Voyage of Change

Notes from Tango Town Cont'd

2010-04-12T20:12:00.000-06:00

La Universidad de Buenos Aires
My new school is beyond description (funny how that phrase is invariably followed by a description...) the building is an old cigarette factory, and sometimes you think it never changed over - there are ashtrays in all the hallways and EVERYONE smokes. It's definitely not the most modern or well-maintained building, but that's ok because the innumerable posters cover the peeling paint. I have never seen a campus so politically active. Everywhere you turn there are signs and posters for the Workers Party or the Evita Party or "Say No to Paying the Foreign Debt" (a hot topic in politics right now). The walls are literally covered floor to ceiling in every room, and the first floor is devoted to tables for each of the political parties to hand out literature. It is so ACTIVE! There's stuff going on in every corner and everywhere you look is another sign to join in a protest or come to a party...The student body is also entertaining. I have never seen so many hippies in one place in my life.
Dreads, long skirts, bicycles in the city, long, loose hair (on guys and girls), baggy cotton pants - it's all there. I feel positively preppy here.

Monedas (change)
At home, everybody hates change. You know, having it jingling in your pocket, weighing you down? Life is better with bills. Not so here. 1 peso pieces are worth their weight in gold and 50 ct pieces aren't far behind. The reason? There's a huge change shortage in the country, and buses will take nothing but change. So everyone is continually buying cheap candy to make change. It facilitates a thriving culture of kiosks - small stores that sell snacks and candy - on literally every corner, and makes one develop a very conniving business strategy ("if I buy something that's 2.50 with a 5$, I'll only get 50 cts, but if I give him 4$, he'll HAVE to give me a 1 peso piece!") I get a little thrill every time someone hands me change - hooray! another bus fare!

Medialunas
The preferred breakfast in BA is "Cafe con Medialunas" - a pastry derived from the croissant but subtly different. They're smaller, for one, and often skinny and very curved, more like a waning crescent moon than the half moon they're named after. The thicker ones look more like croissants, but are very sweet and generally smaller. And porteños (people from BA) say that nothing in the world tastes exactly like a medialuna, which I guess is a good reason to stay here - sipping coffee and watching this beautiful city go about its day.

Child Culture
the other day I saw a father and his young son walking down the street, and as I passed, the boy cried, "don't step on the cracks, papa!" so his father dutifully obeyed. Some things never change, no matter where you go in the world...

Tango Shoes
I spent the last 2 weeks on an intensive hunt for tango shoes. There are many little stores to buy from, all of whom make the shoes by hand and have their own distinct style. My favorite store was Comme Il Faut, the established queen of tango shoe stores, so much so that they never show more than a thumbnail of their shoes on the website for fear that someone will steal their designs. They make new designs daily, and they say you can tell when exactly a woman visited BA by which Comme Il Faut shoes she has on. When you ring the bell at the almost-unmarked door, the ladies of the store let you in and sit you down on a velvet sofa in what could be someone's sitting room, there is so little evidence of it being a shoe store. They then proceed to bring out boxes and boxes of shoes for you to try on. They say that the women only bring out the best shoes for the customers they really like, so I was a little nervous going in. But we got along well and they were very chatty and laughed when I asked for any and all blue shoes they had "we could have known that - it's obvious you like blue!" The shoes were gorgeous, and I felt gorgeous in them, but, after days of looking in every store I could find, I ended up buying shoes slightly more stable (3" instead of 4" stiletto), more my style, and 2/3 the price. Now I have shoes, I'm ready to dance the night away in as many tango bars as I can find - which is quite a few. Wish me luck!

Notes from Tango Town

2010-04-02T13:41:00.000-06:00

I'm going to do this blog a little differently now.
Instead of narrating it as a story (I got to Buenos Aires, got familiar with the apartment, street, city, etc, went to school...) I'm compiling a set of musings on this city, so each blog will be shorter and more varied. Enjoy :)

There's something about this city that I just love. Maybe it's the architecture, a bizarre mix of gleeming skyscrapers and art nouveau - all curves and cupolas - and those cute little cottages all squished together like in Lima. Or maybe it's the parks that pop up wherever you turn, with playgrounds and tree-lined paths for walking the innumerable dogs of the city. Or perhaps how incredibly European it feels, stirring memories of Florence and Vienna, and yet with it has its own unique southern charm. Whatever it is, it's now my favorite city in the world.

I find this a little sad: La Florida, a street in the center of town, used to be Buenos Aires’ cultural center, where all the Parisian-taught modernist painters and writers and intellectuals used to hang out and discuss how to break society’s conventions like rhyme and realism. Now it is just a long street of shops, a huge outdoor mall, entirely run by convention.

Everyone says that below the equator toilets flush backwards (though I still haven't officially checked) but I never knew that locks were backwards too! It's taken me a while to get used to unlocking the doors to the right, but I have high hopes I'll get it before the end.

The subways have open windows. I’ve never seen open windows on subways before. It’s good, because it gives you a life-saving breeze when it’s crowded and stuffy, but it makes you wonder…what if someone threw a bottle out the window? Would the entire train derail and we’d all die, just because of litter?
I have to say my favorite subway line is A – it’s the oldest line, made in the early 20th century and still has the original cars with wooden benches and swinging flower-shaped lights. It gets equally crowded at rush hour, but somehow you feel better about being human sardines – remembering all those 1920’s era business men in their funny hats doing exactly the same thing almost 100 years ago...

Peruvian Adventure Part 2

2010-03-13T20:19:00.002-06:00

Back to blogging. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We left for the islands early in the morning (well, we left for the boat early in the morning…due to boatish delays I didn’t entirely understand we didn’t actually get out on the lake till 10 am, but in the meantime I beat Tim at chess ;) ) and spent the day on the Floating Islands of Los Uros, a truly amazing sight that seemed straight out of a fantasy book. These islands are made of buoyant reeds lashed together to create decent-sized floating islands that shine gold in the sunlight of the highest lake in the world. Each family has 10 square meters of reeds that they tie together to make a community, and, as our guide joked, “if you don’t like your neighbor, you just untie his island in the night and ‘chao!’” The people began constructing these islands when the invading Incas made it too dangerous to live on shore, so they were able to maintain their culture despite the invading Incas and the Spaniards. Now they have yielded to the invading tourists, but in a really cheering form of cultural tourism, showing their lives and letting people experience a day and a night on the island with them, which is what we did.
After Titicaca we returned to the desert coast and the beautiful city of Arequipa, where I had spent Christmas. We visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, justly renowned for its amazing architecture and vibrant primary colors. (see facebook) My favorites were the blue arched courtyards with red flowers placed to make the color that much more striking. Apparently in its heyday the nunnery was quite the place – rich women from Spain would come here with up to 4 slaves and countless luxuries (even discrete baby disposal services – not much of a cloister!) until the archbishop got wind of it and imposed stricter rules. Oh well.
We made our way up the coast to Nazca, famous for a group of designs in the desert only visible from the air. They’re amazing, a monkey, a spider, a tree with intricate roots, a guy waving with huge eyes… The Nazca people made them thousands of years ago and it’s a mystery why – messages to the gods? Communications with aliens? Sacred paths to walk praying for rain? – but to me the greater mystery is how they lasted so long unknown and unblemished. If no one knew about them until the 1920s, why didn’t anyone build a house on them, or a road? In fact, one design is partially broken by a highway, but out of almost 500, that’s pretty darn good. Tim and I flew over the lines in a tiny 5-seater biplane that tilted and turned to see each design clearly which was great…except it turned my stomach quite thoroughly as well. Oh well, I guess there’s a price to pay for seeing what was meant only for the gods.
From Nazca we bussed north to Ica, an oasis in the sandy desert, and Tim felt right at home in the tall dunes – just like Egypt, where he spent the past semester. We went sandboarding on the dunes, or rather, sandsledding for those of us who weren’t experienced snowboarders (oh, wait – that was all of us, I think Tim and I were the only ones in the group who’d ever seen snow and we don’t board) but it was really fun, especially since the dune buggy came to pick us up at the bottom of each hill and drive us to the top again :D The buggy then took us on the wildest ride I’ve ever experienced – it was as close to a roller coaster as you can get while still on the ground, and those of you who know how much I hate roller coasters will be surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
In Ica we also took an entertaining tour of the vineyards with a Swiss-Australian couple and a hilarious taxi driver guide who blasted 80’s rock in the car between vineyards. Tim tried a lot of wine and by the last stop the group was downing shot glass after shot glass of wine from huge clay pots and learning drinking cheers like, “Arriba! Abajo! Al centro! Adentro!” (up, down, to the center, inside!) or, even better, the Swiss cheer which went, “To the nipple, to the balls, to the middle, to the stomach”. Tim wasn’t staggering that much when we got back into the taxi…
We wanted to go to Paracas to see the famous Islas Ballestas, home of everything from sea lions to flamingos to penguins, but apparently the ocean was acting up and the waves were too high and stormy for anyone to visit the islands, so we skipped that and went straight to Lima, where we finally went to the center of the city and saw the Plaza de Armas and the yellow cathedral and the catacombs of San Francisco (awesome. Rooms full of skulls and passageways lined with femur bones…creeeepy!).
And the next day we were gone! Off into the air, back to America for a month-long winter vacation at home before returning to South America and my study abroad in Buenos Ayres.

Touring Peru

2010-01-23T18:54:00.000-06:00

I haven’t written in a while, I’m sorry. Somehow, with my boyfriend here, the things that used to take up my day – like reading Dostoevsky and writing my blog – have slipped through the cracks of my suddenly much busier days. So I’ll try to give a relatively brief account of what those days have been busy with.
I met Tim in the airport in Lima (complete with the classic slow motion running scene and sharing an ice cream in the airport) and we spent a few days in Lima, exploring the city. I’ve decided that if I ever live in a city, I want to live in Lima. The houses are so cute! Each one in its own special way – some look like little stone castles, some like mountain chalets, some like brightly colored boxes covered in flowers, some like Greek temples – and all tiny and nestled in right next to each other.
We spent our first weekend and anniversary in a lodge in the Corodillera Blanca (the White Range), one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Our cabin looked out on a glacier and craggy peaks in one direction and on a sloping valley and more, distant mountains in the other, dotted with potato fields and tiny red-roofed houses. The couple that runs the lodge was really cool; the husband works as an environmental consultant all over Peru and the wife – when she’s not running the lodge or taking guests on horse rides – is working on all sorts of community development projects, from a mothers group focusing on early nutrition and childhood development, to a community center to facilitate tourism in the area, to an afterschool program to develop children’s critical thinking and creativity. The day we arrived, Diana saw our violins and asked if we could come play for the children that afternoon, to introduce them to a new instrument and culture. We agreed happily, and went to play duets for the wide-eyed children who asked, when we told them that our bows were made of horse hair, if they could make a bow out of the tails of Diana’s horses.
On Monday we were off again, this time to Cuzco, the navel of the world…or at least of South American tourism.
Everyone wants to do the Inca Trail – the sacred road that leads to Machu Picchu – but it’s crowded and expensive, even during low season. So we found a local guide who took us around the back way to Machu Picchu, on a lesser used but still authentic Incan trail. We passed by (and spent a few hours at) hot springs on day 1, then followed the train tracks to Machu Picchu Town on day 2, and on day 3 climbed to Machu Picchu itself.
The hike to Machu Picchu was grueling. We woke up at 3:30 AM to start hiking at 4 in the pre-dawn rain, and by the time we got to the base of the 2,000 steps our ponchos were soaked through. Every stone step became a waterfall as we heaved our altitude-sore legs up and up and up. We finally arrived at the gate at 5:30 only to find it locked and with a 200-person line leading to it. Why the line? For tickets to Wayna Picchu, the sacred mountain overlooking MP, to which 400 tickets are given out each day to reduce traffic. The result: only the most hardcore tourists – willing to wake up long before dawn and climb to MP before the first bus – get the privilege of hiking for another hour of impossibly steep steps on already exhausted legs. That’s us! (Since that day, Tim has had a phobia of stone steps, even if they just lead to the entrance of a cathedral.  )
When we finally entered MP, the rain had stopped, and the ruins were playing hide and seek with the flitting clouds. Seeing ancient ruins emerge from the mist as if for the first time was worth all the rain of the hike up (at least in hindsight). It was magical. Even better, by the time we climbed Wayna Picchu the sun had come out and we saw MP spread out in all its glory behind us.
MP, said our guide, was a place of knowledge, where priests and nobles came from all 4 corners of the Incan empire to learn astronomy, religion, history and the arts. It was also the home of the Chosen Women, sacred virgins who wove the cloth for the Inca’s robes and rooms and led the rituals worshiping the moon, the second most important deity of the Incas after the sun. I’ve got to say, if the archeologists are right, this must have been the most awesome university ever. And I thought Midd had a beautiful location. Our hills and corn fields can’t compare to those huge jungle-covered mountains rising from the mist like so many grasping fingers.
We took the bus down from MP, too tired to take another step, and slept the rest of the afternoon until our train left. Next Stop: Urubamba, a little town in the Sacred Valley near Cuzco.
We only spent one day in Urubamba, but it was enough – it was Tim’s 21st birthday, and to celebrate it, I took him paragliding over the Andes. Every spectacular view I see eclipses all the previous wonders: the cloud forest in Ecuador was amazing until I saw the mountains and farmland of Intag, which paled in comparison to a sunset over the mighty Amazon, which was buried in my memory by the majestic mountains and glaciers of the Corodillera Blanca, which were obscured by the vision of MP in the mist, which in turn disappeared before the mountains and lakes and golden-green fields of the Sacred Valley, seen from thousands of feet in the air. I can’t even describe why this place was so much more beautiful. Perhaps it was the colors –red earth, green fields, yellow flowers, blue mountains – perhaps it was the light – bright and sunny where we were but with dark rain clouds over the mountains which gave the day an eerie brightness that accentuated every shadow – perhaps it was nothing more than one of the most beautiful places on earth. Anyway, the important thing is, Tim enjoyed his birthday.
Then we went to Cuzco and spent a few days being accosted by cute children in traditional clothes asking us to take photos of them and their little alpacas (for a price, of course) and street vendors selling hats and paintings and silver necklaces. We also saw some impressive Incan ruins and Spanish cathedrals (often at the same time – the Spaniards had a habit of building churches on top of important Incan temples. Did they have the convenience of future tourists in mind?)
I have to say, this part of my trip is very different from anything I’ve done so far. First of all, I’m traveling with someone else, which is a welcome relief. But we’re also walking the “Gringo Trail” and stopping at all the tourist destinations of the country, which changes me from a traveler (as I was in Ecuador and my first month of Peru) to a tourist, plain and simple. It changes my associates, too. As a traveler, my friends (and they were all my friends, even if I didn’t ever get their names) were the adventurous backpackers traveling all South America in a year or the people with round-the-world airplane tickets coming from Malaysia or Namibia with exotic stories to share. Now, half the people I see are middle-aged Argentineans here on tours for their summer vacation. It changes my impression of myself. I’m not sure I like this new identity, but I can’t spend 2 months in Peru and not see MP, right? So I grit my teeth and try to remember that I probably know more about coffee farming in the highlands and banana transportation in the Amazon than these people will ever learn. And then I ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ with the rest of them at the ingenuity of Inca ruins and the colorful clothing of the indigenous women.

The last journey of 2009

2010-01-02T15:41:00.000-06:00

I left Iquitos with a week to go before Christmas. The fact that it took me the whole week to get to Arequipa (where I spent Christmas and New Years with my friend Joaquin) still astonishes me. My concept of time in relation to travel is changed forever. When it takes 3 days to go from Iquitos to the nearest road, journeys counted in hours become mere trifles. 18 hours from Lima to Arequipa on a bus? Easy. And I wonder how the 4-hour drive to Boston could ever have seemed long.
The boat trip was enjoyable, though. I made friends with my neighbors – fellow travelers from Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia – and had wonderful long conversations about everything from 80s music to sex slaves in Mexico. When we finally stepped onto dry land again, I found myself suddenly sad – I’d been in the Amazon a whole month, gotten used to the heat, the rain, sleeping in a hammock, grown to love the awe-inspiring clouds and the smell of bananas, begun to expect to see river dolphins every afternoon, and here I was leaving…who knows when I’ll ever return?
The bus ride from Yurimaguas to Tarapoto was 2 hours of windy roads up into the mountains. How windy, you ask? Well, the first thing the bus attendant did when we set off was give everyone a little black plastic bag – not for trash, as I thought, but to be sick in, should the road affect you too much – and almost every single one got used by the time we arrived. I have never seen so many sick people in my life. Not the most pleasant experience.
From Tarapoto, my new friend Mayo (a jazz singer from Chile, living in Colombia) and I took the night bus to Trujillo, on the coast. I went to sleep in a jungle and woke to a desert – what a shock! For the girl used to relying on rainwater to wash her dishes every evening, used to the constant sounds of birds and insects from the forest, most of all used to being constantly surrounded by things green and growing, a dry and barren desert was hard to take.
I spent a day in Trujillo, going on a tour of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Columbian city in South America, and largest adobe city in the world. Some of the temples were amazingly well preserved, either because they were buried in sand until recent excavation or because the Chimor people themselves buried their temples inside newer temples, so underneath crumbling mud-brick walls you can find perfectly preserved paintings of gods and snakes and human sacrifices. It was fascinating. I have to say, though, if I were to choose an ancient Peruvian city to live in, I’d prefer Machu Picchu – true, the Chimor had great beaches, but I’ll take mountains and (especially) trees over that any day.
From Trujillo I went on down the coast, past Lima (and by ‘past’ I mean I spent 3 days wandering around the city) to Arequipa, where Joaquin lives. Joaquin was one of my best friends at UWC but I haven’t seen him since we graduated, so I was really excited to get here. And I was not disappointed. His whole family is super cool, and I passed a wonderful Christmas and New Years being entertained by silly jokes and intellectual conversations and lots and lots of illegal fireworks. Wow. I have never seen so many fireworks at one time. For both Christmas (or rather, midnight on Christmas Eve) and New Years, every single roof sets off fireworks, and in a city of almost 1million people, that’s insane. For about an hour after midnight, there were magnificent displays in every direction I looked. It was very much fun.
Some of the New Years traditions around here: 1. Wear yellow underwear for the New Year…apparently it’s good luck. So for the week between Christmas and New Year, all the streets were decked out little shops selling yellow underwear, yellow boxers, even lacy yellow thongs. It was crazy. 2. At the stroke of midnight, drink 12 shots of champagne, one per minute, each with a raisin in it. Why a raisin? I don’t know. It’s supposed to bring money in the coming year. I just ate the raisins. 3. If you plan on traveling, run around the block dragging your suitcase to ensure safe travels. I didn’t have my backpack with me, but I ran around with my shoulder bag and camera…that’s got to count for something.
Now I’m off to Lima again (on another short 18-hour bus ride) to pick up my darling Tim and start off on a wild tour of Peru’s greatest attractions. I’m so excited!

a Shaman in the Amazon

2009-12-13T10:17:00.001-06:00

12-12-09
These past two weeks have been very different from any of my previous travelings. On my first day in Iquitos I found an Ayahuascero – a shaman who cures people with medicinal plants and ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic vine that is so common in these parts – and arranged to spend 2 weeks living with him and learning his practice. Needless to say, it has been a very interesting two weeks.
Jorge, the shaman, works mainly with a mixture of garlic, alcamfor, and sugar cane alcohol, into which he whistles one of over 150 songs of power and healing to give it specific properties, and then rubs or sprays it onto the body to heal his client. He then gives whatever remedy is needed and finally strengthens and protects the healing with tobacco smoke. This is the procedure for minor healings, but for anything major, he turns to the ayahuasca.
Ayahuasca is a vine that grows in the jungle which, combined with the leaves of the chacruna tree, is highly hallucinogenic, and is used for healings all throughout the Western Amazon. Jorge drinks ayahuasca twice a week at midnight, and in that altered state is able to see and cure what ails the people who come to him, anything from lost love to bad luck finding a job to cancer. He’s highly respected in the city, and says he has never been unable to cure his patients, who often come to him in desperation after the hospitals have tried and failed to help them.
He took me to the market on my first day, to get to know the medicinal plants you could buy there (did you know that cinnamon is good for nausea and tobacco is a powerful form of protection?) and later we went into the jungle to collect and learn about the plants you could only find in the forest.
One day he was asked to come to a jungle lodge to do an ayahuasca ceremony for a group of tourists, and, as his “student”, I tagged along. It was great – I got an almost-official jungle tour for free, complete with canoe trips looking for sloths (too quick for us, unfortunately, we didn’t see any), a night walk to see tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, and spiders (I have never been so very aware of the myriad ways to die in the jungle), and an ayahuasca ceremony. I decided to take the ayahuasca to see how the shaman does his work and what he meant by “seeing the illness”, so that night we skipped dinner and all went out to a tiny cabin and one by one drank a shot glass of thick, brown, foul-tasting liquid. I have to say, it was not the most pleasant experience. For someone who has never even been drunk, hallucinating for 4 hours was pretty intense, especially as it was accompanied by vomiting and violent shaking. I was disappointed that I didn’t have any fantastic spiritual revelations, but maybe my expectations were set too high. Anyway, I didn’t do that again, though I continued to study with Jorge for another week.
Now I’m off down the river again, this time towards the coast of Peru. I’m officially traveling to Arequipa to spend Christmas with Joaquin, a good friend from UWC, but I’m making a couple detours to check out pre-Incan ruins and sunny beaches. More on that when I get there.

The Banana Boat

2009-12-04T13:37:00.001-06:00

After five days in Pantoja, the cargo boat finally pushed off. We were all very excited to be going at last, but instead of going downriver towards Iquitos, the boat went upriver for most of the afternoon, picking up bananas and chickens from tiny communities on tributaries of the Napo. And that was how the first three days went – we’d move for about 20 minutes and stop for an hour, loading cargo from everyone who could wave at us from the shore. One afternoon we found ourselves passing a house we recognized as where we’d woken up that morning – we’d spent almost the whole day going up and down a tributary and were only just then starting downriver for the day. But none of us had any pressing business to attend to, so we shrugged at the delay and continued our card game.

Cards were indispensable for the trip. We spent a couple hours every day playing cards, as well as creating a backgammon board out of masking tape and seeds for pieces, and playing chess on my little handmade Incas vs. Conquistadores set. And reading. Lots of swinging in hammocks and reading. And watching the river go by or (as was more often the case in the first days) watching them load the boat. PETA would have a fit, watching this boat get loaded. Pigs were dragged to the boat by their hind legs, their noses making tracks in the dirt, and then thrown onto the metal floor to be confined below deck in a dark and increasingly stinky hold. Bulls, too, were manhandled onto the boat (though it took a lot of men – about 10/bull, pulling on ropes attached to his horns and legs) and then tied up in a tiny pen which at least was in the open air. And chickens in woven baskets kept flooding the boat, going everywhere, under peoples’ hammocks, on the roof, next to the bananas…did I mention the bananas? They were everywhere – they filled the hold (except the part that had chickens and pigs) and then the open part at the front of the boat in stacks 8 ft. high, and then finally up on the top deck with the passengers. Robin, the Dutch guy, calculated that there must have been at least 10,000 bunches of bananas on the boat.

We kept a weather eye out for river dolphins, and on the second day were rewarded by a spectacular show. We were stopped to pick up – you guessed it – bananas, at a junction of two rivers, and looked out to see five or six little grey dolphins and a pink dolphin splashing around in the current. It was a rare sight – normally grey dolphins are solitary, or so I hear, but here were a half dozen obviously playing together. For once we were glad the stop was especially long, because it gave us a long time to watch the dolphins.

After three days, we arrived in Santa Clotilde, a town about halfway to Iquitos. It was quite a shock – after three days of boat and another week before then of a tiny border town, Santa Clotilde was like a metropolis. They had roads – well, sidewalks, I guess – complete with the occasional motorcycle, and shops, and restaurants, and streetlights…it was overwhelming. We disembarked to walk around and restock on crackers and yogurt, and enjoy the fresh air, free of the smell of bananas and chickens.

We were halfway to Iquitos by map, but to our surprise, the trip was almost over. We had filled the boat to the gills, and so could make no more stops and the rest of the trip just flew by. The next thing we knew, we were entering the Amazon (exactly like the Napo except bigger) and the next evening we docked in Iquitos. We decided to spend one last night in our hammocks and save on hostel money – bad decision. At 4:30 the crew tramped up the stairs and began unloading the bananas and chickens from our deck and between the crowing roosters and the shouting men, none of us could get back to sleep. By 6 am we gave up and tramped off the boat for the last time, looking forward to exploring this legendary city.

the Amazon, Part 1

2009-11-25T16:47:00.000-06:00

I am now on my way down the Napo River to the Amazon and Iquitos, the largest city in the world that is inaccessible by road, located in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon. Once again, I was pleasantly but truly surprised at the way things turned out. I met Phil (a friend from La Hesperia who’s also traveling South America for a year so we decided to do part of our journey together) in Coca, a small town at the edge of the Amazon and the next morning, at 7:00, we boarded a large motorized canoe, together with some 50 or 60 other people, bags of rice, generators, baskets of fruits and boxes of chicks. Then, for 12 hours, we floated down the river towards Nueva Rocafuerte, the last town before the border with Peru. It was a wonderful ride. Much of it was passed in silence, watching the water and the jungle go by, with only an occasional, “wow! Look at that huge tree!” or “Did you see that butterfly? It just passed us! That must be a blow to the captain’s ego.” I started talking to a nun named Edith, who is twenty years old and grew up in Iquitos. First she entertained me with adventure stories of growing up on the doorstep of the jungle (and the dangers of man-eating wild pigs and electric eels), then we started talking about her religion and where she was going. She’s one of the “children of Israel”, which is a tiny Peruvian-based Christian sect based firmly in the Ten Commandments. She very nicely gave me a little booklet of the Ten Commandments and some psalms, and then invited Phil and me to join her and her sisters (as in, fellow nuns) at their mission about twenty minutes farther down the river from Nueva Rocafuerte for the weekend. We agreed, excited to get a taste of their life, and so the next morning, after a night in Nueva Rocafuerte, we set off.
We docked at a cluster of houses – I can’t really call it a town – and helped the sisters move their baggage into their stilted house. Then we spent most of the morning clearing land for a new church. It was a huge swath – two hectares by the end - because they said that this was going to be a huge town, as everyone who believed in the second coming of Jesus Christ and wanted to be saved would come here to join the community. Don’t worry, it wasn’t rainforest, it was old corn and rice and bushes, so we didn’t feel bad macheteing it.
We were done by lunch time – and good thing too, a month of no work meant huge blisters when I took up the machete again – and so we spent the afternoon talking and chewing on sugarcane. At 6, their Sabbath started, so we were invited to join them in the church. In general, it was a relatively normal church service, hymns, the Lord’s Prayer, a sermon with lots of references to biblical passages, etc. but there were a couple key differences. Firstly, they didn’t have a cross – they believed that it counted as a ‘false idol’ according to the 10 Commandments so instead they had a banner listing the Commandments and their derivations in the Bible – and they segregated men and women on different sides of the church so one side was filled with brightly colored veils and long skirts and the other filled with long unbound hair and beards. I was told the biblical references for those mandates, but I can’t remember them now. What struck me though, was the length – the service was 2.5 hours long, and it was the first of seven on the Sabbath – 6 and 11 pm, then 4, 7 and 11 am, then again at 2 and 5 pm. So we were woken up by a ringing bell at 11 and 4 and 6:30, though we managed to get out of attending all the services and instead spent the day relaxing by the riverside and exploring the jungle.
Phil made friends with one of the local kids and he showed us along a path in the jungle, pointing out orchids and bullet ants (So named for the amount of pain inflicted by one of their bites). It was just as interesting as any jungle tour, and free!
We attended their evening service and I played my violin along with their hymns (which were very repetitive so it was easy to learn). After dinner we sat in the house, listening to the rain fill the water barrels, and talking about religion. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn Israelita (as they call themselves) but it was definitely interesting to hear their point of view on biblical and cultural and historical issues.

The next day we went back to Nueva Rocafuerte to get our exit stamps from Ecuador and provisions for the boat, and then were off back down the river to Peru. We’re now hanging out in Pantoja, the Peruvian border town, and the most idyllic place I have seen in a long while. They have sidewalks instead of streets (who needs cars?) which are lined with fruit trees, and palm frond-thatched houses with little grills out back to cook their food over open fires. They have electricity from 6-11 every evening, which very conveniently forces everyone out into the streets to socialize in the afternoon, since there’s nothing you can do inside and people sit by the river and talk or play games or exchange songs on the guitar.
There are quite a few other tourists here. Joining Phil and me on the boat will be an Argentinean couple, a Dutch couple, and a crazy Chilean graffiti artist. In the 3 days we’ve been here we’ve had great fun hanging out, especially with the “Suiso Loco” – the Swiss guy who is paddling down the Amazon to the Atlantic in his Biciboat – a paddle-house boat powered by his trusty bicycle. He’s been traveling for 5 years now, biking through the Middle East, guiding tours in Africa, and finally biking around the southern half of South America to get to Ecuador and start his Amazon journey. If you want to know more about his trip (vastly longer and more interesting than mine, i'm sure) he's at www.hervepuravida.com

Tomorrow morning we sail for Iquitos, 5 days of swinging in a hammock, talking to my fellow travelers, playing cards, and keeping an eye out for parrots and river dolphins.
But I'll tell more about that after I do it.

The Permaculture Workshop

2009-11-16T18:07:00.000-06:00

16-11-09
My time in Pucara didn’t go exactly as planned. I started off teaching in the school, but didn’t like it. First of all, they didn’t need me. They had two teachers (for around 30 kids, aged 6-13) as well as a music, art, and gym teacher who came in once a week for specific classes, and another volunteer who had been there since June teaching English and helping with classes. I was utterly useless. Moreover, the week I started was the week of their exams, so I spent 5 days standing around watching the children cheat on their tests. The next two weeks were vacation, and I was out of a job.

Fortunately, I met Peter, an ex-Vermonter who has been living here for 11 years working with the people of Pucará and other villages on sustainable development projects through his NGO and, as if in answer to my prayers, he invited me to join a permaculture workshop he had organized. It was perfect. The workshop was three days per week for three weeks, taught by a Guatemalan permaculture expert and attended by Ecuadorian organic farmers who wanted to know more about this permaculture thing. (Permaculture, if you don't know yourself, is basically sustainable organic agriculture, working with and from nature, instead of against it). I had so much fun, and learned so much.

For example: the “border effect” is really useful – if, instead of thinking of a border as dividing, you think of it as uniting two different areas, you can take advantage of the diversity created there (i.e. at the foot of a mountain, you find mountain birds, valley birds, and some birds that only live in that niche). So when planning a garden, make as many borders as possible – canals, paths, etc. – and make them as curvy as possible: when have you ever seen a straight line in nature? That also uses space better- you can plant more carrots in a wavy line than a straight one. And the more carrots, the better.

Or: agriculture should work in harmony with the lunar cycle. When the moon is waxing, energy and fluids in plants move upwards, while when it wanes, the energy sinks. So always plant seeds with the waxing moon – so it will create shoots – but transplant with the waning moon – so it develops roots.

Or: many times you can get nature to do your work for you. E.g. if you have chickens (and everyone here does) put them in an empty vegetable bed and they will clean it of seeds and insects while tilling the soil and fertilizing it with their nutrient-filled manure, and - voilá! You can plant in it again without having to do any of that yourself.

I don’t know about you, but I found it fascinating. We generally spent our mornings learning the theory behind permaculture, its principles and methods, and the afternoons putting them into practice: like making a circle of banana trees around a hole filled with branches and leaves to filter and use the “gray water” from the laundry/kitchen areas – every year you get a meter and a half of good compost, 21 bunches of bananas, and someplace to drain your dishwater. We also made ditches in the hill to collect rainwater and direct it into the soil, mandala gardens, and a seeding area. It was great fun.

The only problem was that many of the things I learned – like how to make a sustainable coffee forest with bananas and citrus trees to give shade – aren’t really applicable to Vermont. I was suddenly faced with how very unsustainable our life in New England is; everything we eat, even in the summer, is transported from California or farther. And even if we turn the field behind our house into a fully functional, diversified permaculture garden and canned and stored everything, we could still only produce a fraction of what we consume in a year. It almost makes one want to up and move down to the tropics where you can plant a lemon tree outside your kitchen window and never more have to worry about zest. Sure, these people don’t even have a word for “sledding”, but they’re a heck of a lot closer to sustainability than we will ever be. And they have really good fruit. (Tangent alert!) My two favorite fruits right now are Guavas – like a huge (2 ft long) bean pod filled with shiny black seeds covered in a layer of soft white fuzz, you eat the fuzz and spit the seeds on the ground, hoping to plant a new tree – and Grenedillas – perhaps so named because they look like grenades, they’re a yellow fruit that has a hard shell you crack open to reveal hundreds of small seeds covered in clear, sweet pouches of juice, sort of like a pomegranate but better – I’m going to miss them when I leave here.

Oh, by the way, my plans have changed and I’m now not going to Colombia but straight to the Amazon and on into Peru, so if you never hear from me again, I was probably eaten by an anaconda or a jaguar or a school of piranhas or any of the other amazingly lethal things they have in the jungle. It’s going to be so exciting, hooray! :D

Goodbye La Hesperia, Hello Pucara!

2009-10-18T09:09:00.002-06:00

This week I traveled north in Ecuador, past Quito, past the Equator (I’m in the northern hemisphere again! …it doesn’t feel any different.) and now I’m in a tiny town (50 houses or so) in the mountains called Pucara. I actually spent the first half of the week at a farm that’s the base camp of the program I’m doing, which was wonderful. The farm is much more productive than La Hesperia, and the volunteers there eat all their food fresh from the garden – the pre-dinner conversation goes something like, “there are a lot of carrots in the garden, we could get some onions too, and I think I saw some zucchini ready, oh, and we have all those potatoes from last week…ok, let’s go harvest them”. All this is in Spanish, of course, because, although there was only one Spanish-speaker among us (a guy from Spain) it’s the lingua franca, and even when I was talking to the American guy we spoke mostly in Spanish.

Tuesday was Harvest Day, and so we spent the morning picking all sorts of vegetables and washing them and tying them in bunches to sell, then in the afternoon we went out in a truck and sold them all, to specific clients and anyone who happened to see us stopped on the side of the road. Sitting in the back of a truck, the wind blowing my hair, crunching on a sweet, organic carrot from the bin…life couldn’t get better.

On Thursday I left for Pucara, where I’m going to spend the next three weeks. After a morning spent thinning carrots (and munching on the larger ones, straight out of the ground), we hopped on a bus that took us deep into the mountains, far from any sort of civilization. Tiny, twisty roads brought us down from the high Sierras and their rain-starved brown fields (it’s the end of the dry season and everyone’s praying for rain) to the cloud forest, where everything is lush and large-leafed, even though technically it’s the dry season here too. I alighted in a town with one and a half roads (I think the second one disappears after a short distance), one school, and one kiosk-like shop that also, thankfully, has a public telephone.

My host is named Emperatriz, and her house is basic but sweet. My room is cozy and the cinderblock walls are painted a cheery yellow, made more inviting by the bright light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a wire. There’s no electricity apart from the lights in the whole house though, so I have to find someplace else to charge my computer if I want to write anything. The kitchen is separate, with a dirt floor and a roof so low even I have to duck in order to not hit my head, but the food that comes off of the tiny stove more than makes up for it – it’s simple, but very, very good. Emperatriz has a few chickens that have the run of the yard and sleep in a tree nearby (I’ve never seen chickens in a tree before, but I guess they’re birds too…) and a cute 3-month-old pig and a couple guinea pigs. Everyone has chickens here. You can hear them all day, and they strut along the road like it’s their own (and considering the number of cars that come by, it very well could be). The roosters have crowing contests across town, especially at 4:30 -5:00 in the morning when they all get together for a grand chorus, but I’ve learned to sleep through it.

The other woman who’s taken me under her wing is Consuela, and she spent all Saturday morning teaching me to make empanadas – sweet, cheese-filled rolls – and telling me about life in Pucara and all the other volunteers who stayed with her and wrote to tell her how much they missed her empanadas.

On Monday I start teaching in the elementary school in earnest (I went on Friday but it was a bit of a fiasco, and I have higher hopes for Monday when, hopefully, I’ll know what I’m doing) and I’ll be here until the beginning of November, when I go off to Colombia to another organic farm.

Just Another Day in the Jungle

2009-10-07T10:54:00.000-06:00

Here I am, about to leave La Hesperia and I feel like I’ve only just settled in. My blisters have just barely turned into calluses, I’ve finally gotten the hang of the machete (and I haven't chopped off a limb yet - yess!), and I’ve figured out how to make breakfast interesting (liven the oatmeal with a dollop of jam, for example, or convince the cooks to let you make butter so you have something for the bread). The huge-leafed plants and tall trees covered in spiky pineapple-like epiphytes feel comfortingly like home, and I know all the landmarks of the mile-long trek up the mountain from the road to the reserve. At the same time, I’m ready to go, ready to do something different, to really get to know Ecuadorians on their own terms. My next stop is Intag, a small town in the north of Ecuador where I’ll be staying with a host family and working with the community on their reforestation project.

But for now, I’m still at La Hesperia, and I’ll enjoy it for all it’s worth. And that’s certainly a lot.

Living on the equator gives me insight into the origins of many things I’ve taken for granted all my life. Like peanuts. I’ve always heard, “peanuts aren’t nuts, they’re legumes” but never really known what that meant. I had a vague picture of them growing on plants like beans or something…nothing of the sort. They’re roots! And the plants look like overgrown clover – I even pulled a few out thinking they were weeds before I learned my mistake.And bananas! Did you know they grow upside-down on the tree? They curve upwards in a big bunch…I guess so they’ll fall easier when they’re ripe. But when they’re ripe the whole tree dies and so to harvest bananas, all you have to do is chop the whole tree down with one swipe of your machete. My favorite plant is what is colloquially called ‘poor man’s hat’, but it could be called ‘poor man’s cape’ because its leaves are literally 3-4 ft long and at least 2 ft wide. It grows all over, and gets quite large. The best thing about it, though, is that it is very soft, and it’s incredibly satisfying to fell a gigantic tree with one backhanded machete stroke. Makes you love the machete.

Last weekend’s hike gave the waterfall hike a run for its money in terms of epic adventure. This one was called the Tiger Trail, after the family of pumas that live up on the mountain and use the trail for their own private highway (the Ecuadorians apparently don’t know the difference between pumas and tigers and lions – they use the words interchangeably). We even saw a puma hairball on the hike, though no tracks or (thank god) the pumas themselves. We hiked up and up and up and up the mountain, past the pastures, past the secondary forest, and into the primary cloud forest, all the while learning about the flora of the area. Like the tree called the Dragon’s Blood, which literally bleeds when you cut it, with a thick, red sap that oozes out of the cut just like blood from a finger-prick, but when you rub it on a cut or a blister it foams pale pink and heals the sore. There’s also a tree called the Suicide Tree, which drops little pellets on you if you try to cut it down, and they itch and sting for weeks with no cure.

The hike was beautiful but steep, and when we got into the primary forest it became overgrown as well, and we had to push vines out of our way to climb up the narrow path. Walter, the leader of our hike, told us that this was a trail made by the indigenous tribes to connect the coast with the mountains and the Amazon, and you could tell from the erosion of the trail – in parts the sides of the trail were above our heads. The way down was one long landslide, accompanied by shrieks as one after another of us felt the loose dirt give way under our rubber boots and we slithered down the path until we hit a root. Neither words nor pictures can do justice to the incline of that trail – it was nearly vertical at times and the soil was very sandy, so it fell apart at the slightest touch. All in all, the trip was fun and interesting but exhausting, especially since we had to walk down to the road as soon as we got back to catch a bus into Quito for the weekend.

Life at La Hesperia

2009-09-18T16:59:00.000-06:00

After a week volunteering at the La Hesperia Biological Reserve, I’m ready for a relaxing weekend in the hammock.
The schedule is fairly simple – breakfast at 7:30, work from 8:30-12, lunch at 12:30, work from 2-5, dinner at 6, sleep sometime between 8 and 9:30. At first I was worried about getting up by 7:30, and laughed at going to bed at 8, but after only a day here it seemed natural: how could I stay up late when the crickets chirp so sleepily outside my window and it’s so very dark? (There are no stars here. The weather is consistently sunny and beautiful in the morning, cool and cloudy – but rarely rainy – in the afternoon, and overcast all night.) And how could I stay sleeping when the birds sing so brightly to accompany the morning sun? Normally I wake well before my 7:00 alarm.
Our tasks reflect the dual nature as organic farm and biological reserve. So far this week I’ve tied up tomato plants, spread manure, cleared weeds with a machete, filled soil bags for planting native trees, milked cows, walked the mule down the road to bring the day’s milk to the milk truck, and sat in the jungle looking for orchid bees. The bees here are amazing – they don’t sting, and they’re iridescent blue and green and gold with little yellow pompoms for antennae.
Tuesdays we stop work early to listen to a lecture about anything from the politics of Latin America to the variety in butterflies in the cloud forest. Wednesdays are the weekly soccer match between the volunteers and the staff. Fridays alternate – free, so we can travel on a 3-day weekend, or a hike. Today was a hike, and what an epic hike it was!

Just beyond the cow barn the cloud forest begins, and we began our hike by descending down a steep trail over, under and around jungle vines and huge-leafed trees. The trail was so steep half the time we were sliding through loose dirt rather than walking, trying not to land in the river far below. We finally got to the river in one piece (or rather 10 pieces, we were a fairly small group today) and started wading through the water in our big rubber boots –easier than making a trail of our own.
At one point we had to jump from a boulder into a calf-deep pool and everyone squealed as water sloshed into our boots. But that was the easy part. The river turned into a series of waterfalls, and one by one we strapped ourselves into harnesses and rappelled down the cliff next to the waterfall.

Or at least, that’s what we did for the first 2 waterfalls. At the third, our guide said something about ‘mas facil’(easier) and we found ourselves rappelling down through the waterfall into a deep pool and then wading out to the banks to wait for the rest of the group.

It was cold and wet and fantastically fun.
Over one of the waterfalls, we saw a pair of black eagles watching us – apparently we were right below their nest and they had eggs. In the last waterfall, our guide lost the machete underneath the torrent and tried diving to find it but didn’t succeed, so we’re down 1 machete (I’m not too sad about that. Machete clearing is hard work).
The way back was equally steep and no easy work for the lungs and legs, but we ended up just beyond the peanut field in time for a hearty, though late, lunch.

And now – the weekend! You’ll be able to find me in the hammock outside the volunteer house, reading and keeping an eye out for toucans and monkeys.

Day 2 of Porta Lopez

2009-09-17T11:35:00.001-06:00

Today we went on an expedition to Isla de la Plata (Isle of Silver, so named because all the bird poop on the cliffs shines like silver in bright sunlight or full moonlight). It’s also called “poor man’s Galapagos” because it has similar wildlife (though not nearly as diverse) and is a heck of a lot cheaper. We took an hour boat ride there, bouncing and rocking over high waves that almost made me sick. When we got there, I met two interesting people – one named Anika (or rather, Anneka) and one alumna of Middlebury College! She was in our tour group, so we spent the day getting to know each other, reminiscing about our school, talking about life after college, and admiring the island. It was so cool to find a Midd grad in such a remote place! Small world. This tour was also in Spanish (though they promised an English-speaking tour guide) so once again I translated everything for my new friends. Fortunately or unfortunately, this time there were a lot of other people who spoke Spanish and English better than me, so I had people to help me with the words I didn’t know (like a baby bird’s downy feathers and tree sap) but also had people to correct me if I got anything wrong, so this translation project was a bit more stressful.

The tour was great though – we met dozens of Blue-Footed Boobies, and I say ‘met’ because they’ve been protected for so long that they don’t mind human presence at all and build their nests in the paths and walk right up to you on their bright blue feet.

I learned lots of interesting things about them, like that they take a different mate every year, but the females return to the same nest their whole lives: one home, many boyfriends. And that their feet get brighter blue with age, starting out white as babies and ending up a bright cerulean blue, like the Caribbean Sea in sunlight. I’ve fallen in love with their blue feet and wide, yellow, quizzical eyes. There were lots of other birds there, but none as cool as the Blue-Footed Boobies.

Then we went snorkeling in the coral at the foot of the island and I saw two blue polka-dotted fish, one bright blue flat fish with a yellow tail, a puffer fish, and lots of little yellow and purple striped fish. (like my official scientific names?) We went hunting for whales after that, to see them for the last time here before they migrated south to Antarctica for the…summer. They were amazing, (as whales always are) huge and majestic and playful…we first saw a pod of about six, then later, on our way back, we saw a mother and her baby. The mother was placidly swimming along while the baby did jumps and flips out of the water, playing in the air. It was so much fun to watch him.

That night we went out for smoothies on the beach and the waiter asked if we could dance. Only I said yes, so the next salsa song, we went up to the wooden platform and started dancing. He soon handed me off to his friend, who was a great dancer, and we danced for at least an hour, him giving me tips on how to show more “sexualidad” in my dancing every once in a while between spins. It was perfect, everything I had dreamed of, coming to Latin America and finding a random guy who would teach me salsa while showing off on the dance floor. I was so happy.

Impromptu trip to the Pacific

2009-09-15T12:37:00.001-06:00

My first day at La Hesperia didn’t really count.

I got up super early in order to take the first bus out of Quito and then spent the next two hours staring out the window at the changing landscape. First I saw Quito, which felt strange to me, because it smelled like Mexico but looked like India. I had trouble wrapping my mind around that, how every brightly painted garage door and every box-like, multi-storeyed, and equally colorful house brought back visions of remote towns in the Himalayas. I don’t know if the architecture is characteristic of the altitude, the climate, or the socio-economic level, but there are strange similarities.

Once I left the city, I saw the farmland, which looked like a picturesque Vermont landscape stretched out onto steep mountains. Even the cows were the same, except here, they ate grass on 45^o slopes instead of the flat farmland I’m used to. Then, as we descended partway down the mountains, the vegetation grew denser and we hurtled along winding roads overlooking cliffs and jungle.

The bus dropped me off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, and I began my mile-long climb up the mountain to the reserve. The walk was interesting and exciting, but it went on…and on…and on…

I finally found the volunteer house and lots of nice, helpful volunteers who showed me around, gave me lunch, and told me that this was actually one of their Long Weekends, when everyone leaves the reserve to travel Ecuador. I was invited on a trip to see the whales on the southern coast of Ecuador, so only a few hours after arriving, I was off down the mountain again, back to up Quito, and then on a 12-hour night bus that dropped us off in a small, sleepy port town at 6:30 am.

Fortunately our hostel was ready for us, and we had a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit and rolls before starting our explorations. Today we went to the dry forest national park and the beaches and a town built on an archeological site. The dry forest was strange – it looked like winter but felt like summer, because here the deciduous trees lose their leaves in summer when it’s dry, rather than the winter when it’s cold. It was still beautiful, though grey, and the beaches and the water were especially marvelous. We watched pelicans diving for fish and sand crabs scuttle across the beach and splashed in the water ourselves for a bit before hiking back and making our way to the village. They had a small museum there, and a guided tour of the museum and the town, which was great, except it was in Spanish. I understood it fine, but my three companions (two from Germany and one from the UK) didn’t understand any Spanish, so I became unofficial interpreter for the group, with the guide kindly stopping every few sentences for me to translate. The tour was very interesting, about the civilization that lived here around the time of the Incas and what they knew about it, which wasn’t much because the funding for the research had run out a few years ago and all they can do now is maintain the site as best they can.

South of the Equator

2009-09-09T19:18:00.000-06:00

Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen this blog. But I figured that since I was voyaging again, I should resurrect it to let people know how/what I'm doing this year (writing individual emails just takes too much time when you're timing yourself at an internet café).

My first day south of the equator went better than I had worried it would on the flight from Burlington. I watched the Green Mountains disappear beneath the clouds and imagined scenarios of my Spanish completely failing me and not being able to communicate, or being kidnapped by a taxi driver, or not being able to find the office I was supposed to go to...
No such luck.
I arrived without mishap and with multiple short but successful conversations in Spanish along the way. I checked into the office of La Hesperia, the biological station where I'll be spending the next month, arranged everything that needed arranging and spent the rest of the day exploring Quito. I didn't actually see any particularly touristy spots in the city, but I figure I'll have plenty of chances later.
The US's imperialism towards its southern neighbors has never been so apparent to me before. It's eerie. I can understand the outlets being the same, but the currency? It's so weird to see the US dollar everywhere. I've never been in a foreign country and not had to deal with exchange rates before. On the one hand it's really convenient, but on the other hand, there's no automatic discount, which is disappointing.

I'll sign off here, this was just to prove that the blog and I still exist.

A Hell-Heaven-Hell sandwitch

2007-04-14T06:24:00.000-06:00

These two weeks have been a hell-heaven-hell sandwitch.
Music has always been my easiest class. Stefano, the teacher, doesn't really teach much, and we don't really bother going to class all that often...it's just not worth it. I knew that all our work would be due at the end of March, and I prepared for it, really. We had to do 3 compositions and 3 solo performance pieces and I finished one and a half of the compositions over the summer and I've been working on the solo performance pieces all year. But I wasn't ready when, 2 days before the deadline that none of us were really paying attention to, Stefano told us not only did we HAVE to have everything in, but it had to be recorded by others and formatted correctly before the deadline. We started to worry, but he said no - you can do it until April 5th, don't worry. Even though that was still way too soon, it was better, until we found out (almost by accident) that because Stefano was going to America on Saturday morning (our deadline was Friday) he had to hand in our grades to the administration on Friday. And he did...he handed in grades for work that we hadn't done, that he hadn't seen, and the admin sent it off to the IB. When the admin found out that he'd falsified grades (through a conversation that went, "so when is the final deadline?" "what do you mean? I already have your grades." "what!? but we haven't done them yet!" "what?!" etc.) everything went into an uproar and we music students locked ourselves into the music rooms for literally 12 hours each day for a week to get everything done and recorded by the time Stefano came back so he could sign our papers and send it off (for real, this time). I got it done, and after a night where I didn't go to bed until 6 am, I handed it in. It was so freeing, the feeling of existing in the real world again... and then came long weekend, which was bellissima, made everything much better.
we went to Slovenia to go camping on the beach. There are no beaches in Slovenia, apparently, only slabs of concrete, but we had a wonderful time anyway. 6 girls doing nothing for 4 days, lying in the sun on the grass, on the pier, talking, playing the guitar and making up songs, playing games that we thought we'd outgrown in 5th grade. Easter was wonderful, we bought colorful candies and hid them around the campsite and had an Easter Candy Hunt. After the hell of the previous week, it was incredibly relaxing. I relished every moment of it, like I relished the first taste of chocolate after 40 days (I had been doing Lent as I had done Ramadan last year, and I didn't eat sugar for 40 days. phew! that was HARD!). It was one of my favorite long weekends ever, just for the pure joy of being, and being relaxed.

(by the way, this is called a UWC picture - for some reason they have pictures like this on all the material, and we laugh and give them more material for their brochures)

When I cam back, however, I had to pay for my relaxation. I had an important essay to do in 4 days, and I should have been working on it over the weekend when I was relaxing. So for the next 4 days I sequestered myself in my room, studying books and researching and writing like mad. This hell was much more enjoyable than the last one, however, because I was writing my essay on The Lord of the Rings, and the research of it was what I love to do anyway - read and watch The Lord of the Rings. And yesterday I handed in the final product, of which I am very proud.
And now? I'm free forever. No more work due for the IB, ever. Nothing but the exams, for which I am now studying (3 weeks!). But until they come, I will completely enjoy my beautiful life in Duino, paradise on earth.

Project Week - Moscow

2007-03-10T06:11:00.000-06:00

A Day of Travel

Our project week started in the pale light of pre-dawn, our sleepy eyes blinking as we rolled our suitcases to the bus stop. Our flight was at 7:00 am, so we woke at 4:30 am to catch the bust at 5:00, just to be safe. The journey was uneventful and fun, we spent a few hours in Rome, then on to Moscow. It was amazing to look out the plane window at Russia - after a winter of no snow, there was snow everywhere, and it was so flat! coming from Vermont to Italy I'd forgotten that there were places that were truly flat...but it was flat as far as I could see, and the city was a small blotch on the white snow.

Despite our worries, we got through Passport control without difficulty and were met by Danil, Heloisa’s friend, and Tatosha, our Russian third year, at the entrance. They took us to our hostel, a beautiful place behind one of the only two catholic cathedrals in Moscow.

A Day of Exploration

Our first trip was, of course, to the Red Square. It was a beautiful day, and St Basil’s Cathedral was spectacular in the cold sunlight. We went inside and marveled at the decorations – many of us had never seen an orthodox cathedral before, and the icons were truly spectacular.

Then we went to the shopping center nearby to have lunch, where we met Danil again, and he took some of us to see Arbat, the most famous street in Moscow. We couldn't figure out why at first, it wasn't that different from all the other streets, until I realized that it was like Times Square in NYC - it's an icon of the city, a place to pin your heart, even though it's not actually much more spectacular than the rest of the city.

That evening, we all went to Danil’s school to meet his friends. Despite the language barrier, we had a wonderful time talking, and then Danil got out his guitar and they all sang their favorite Russian songs for us. We enjoyed it immensely.

A Day of Success

Today we went to our first official activity of the Project: a bilingual Italian-Russian school, where we gave a presentation about UWC and they gave a presentation about Russia, and then we had tea and chatted in Italian. The students were very nice and we had a lot of fun talking to them about the differences between our schools and countries.

We went straight from that to the orphanage. We were worried that the orphans, being only slightly younger than us (15-17-years-old) wouldn’t respond well to our games and activities, but we were completely mistaken. They loved it: they played our childish games with almost more energy than us. When we had finished, they invited us to tea, with sweets that they had made themselves, and we tried to communicate through the few Russian speakers in our group and the even fewer English speakers in theirs.

Elated at our success, we went out to an underground bar in the center of Moscow. It was a beautiful bar, with a jazz band playing and a wonderfully cozy atmosphere. I felt so at home there, if I lived in Moscow, I would go there every night.

A Day of Trials

This was the hardest day of the week for most of us.

We were scheduled to prepare and deliver meals to homeless in the evening, but we ended up spending all the time talking to the women who organized the relief work, and didn’t prepare any of the food at all. We went to help deliver it as well, but there were too many of us and not enough to do, so most of us ended up standing around looking at the homeless people come to get the tea and sandwiches we offered. We felt like spectators to their pain, and unable to help in any real way. But it also brought out how important work like this was, and sparked a will to help similarly in our home countries.

A Day of Beauty

We went to the Tritikovska Museum of Art in the morning. It was a wonderful museum, the artwork is spectacular, wall after wall covered in marvelous paintings, each one worthy of hours of study by itself, but unfortunately we had only 2 hours to see the whole museum, so we rushed around trying to absorb everything before we had to leave.

We went to have lunch with Olga, the head of the Russian national committee. It was wonderful – by far the best food we had the whole week and a very interesting conversation with Olga and Tatosha’s mother about the national committee and Tatosha’s mother’s ecotourism business.

That evening we went to the orphanage again, and had another fun time playing games. We had learned from the last session, and we had more active games this time, with the orphans running around and laughing, then they suggested a game and we all played until the end of the session.

A Day of Contrast

We woke up early to get to another school at 9:00. This school was very different from the other school we went to: it was the elite school where all the richest students in Moscow went. We went to talk to two classes, an English class of 16-year-old students and an Italian class of students ranging from 8 to 13-years-old. We were shocked at the life these kids led, their minds occupied with fashion and material goods. We had forgotten that at UWC we were the exception, not the rule, and it was a rude awakening to the real world.

In the afternoon, we saw the other end of the economic spectrum: we went to a homeless shelter to do art activities. It was a wonderful experience, much better than our other encounter with homeless people. We finger-painted, one of us with one homeless person, making paintings about spring, and communicating without words through the colors on the paper.

They loved it, and afterwards asked us again and again to come back. A summation of the day: we preferred the downtrodden to the elite.

A Day of Culture

In the morning we went to see the Kremlin, though the weather was less than desirable: rain and slush made it very hard to walk the streets. After wandering around the Red Square, trying to find the way in, we asked two guards on horseback and got directions to the real entrance. The cathedrals we saw were spectacular, every speck of them covered in frescoes and icons, so similar and so different to the churches of Italy.

We spent the afternoon in the orphanage for the last time. We had a huge party, sang songs for each other, and Vivian taught us all how to make Chinese lanterns. We were so sad to say goodbye, but we told them about UWC and invited them to apply, so hopefully UWC and the orphanage will have a great long-lasting relationship.

That night we went to the Red Square again, to see it by night. It was awe-inspiring, despite the rain, and we stayed there for a while, just gazing at our surroundings. Sarah, my prima, was taking pictures like mad, it became a running joke of the project week.

A Day of Conversations

We spent all morning in school 136, having tea and talking about our impressions of Russia and their impressions of Italy. The Italian teacher took us out to lunch in a beautiful ethnic restaurant and then to the cheap shopping haven of Moscow, where we got souvenirs and presents for all our friends. I got a blue fur hat, which is sooooo warm and cozy and wonderful. Umberto got his desired Russian army cap, and then we switched, just to make life interesting. :)

A Day of Delays

In the morning, Olga and two other people from the national committee came to talk, and we discussed the role of the national committee, how they operated, and what we expected from them in general. Then we were off…well, sort of. The flight was delayed due to bad weather, and by the time we got to Rome our connecting flight had already left. So Alitalia paid for our stay in a wonderful 4 star hotel and we got back to Duino the next morning, safe and sound.

What a trip! Thanks to everyone who helped to make it possible, there were some days when we weren't sure we would be able to go, but we pulled through, and it was very much worth it. Thanks!

Philanthropy

2007-03-06T14:18:00.000-06:00

We had a wonderful International Affairs presentation today. Normally they're fairly interesting but overall you forget about them somewhere around 15 minutes later. But this was really great. The man was the chief executive of The Institute of Philanthropy in London (but he's a New Yorker) and my co-year invited him to speak to us. He was a great presenter, probably because he makes a living out of it, teaching "high net-worth individuals" how to give their money away wisely.
It was wonderful to hear a man speaking about the kind of life that every UWC student should have, but I've never actually seen in practice. His is the life that I wouldn't mind living, doing something good for the world while traveling and not doing too badly money-wise either. He said he woke up every morning glad to go to work, and the main payment for his work was the feeling of having truly helped someone.
We had a great discussion in the evening, 15ish people came to talk to him about philanthropy and the social, political, economic and philisophical issues surrounding it - the idea of treating cause rather than effect, or the welfare state, or the role of government or the UN...
I'm inspired. I now know that the kind of life I want actually does exist, and if I play my cards right, I could actually end up following my wildest dreams.

English Native Speaker Week

2007-02-07T14:10:00.000-06:00

Finally, after almost two years, my National Week came.
It was fantastic, the best week I've had in the College, which is saying a lot.
Since I've been waiting for it for so long, I took a very active role in the week - heavily involved in almost everything that happened, which was a lot.
This was our schedule:
Every day, every meal, we had a different genre of music in the cafeteria, which I organized (I have so much music on my laptop now, it's unbelievable). Everything from Reggae to 80s to Indie to Celtic to Jazz to Classic Rock to 90s Pop... now that we don't have music anymore I feel like something's missing, it was really nice, especially the Jazz day - it created such a nice atmosphere...
Monday was the Introductory skit, when we all got up in Assembly and presented the program for the week - Disney style. We made a movie of all of us being Disney characters to introduce a part of the week - Lumier (the candle guy from Beauty and the Beast) introduced the taster session, Pocahontas introduced the poetry session, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd (ok, they're not Disney, I know) introduced Saturday Morning Cartoons, and I, as Cinderella, introduced the Prom - Infomercial style. It was hilarious, the costumes we managed to get together and the acts themselves; we were laughing ourselves senseless.
Tuesday was the Poetry Session, which I organized. It was truly beautiful, it went better than I could have hoped. Coffee House style, we had everyone snapping politely to our poetry rather than clapping, and we read everything from Shakespearean sonnets to e. e. cummings to Green Eggs and Ham. I was very proud - I'd never organized something completely alone and had it come out well before, so it was a personal milestone.
Wednesday was the Taster Session, for which I cooked
5 bowls of Jello (ok, so "cook" is a relative term...)
3 apple pies
50 some-odd veggie burgers
2 bowls of mashed potatoes
2 Hawaiian pizzas
30 PB&J sandwiches
and oversaw the roasting of 4 bags worth of s'mores

and that was only one person's contribution, imagine the whole ensemble...
I'd brought burger king crowns for everyone, so all the Native Speakers wore crowns. We had music playing, and after eating we all danced and danced, playing limbo and jumping on tables...great fun.
Oh, also on Wednesday we had a Hockey Tournament and a presentation on the Group of 7 - the major artists of Canada.

Thursday was our "down day" so we only had two things going on - the Movie (American Beauty - totally depressing. I'd never seen it before.) and a Highland Dance session.
We spent the whole day practising for the show on Friday.

Friday was the show - wow, so cool. We got everyone to dress up as famous Native Speaker Couples...everyone from Superman/Wonder Woman

to Bert/Ernie to Romeo/Juliet to Barbie/Ken to Harry/Ginny. The teachers were all famous villains - Lord Voldemort, Ursula, Jafar, Darth Vader, etc.
Everyone dressed up - I think we got the most people to dress up ever, we were so happy to see them come into the room all excited for our show.
The show was great. I participated in a Formal Apology, where we apologized for Barbie, the SATs, McDonald's, Reality TV, and an illogical measuring system. Britain apologized for the Spice Girls, their spelling system, and their "bastard child, America". Canada apologized for beating everyone at Hockey (which pissed off the nordics, you can be sure), and having too much land and not enough people. We finished with me saying, "On behalf of the USA, I should apologize for... um. that whole ... world domination thing..." and I ran off the stage. The rest of them stayed on, laughing at me, until Canada turned to Britain - "what are YOU laughing at?" :)

I also did "Gee, Officer Krupke" from West Side Story, the Politically Correct Red Riding Hood, and a "Speak Like an English Native Speaker" session, where we taught a volunteer to say "Hey y'all, innit like hella goin man, eh-izzle?" which to any native speaker makes perfect sense. right?

Saturday morning we woke up early to cook pancakes for Saturday Morning Cartoons - we watched Loony Tunes and The Emperor's New Groove while eating huge quantities of pancakes and maple syrup. (thank god I still have some left!)

And Saturday night was Prom - wow! it went so well. We spent all afternoon decorating and getting ready, Palazzina Dayroom has never looked so good. We had chips and punch (which we told everyone was spiked), an Official Photographer, and Prom King and Queen, drawn from a lottery. It was the greatest party UWC has ever seen. Full Stop. (as they say in british english - help! I'm being corrupted!) we had soooooooo much fun.

And that was it. The week was over. it was so sad to leave - it had been like a mini-vacation, none of the school rules applied to us - no curfew, no homework, no activities or social service, nothing but national week. it was so relaxing to be stressing out about something that didn't have anything to do with school.
And everyone said it was the best week ever. (or, if their pride couldn't take it, the best...except theirs) Success!!!

Look at that, I've spent way too much time writing. Now I really must study for the trial exams coming up next week. good bye.

PS Hey look! they've put our videos on YouTube! you can check them out at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x11Nglpvug and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqroN-k3UEY

Rome

2007-02-07T13:38:00.000-06:00

I've given up trying to write everything amazing about this place in detail - if I try, I'll never even start. So I'll try to give a brief overview of life here before I remember all the things I have to do and feel to guilty to continue.
World Cultures is the best class in the world. What other class will take you on field trips to Venice, Ravenna, and Rome? We went to Rome 2 weeks ago for 4 days, studying ancient Roman archiatecture, early Christian mosaics, the High Renaissance (Michelangelo & Raphael), and Baroque/Neo-Classicism. It was a huge overdose of awe - I couldn't think afterwards, my mind was reeling from too much art. How do you choose between Bernini's Rape of Persephone:
So real you can see his strong fingers digging into her flesh, feel her terror and despair, his bestial triumph, at the moment when they cross the border into the underworld and he knows he has her for good...
and the ceiling of Il Gesu,
where the painted angels come out of the frame onto the gilded ceiling, bursting open the roof and spilling sunlight onto the congregation inside?
How do you compare the spectacular beauty of a sunset over the city-scape of Rome:

with the ancient majesty of the ruins of the Forum?

How can I convey the wonder of that trip?

I give up.

The next week was - though it seems impossible - even better.

African-Middle Eastern Week

2006-11-25T13:28:00.000-06:00

My last national week ever. It's so sad, because the next National Week is my own, so I won't get to participate in it. It was fabulous though, a great week to end on.
It started out with a phenomenal poetry session - the best I've ever seen. They brought blankets and pillows into the lecture room and created a warm and cozy atmosphere, and served Turkish tea, and then started reciting the most amazing poetry - so powerful, so full of emotion, so beautiful... and they did something no one else has done before: they sang some of their poems, and the combination of music and poetry was gorgeous.
The taster session was great as well, it rivaled the Italian one, because though it didn't have as much food it had much more varied and exotic foods that made up for it.

And they had Arabic/African music playing, so after eating we all danced and danced:

(The Israelis have the craziest hair ever, especially when they dance!)

The next day we had the "chill-out session" when we relaxed, drank tea, smoked nargille, got massages and face masks, and generally calmed down.
And then the show. Oh so much fun.
I was partnered with Honza, and we went as a camel:

There were some other really great costumes as well:

Marco as an African Warrior

Ridhima and Joe as street beggars

Eduardo as a Jew :)

I participated in the show, doing a skit with Nevin on the cultural differences between America and Palestine. e.g. How she literally drinks Tabasco sauce, and is shocked at short skirts, how I'm not allowed to touch the Koran and how (the crowning glory of the show) we dress differently to go swimming. She came out in a full body suit, looking like a deep-sea diver, and I came out in a bikini (in front of the whole school! AAAH!). It was fun, though I got teased mercilessly afterwards.
The skits were funny, the dances were beautiful, the raps were great. And there was one really profound dance/sketch that was serious; when four people came on stage representing four major issues: Julie as a drug addict, Eitan as a prisoner, Ansally as a prostitute, and Elroy as a disabled person.

It was really touching because it reminded us that the problems that we always hear about in African and the Middle East are actually universal, that everything they have, we have as well, but to a lesser extent.

On a more upbeat note, the next week is Native Speaker Week, the one I've been waiting for since Balkan Week, oh so long ago! I'm so excited for it, we have such a great group and such fabulous ideas, it will be the best week ever!!!!

EE Show

2006-11-15T08:40:00.000-06:00

Friday was the EE show for which we were all very excited. We kept seeing first years doing strange things around Duino, hearing loud music coming from the basement, coming up on conversations that stopped as soon as we got there, and other tell-tale signs of an upcoming show.
Our invitations were interesting - mine was, "the hairiest hair model", for example, and some others were, "The Most Colorful Butterfly", "The Scariest Mummy", "The Most Romantic Boy"
(that's Nyamka, who does a surprisingly good impression of a romantic boy...) etc. Toni (Finland) was "The Strongest Vodka", of course:

I had a violin lesson so I didn't have much time to prepare a costume, but I cornrowed half my hair and then made a row of buns in the middle and left the rest down. Slightly uncomfortable in the crowded room, but whatever.
Their show was great (not better than ours though, we still have the UWC record for greatest EE show ever :) haha) the theme was "GuinnEEs Book of World Records", hence the costumes.
They had a lot of songs with changed lyrics, like "Let It Be" turned into, "The EE" (as in, "there will be an essay, the EE....") and such, and some crazy record stuff, like a competition between a first year, a second year, and a teacher to eat the most pasta, drink water the fastest, peel an apple without breaking the skin and transport a raw egg from one bowl to another using chopsticks.

They had a great skit about the EE (Evil Essay) tormenting us poor second years who would rather be partying or drinking coffee. They/we finally defeat him by finishing the essay on time and have a great big party. Yay!

But now Axel, the Swede who played the Evil Essay, freaks me out - anyone would if he looked like that!

There were also some very sweet skits, like the paper dance where they came onstage holding pieces of paper to form out sentences like:

And at the very end they all came on stage with the name of their EE friend taped to their...ahem...bottom and invited us onto the stage to dance and hug and congratulate.
this is my EE friend (Lorenzo) and me:

They also made fantastic cake for us, which was a wonderful idea and I need to find the recipe because it was insanely good, even the tiny piece that I got and shared with my EE friend.

And afterwards Lorenzo took me to Old Castle for the first time. By strange coincidence he happened to be present at the conversation early in the year when I said, "I've never been to Old Castle, so now I want to make it a special occasion - I think I'll get my EE friend to take me when I finish my EE." So after the show he said, "So, are you ready to go to Old Castle?" I was so surprised that he knew what I was going to say before I said it!
But Old Castle was fantastic, so beautiful and ancient - it's 11th century they say - to think that we had this in Duino all this time and I'd never known...
So the EE show was fantastic, in all its elements, I love our Primi!!!!!

Vienna

2006-11-12T15:14:00.000-06:00

Last weekend was 'Long Weekend', our 4-day vacation. After much trial and tribulation, manindecisionns and revisions, and a lot of looking at flight/train ticket prices, we decided to go to Vienna for three days. The group consisted of: Vanessa, Nidhi and me (the Weird Sisters)

and our first-year male companions, Nidhi's primo, Shashank, Vanessa's boyfriend, Bar (Israel), and my adopted primo, Lorenzo.

When we got to Vienna, we met up with my co-year, Leah, and Andrea from Brazil. So this is all of us:

We had a fabulous time. We left Saturday evening and took the night train to Vienna. We didn't get much sleep, but that was mostly our own fault, as we stayed up most of the night talking and laughing and watching a movie. When we got there, we made our way to our hostel, the Blue Corridor (you can imagine why I chose itJ), deposited our bags, and went out to explore Vienna. We went to the Schonbrunn palace of the Hapsburg emperorsgapedawped at beautiful rooms and paintings while listening to the commentary on headphones, enjoying making a running commentary on the commentary in whispers.

Then we went to the Stefansdom Cathedral, the cathedral I had marveled at last year when I went with Street Performance. If anything, it was more awe-inspiring and more beautiful than before. We sat there and looked around and talked about the art like good Art History/World Cultures students, pointing out the differences between the gothic and baroque styles and how it differed from the renaissance style of the Venetian churches we had just seen and generally feeling very educated and prouourselves. Then.Then we went to meet Leah and Andrea at the Opera house. When we finally got there, after walking around the entire city of Vienna looking for the Opera (it turns out that the first building we found was actually the correct one, but we didn't recognize it from the back, so we walked all around the rest of the city to finally come back and realize our mistake), we sat in line for tickets again, this time for Carmen. After 2 hours we ended up with almost exactly the same spots as last time, which was really cool. The opera itself was fantastic. I love Carmen! All the music is fantastic, even the minor melodies, and the performance was awesome. The sets so real you couldn't tell where the stage ended and the backdrop ended, the costumes were of brightly colored swirly gypsy skirts and Toreador capes, and the actors that you into the story without even needing the subtitles on the screens on our seats.

The next day we went to the National Treasury, an amazing collection of insanely expensive stuff, from beautifully embroidered cloaks to ornately carved reliquaries to portraits of the Emperors and their families. My favorite was the huge sapphire, cut in such a way to reflect as much light as possible:

In the afternoon, we split up: some to the Freud museum, some to go shopping, and Lorenzo, Shashank and I to go to the Kunst Historische Museum. When we got there, Shashank learned two new words in German: "Montag Geschlossen" (Closed Mondays). Aahrg! We sat and fumed for a while, but then decided to go enjoy our day somewhere else. And you know what? we had so much more fun than we would have had if we'd gone into the museum.

If I write it down, it'll sound dumb - we walked around Vienna, laughing about German, we almost went into an Italian church until we realized we lived in Italy, we sat on the steps of the Parliament building, we walked around a garden somewhere, and we went to an Esperanto museum. You may think that an Esperanto museum is about the dumbest place imaginable, especially when it's one small room that documents the history of a well-intentioned but useless language, but it was so much fun!! Lorenzo and I could basically understand the signs in Esperanto if we worked together, and we played pakman with Esperanto grammar and had fun with the interactive maps of where Esperanto conferences were being held around the world. They had to kick us out when they closed, and we walked to the meeting place planning a Project Week to learn Esperanto in a host family somewhere far away.

All together again, we went out to dinner at a bar called "The Centimeter" and had a wonderful dinner that came in a wheelbarrow which we all ate out of. Before we ate, Lorenzo proposed a toast, and said, "To the person who helped organize this trip and made it a wonderful weekend, to a great friend, and a great EE friend, Anika." I was so surprised, Lorenzo was my EE friend? I squealed and jumped up to run around the table and hug him. Suddenly it all made sense, the fact that he never wrote long letters was explained by the fact that I already knew everything he might write, having stayed in his house at the beginning of the summer while getting my visa. And having a face to put to those wonderful gifts he gave me was so nice!

Then we packed up and got on the train, sadly leaving Vienna behind. Once again, we stayed up all night talking, and when we got back to Duino we slept all day. Or rather, I slept half the day and spent the other half of the day feeling sorry for myself and wishing I was back in Vienna. But long weekend was over, and I had other things to look forward to...like the EE show!

Opening Ceremony

2006-10-18T11:09:00.000-06:00

My second (and last) Opening Ceremony was on Friday the 13th of October (haha). The only time throughout the year when everyone wears their national costumes together, and thus we have a lot of pictures. There isn't much else to talk about besides the pictures - speeches, choir, more speeches, music scholars playing, more speeches...anyway. There was good food afterwards, and we went on little "cultural visits" in the afternoon, exploring the surrounding area.
Nik and I wore national costumes, and were very proud of the result:

Other random pictures:

this is my prime and I: the two American girls, Lucy (Colorado) and Sarah (Virginia) and my adopted prima, Keleigh (Canada).

Speaking of adopted primi, these are two of my three adopted primi: Keleigh, whom I adopted because she is so very similar to me and the ways in which she's different are really cool - she's been doing Highland dancing for 14 years and she headed a "lights out canada" program to conserve energy and reduce global warming etc. at home, which is awesome. Lorenzo is the guy who hosted me in Milan at the beginning of the summer, so I adopted him because of our pre-college connection. There third adoptee is Nkechi, a girl from Nigeria who lives in scholtz (my residence) and has american citizenship, so she's my prima as well. I like my nicely diverse family.

This is Ximena, my rooma from Uruguay. Isn't she cool? I'm so lucky with roommates...

And this, as you can probably recognize by now, is the Weird Sisters: Nidhi, Vanessa and I. (All in blue, I might add. we have excelent taste.)
Afterwards, on the cultural visit, I had a strange encounter:
I was walking along the river when I saw a woman who was dressed like me - in 100-year-old clothes. I laughingly said to Nidhi, "hey, look! I have a friend!" and the woman came up to me, saying, "do I know you?" in English.
Apparently she's dressed this way all her life, and she just retired from her job as a seamstress. She's been to America multiple times to sell her dresses to others like her (I don't think she's amish, but she's something very similar) and she thought I was the daughter of one of her clients. She was very nice and we had a wonderful conversation, and before we left, I got a picture with her:

Isn't that great?

Asian Week

2006-10-17T14:08:00.000-06:00

This is belated. Mi scusate, perfavore. I have a million excuses which I don't want to recount right now - they all have to do with essays and lab reports and ugly stuff like that.
So I'll tell you about the wonderful things in the college and specifically, the first National Week.
Asian Week was wonderful, we had a lot of activities throughout the week, and I can't do it justice, of course, but I'll try my best.
The first thing that distinguished the week from other national weeks was the Cultural Fair, which they had out on Fore Lawn, and served tea, wrote our names in Chinese, taught us to play the Erhu (chinese cello),

did henna tattoos,

and danced to bollywood music. Shashank, the Indian primo is a great dancer, and he led us all in corny bollywood dance moves.

The second thing, chronologically, and first on my list of favorites was Dicipline Day, when we all had to act as Asians do in school - dress in uniforms, not talk in class, address the teachers as Mr. ___ and Sir, etc. and they could send us to the Naughty Corner if we misbehaved, a place where we had to "Stand, look at the wall, and contemplate your crime and Be Sorry". We all had so much fun with it, but I didn't go to the Naughty Corner (not that I didn't try).

The poetry session was amazing, as always. I never knew that Flora (China) and Valentine (Indonesia) were such good orators. Valentine presented a revolutionary poem that made me tremble with fear. I never knew such a small, sweet girl could carry so much power.
The taster session was different than usual - normally we have it in the dayroom of one of the residences, and we all crowd in like people trying to escape from a fire and rush around trying to get as much food as possible on our plates at one time. Then we go to a corner and try to eat it all, generally ending up feeling bloated and bruised (from the mad fight for food) but very, very happy. In Asian week, however, they put the food in mensa, and we went through the normal mensa line to get the food at the end. I was late, so didn't get very much food at all, and ended up eating just mensa food, and it seemed that they didn't cook nearly as much as the other weeks. But it was fun anyway, and the best part was that they put Indian music on and we all got up and danced with Nidhi and Shashank and Malika (the volunteer from India).
Then there was the show, which was great. I was told to dress up as Sailor Moon, and I put my heart and soul into the costume. From 8 am to 7 pm I was working on it, gathering clothes and designing the outfit - the final product? here.

I participated in the show, too, which was really fun and funny. I and my rooma, Corina, played/sang "I like chinese" by Monti Python. (general gist:
"I like chinese, I like chinese
they only come up to your knees,
but they're always friendly and they're ready to please.

I like chinese thought,
the wisdom that Confuscious taught,
if darwin was anything to shout about,
the chinese will survive us all without any doubt."

It was a smash hit - everyone loved it, and even now people sing it randomly in the halls and ask me for the words. I'm proud to have made a worthwhile contribution to the UWC society.
And that was Asian Week.

People

2006-09-30T07:53:00.000-06:00

In a terrible act of disrespect, I have yet to describe my new primi. They, as a general rule, are amazing and great and fun and nice and smart...but there are some that stick out more than others.
First: my roome. I'm now in a small all-girls residence called scholtz, rooming with a second year (Corina from Greece) and two first years, Ximena from Uruguay and Lamira from Western Sahara.
It's strange, because I seem to be repeating the room I had last year with completely different people: my new roommates correspond exactly to my old ones. Lamira = Nevin, she's Muslim, so she wears a scarf and prays (I was so sad to be leaving that with Nevin, I missed it so much over the summer, and now I have it again!) and she seems shy and quiet at first, but that's only because her English isn't too good. Actually, she's talkative and sing-ative and funny and energetic (exactly like Nevin, but I don't think she's quite as crazy. Or at least I hope not :$ ). We've been known to walk up the street at midnight singing My Heart Will Go On at the top of our lungs and waltzing, and this is just within the first month, I have a premonition it will only get stranger.
(This is me and my roomine -the new one (Lamira) on the left and the old one (Nevin) on the right)
Ximena = Marta. Firstly, they have the same birthday (in a week, I need to plan something!) and they also do random creative things, like decorating paper and drawing and stuff when they should probably be doing homework. :) Ximena also really likes videography (though I don't think Marta does), she made a video of her and all her friends before she left, and she showed it to me and Lamira and her latina friends. She hangs out a lot with the Latinos, and so my Spanish seems to be getting better just because of hearing it so often in my room.
And Corina = Giulia, the seconda who's never in the room, but when she is, is really nice. Like Giulia, she spends all her time in Trieste, and like Giulia, we wake up in the morning to find that she never did come home - her bed's still untouched. But she's so much fun to talk to, Corina and Ximena and Sylvia (our neighbor from Italy) and Boriana (also neighbor, Bulgaria) and I have stayed up till 2 am countless times talking about life, the universe, and everything, and it's great fun.
Next, my Primi:
I've already mentioned Gavino, my primo. He's crazy and cool, but I haven't spent as much time with him as with my Prime.
Prime: Sarah, from Virginia and Lucy, from Colorado. The three of us and Keleigh from Canada and Julie from the UK get along really well together, more than I've been able to connect with other native speakers in the past. Sarah and Keleigh are huge Gilmore Girls fans, so I've seen a couple episodes with them - they're not that bad... and it's fun to talk to them about American issues as Americans.
I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of them yet, I'll add them later.

Choir

2006-09-26T10:11:00.000-06:00

(our two choir directors, Vanessa and Katy, after their first performance)

Although it isn't my official aesthetic activity, choir has been an important part of my life here, and I have a feeling it will become more important as the year progresses. So far we've been overloaded with concerts, which is good - they're really fun and we get good food and have a great time, but it's hard to perform after only having rehearsed 3 or 4 times, especially for the first years.
Choir this year is so much better than last year - already I feel like we're better quality and have better songs, even though we've only added 2 or 3 to our repertoire so far. Vanessa is going a great job as choir director, I'm so proud of her...
Last weekend we had three concerts, and all of them were great, especially the one on Saturday. It was a gathering of train workers from Slovenia and Italy and we sang for them all the songs we knew. It was crazy - the first years learned half the songs on the way there in the van, and I was the only soprano who actually knew what she was doing, yet it sounded great. And afterwards they gave us really yummy finger-food (the best part of choir). My favorite part, though, was the people who came on after us, a small band that played dance music (waltzes and stuff). We were so happy and proud of ourselves that we all got up and danced, and Honza (the Czech primo) grabbed me and started teaching me cha-cha and blues and polka. It was SO MUCH FUN! Jumping and spinning around the room, and everyone else dancing too (but not like us, haha :) )...and Honza's now starting ballroom dance classes for which I'm incredibly excited. He's already taught us a couple steps in dance activity and I think it's going to be great, he's a wonderful teacher, making it fun and funny and easy.
Singing and dancing, could life get any better?

International Show

2006-09-12T04:00:00.000-06:00

Ok, this is out of order - technically the International Show was on Saturday and the first day of school was Monday, but whatever.
Every year the second years introduce UWC to the first years through an event called the International Show where the first years have to dress up (this year it was a beach party, last year it was 80s style) and the second years put on a show for them.
Throughout the first 2 weeks we second years practiced our acts and got ready for the show, while also showing our primi around and re-bonding with our friends.
I was in three acts, the "Wake Up sketch," a rhythmic cup sketch, and a Angel vs. Devil/ Violin vs. Electric Guitar duet.
The Wake Up sketch was funny - we documented the progression of wake up routines, from the first day (wake up at 6:30 To shower, put on makeup, eat a nice, hearty breakfast, then saunter off to school)to the last day, when the alarm rings at 7, 7:30, 7:45, 8:00 (when classes start) but at 9:00 we're still sleeping.

Then I did a cup sketch...you know the cup game, the one where you move the cups from person to person in a circle doing a rhythmic pattern of clapping and hitting the cup on the table/your hand/etc. It was great fun, and we didn't really mess up too much, which was amazing. The premise was: a row of girls and 2 guys on the end of the table acting bored, then Renato (as "cool guy") comes in and starts doing a pattern with his hands and we're all impressed so we copy him, one after another. Finally it's the (now jealous) guys' at the end of the table turn and they do it really fast and we all turn our attention to them.

Renato gets mad and picks up a cup to do the cup pattern and regain our favor (of course) and we all end together happily.

Then the one I really worked on: the Angel/Devil sketch. It went like this:

I come onstage in an angel costume with my violin, and start playing Meditation from Thais - slow, romantic, beautiful violin music - when, halfway through my first phrase, I'm interrupted by a loud chord from an electric guitar: Renato, dressed as a hard-rock devil, comes onstage and starts showing off on his guitar.

Thus ensues a competition of us each trying to outdo each other with faster and harder and more impressive songs.

Then, in classic UWC style, we ended together, playing a Paganini caprice in harmony.
We had so much fun planning and playing the songs, and everyone loved it ... great success all around.

The costumes of the primi were great...especially my primo. Gavin (or Gavino as he likes to be called) dressed up as a lifeguard, sort of. He was wearing a speedo and a lifeguard t-shirt: Wow.

There were a lot of other acts as well, like Marco's and Margherita's dances, they did ballet and hip-hop "duets."
It's amazing how they can move their bodies so smoothly and gracefully ... I wish I could do that...

There was a rendition of "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago, that was great, really funny and musically well-done.
And Dominika and Ana Maria did an amazing fire dance, spinning balls of fire on chains around and around in complex patterns, it looked so cool!
There was also the traditional Israeli dance, that's performed at every show. It's a series of movements repeated, and each one has a special meaning - very powerful and beautiful to watch.

And the Christian fellowship did a dance that was really cute, all of them singing, "Testify! Testify! I will testify to love!"

All in all, it was an absolute success, I loved it. More on the actual people soooooon. I promise.

Second First Day of School

2006-09-12T03:52:00.000-06:00

Well, that was an auspicious start to the year. Out of five classes today I was late for four of them and missed the fifth completely. Granted, the skipped class wasn’t my fault, but still … let’s start at the beginning.
Just like we predicted, my two first year roome, Ximena and Larima, woke up at 6:00 am and 6:30 am respectively. I, being the experienced second year that I am, waited until 7:30 to rise from my blue cloud of slumber. I had plenty of time, but I decided that I should start the year out well and eat breakfast: a mistake. (actually, it was a case of deja-vu, I recall making the exact same mistake last year with exactly the same result) The logical consequence of eating breakfast (an error I won’t repeat in the future) was scarfing down a bowl of cereal and running to World Cultures class and arriving there just barely on time … but the door was closed! (door closed means I’m late = bad) Apparently Henry’s clock was 5 minutes fast, and though I informed him of the fact, it didn’t reduce the embarrassment.
Great class though, a discussion of the different meanings of the word “Classic” applying to everything from Greek civilization to “Gone with the Wind”. And next I had a free block. I spent it in the normal free block routine: do various nothings until you realize it’s 10:00 and you have to run to your next class, wondering where your hour went, because you certainly didn’t use it!
Theory of Knowledge, my next class, moved buildings without prior notice, and the sign on the door directed me to the building I had just come from – ahrg. I arrived at class out of breath and had to sit right at the front of the class in the last available chair. My placement was perfect for becoming Official Scribe for the class, an idea our ToK teacher has decided on – write down everything said so we can remember it later – and so I was stuck typing frantically as everyone else had a lively discussion on the nature of history and memory and the effect that writing things down and taking photos has on them.
Yay: break! So I went back to Schultz, my residence, and had a second breakfast, because the last one didn’t cut it. Once again, I mismanaged time (perhaps it’s the relaxing effect of yogurt…), but still got to the room on time – only to find no one there. My English class had been moved as well. Again I run to the other building (in the opposite direction again), and just as I enter the door I see my teacher coming, so I scuttle into class so as to appear un- late ( maybe the red cheeks and panting gave me away though).
Wow. English class was heaven. After a year of Beth (our last teacher who left) we had all trained ourselves to automatically switch our brains off as we enter the classroom, and this class was a frantic fumble to find the switch back on. We read – and I mean really read – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufok, and discussed modernism in Britain and America and its effects and influences in 20th century culture. I haven’t thought so much in English class since the end of AP English in high school (discounting the math homework I used to do there last year).
Determined to get to Music on time, I was waylaid by my Italian teacher: “I missed you in class today, where were you?” What? I had been devastated that my favorite Italian teacher had been switched to C block while I remained in B block with another teacher…or at least that’s what the list said, and I hadn’t gotten a new schedule to say anything different. But apparently I was switched along with my teacher (yay!!) and missed my first class (oops.)
So, I was late to Music as well, but that didn’t really matter because Stefano doesn’t really care anyway, and we talked about orchestration in the Romantic period and the differences between Brahms’ and Bruchner’s early symphonies.
I was early for lunch though, and had a wonderful time with the other native English speakers excitedly lauding our new teacher and laughing at my blunders. It’s been a great day though, because even though I was late, the classes were all really fun, and I’m so happy to back.

Taj Mahal (ok, a little late)

2006-08-13T19:16:00.000-06:00

I'm home now, which explains the lack of blogging - it's completely slipped my mind for the past 2 weeks, what with all the people and things to see and do around here.
But there are still a story or two left from India, so I will dutifully recount them:
I sadly left all my new friends in Solan on the 24th of July, especially Nidhi's family. I already miss her brother and sister - so cute and so funny when they argued - and her mother and grandmother, with whom I could never quite communicate because of the language barrier but still managed to bond through smiles and gestures. And of course Nidhi's father, who took us on all our travels and made my trip so special.
We went to Delhi again, but this time it was monsoon season and only 90 degrees - yay! Cool weather! - we took the train this time, the rickety old public transport train to Chundigar and then a superfast air conditioned train from their to Delhi. Both of them had their merits: on the train to Chundigar we shared the compartment with a group of boyscouts on their way to Delhi, and we shared cultures all the way down the mountains, i.e. sang songs together. I would sing a song in English and then they would respond with a Hindi or Punjabi song that they all shouted out (because none of them could sing). We had a great time, and every time we came to a tunnel we all screamed our heads off, according to tradition.
The train from Chundigar to Delhi was really cool - first class type treatment in a normal compartment, with lots of food and nice seats and stuff.
We spent the night in Delhi and then went to Agra to see...the Taj Mahal!
It was hot and the train there was uncomfortable, and when we got there at around 10 AM we hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so we walked around outside to try and find something to eat...and failed. There was NOWHERE to eat, and soon we had a line of mini-taxis following us asking if we wanted a ride. Nidhi's dad kept saying, "no, no, no! We don't need you!" and they kept pestering us anyway. So he finally went to the head office, and complained to the taxiboss about the annoying cabbies...and then ended up taking one of them to McDonalds after all. Nidhi and her father ate hamburgers while I watched and enjoyed the AC, and then we went sightseeing.
First we went to the Agra Fort, a massive Moghul palace of Redstone, and wandered in and out and around all these amazing rooms for the kings and queens and royalty of ancient India. It was cool to think of the idea that people actually lived there, in that manner, hundreds of years ago.

Then, on to the Taj Mahal in a horse-drawn buggy.
It was beautiful, just as spectacular as you expect it to be, especially as you see it first through a red stone and mosaic-ed arch that frames it beautifully, then walk up to in along an avenue of trees and fountains.
You take your shoes of when you go in, out of respect, and walk barefooted on the soft white marble in the hot sun around the perfectly symmetrical building. Inside it's dark and crowded with tourists, so it's not as nice as outside, but it's still interesting to see the grave of the woman who inspired this work of art. (did you know that after the architect finished the design, the king cut his hands off so there could never be anything as beautiful in the world again? Wow. That's royal.)

Nihdi and I took a nap on the Taj, it was warm and comfortable and nice...

I was dressed in a Salvaar Chemise, and everyone around us kept asking eachother (and me sometimes) whether I was Indian or not. I love how despite my blond hair and blue eyes I looked Indian enough to be mistaken. (victory!).

Back to Delhi, and then the plane in the morning.
It was so sad to leave India... I must come back sometime, something about this country touches your heart like nothing else. The cows in the streets, piles of dung covered in hay (strangely beautiful), the rivers, the mountains, the language, the people, hospitable and talkative and nice and always bragging about their country...I couldn't leave it forever.
But I could leave it for a while, if leaving it meant going home. And go home I did.

Tour of Himachal

2006-07-22T04:38:00.000-06:00

My last full week in India, I spent with Nidhi’s entire family (mother, father, sister, brother, and grandmother) getting to know their state inside and out. We hired a driver to take us to all the major destinations in Himachal, and spent one night in each. It was a great trip, with spectacular views and amazing culture.
The first day we drove to Kullu Manali, apparently the place to go for tourists, though we didn’t see what it had that Solan didn’t (Home is always best, isn’t it?). We drove all day, and it was hell. The roads were so small and twisted, and the driver took the turns so fast (so we’d get there before dark) that everyone in the car was sick. Guddu, Nidhi’s brother, spent the whole drive throwing up out the window, which meant that I couldn’t open my window for fear of getting splattered. The rest of us huddled down in silent misery, hoping it would pass. After lunch though, it was better. We’d gotten used to the roads (all except Guddu) and felt well enough to enjoy the beautiful vistas of mountains and rivers and more mountains.

Kullu Manali is just another Hill Station (their term for a town in the mountains) except that everyone goes there, so it’s very touristy. I was counting westerners here, but in Manali I stopped at around 250 because there were so many. I felt weird, being one of many westerners; I think I like it better when I’m the only one – I feel more individual, rather than part of a (not very respected) group.
The next morning we went up to Roatang Pass, on the way to Kashmir. We didn’t go to Kashmir – too dangerous – but the pass was gorgeous. Truly Himalayan as I’d imagined it, with high, craggy, snowcapped peaks in the distance and lower but still snowy mountains where we were. We drove and drove up the mountains on tiny bumpy dirt roads (and I swear that car had no shock absorbers whatsoever) and watched as the clouds grew lower and lower. It felt like we were driving to heaven (“take a good look,” we told each other, “you’ll never get there after you die.”) with the beautiful mountains and the round wispy clouds below us.

We spent about an hour up there, and then drove downdowndown back to Manali and then on to our next destination.

This was a town deep in the mountains accessible only by narrow dirt roads, which is home to hot springs and temples and is a pilgrimage spot for both Seiks and Hindus, Seiks for the beautiful silver Gurudwara and Hindus for the many temples dedicated to Shiva and his wife, Parvati. The water is so hot there that the Gurudwara boils its rice in the pools, and when you walk barefoot into the temples, you have to walk on wooden planks because the stone floor is so hot.

The next day we went to Daramshala, the home of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in exile from Tibet. Unfortunately he wasn’t there when we were there, but we walked around the monastery and watched the monks singing and playing their horns and flutes in devotion. It was a wonderful place, very peaceful and spiritual, and I was sorry to get back in the car and drive away.

Drive, drive, drive, drive. That was most of the tour, actually, we spent all day in the car and only got to out destination in the evening. But it was nice, and when I wasn’t sleeping or getting bored with nothing to do (you can’t really read when you’re bouncing around all the time) I enjoyed it almost as much as the places we were going. I loved passing by the tiny villages and watching the glimpses of people’s lives, the women carrying water in big brass pots on their shoulders, the two children, maybe five and seven years old, pushing with all their might on the pump handle to fill a plastic jug, the girl lazily switching the backs of cows as she led them down the mountain to graze, the two walking trees – wait, no, they’re people, with huge piles of grass strapped to their backs so that you can’t even see them, just a pair of legs under a bundle of grass for the cows…it was so simple and peaceful, it once again made me wonder why we bother with all the stuff we have in America when we could live perfectly happily like this.

We next went to Dalhousie, another Hill Station, and officially Nidhi’s father’s favorite Hill Station in the country. It’s very peaceful and quite there, I found myself slowing down and speaking less because of the aura of the place. It was covered in clouds so close I kept reaching out to touch them, and green trees overhung all the quiet little roads and added to the sense of peace.
The next morning we went to “India’s Switzerland” which was a nice place, though it didn’t actually look very much like Switzerland. There was a pond and a big open field where everyone was strolling around and relaxing. We got cotton candy and rode horses around the perimeter (because I said I’d ridden before my guide let me gallop, which was exhilarating, but I was sorry for him running beside me to keep up with the horse) and then started our journey back to Solan.
The last night we spent in a town known for its temple, where they worship, not idols as usual, but blue flames that come out of bare rock. It was an interesting sight to see, but the temple felt all wrong. It was very dirty and the people seemed somehow insincere. Nobody liked it, and we got out as soon as we’d paid our respects to all the little shrines. It was also surrounded by people trying to make money off of piety – shops and shops selling devotional music and offerings and pictures of the gods, which seemed to sap the holiness out of the temple itself.

And then back to Solan. The last day I got sick – a stomach ache – and I couldn’t eat at all, it was made worse by the curvy roads we were driving on. It was something that everyone except Nidhi’s father got, and I actually got off lightly compared to Nidhi’s grandmother and brother. I still feel sort of dizzy, but thankfully my stomach doesn’t hurt as much and I can eat a little bit.

Punjab

2006-07-22T04:21:00.000-06:00

Nidhi, her father and I (the traveling trio) went to Punjab on the 12th and 13th and had a great time. Punjab is a state adjacent to Himachal Pradesh (our state) with a very distinct culture – great music, wild dancing, and funny guys in turbans. Most people in Punjab are Seiks, or Sardars, as they’re usually called, and they are the brunt of all jokes in India (Q: where do you find the most Sardars outside of Punjab? A: in jokes!). They’re known for having a great sense of humor and a hot temper, probably because the turbans they wear are really hot and make them disagreeable (Saying: Sardars go crazy around noon because the sun is right above their turbaned heads and it fries their brains). I also found them to be incredibly kind and hospitable, more than anyone else (which is saying something in this country of hospitality).
Seikism is a very interesting religion, it’s monotheistic and they follow 12 Gurus, or prophets, and worship (literally) their holy book which is comprised of poetry and sayings that the Gurus collected, and which lays down the code they are to abide by. And a funny code that is, they have to have five things with them at all times: A small knife, the book, an uncut beard, and uncut hair covered in a turban. They aren’t allowed to cut a hair on their heads, so most Sardars have really, really long hair, though you never see it because it’s always covered. Every male Sardar has the last name Singh so it’s really hard to tell them apart – they all look the same, with a turban and a beard, and they all have the same last name.
Ok, anyway, our trip.
We first visited Nidhi’s father’s old professor in Ludhiana and his two sons who were home for summer vacation from high school in California. It was weird to hear the American accent coming so perfectly from two Indians, but they were very nice, and we had a great time at their house, with their father and grandfather telling us about Seikism and its history.
Then we drove on to Amritser, the holiest city of the Seiks and one of the holiest cities in India because of the famous Golden Temple, and past it, to the border with Pakistan. That was an interesting spectacle: Wagha Border is the only peaceful border area between India and Pakistan, and they make the most of it with a parade every evening on both sides. There are huge stands on either side of the border and they’re packed with people shouting slogans and patriotic sayings, competing with each other to see who can be the loudest in support of their country. Each army sends five soldiers to the border where they salute and then (with great ceremony) lower the flags. Their manner of saluting and marching is hilarious, they don’t just stomp, they literally lift their foot to their nose before bringing it down with a crash three times and they walk with exaggerated heal-toe movements. Both sides were like that, and it was strange to watch them do something so funny so seriously.
Of course I also felt privileged to be at the border, and since Nidhi’s dad had some contacts we were allowed to go straight up to the fence. There were some other Americans on the other side and we shook hands over the border (an American in India and an American in Pakistan shaking hands. Cool!) which was great, until the guard said it was illegal and would we please stop Now.
Back to Amritser where we spent the night, and then in the morning we went to the Golden Temple. Wow, what a place. It truly felt holy, unlike most of the other places that merely looked holy. People from all over the world come there, cover their heads, take off their shoes and bathe their feet before walking slowly around the square lake of holy water, looking at the sparkling gilded temple in the center. As in all Gurudwaras, everyone first eats a communal meal, kings and beggars, Brahmins and Untouchables, all sitting side by side on the floor eating the (quite good) food that’s prepared by dozens of volunteers. And they’re so nice about it, you really feel welcomed to eat there. I think all religious institutions should follow their welcoming example.
The temple was beautiful, covered in gold and crystal and mirrors and flowers and filled with people singing devotional songs and paying their respects to the elaborately decorated book in the center. It was beautiful and awe-inspiring. And just as we left the rain came pounding down, the first of the monsoons, and turned Amritser into Venice, with canals instead of streets. (Literally, there was at least a foot or two of water in most of the roads.) But we managed to get out and come back to Solan (nine hours later) safe and sound.

Delhi (well, sort of) Day 3

2006-07-14T01:48:00.000-06:00

We left Delhi early in the morning (7:00) and drove out into the countryside to visit friends and family in the planes villages. The first village we went to was that of Nidhi’s aunt. After passing through the impossibly narrow roads of the tiny village to get to her house, she invited us in, but only Nidhi and me. In these villages, the women cover their faces with the transparent cloth of their saree, or the scarf of their suit-salvaar in the presence of the male elders of their in-laws, and since Nidhi’s father belonged to that category, it would have been awkward having a conversation with someone with a cloth over their face. So he waited out in one room while Nidhi and I went into the courtyard of their house.
All houses have these courtyards or flat roofs where most of daily life happens, because electricity is almost nonexistent. Sometimes they have it, sometimes they don’t and it’s fairly random and never announced. In this village, they said they had electricity until the 28th of June, but they haven’t had it since. So they boiled milk over slow-burning cow dung and we all fanned each other with square, woven fans. It seemed like they could have lived 100 years ago, that nothing had changed since then, except an occasional plastic lawn chair or the sound of a motorcycle outside.
The next village we went to was Nidhi’s native village – where all her dad’s ancestors had lived. It was a lot bigger than the first one, almost not a village anymore, but it still had the narrow stone streets and closely built houses, because everyone in the village was like one large and slightly spread-out family. We were invited into three or four houses, and Nidhi talked (and I listened uncomprehending) with the women on the roof/second storey of the houses, while her father talked to the men of the house on the first storey, with the buffalo. The women were really nice, including me in the conversation through Nidhi’s translation, and smiling at my attempts at Hindi.
When we finally escaped the numerous invitations for juice and tea and milk and any other drink possible, we went to Nidhi’s mother’s village, and spent the night there. That was really nice. I lay on a woven bed with a battery-powered fan next to me and read until the sun set, while Nidhi and her father talked to their relatives they hadn’t seen in years.
That night we slept outside under mosquito nets (that did a fine job of keeping one mosquito inside, which bothered me all night.) and in the morning we woke up early and rode on a bullock-cart to the mango orchards, where we ate mangos and climbed trees and splashed water at each other from the well and generally had a great time. Then we skipped back, got our stuff together, and took three long, hot, uncomfortable busses back to Solan.
What joy, to be back in the mountains! It’s so cool and rainy and cool and not hot…aaahhh.

Delhi Day 2

2006-07-10T06:17:00.000-06:00

This day was the low point of the trip, I think. I spent most of the time unconscious or uncomfortable or (mostly) both. We were going to take a tour bus to see the sights of Delhi, but the costs of admission to the monuments are exponentially higher for foreigners than for Indians (i.e. 20 rupees for them and 250 for us) so we decided it would be more cost effective to hire a driver to take us to the places ourselves and then if we wanted to go in we could, or we could just look at it. It sounded like a good decision, but an entire day spent in a hot un-AC-ed car is absolutely no fun. Half the things we only saw through the window or over trees: “Oh, look, that’s the biggest mosque in India! Look, there, can you see it? That’s the Red Fort, a great example of Mogul architecture…too bad we won’t go in.”
The morning we spent looking for Hindi books for Nidhi’s IB, and I truly don’t remember much, I was asleep most of the time. This never used to happen, but I seem to have serious problems staying awake in any kind of moving vehicle for more than half an hour here. It’s useful, actually, it makes the time pass a lot faster, and you don’t notice how hot and sweaty you are when you’re asleep. Plus the snatches of dreams are entertaining.
In the afternoon we went around to various monuments and things to see, and when we were out of the car it was better, because there was a slight breeze and I could stretch my legs and appreciate the things we were looking at.
We went to two temples, one Hindu temple which was huge and amazing and full of fantastic pictures of gods and their deeds. I’m getting better at the temple ritual now: ring the bell when you enter, bow, receive the blessing (in the form of a red dot or sweets or both) then walk around the temple contemplating religious-ish things, then ring the bell when you leave, and touch the steps and touch your forehead.
The other temple was the Lotus Temple, which isn’t actually a temple; it’s a place of religious worship for all and every faith. From the outside it looks like a lotus flower just blooming (hence the name) and from the inside it’s a beautiful wide, sunlit room with marble benches facing a podium that could support preachers from any faith. You’re not allowed to speak in there, so the room is filled with the sound of the shuffle of bare feet and the slight jingle of anklets. It’s a wonderful place, and so peaceful.
We also went to Gandhi’s grave, which is surrounded by wide expanses of grass (which you can’t walk on) and flowers on an artificial hill which drops off to a stone courtyard with Gandhi’s moral remains in the center in a large black marble box with flowers all over it and the words “He Ram” (Oh God – his last words) set into the front. It, too, is a very peaceful and powerful place, thinking of the man who did so much for this country and the world.
In the evening we went to visit a succession of Nidhi’s relatives and her father’s friends, and drank so much tea and juice and water I felt like I was going to burst. We changed clothes at her cousin’s house to go to the wedding (that started at 9-9:30) but we were late, so we didn’t get there until 10:00. We went through the brightly colored archway hung with flowers and sparkly cloth and downstairs where the wedding hadn’t started yet – they were waiting for the groom to arrive with his huge parade of dancers and merry-makers – and were just about to settle in when Nidhi’s father came back to us saying, “oops, wrong wedding. Ours is upstairs.” Unfortunately in our wedding we had missed the parade – the couple had already exchanged wreathes of flowers and were posing for photos. So we ate and then sat there, wondering if anything was going to happen until 11:30 at which time Nidhi and her dad said, “the next ceremony won’t start until 1 or 2 am, so we may as well go.” What a let down, I was so excited to see an Indian wedding, and all it entailed was eating and looking at two people dressed up getting pictures taken.
We went to the India Gate afterwards, a huge gate (very like the Arc of Triumph in Paris) in the middle of a wide plaza that commemorates all the soldiers who died in the World Wars. It was nice, and interesting to see it in the dark when the crowds had mostly gone away.
End Day 2

Delhi Day 1

2006-07-10T06:02:00.000-06:00

Our trip to Delhi was vastly superior to our trip to Solan on the first day – this time we got to take that coach bus we’d missed earlier, and what a difference it made! Air Conditioning and comfortable (blue) seats and movies all the way through the 9 hour trip to Delhi. Actually, I’m glad I didn’t take it the first day, it wouldn’t have been as much of an adventure, and I would have gotten the wrong impression of the country, and felt guilty for being treated in a way so obviously different from the common Indian. As it was, I truly felt like I was in India, and by the time I took the coach bus I could genuinely appreciate it because I knew the alternative.
It’s amazing, the contrast between the hills and the plains. You can tell immediately that one is more prosperous and less populated than the other, and it’s a shock to see the poverty I had expected before I came, but had almost forgotten about in Solan The poverty in the plains is made worse by the heat – well over 100 every day, even though the monsoons were supposed to come and cool things off – it must have been hell for the people carrying bricks and digging up the roads. I have never seen so many people sleeping in the streets before, day and night. People on the dividers between the two lanes of the road, on the sidewalks, on exposed pipes, at train and bus stations...
I don’t know how they manage to sleep with all the noise – cars and trucks blow their horns like maniacs or aspiring members of a marching band at all hours of the day and night, whether or not there’s any reason to announce their presence to the world.
We stayed with Nidhi’s Uncle – the one who picked us up the first day – in their little flat with three rooms and a kitchen.
Nidhi and I have to do research for our Extended Essays – 4,000 word essay for the IB that we have to do over the summer – hers is on the reasons for the accession of Kashmir to India, and mine is on Philip Pullman’s treatment of religion in His Dark Materials. So we went to find books on our respective subjects. The first library was useless to both of us, though a nice escape from the heat, so we left it feeling a little down-hearted.
Then Nidhi’s father asked whether we wanted to go to the Parliamentary Library. “Isn’t that restricted?” Nidhi asked, but apparently her dad knows someone in the security from his days as a government worker, and so we went to try. A few conversations and several cups of tea later we were in the beautiful new library of the Indian Parliament. Both of us were more successful there, so we made a trip to the photocopier and then had lunch (south Indian food). Then the security man took us on a tour of the Parliament itself, which was super-cool.
When we left, we went to Gandhi Smriti (an organization to promote Gandhi’s ideals) and had a meeting with the editors of Yamuna, a children’s newspaper for which Nidhi is the “foreign correspondent” (I’ve contributed an article as well). Then the organizer introduced us to a 13-year-old boy that the organization had just adopted. He came from a small village and is a math genius – we watched as he did the times tables of 200,554 as easily as you or I would do the times tables of 6 or 7. So they’re sending him to a prestigious school in Delhi to give him a good education and a future for his intelligence. Wow.
Then we went to the place where Gandhi was assassinated on his way to the Morning Prayer and the multimedia museum on his life – one of the most amazing museums I’ve ever seen. They had staff for each room of the museum to tell you about the exhibit and background information about Gandhi, and the exhibits themselves were so cool – you sing into a straw basket and a speaker nearby plays Gandhi’s favorite song, or you blow into a bowl filled with water and steam and it shows one of Gandhi’s messages as light on the steam, or you spin Gandhi’s spinning wheel and it plays a movie about his life. Such organization!
That night we went to Connaught Place (the main market of Delhi) and shopped. I was overwhelmed at first by the colors and sparkles of countless stalls – where should I start? Each person had a stall about 4ft wide and maybe 10 feet deep, and it was like walking into a tunnel of colors (if you were in a clothing stall) or glitter (if you were in a jewelry stall). But by the end I was having fun bargaining with the shopkeepers – bringing things down to half their original price with the help of Nidhi to translate the more complicated parts. It’s a good thing she was there, because apparently the shopkeepers hike up the price exponentially for foreigners, but because Nidhi was with me they treated me like a native. So we came back laden with bags and Nidhi’s uncle congratulated us on getting good prices for everything.
Yay!

Cultural Tangents (read this one second)

2006-06-28T08:30:00.002-06:00

(CT#1)
It's funny how important walking down the Mall to look for guys is to everyone here. Maybe because real relationships are so constricted (the normal reason for two teens to break up is "her parents found out, now her brother's probably going to come and try to beat me up," as Rahul Nidhi's friend put it, and the idea of a girl calling a boy or vice versa is almost unheard of) so things that to me seem fit for middle school - crushes, friends-as-messengers, code words ("one-four-three" means "I love you", for example), etc - are common among 17-18-year-olds here. And relationships that actually do occur are far more low-key than at home - many people won't even kiss before marriage, and the farthest you'll go is maybe seeing a movie together and (*scandalous!*) holding hands. So girls will walk slowly up and down the Mall for hours waiting for their secret -or not-so-secret - crush to pass by and then when he does, not say anything except maybe "Hi". It all seems very juvenile to one who comes from a culture of 14-year-old mothers and abstinence being prudish, but I guess it makes sense here.

(CT#2)
At Nidhi's friend's house, we watched an amazing movie called (translation) "Color Me in Saffron" (Saffron is the color of sacrifice in India) about a British woman who goes to India to film a documentary about the freedom fighters of the revolution. In the process of filming, the actors (a bunch of carefree and careless college students) begin to understand the passion of the revolutionaries they're acting, and then when one of their friends is killed in a government oversight they follow their characters footsteps to fulfill the words of one of them: "Our country isn't perfect, no country is. We have to work to make it perfect." It's the most Hollywood-ish Bollywood movie I've ever seen, and it was really powerful.
But I'm enjoying Bollywood more and more here, it's truly a completely different genre than Hollywood and can't be judged by the same standards, because the mentality of the people is different. While with Hollywood we want something that will remind us of our own lives, the Indians crave an ideal world where the only troubles are who's marrying whom and when they'll realize that they're in love. (Ok, that's an oversimplification, but in general, the world of Bollywood is more idealized than that of Hollywood) Almost exclusively the movies end happily with a marriage or two, even if the movie isn't supposed to be about love, so the term "Hollywood ending" seems pointless - it should be Bollywood Ending, because Hollywood doesn't end like that nearly as often. And since every movie is peppered with songs and dances, it's more important for an actor to be a good dancer than a good actor, and (for guys at least, sigh) looks come third on the list. There are maybe seven actors of each gender that do basically all the movies, so you see the same combination of actors many times playing different characters. Many of the stories are universal, cheesy romantic comedies in Bollywood are basically cheesy romantic comedies in Hollywood - except they're probably about 5 x up on the cheese factor - but the story's the same. I love Bollywood style though, and I'm going to miss it when I get back to a Hollywood-dominated culture.

Festivals (read this one first)

2006-06-28T08:30:00.001-06:00

In the past 2 weeks there have been two super-cool festivals in Solan. The first was a dance/theater festival with participants from all over the country showing their traditional dances and competing with one-act plays. There were performances in the evenings for a week and on the last day all the groups paraded down the Mall of Solan. The Mall is the name of the main street, every town/village/city has one (at least in the hills, I'm not sure about the bigger cities in the planes) where most of the shops/street stalls are and where the old people goes for their evening walk and where the youth (male and female) go to scope out the opposite sex. (Cultural Tangent #1)
Anyway, the parade was very cool, as each group passed by Nidhi explained to me where they were from and some specifics about their dance. I think my favorites were the Punjabis, with their brightly colored, starched turbans and distinctive rhythm.
I also loved the Hijiras, cross-dressers: two men dressed in pink and red saris laughing and dancing seductively down the street. They were incredibly ugly, but I guess that was the point. And of course there were the Himachal dancers (from this area). Their traditional dance is very simple, basically swinging your hips and turning your hands in the air, but it takes a lot of skill and balance, because the cool thing about the dance is that you do it with stuff balanced on your head √ a tall stack of rings for the women and a candelabrum of sorts for the men. And then you have to pick up a handkerchief off the floor with your teeth while staying balanced. It's really interesting to watch and I'd like to try it sometime.
Then there was the annual Shulini fair, celebrating the time that Solan's patron goddess, Shulini, went to visit her sister. I don't know why that was so important, or what she did with her sister for those three days, but hey, it's cool anyway. It began with a parade - no, it began a couple days before, when the city began showing lights and tinsel everywhere, and people set up tiny stalls selling everything from plastic dolls to wooden flutes to peacock fans and the city got really crowded. But the festival itself began with a parade, bringing the statue of Shulini down from the temple to the center of the city. First came all the other gods, represented by people dressed up and posing (sometimes uncomfortably) on floats and giving out blessings in the form of bindis and handfuls of sweets. We had a great view from the cloth shop of Nidhi's friend's uncle, and we watched and laughed as the huge devils (Bread and Puppet style) danced and spun drunkenly down the street. Finally the little statue came in a covered litter and people surged forward to make offerings and touch the holy object. It was covered in flowers and people were throwing more (marigolds, the most common flower for blessings) from balconies.
Then that evening was the opening performance at the fairground. We had VIP seats - front and center - because Nidhi's best friend's father is the District Public Relations Officer, so it was a great view, but a little loud. It started out with traditional music and dances and then came to the main performance (at around10:00 PM) - a Bollywood playback singer who alternated with a little-known singer whom we actually liked more because he sang better songs. The playback singer had crazy outfits, things you could only get away with on stage (but would be normal in the states) and all sparkly and glittery. She was backed up by five dancers doing funny only-in-Bollywood dance moves - they're too corny to be done anywhere else.
We got back at around 1:30 AM and didn't go the next day because we spent the day/night at Nidhi's friend's house. (Cultural Tangent #2)
On the last day of the Shulini fair two of Nidhi's guy friends took me to the fair (because Nidhi was sick) which was really fun, because most of her friends are girls and it was refreshing to have male company again. It was funny, they walked on either side of me, like bodyguards, and glared at any guy who looked at me too long (which were quite a few, because I'm the only foreign girl for miles and miles, so everyone's looking at me around here). They guided me through the insanely crowded, mud-filled fairgrounds and then one of them got his friend, who worked one of the rides, to give us free tickets and so I got to go on a smaller, faster-spinning version of a Ferris wheel and had a great time. They were really nice and great to talk to, and I hope to see them again, though the gender barrier could pose some problems in that regard - how do we plan a meeting if it's socially unacceptable to call? Sigh...
And that night we went to the performance again, it was a Punjabi singer this time, and I've now decided that I like Punjabi music the best - it's so much fun, and such a beat to dance to. I've vowed to get some and bring it for the aerobics class at UWC - what a change that will be from the ever-repeated 80s rock we're always jumping to!
And next week we're going to Delhi and we're going to a wedding! I'm so excited, I've heard/seen so much about weddings, and I want to see how real ones compare to the Bollywood type. And lots of sight-seeing of course, so next time I get online, I'll have lots to write.

Journalism Workshop

2006-06-28T08:30:00.000-06:00

Nidhi and I spent the past week with a group from an organization in Delhi that serves underprivileged girls who were here for a workshop on journalism that Nidhi's father had organized. There were about 40 of them, and they were all around 16. They were really nice, but unfortunately couldn't really speak English, so I wasn't able to communicate with them. The workshop was held at a private school up in the mountains, about 10 km from Solan called KTS (they said it stood for "Know Thy Self", interesting name...) and the 30 some-odd students there also participated. Nidhi and I went there every day and listened to the presentations (or fell asleep, in my case, I couldn't understand them, and so it was sort of boring) in the morning, and then in the afternoons we led Creative Writing sessions. We all waked out into the woods and sat down to write stories and poems and relieve the tedium of old people talking about their jobs. Nidhi and I split the group into two groups, those that could speak a little English (about 7 of them) and those that couldn't (the other 30ish).
My group was fun, I explained in English and then one of the teachers translated for them just to make sure it made sense. Then they translated their stories/poems for me and read them in Hindi for each other. Some of the stories were really nice, and I could tell that the poems were too, but those were harder to judge because so much of poetry is in the language, which I couldn't understand.
And afterwards we would play games, they taught me Cricket (everyone's obsession) which I've decided is the lazy man's baseball - you only have to run between two posts instead of all the way around the bases, and if you hit the ball far enough (the equivalent of a home run) they just assume that you would have run back and forth six times so you don't even have to move at all. But maybe all the sitting around and not moving was because half the time the kids couldn't hit the ball (not like I was much better. Whatever).
We also played Anthakshi which is a fun game in which one team sings a song and then the other team has to sing a song that begins with whatever letter the first song ended in. Of course I couldn't participate, but it was fun to watch.
The girls were really nice, even though I couldn't really communicate. They were all about our age, 16-17, but they looked so much younger. Maybe it's because Nidhi and I feel/look more mature after UWC (I have noticed that, even with other people. I think UWC does something to us, more than other places) but it did seem strange. There was one girl who looked especially young - she said she was 16 but I would have sworn that she was half that.
Sadly, they left a few days ago, and they were all tearful to go, but we promised to visit them in Delhi, so we'll get to see them again in July. Yay!

My 18th Birthday in the Himalayas

2006-06-21T03:44:00.000-06:00

On Monday the 12th, we went to Nidhi’s grandmother’s village with Nidhi, her father, her cousin, and of course, her grandmother. The bus ride there was agonizing –hot and incredibly crowded. People were sitting on the engine, standing in the aisles, and even sitting on the roof! (I actually envied them – at least they got the breeze to cool them off) We were stuck together, hot and sweaty (in my case – I never thought I sweated that much, but apparently compared to Indians I do. It’s annoying.) I was sitting down, thank god, but my leg was pressed against the engine, which was scalding. Near the end of the 3 hour ride the man next to me got off, so I was able to sit comfortably next to the window and enjoy the view. And what a view it was!
Mountains and mountains, getting bigger and bigger as we drove on, so that I felt oxygen deprived just by looking at the distance to the valley. It was beautiful, but it would have been more so if the mountains hadn’t been so covered in clouds/haze, I felt like I was missing something.
We got to the village, a small little collection of houses in the middle of the mountains, and met Nidhi’s great-aunts and –uncles and cousins and many other friends and relations. It was so sweet – everyone knew everyone because the village was so small and the houses were so close together, you were never quite sure when you left one family’s quarters and entered another’s, and it didn’t really matter anyway, because people visited so often. Every single family had a little garden where they grew potatoes and garlic and other roots, and a couple cows that lived in a mini-barn below the house. The houses were so cozy, with low slate roofs and wooden interiors, and floorboards that creaked comfortingly, as they do in really old, loved and lived in homes. I can’t describe the warmth that radiated from that house and the people in it, laughing and talking all the time (even though I didn’t understand more than the basic words I’ve learned: so, and, very, ok, good, etc. and those don’t help much in comprehension). Nidhi’s great-grandfather looks so much like my grandfather (except with darker skin) it was scary, every time I saw him I almost cried; I hadn’t realized I missed them so much. And I wanted to talk to him, because I could tell that he had many stories to tell, but I couldn’t. I’ve never hated the language barrier so much.
We slept there, and the next morning (the day before my birthday) we got up dark and early (4:00 am) to hike to a temple on the top of a 12,000 ft. peak. It was around 25 km round trip, but wonderful. We kept passing cowherds with 6-7 cows ambling in front of them, walking along the narrow paths up and down the mountain. I never knew cows could be so agile as to get up those steep rocky paths, but maybe these are special mountain cows and I’m used to spoiled, sedentary Vermont cows. I couldn’t believe that people still lived like this, spending all day on the mountain, following the small herd of cows and then coming home to a tiny house at least a 15-30 minute walk from the nearest road, let alone civilization.
Because we were in the mountains it was cool all day, and the hiking was fairly easy, though long. What I’ll remember most about it is, not the views (though those were amazing) but the encounters we had with the nomads. If I thought cowherd/farmers were behind the times, these people were stone-age – they follow the seasons and spend about 3 months in each camp that consists of a grassy area for the cows to graze and a few crude stone houses with tin roofs for them to live in. It was a surprise to come out of the dark forest to a grassy field, like we’d stepped into a completely different world, one that hadn’t changed for hundreds of years – except for the radio we could hear from one of the houses playing Punjabi pop songs.
The faces of those people! I know now why the National Geographic portrait books always show faces of rural India and Tibet. It’s not just that we Westerners want to see something foreign and exotic, it’s that they have so much character. If I live to be 100 I’ll never be able to fill my face with such down-to-earth reality that these people have. Maybe there’s something about the soft American lifestyle that makes our lives and faces so bland, but if I had a choice between studying the face of a random American and a random Indian nomad, I’d choose the nomad immediately, there’s so much depth there…There was a little girl there with a look in her wide eyes that I can’t describe – one of wonder and understanding and an endurance I can’t believe. Unfortunately my camera chose that moment to die and not accept the kindly offered replacement batteries, so I was left photoless. I’m sorry.
Finally, after a very long journey, we reached the temple at the top of the mountain. We all took off our shoes, washed our feet, and entered the tiny wooden building that had stood there for hundreds of years, on a spot to which people had climbed for millennia. It is believed that it was Lord Shiva’s home at one time, and that a priest once went there thousands of years ago, and went into such a deep state of meditation that his bodily functions slowed to a minimum and he lived for a thousand years, until he finally attained nirvana, and the people built a shrine in his honor.
We rang the four bells at the doorway and stooped to enter the dark room. A priest sat there, and when we had knelt, prayed, and made an offering to the god, he blessed us and painted a bindi on each of our foreheads and then gave us a handful of rice as a symbol of his blessings. Then we went down to a smoky room where they served us rice and watery curry (which we ate with our hands – ick!) and then we headed back.
We timed it perfectly – we arrived at the village right as it got dark, and went to a different house (Nidhi’s grandmother’s other brother’s) to spend the night. When they heard that it was my birthday the next day they insisted that I celebrate it with them, but we said we had to get back – we had plans.  So we made a compromise: We stayed the morning with them, and then went back for the evening. So I woke up to a spectacular view of the Himalayas on my 18th birthday, had a kind of porridge for breakfast that was delicious, and then relaxed for a few hours, gazing at the mountains and enjoying the sun. Then they took us to another temple nearby that had been built 700 years ago with a tree next to it that had been planted the same time. It was huge; the trunk had split into 3 parts and was so wide the five of us probably couldn’t have reached around it. And it towered over the tiny temple where we went to pay our respects.
The bus ride back was much better, fewer people, and we got good seats all the way. Nidhi and I talked and sang and looked out the window, and it was great fun the whole way. When we got back Nidhi and her mom took me out to buy a suit salvar – the traditional dress that everyone here wears. We bought the fabric in a shop with rows and rows of brightly colored cloths, and a salesman who would take out a bolt of fabric and sweep it out onto the cushioned floor to display its full pattern. So many fabrics! Each one hid the ones before it, so I had a hard time remembering what I liked. But I finally chose one, and we brought it to a tailor who delivered it 3 days later, so now I have an Indian dress!
We were going to get my hand henna-ed, but it was raining (it was auspicious, they insisted, and I liked it) so we went to the mehendi man the next day, and now my right hand is covered in beautiful brown curls and it smells fabulous.
We came back home to a small cake waiting for me (not particularly tasty, but hey, it’s the gesture, really.) and, according to tradition, I fed the first piece to everyone –Nidhi’s family and her neighbors – myself. Then we had celebration puri – like chapattis but smaller and puffed up and really, really good. And we watched Bollywood TV (amazingly entertaining, actually) and went to bed. And so now I’m 18, legally an adult, and ready for all sorts of new adventures.
I have pictures that I wanted to add here, but the connection is too slow. I'm really sorry. I'll add them later if I get the chance.

India: First Impressions

2006-06-16T06:47:00.000-06:00

Before I describe this indescribable country, I’d like to note that Virgin Atlantic has the best safety manuals ever. And I know, because I’ve read and assessed every single manual from every single plane I’ve been on, and this on outshines them all. It’s accompanied by a safety video and they both are animated wonderfully, with specific characters – the smoker dude, with a goatee who gets caught trying to smoke in the bathroom, the teenage punk who has to take off his high healed boots to slide down the ramp (the businesswoman and the fashion model are fine with flat shoes), the black Southern Baptist preacher, complete with gold earring, cross necklace and shades, who tries to steal the manual by hiding it in his jacket, etc. – it’s so funny.

Anyway. On to India. My first impression was brown: through the airplane window all I could see of Delhi was a disorganized patchwork of brown dusty buildings as far as the eye could see. As we came off the plane, we passed a “welcome torch” – an ornate golden pillar carrying a candle with the elephant god blessing it – the first taste of a culture vastly different from my own. We were met by Nidhi’s father and uncle, who’d brought me flowers (that didn’t survive the trip, sigh) and they took us to the bus station. Crowded, hot, and loud is my summary of that place. We stood in line for the air conditioned coach bus that would take us the 6 hours to Chandigar where we would change busses and take another to Solan, Nidhi’s city. But the bus was full, so we had to take the budget bus, you know, the one that’s falling apart with dirty, rattley windows and seats that have seen better days, maybe those of Queen Victoria. But it was fun, it was an adventure, and I entertained myself by trying to read the Hindi signs (Nidhi had taught me the alphabet in Duino), until I got tired and fell asleep.

When I wasn’t sleeping, I was staring out the window, both to find easy Hindi words to read, and to take in the astonishing surroundings. I think I can describe my impressions with colors: the women all wore such bright dresses, seeing a group of them was like walking into one of those Hippy Flower Power pictures – orange and lime green and blue and pink and teal and magenta, all dyed as bright as the could come – even the men were colorful, because all the Seik men wore brightly colored turbines, I never thought I’d see a guy in a pink turbine, but there he was on the bus, perfectly respectable, with a grey beard and a knowing eye and … a pink turbine. And the busses and trucks were all brightly painted with designs and messages “Blow Horn!” “Use Dipper At Night!” “India is Great!” and stuff like that. And flowers and pictures of gods everywhere…

The other color, or rather absence of it, was the grey/brown of the buildings. I’ve never seen a city in such disrepair. I thought that the few people living with their kitchens open to the streets in Vietnam were terribly poor, but that was the general standard of living in Delhi, that or one room brick house/apartments that were obviously falling apart. And these were the middle class, as Nidhi said. What were the lower class living like? Of course I saw that too, people cooking chapattis (the Indian staple food, like a tortilla but smaller and thicker, they have it breakfast, lunch and dinner) on open fires in the streets and then retiring to corners to sleep, people digging through the endless piles of trash to find recyclables with flies buzzing around their heads, people burning cow dung for fuel because fossil fuels are too expensive.

The thing is, though they were all obviously very poor, they seemed perfectly happy. It’s one of the things I’ve discovered, both by experience and because everyone says it: Indians have very little, but are some of the happiest people on the planet. They are content with what they have, and have such a strong community (especially in the villages) and are so generous that they don’t need anything more. It makes me wonder why we westerners have such trouble with depression and materialism. I mean, sure, I like my laptop – without it you wouldn’t be reading this – but do I really need it, or anything else I have? How essential is running water? Everyone here bathes with buckets and cups, and it seems unnecessary now to have a full-blown shower, and such a waste of water.

After about 4 hours though, our bus died. So we all clambered out and waited on the side of the road for another bus, which came after not too long, and we clambered on (a lot more crowded now) and went another 2 hours and then that bus broke down too, so we all got off again. Nidhi was so embarrassed (“this never happens. Really!”) but I was having fun – an adventure on my first day! Nidhi’s dad went and found a car and so we were driven the rest of the way in a tiny car that took hairpin turns at breakneck speed while passing huge trucks. Way fun.

Solan, Nidhi’s city, is in the middle range of the Himalayas, so not too high, not too low. Lots of mountains everywhere and misty clouds and tiny bumpy roads. I’ll post pictures when I can. Her family is wonderful. Her mother and grandmother cook fabulously (spicy Indian food eaten with your hands – I’m actually getting quite good at it, you use your chapatti as a spoon and dig in, it’s still strange though, to have no forks…)And her little brother and sister are really cute (but a little shy with their English, hopefully they’ll get over it. And in the meantime, I’m working on my Hindi.)

These are just my first impressions. More to come in the ensuing weeks, I’ll tell everything, but maybe a bit later than it should be, internet is not as accessible as it was at home…

The Visa Ordeal

2006-06-16T06:37:00.000-06:00

If ever any of you decide to go to India (or anywhere else, for that matter) be sure to follow their advice on the website and go to get the visa months in advance. I learned this the hard way, and you can rest assured that I will never make that mistake again. Ok, so I had a fairly valid excuse – the Indian Consulate in Milan (where I had to go) was only open Monday to Friday from 9 – 12 am and I happened to be in school at those times and it would have been hard to make the 5 hour journey during one of my free blocks. And they said it should take 2 days, so I wasn’t that worried: I went a week and a half early and figured it’d be a done deal long before I flew. To use the cliché, “How very wrong I was.”

I went to Milan on the evening of Monday the 29^th, stayed the night, and went to the consulate in the morning. I got to Milan in a thunderstorm, rain pounding the streets and lightning cracking the sky every other second. I made my way to the hostel without too much hassle and thankfully they let me stay there, though technically I wasn’t allowed to since I wasn’t 18 yet. And I woke up bright and early to wander my way to the consulate. The Indian Consulate in Milan is a small, crowded room on the fifth floor of a tiny building off a back alley, but I didn’t have to wait too long in line before I was up against the sweaty glass and pushing my papers through.

But no. For them to process my visa I had to be a resident in Italy for 2 years and my Permesso was only valid for a year and 10 months. So they would have to send my application to New York, who would reply in around a week. Then I should come back and they would have it ready for me in 2 days. Oookay, that’s cutting it a bit close now. I asked if there was any way they could do it faster – I had to leave in a week and a half – couldn’t they make an exception and do the visa themselves? No. Ok, could they ask New York to be extra quick about replying? Sure, we’ll tell them, (but they didn’t do anything) call this number in 3-4 business days to see if it’s in.

I left feeling sort of worried and disappointed, but I figured, it could still work out if I was lucky – 3-4 days left me with getting it on Friday or Monday at the latest, and then I could go back and still have it with time to spare before I flew on Thursday – so I went and watched Ice Age 2 in Italian and relaxed until my train back to Duino left. I was not lucky. Neither that day nor later.

My train back was late by 20 minutes, which was ok – I had about that much time to catch the connecting train in Venice, if I ran, I’d be fine. But when I got to Venice, the other train was about to leave, so I jumped on without having time to validate my ticket. Big mistake. When the conductor came along and I showed him my printout from the Internet, he said, “You can’t use this. You need a real ticket. Pay 25 euros, plus the original ticket price again.”

“But I didn’t have time to validate the ticket, and I don’t have any money (not technically true, but hey…), please, isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Ok. Get off at the next stop, validate the ticket, and get on the next train. I won’t fine you this time.”

Yay! So I spent half an hour in a tiny Italian town, and got on the next train to Udine. It was a nice ride, but a little long. I kept looking at the stations, waiting for Monfalcone, but it never came. And then, as I was getting annoyed and tired and ready to be home, came the sign: Udine. Udine? I’m not supposed to be there!!! Apparently I’d either gotten on the wrong train or missed the stop early on. So I got off, bought a ticket back to Trieste, and for an hour, wandered Udine. Nice city by the way, some really pretty buildings, only marred by the fact that they weren’t the Duino Castle or the Al Castel café where I should have been.

The train finally came and I got off at Monfalcone without any problem, and ran down to the bus stop in case it came soon. Umm… no. The bus didn’t come for another hour, so I decided I’d rather walk the 10ish kilometers back than wait at the bus stop with nothing to do. That was scary. It was midnight and there weren’t streetlights, though there were lots of crazy Italian drivers speeding by. I spent my time saying prayers in Italian: “Per favore machine, lasciami vivere. Per favore, dio, non voglio morire. Il visto non e tanto importante, solo voglio vivere…” (please cars, let me live. Please god, I don’t want to die. The visa isn’t that important. I just want to live…)

I finally got back, and had to climb the wall to get into Beth’s (my English teacher) house at somewhere around 12:30. I fell into bed thinking, “phew. The ordeal’s over. Next time will be much easier.” Once again: How very wrong I was.

I called on Monday but they never answered all day. So I decided to go anyway and hope they had it. While I was using the secretary’s phone, though, I found out that Lorenzo, a Milanese boy I’d met during the Italian first year selections had been accepted, so I emailed him saying, “Congratulations! By the way, I’m coming to Milan tomorrow, want to meet somewhere to talk about the college?”

Another train to Milan. Another wait at the consulate. And another dismissal. Apparently New York hadn’t responded and I was to come back in 2 days. “But I’m leaving in 2 days! I can’t do that. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“If you’re leaving, we can give you the visa the same day, if you show us the ticket. But only then.”

“My flight to London leaves from Venice at 10:30 in the morning, can’t you give it to me tomorrow?”

“No. Only on the day of the flight to India.”

So I left feeling angry/sad/worried/stupid/hated by fate. What was I going to do? Go back to Duino? I couldn’t no train would take me back in time. I had to find a hotel or something here. But I had no money. Help! My prayers were answered by Lorenzo, who came to meet me where we’d arranged. I think that was the only truly good thing that happened in this entire story, but it was so good, it made up for at least 2/3s of the bad things: he said, “Where are you staying? Because my mother said that you could stay with us if you wanted.” Grazie a Dio! So I spent the afternoon with Lorenzo, sightseeing and telling him about the college. Then I went home with him and met his wonderful family who fed me dinner, gave me a bed, let me use the internet, and helped me decide what to do. We’d try the consulate again in the morning in case New York had replied, and if they had, all was well. If they hadn’t, I’d change my flight to leave from Milan instead of Venice (it was more expensive, but there was nothing we could do.) and go back to Duino to get my luggage, then come back that night, stay with them again, and hopefully get the visa in the morning and leave in the afternoon from Milan to London.

The next morning Lorenzo’s mom took me to the consulate early to ask again, but the answer was no. Again. So we went to the station and I bought a ticket to Duino and back again, and said thank you, see you tonight.

The train ride was uneventful, except for the deep feeling of despair and angst – everything was going wrong! – but I managed to sleep through most of it. I got to Duino and found Beth, so though the computer room was closed, she opened it for me and I was able to get online to change to airplane tickets. But the price had doubled since the morning, and suddenly I wasn’t sure it would be best to change the tickets – maybe it would be cheaper to just by another ticket? But Beth had to go and so I didn’t have time to check or change the ticket. I did have time, though, to read an urgent email from Jesus, my Secondo, saying he’d be in Milan that evening, could we meet? Oh, cruel fate! Why did he have to come at exactly the time that I wasn’t in Milan? But there was nothing I could do. I went to Beth’s house, hurriedly packed all my stuff, said goodbye and thank you to Beth and ran back to the bus stop to get on the train again. (Ugg. I’m so sick of trains…)

This train was more fun though, I met an Iranian family and spent the hours entertaining their 5/6 year old daughter as the parents slept, drawing, watching a movie on my laptop, playing cards, making faces, etc. and got into Milan at 11:00 pm. There was Jesus, waiting for me, the poor guy. We had all of five minutes together while we walked to where Lorenzo and his mother were waiting to take me home. Then we said goodbye again and I went back with Lorenzo. It was so sad to see him and then leave him again so soon…

By the time we got back it was too late to change the tickets, so we had to wait until the morning. So the next morning (this is Thursday, the 8^th, by the way, the day I leave) I went with Lorenzo’s mother to her office at 7:30 to check tickets (all of them insanely expensive because it was the same day) I ended up buying the same tickets I was going to in the first place, but it was too late to change tickets, so I ended up paying about 200 euros extra. Damn. (another lesson: get tickets when you can – don’t wait.)

Then at 9 I went to the consulate again. They told me to wait because the person who was supposed to handle my visa wasn’t there then. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, after an hour and a half, I asked, “excuse me, but exactly how long am I supposed to wait?”

“oh, another half an hour, maybe.” (Thanks a lot. You could have told me that before! Oy.) So I went outside and wandered around Milan again, looking at the churches and University buildings and not thinking about the future. I returned to the consulate right before it closed, and made my way slowly to the window. And, miracle of miracles, they took my passport and money and said they would do the visa! I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to hand over 75 euros in my life. “Come back at 4 to get it,” they said. Ahrg, another problem. My flight left at 4:50, I had to be at the airport at 4. This wouldn’t work. I asked if they could do it earlier and they said, no, come back at 4. I was about to leave in dejection and hope that I would be able to make the flight, but then I turned around again, I wouldn’t take defeat that easily. “You said you could make an exception if it was really necessary, and this is very important. Could you please do the visa earlier than 4? I absolutely have to be gone by 4.” And the blessed words, “Alright. I’ll do the visa now, come back at 2 to pick it up.” I nearly skipped out the room and did a little happy dance in the elevator. I met Lorenzo and we had lunch together before I went to get the visa. I was so happy and carefree then, it was wonderful. I went in at 2 and – joy and rapture – they produced my passport with a page full of a sparkly purple visa. So we went back to his house and I packed and said goodbye and thank you for saving my life and stuff, and then I went to the airport. Funny, how once I was in the airport I felt safe and at home: I know how to do airports. My visa was done and I was on my way.

Finito

2006-06-01T09:12:00.000-06:00

It's been a week since school's ended, but I couldn't stand the thought of writing about it until now. I think I'm ok now. Maybe.
The second years are gone!!!! :'-(
The year ended with a bang - the first years put on our last show for our secondi, which was great, the usual material: funny (battle of the bands: The Spice Girls vs The Backstreet Boys) and beautiful (Marco and Margerita did a ballet dance that was gorgeous. Wow.) and sweet (Alvaro, Vanessa and I sang a medley of songs (with changed lyrics) commemorating our second years' leaving, ending with Friends Will Be Friends, by Queen) and sad: our last song was Aloha Oe:
"Aloha Oe, Aloha Oe
The wind will carry back my sad refrain
One fond embrace
Before goodbye
Until we meet again"
Then the second years all came up on stage and we hugged and cried and cried and hugged...
That night (Tuesday the 23, for reference) there was a huge party in Mickey's (the bar) with everyone dancing one last time. The first half of the dancing was Latin - Tango and Salsa and Samba etc. and the latinos took the floor and danced (showing some of the rest of us how to do it), with spins and twirls and fancy footwork. Then the music changed to normal pop music, and everyone got up and danced, it was soo hot and crowded... but a good way to not think about the next day.
The next day was Closing Ceremony, which was nothing particularly special, a lot of Italian politicians talking about our importance to the community (blah), the choir sang, Vanessa did a speech on behalf of all the first years saying Thank You to our secondi, some music scholars played, and all throughout the ceremony we signed yearbooks. Then we had the best mensa food we've ever had - buffet style nice red rice and vegetables and pasta... and really good dessert, too.
Then it began. The first people left right after closing ceremony and then it was a constant stream for the next 2 days. Every half hour someone was at the bus stop, crying and blindly hugging anyone and everyone who came near to say goodbye. One by one my Secondi ( and the ones that meant the most to me and became my "adopted Secondi") left - Deanna (my real Seconda, who's going to Middlebury, so I'll see her soon) and Isaac (from Spain, a wonderful dancer and singer and such a kind-hearted person) left the first day without me being able to say goodbye, Yusaku (I'll always remember how he dressed up as me for the Nordic show - he did it so perfectly! And his cooking...ahh) and Doba (the computer geek, my Secondo-in-law - he was going out with my co-year, Leah) and Diego (who taught us the "beaver cheer", I can't relate it here, ask me to perform it when I get home, it's so funny...)
The weather was strange that day, it reflected our feelings exactly. All morning it was raining and very windy - sometimes we couldn't even hear the speeches because the tent was flapping so hard - but the grey clouds were the perfect backdrop to our sadness. Then the rain stopped and, just at sunset, a beautiful double rainbow appeared. The image of people saying their last goodbyes under that arch of color was so powerful - sad and beautiful at the same time.

The next day was the worst. My 2 first year roome left early in the morning (5 am for Nevin, and 8:30 for Marta) Then Jesus...Lisette and I went with him to Sistiana for one last coffee before he left and we promised that Lisette and I would return next year to remember him. We talked and laughed and bullshitted (he won the yearbook award for best bullshitter, and he was so proud...) and then he had to go.
Let's skip that part of the story, ok? He's the one I/'ll miss most, his bullshitting, his philosophy (talking about the merits/theory of anarchism, the US's involvement in Latin America, God, etc) his jokes, his absolutely horrid conduct with girls (I think "player" is the correct term - he would go through his picture album and say, "I got with her, her, her, her, not her - sigh - she was too far away but I wanted to, her, her...") which, though it sounds bad, is actually probably quite a good thing - it's one of the only things that kept me from wanting to fight my Seconda for him ;) (he was my Secondo-in-law too) the other thing was my Seconda herself and his devotion to her, - apparently, once he found the right girl he'd stick to her like glue - and how incredibly sweet they were together. And, of course, I'll remember his egocentric (sometimes faked, sometimes real, I don't know) how he loved being vain and singing, "I Feel Pretty" and taking pictures of himself...
Next most missed person is probably Cosy, though she left on Saturday and so I had time to talk to her before she left. Her laugh, her way of telling stories so that even if it's the most mundane occurrence - making omelets for example - it's hilariously funny, her voice - wow! sometimes I wish I were African too... - and all our inside jokes from Project Week. I think that week was one of the best in the year, and much of it was because of her. Memories of singing "Under the Sea" in Italian, of walking up the hill to our host family's house and talking about UWC/the world, of teasing Alvaro about his accent (whenever he asked for the ramp for Dana's wheelchair he'd roll the R and we'd all laugh - "la rrrrrampa!") of getting lost, and she was always there, smiling...
Thursday afternoon 2 more of my secondi left, Terence (the real Secondo) and Leon (the first adopted Secondo) I'll miss Leon's ever ready advice and listening ear, the conversations we had at the beginning of the year when we literally recounted our entire life stories to each other over cornflakes, how he was always available for a hug when I was feeling down...
Friday was a bit better. Lelde (our choir director) left in the morning, but after that everyone stayed, so we just lounged. All my latinos stayed (except Jesus) and the Russians, and we had a great time going through the clothes that people left behind and dressing up.
And that night we sang and played Latin songs together for the last time... and watched a movie and talked.
Slowly they all trickled away, and as my last Secondo left (Rene, on Monday), a crowd of Italians came for the first year selections, so I went smoothly into being a Seconda myself, showing them around Duino and telling them about the college.
And so here I am, a quasi-Seconda, lying in the sun and looking forward to going to India in a week!!!!!

The End of the Year

2006-05-22T05:39:00.000-06:00

I'm truly sorry it's been so long since my last post. There hasn't been that much happening, except for the slow march of the year towards the finish line. And here we are at the last days and I can't believe it. All our amazing second years are leaving us and we're taking charge, hearing from our primi (I have a prima named Lucy from Colorado who's in Thailand right now on an exchange trip - wow! and a primo from Virginia and another prima from Oregon). All the girls are complaining that there are no guys coming (which is sadly true - the vast majority of primi are girls. *sniff*) and all the guys are, obviously, extatic.
Hmm, what else has been happening?
I went for a hike in the Alps with a group of first years, we're going to have a hiking club next year.

And we had a concert for the music activity, I played rock music with the latinos - Renato, Rene, Alvaro and (not latina) Anja, which was super fun and everyone loved it. And then I played a Mozart sonata with Alvaro which we played pretty well, but it got boring for the audience because we didn't think and took all the (many) repeats. Oh well, we had fun, and people said they liked it.

And a lot of packing/studying for exams, but I won't talk about that. Ick.

Theater Week

2006-04-04T07:37:00.000-06:00

Last week was Theater Week, and Oh So fun. Every day there was something theaterish going on, at break, in Mensa at dinner time, at College Assembly...wow.
On Monday in Assembly, Cosy (Swaziland) made an announcement that went, "I'll keep this short. I just wanted to say: NAAAA-siguetenya..." and burst into Circle of Life. We all got up from the sidelines and started singing backup(inganama-inganamababa) to a spectacular performance of African singing (Cosy and Ayanda, from South Africa). Wow, but those southern Africans can belt it out!
And that night some students got up on the table and sang/acted Summer Lovin' from Greece (unfortunately no pictures, it was awesome...) "tell me more, tell me more..."
Tuesday evening we got Jesus Christ Superstar performed for our dinner, and I did bring my camera that time.
And then Wednesday Haley (Canada) and my second year, Terence did (I don't actually know the title. hmm) the song that goes "Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you."

And Thursday break was Terence and Ayanda doing the "Who's on First" skit, which was hilarious.
Wednesday and Thursday nights the Drama group performed Blood Wedding at a theater in Monfalcone (I helped with costumes). It was amazing. It was so powerful to watch them get so completely into their characters - before the last scene all the actors were literally crying backstage because of the events in the play. Wow.

And the grand finale was the Theater Week Show, which was great fun. Alvaro (Spain) and I sang Last Night of the World from Miss Saigon:

Eduardo's friends all laughed when Alvaro and I were performing ("you should have seen his face!" they said afterwards...) because (it being Theater Week and all) we acted and danced the whole song.

I was in Vanessa's national costume, which people said I looked good in (though it doesn't look like that in the picture, does it? sigh.) and it was Blue!! (yay).
Anyway, that was Theater Week, and it was loads of fun. I can't wait for next year.

And last night something amazing happened - it was raining/sunning all day, and in the evening we got some sort of triple rainbow - one that repeated twice and then another, fainter one above it. The first one was a complete half circle that ended right in Trieste. And if you looked past the castle there was a gorgeous sunset out over the Adriatic... sigh.

And so Eduardo and Marta and I ran down to the sea and took pictures...

yes, it's corny, but hey - he's Latino. ;)

Spanish Immersion

2006-03-29T09:32:00.000-06:00

I'm now having an intense Spanish immersion experience, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I've found a wonderful Latino to spend my time with - Eduardo from Peru - and now the world is beautiful and bright, even on cloudy days.
It started on Sunday, when we took a walk down the Rilke Path (the classic romantic spot in the college) and sat on the cliffs, looking out at the sea and talking about life. At some point in the three hours we spent there we changed from being friends to something more, and the rest of the story is private ;) and not for public posting. Suffice to say that I don't think I'll make it in for curfew very often in the future, and my Spanish is going to get really good. (this is where I get mad that blogger doesn't have emoticons, because I'd put a huge grin here)
Our friends are having a blast with it - teasing us to no end - but we don't mind whatsoever. The college tradition in this respect is for each person to adopt the other's secondi, co-years, and especially roommates, so now Marta, Nevin, and Giulia are happily discussing their new Roomo and Rene is my new secondo (though he basically was before anyway, by adoption).
Sigh...He's so sweet, and his language is sooooo gorgeous - having "te quiero" whispered in your ear is an experience every girl should have.
This is him, in case you can't find him in the pictures I've already posted:

I know I've said Life is Good before, but I was mistaken - Life is Fabuloso. :)

Random stuff

2006-03-29T08:11:00.000-06:00

There are all these little things that go on without being big enough to warrant a full post, so I'll bunch them up here.
on March 10th we had a Model United Nations conference. It was really fun, I was Haiti. The latinos made fun of me for being the poorest country in the western hemisphere (which actually isn't that funny) and hating the Dominican Republic (represented by my friend Bulat from Russia, so we had a lot of fun insulting each other's countries). I made a joint resolution with Trinidad and Tobago (represented by Camilla from Italy) on the nuclear crisis in Iran and it got passed! (over the US's haha.) Yay.
My poor friends though: Ying Xin (Hong Kong) and Vanessa (Singapore) and Martin (Slovakia) were saddled with being America. Martin did it impressively - he talked about freedom and evil and spreading democracy in all his opening speeches, it was hilarious.
here they are:

I wish we had been able to represent our own countries though, it would have been really interesting to do a true cultural MUN - when else are we going to get this opportunity? oh well, maybe next year.
And then there are the random happy moments of the college that I happen to have photos of:
The day Marta (polish rooma) and I climbed down to Fore Beach and lay there basking in the beautiful sunlight and view and laughing at how wonderful the world was:

And the night (1:30 am ish) Nidhi, Vanessa and I painted henna on each other's hands to match:

Speaking of Nidhi, I officially got tickets to India this summer! I'm going with her and we're going to tour the country, do presentations in schools in her area, and hopefully do some volunteer work while we're there. And so I'll come home on August 1st - I can't wait! Or maybe I can, because it seems like the end of the year is coming mighty quickly and I'm not ready for my first year to be over or (worse) my second years to leave.

Then there was Purim, and the Jewish taster session. It's like Jewish Halloween, so we all came dressed up and had cookies and hot wine and cake and the Israelis performed the story of Esther and how she saved the Jews from yet another extermination:

And the cultural visit to Mantua (where Romeo went, remember?), which was great. Henry gave us the full tour, including the details of the Marquis' scandalous pleasure palace, in which the dining room is covered by huge frescos of an, umm, feast/orgy at Cupid and Psyche's wedding.

(I love this picture of Henry, I think it captures his essence perfectly.)
And in our free time we went to a fair that was happening right outside the gates of the palace and had cotton candy and went on bumper cars and stuff. It was great.
I participated in a science cafe which was themed on the relationship between poetry, music, and science. So I played a cool flamencoish song with Rene (bolivia) and read Recuerdo (by Edna St Vincent Millay). We had so much fun.

Ok, that about sums up the special events of my life recently. Now I have to do a presentation for Environmental Systems on US Immigration (with a Chinese and a Latino - how perfect is that? I love UWC)

Project Week

2006-03-07T06:06:00.000-06:00

Every year (except last year because of financial difficulties) UWC has a project week, a week when all the students scatter to community service projects around the area - Croatia, Switzerland, Bosnia, Slovenia, Austria, etc, and Italy, of course. I (and Alvaro, from Spain) organized a project to Florence, to sing in elderly homes and do presentations in the International school about UWC and issues around the world. It was wonderful. We stayed in host families for the week, and mine was perfect - the mother was German and the father Italian, so we spoke a combination of Italian (mostly) and English and German. There was a 15-year-old son too, named Carlo, who was the sweetest boy imaginable, we had a great time talking in Italian/English about school, life, religion, growing up (he showed me his toy car collection and where/how he used to play with them and lamented how hard it was getting to play like that now, somehow it didn't have the same magic. I could sympathize perfectly, the same had happened to me with Legos and magic princess games, and I was surprised how easily we talked about it, two teenagers who should be "too old for that". It was good for me). On my last night there, we (Carlo, his friend Charlie, and I) played hide-and-seek all around the house and had a great time, another unexpected trip into childhood.
This is them:

And this is us, except Leni, who was taking the picture:

Leni didn't spend much time with us anyway - she had different priorities. For us, the project came first ('cause it was Project week), preferred touring Florence. This led to some social difficulties, quite a bit of animosity, and a formation of 2 groups: her, and the rest of us. The climax of this difference in priorities was her laryngitis to get out of the last concert and then going around Florence all day. We found out about it the next day when our host families said, "Oh, yeah, she went out with us and was perfectly normal and healthy..."ahrg. oh well. The rest of us had a fantastic time, so I don't really care. Wednesday was Cosy's birthday, so as a surprise, we took her to Pisa:

We had so much fun, laughing all the way. Pisa was great, I didn't expect it to be awesome - it's just a big tower - but it was, the feeling of being there and seeing it for real was really cool.
And we went Uffizi, the Piti Palace, and the Academia (Mama, you missed soooo much! how could we have thought that it wasn't worth the exorbidant entrance fee? It is!) My favorite was the Piti Palace - it was so amazingly decorated, and the art there was my favorite, Neo-classical covering the ceilings.

La Primavera and the Birth of Venus were awe-some as well, but on the whole Uffizi had too many Jesus-orriented rennaissance paintings. Amazing, yes, but not quite my taste. Anyway, this is a view Uffizi - very pretty.

And David was fantastic, really. You don't truly understand what is so powerful about a block of shaped marble until you stand at his feet and look up at his troubled eyes, his relaxed but still tense posture, his almost transparent skin...
Our concerts went well, there were some really sweet moments, like when this little old nun started dancing to our songs, and when the people started singing folk songs for us... wow. But we all swore to commit suicide as soon as we came even close to that state - it was so sad, seeing them all degenerating together... I would never want to be like that.
We had a couple mishaps, like the time we arrived an hour and a half late because the place we thought was in Florence was actually in Capalle - a little town 45 minutes away, and then we got lost... I officially hate the Florentine bus system, it's so uncooperative. Unlike Prague (Ah, Prague...). Anyway.
The trip back was awful - we took a night train (2 am-7:30) but didn't reserve seats and got the wrong tickets (for youth instead of adults, apparently it's only up to 12) so we had to pay an extra 64 euros total, and slept in the corridor because people were taking up 2-3 seats to sleep. Ugh. I hate night trains.
It's so nice to be back though...I missed Duino so much. It was great to greet everyone again and hear/tell all our stories. I love this place. Life is Good!!!!

Ski Marathon

2006-02-25T05:16:00.000-06:00

I skied 28k last weekend. It was awesome, we spend the whole weekend out, traveling all day Saturday and then skiing a little and lazing about. We went to dinner in a great restaurant that had such good food (or maybe it was just that it wasn't mensa. hmmm...) Anyway, we loved it.
And when we got back, we had the greatest hour+ long snowball fight. It was perfect conditions - snowing, so we had a constant supply, and the snow was the perfect consistency, and we had 3 vans to run around and hide behind and ambush people from. And great snowbanks to throw people in and bury them in snow. The equatorial people were pretty good at it too, considering they hadn't ever seen snow before this year. We were all soaked when it was done.
And the next day we went skiing. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful track and we were dead last. We watched as everyone sped ahead, and then plodded on ourselves. We had so much fun, Leah (my co-year), Marta (polish rooma, you should know that by now), Renato (Guatemala), Eduardo (Peru) and I laughed and discussed the meaning of life and the existence of love and our aching legs.
We came in dead last, half an hour after the gates had supposedly closed. But hey, who cares? We're not competitive. We would have been second to last, but Assumpta (Uganda), Tara(Sri Lanka) and Vanessa (Singapore) cheated. Grr. They skipped a 4k loop and then got a ride for the last 10k in someone's car. I guess that's good, and they're happy, but it makes us look worse, being the absolute last people through the gate. We're still happy though, see?

All in all, it was a great way to end the ski season.

Valentines day

2006-02-20T07:18:00.000-06:00

Ok, so this is a little late, but I figured y'all would like to hear about my Valentines day.
It was really fun - I dressed all in pink, make-up and everything, and put my hair in a semi-ponytail. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture, though I meant to. sigh.
In TOK (Theory of Knowledge - a cool class about critical thinking and perception, etc) I convinced the teacher to let us discuss love ("what is love?" as my co-year puts it) and marriage instead of Reason, as was scheduled (reason, can you imagine? On Valentines day? Eru's song.)
I baked cookies with sweethearts in them for all my friends and spent the evening distributing them, which was great fun. I gave roses to my closest friends as well and little notes saying, "Roses are pink (they were), Violets are blue, Cookies are sweet and so are you!"
And I got some sweet Valentines in return: One of the classic American mini-cards from Nik, my co-year saying "hope this helps you reminisce about the good ol' days of 2nd grade!" (us Americans are cool - I made cookies etc. And he gave a bundle of roses to his girlfriend, who was mighty pleased) A little blue heart from Renato (he's from Guatemala) and a pop-out blue heart-card from Nidhi (India)
And the Latinos gave every girl in the school a (uniquely composed for her) love poem (and there are a lot of them). So cool, so Latino... Mine was:

Little Princess from the sky,
Your magic smile
Brings every day happiness
To every place in my soul.

You should know, my little princess,
That you are not just pretty,
Because when I see you and listen to you,
I could die for you.

Isn't that sweet??? I love Latinos.
And Rene (one of the Latinos who wrote the poems, I think - they never would tell) gave me a red rose. ;)
So, all around, a good day.

Skiing

2006-02-02T09:03:00.000-06:00

So I did get snow after all.
I joined the x-country skiing activity and am having a blast. It's so funny to see all these equatorial people trying to ski... It makes me feel much better about my moderate ability. And now that they've had 3 times to practice, they're really good and we have a lot of fun.
(That would be Assumpta(Uganda), me, Giulia (rooma/Italy), Domenica(cecz republic, Vivian(Hong Kong), and Marta (other rooma/Poland))
I'm on skate skis, but I switch with lots of people because they see me and others speeding along and want to try. And while I have classic skis, I go off into the woods and do a little trekking, it's awesome.

Last Saturday I went 20ish kilometers, and ended up 45 minutes late for the ride back because I was going with Assumpta, Renato and Edurardo and we took a wrong turn and went on the long loop, not the short one. Oh well, it was fun, and they didn't leave without us, so that's good.
And now it's gorgeous and sunny and 60-65Â° and we're out on the grass basking in the sun. Sigh, it's a hard life, y'know?

Another Unhappy Update

2006-01-27T11:59:00.000-06:00

Hamas won the Palestinian elections yesterday. I don't know if you guys heard or knew what it meant, but I do (having a Palestinian roommate and Israeli friend) and it's bad. At least from my point of view. Hamas is a group, classified as a "Terrorist organization" by US, mainly because they are the ones that organize pretty much all the bombings that happen in Israel. They have a huge amount of support from the Palestinians though, because not only do they kill the occupiers, but they have many service programs - schools, hospitals, charity, etc - so everyone thinks (and, I guess to their minds, rightly) that they're a wonderful, caring organization that is devoted to Palestine and its people. They've never entered into an election before, because they don't consider Israel a state and refuse to talk to them. They say Fatah (the other party) is corrupt (probably true) and also unpalestinian for dealing with the invaders.
Then this year they decided to enter - I don't know why - and boom! They now control almost all the Palestinian government. The old Prime Minister who had worked so hard for peace (and gotten criticized by the people for giving in too much) resigned and Hamas has everything. What's going to happen when there are two governments within the same country (and one "the size of my pinkie" as Michael put it) that refuse to acknowledge that the other one exists, let alone talk to them. Oh, and by the way, they're both actively and openly trying to kill eachother.
And all the Arabs here are so happy! At mensa this evening they started a cheer (along the lines of We Will Rock You, with table banging and all) "Hamas! Hamas! Hamas!" they're so excited, can't they see this will bring only destruction? There's no way that Hamas will get all the Israelis to leave, and that's what they're asking for, nothing less. And the peace talks were going so well, with the Army out of Gaza strip and all... Now the Israelis will probably occupy it again, which is not only bad for those people there - destroyed houses/people/lives - but a more personal connection is that if they re-occupy, my rooma won't be able to get back to UWC next year. And if this is one of the key conflicts between Middle East and West, what does it foresee for the rest of the conflict? How can these people cheer for something that will produce more war, more suffering (especially for them) and more mistrust? I find it so hard to believe in my optimistic "it'll all work out somehow, someday" view of things when I keep hearing news like this. How do I respect and try to in some way help people that act so stupid sometimes? (this all applies to US and our last election as well)
I can see where they're coming from, I really do understand their hatred and anger (I hear it enough from my rooma), but...

Sigh. I guess this is the cost I pay for getting too close to people from conflict areas.

Please Allah/God, these people obviously care about you (praying that much, they gotta;) ), please help them/us/everyone see reason.

Back Home

2006-01-11T08:38:00.000-06:00

I'm Back!
It's wonderful to be home (and it really does feel like home). The first day was filled with hugs and "wow, how was vacation?!" My secondo went to South Africa, so though people said I looked tan, he looked very tan. And so many people went home and came back to share stories of their friends. A lot of them said that they felt different going home, that their friends (or they) weren't the same, that they didn't have quite as much to connect with, or that they missed the international aspects of the college. I'll agree with the last part, but I hope the first 2 don't happen when I go back.
We all came back with new and wild New Years Resolutions, mostly about eating and studying - "Not to eat when I'm not hungry" is a common one, as is "Study harder and stop being lazy" and Nidhi even said "Not eat chocolate". Fortunately I talked her out of that one (for her own good, one simply cannot survive without chocolate).
Mine are along those lines, as well as "Go out of my room and socialize more" (because, although my roommates are amazing, there are more people in our school) and "only eat 3 meals/day" (or at least try. Make an effort, y'know?) and "be nicer to my teachers and pay attention in (specifically math and English) class" but that one's going to be really really hard. Especially since we're only just starting on the Unit circle in Math now and English is English. I don't really mind though - I'm reading Jane Eyre now, and it's fabulous. I feel very nicely Englishified.
Oh, and "Be more socially active". I figure if I get one of these done, I'll be doing well, and if I improve all of them, that will be best.
I'm sort of annoyed, because I have all these pictures I want to take, but no camera. Oh well, it'll come in a week or something.
Nevin and I went down to Fore Beach (a fairly steep climb with some rock scaling at the end) and she was terrified. Apparently they don't have cliffs in the Gaza strip. But we made it and it was so beautiful (camera!!:( ). She was really happy we'd done it in the end, and I was as well, (Eru's song, though, that took a lot of coaxing)
I have homework to do now (resolution#2) and I have to write something up for Nidhi (resolution#6) and then socialize (#4). Hard life, ain't it?

Holidays

2005-12-29T20:31:00.000-06:00

So I'm in Taiwan. What a strange place to spend Christmas! It's worth it, though, to have my family again.
Christmas was both incredibly different and completely familiar at the same time. Our tree was different - a tiny potted cedar that we brought into the living room and decorated with paper cranes and mini lights - but the presents underneath were the same, from all our beloved friends back home. The weather was different, but since we stayed inside most of the day, we felt the same. We had the familiar tradition of getting Nana's presents on Christmas Eve night, but the presents were different - fuzzy blankets instead of the customary pajamas. And although Christmas morning and early afternoon were the same - opening stockings, eating breakfast, opening presents, then spending the next couple of hours reading our new books - Christmas evening was not: we went to a hot spring instead of the Meeting House and our Christmas dinner consisted of Chinese take-out noodles. Oh well, at least it was memorable.

New Years was likewise very different: we performed Handel's Messiah, which went wonderfully. Mama and Papa sang in the choir and I played in the orchestra. I'd only played the piece 4-5 times before performing, and I hadn't been able to practice it, but I think I pulled it off well. The sound of the choir and orchestra together were awe-some, though. Truly inspiring. Then we went home afterwards and watched fireworks from the roof. It was great, they were popping all around us, and whenever one set stopped, another started. We put up the tent on the roof and slept out there that night, and woke up the next morning to a new and wonderful (though cloudy) day, in which we went to the beach and got rained on and had a lot of fun. A great set of holidays, all around.

Winter Break

2005-12-25T02:39:00.000-06:00

I'm really sorry for not having written for so long, the beginning of December seemed relatively mundane (relatively) with little time. And then I went on the Street Performing trip and didn't have internet for 10 days.
But oh, what a 10 days they were!!
The General Premise: Elliot, a Hong Kongese second year, organized a trip for the choir (and other interested people) to go to Vienna, Bratislava (Slovakia), Prague, and Budapest and sing on the streets and in concerts, promoting UWC and getting money for the earthquake in Pakistan. I was a part of the choir, and we had a fantabulous time. We started out as 40 people but by the end we were only around 20, because people dropped off in various cities, some people couldn't get visas to Czech Republic and Hungary and some people lived in the places we went and just stayed there when we left.
Vienna is officially my favorite city now.
Perhaps it's because of the glorious (and so un-Italian! Not that Italian is bad, far from it) architecture - everything in that city breathes grandeur, from the shop fronts to the Christmas decorations (think: huge chandeliers of Christmas lights suspended between the buildings of the main pedestrian avenue with stars and bells and banners of light everywhere) to the opera house (gilded and filled with statues and wide, velvet covered stairs) to the museums to the cathedrals. Stefansdome, in the center of the city, is the most magnificent, awe-inspiring, and I'd almost say terrifying, cathedral I've ever seen. You enter and suddenly you feel so small in the face of whatever it was that created or inspired this. I'm assuming that's the intended effect of all gothic cathedrals, but I've never felt it more keenly.

Perhaps it's that, or perhaps it's the music. We stayed there for three nights, and each night I went to a concert. You would think this would have put a strain on my little blue wallet, but no, the most I paid for a ticket was 4 euros. 4 euros to see Tibor Kovak play (on Kreistler's violin) Paganini and Bach and Bartok in a small but ornately carved and painted and gilded music hall. Sure, our seats were above the stage so we couldn't see a thing, but once we moved down the balcony to stand behind a Viennese man's chair (for which he paid 36 euros, I saw his ticket) we had a perfect view.
That was the second night. The first night we (Yusaku(Japan), Sara(Italy), Juan Chi(Argentina), Nidhi(India), Julia(Slovakia) and I) went to see "La Nozze di Figaro" at the Vienna Opera House. To get standing tickets, we had to get there at 4:00 and stand (or rather sit) in line until 5:30 when they let us buy the tickets (2.50) and then we stood in line to get good standing places (which we did) we tied our scarves around the bar and went out to get dinner (ridiculously expensive! I got a mediocre hot dog for 3 euros, and that was the cheapest thing around.) When we'd finished, we went back in and stood through the opera: Amazing! We had a perfect view, we were eye-level with the performers (though a ways back) and because we were standing there were no heads in the way. And the opera itself was incredibly well done. What voices! Such power, such beauty. The orchestra was wonderful as well, and of course, the music they were working wasn't half bad.
And the last night Juan Chi and I went to see the Vienna Philharmonic. Wow. I have never seen such perfection live. I kept having to remind myself that I wasn't listening to a CD, that this was real, because everything about it was precise and exactly what the conductor motioned for. Of course the surroundings reflected the music glory - the hall was covered in paintings and sculptures of angels and down the stairs were depictions of the nine muses. In the lobby there were statues of great composers and flowers and chandeliers...Wow.
So, yeah. I like Vienna. We had fun there as well, the choir sang in the street and we made 40 euros in half an hour. (I wanted so much to play my violin - I would have made a killing - but it was too cold. Maybe in the spring I'll take a trip north.) We sang in the UN lobby as well, which was cool, underneath all those flags spread out in a circle, and the others talked to some of the people who came to listen.
Then there was Bratislava. That was fun as well, but not as beautiful. We did presentations in an IB school (I did one on American Foreign Policy. Ableaghydug. (a word that pretty much sums it up. It went ok, I guess, but oy, what a subject.)) then sang for them, then went out and toured the town. I went with a Slovak student who showed me (and Marina and Julia) around and took us to a pub to have the "national food" (some sort of mashed and fried potatoes in cheese sauce with bacon on top. Really fatty, but sort of good). That night (at 12:00, we were all really tired) our hosts set up a game for us, in which we had to run around the school in the dark with candles, trying to find scraps of paper ("lost souls") and return them to our bases before the other team caught us and stole our souls. It was fun, but it would have been more fun if we hadn't been dead tired.
The next day we went to Prague.
If Vienna was grand, Prague was mystical. Tall, dark statues of saints and martyrs line the main bridge, one I wouldn't want to cross alone at night. They seem to be watching you as you go, though the effect is somewhat diminished by the souvenir shops and tourists taking pictures (yes, I was one of them. Oh well). The main cathedral is also awe-inspiring, especially as you approach it from a small street: normal houses, normal shops, then ...!?! It rises into the darkness of the night, illuminated from below to fully show its glory. One has to merely stand there for a minute, shocked into silence.
The inside's not too bad, either. It's not as frightening as Stefansdome because it's illuminated by myriad stained glass windows in all different styles. Beautiful, all of them.
Prague's transportation system was the best I've ever seen. It was redone 2 years ago, and there were lots of punctual, frequent, clean metros, busses, trams, you name it. And the metro stations were even nicely decorated (with Narnia posters! I want to see that sooo much, but none of the cinemas showed it in English). Unfortunately, the weather was awful there, so we couldn't really street sing. But we did some nice wandering, and generally had a great time.
We took the night train to Budapest. Big, Big mistake. It was easily the worst night I've spent in years, if not ever. First of all, the compartments were crammed (6 to a room) and the they were little more than padded benches - we didn't even get our own seats. And they didn't recline like the ones to Florence. There was lots of baggage, so we were all really crammed and uncomfortable. That would have been bad enough, but then the heater started going full blast. Now I know what hell's like, I'll start saying my prayers.
Strangely enough, I wasn't actually that tired the next day. Which was a good thing, because we were booked to the gills that day. Budapest was the most organized stop of the trip - we had street performance, a scheduled lunch (that I didn't appreciate, because we'd been fending for ourselves and I'd been doing a lot better than the mildly overpriced mildly tasteless food we got there), a concert, a tour (spectacular, of course. I love Europe), and a Christmas party. The party was for all Hungarian UWC students, past and present, and they had great food, a trivia game (which my group won. Booyah. Cake for everyone!) I had fun talking to an ex-UWC-USA student and we compared campuses and alcohol policies (basically nothing allowed vs. Everything fine and even almost encouraged. Guess which country hosts which policy?)
The grand cathedral of Budapest was very different from the other cathedrals I'd seen. It was warm and beautiful and inviting, all pink and white marble and gold and glass windows placed so that it was filled with natural light that, in once case, streamed in from the window in such a way as to illuminate a sweet little statue of two angels in the corner. I think I like it best, it's so comfortable. I prefer a religion that makes loveliness rather than grandeur, as I prefer a god that welcomes and accepts to one that condemns and judges. Don't get me wrong, I loved those gothic giants, and would gladly return to them, I would merely prefer to worship in the cathedral in Budapest.
The other thing I liked best about Budapest (closely followed by Prague) was its Christmas Market. If anyone's been to Europe around Christmas you'll know hat I'm talking about, they're everywhere, these piazzas (or whatever) filled to bursting with stalls covered in wreathes and selling everything from hats to crepes to candles to glass ornaments to hot dogs to cups to jewelry, you name it. And all around it is music of one kind or another (sometimes performed by us) and people warming their hands on mugs of hot punch and huge Christmas trees covered in lights. Everywhere has at least one (even Venice, as I saw while I was there connecting to Taiwan) and most cities have two or three or five. Budapest's market was the most original - it had brightly colored felt hats and booties and beautifully glazed ceramics and glass candle holders. But they were all beautiful, and each had its trademark - the candles of Vienna, the wood-working of Bratislava, the little painted mugs of Prague, and the pottery of Budapest.
My last night on the trip I went to a concert at the National Concert Hall. Beautiful space, that, very modern, but very tasteful. And the music was great. We saw a Tchaikovsky violin concerto and Mahler Symphony #1, I was sooo happy. Unfortunately, my camera didn't seem to like it as much. We were on the 5th floor (having paid 80 cents to get in) and my bag was hanging over the edge of the balcony. I thought that was a little unsafe, and was moving it back behind the bar and the camera jumped. All I saw was a flash of movement, wasn't sure what it was, and then heard a clunk! far, far below. I thought, "oh, something must have happened down there, I wonder what..." And looked down to see a man waving something black at me. Needless to say, my next word was not particularly suited to the surroundings. This is the last picture of the ill-fated camera.

Fortunately, it was the end of the trip, and the card was saved.
And Finally, that's the end of this post. Eru's song, that took a long time. I hope it's worth it.

Good Bye UWC

2005-12-13T15:30:00.000-06:00

And here comes Christmas break. So much to do, so little time, packing and arranging travel and presents...And tomorrow I leave for my grand tour of Eastern Europe: Vienna, Bratislava, Prague, Budapest.
More on that when I've actually been there.
And after that? Family!! Christmas! Yay!
So here I am leaving UWC for the first time. only two more goodbyes and I'll be going for good. Strange, how quickly it passes.
Ciao, Duino!

Snow!!!!

2005-11-23T10:39:00.000-06:00

Hey, guess what?!?
We got snow!!! And the Bora! phew, that's a lot of wind.
Yesterday it got quite cold, and everyone was complaining about the weather. I went to an amazing production in the evening - two men from Paraguay doing a play about one of the men's experience as a political prisoner, how he was tortured physically and psychologically, and how he and his fellow prisoners used theater games and imagination to retain their sanity for 13 years. It was really good, and very moving. I found it disturbing because when they finished and bowed I realized that they hadn't stepped out of their characters and become just people again as normally happens at the end of a play: these horrible experiences had really happened to this person and he would never step out of a role and become "normal". After the performance, they held a Q&A session, which was very interesting. It turns out that he was released partially due to the efforts of Amnesty International and other organizations, and it was surprising and heartening to actually see a person to whom the efforts of a group that I participated in made a difference.
We had Tutorial Dinner afterwards, so my group left a little early. I was expecting the dinner to be subdued, after that performance, but when we got out I felt something touch my cheek...I looked up in disbelief - snowing? In Italy? Before Thanksgiving?? No way. But there they were, few and far between, but very clearly drifting down past the streetlights. Eduardo was amazed - he's never seen snow before (even though they have mountains in Peru...) - and we both ran about like maniacs, catching snow and jumping up and down and hugging each other. So the dinner was fun after all.
Today I had my first encounter with the legendary Bora. I went outside in the morning to go to class and was immediately assaulted by a huge wind. I could hardly get down the stairs, but it was fantastic, I ran all the way to class (well, technically I was late, but I would have run anyway...).
This afternoon we went climbing (our leader, coming most recently from Antarctica, doesn't mind cold) and it was Freezing. The rocks were cold, the wind was cold, we were cold, we had to keep our hands exposed to grip the rock and our feet were squeezed into too-small, thin rubber climbing shoes, and we weren't particularly happy.
But I eventually warmed up, and I'm happy about the cold. Who would have ever guessed it would get cold in Italy?? I'm so glad it did.

Sunsets

2005-11-17T10:34:00.000-06:00

I know you have sunsets everywhere, but this one was particularly spectacular, and I wanted to share the joy.

Of course the camera doesn't do it justice, but it's close enough.

EE Show

2005-11-12T08:21:00.000-06:00

The second years' Extended Essays are done! And so the first years have, according to UWCAd tradition, put on an EE Show for them. We've been working on it for over a month, and it came off fantastically last night. We did it along the theme of a TV station: EETV with a live studio audience. We had all the secondi dress up as TV characters:
James Bond (and his girlfriend, Bondgirl, my seconda)

The Adams family,

Aladdin and Jasamine, etc.

I was greeting people at the entrance with a camera and autograph book and being a classic fan: "Wow! Isaac! I've always dreamed of meeting you. Your last movie was amazing. My friends are going to be so jealous of me. Y'know, I won this place in the Studio audience by calling into the radio...I never expected to actually come and get to meet you guys... Can I have your picture? Your autograph? Wow..." (thus this picture)

Then we started the show. It was so funny - we had everything from STOMP:
To examples of classic EE Friends (The non-existent eefriend, the competetive eefriend, the eelover, the transgender eefriend, etc.)
To the strip show: note Eilu on the end, our resident firstyear gay guy. (no, Nik (the guy dancing with him) is not gay and Eilu has a boyfriend)

To a great teacher impersonation skit that involved the economics teacher coming up on stage and battling his alter-ego for possession of the name Peter Howe, and the Director of Studies (who's really strict and sort of hard to deal with) dressed up as batwoman.
To the (traditional) strip show:
In between skits there were advertisements like "Super-Cancer-Cigarettes" (Alejandro and Nick smoking and Elad comes in with 10ish cigarettes rubberbanded together and shows off) the slogan was "Everybody gets cancer, why wait?"
Nevin and I did an Arabic song ("Arabian MTV") and it sounded great.
At the end I finally unveiled myself to my EEFriend (Salim) he was so surprised and happy. It was really funny. I gave him Skittles and Milky Way as a final EE present (Thank you Anne!!!) and then everyone went to Micky's (local bar) to party.
Such fun...

why war?

2005-11-10T08:10:00.000-06:00

You probably haven't heard about this, because it came out here, (but BBC managed to get it. funny, I wonder if that says anything about American media... ) but Rai, (Italian TV) broadcasted a documentary on the US army's use of white phosphorus (aka Napalm) in the battle of Fallujah against civilians.
If you're into scary sights and Italian, (I haven't had the courage to watch it yet, but my rooma has, says it's really disturbing) you can watch it.
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/default_02112005.asp
I find it hard to fathom...I had a difficult conversation with my roommates last night, trying to understand how people like the Americans I knew (some of them in the army) could do something like this. I can understand Nevin's friends doing cruel and seemingly insane things in war, or Samari (from Sudan) because they've been brought up in an environment conducive to that sort of thing.
but Americans? god, I'm so naive... How can people do that?

Croatia

2005-11-01T07:23:00.000-06:00

I've added two new countries to my list now. Slovenia and Croatia. Technically I never really set foot in Slovenia, but I got the stamp in my passport (which, by the way, I like a lot now, seeing as it gets me everywhere and people like Nevin and Vanessa and Tara can only go to certain countries with theirs) so that sort of counts.
Croatia was fun though, we spent two days there, wandering around. isn't this weird? They live in the house, but it's half broken down.
we found a nice black kitty and befriended it. Toni apparently really likes cats.
and the 2nd biggest amphitheater in Europe. Interesting to see a normal street dissolve into this - a conflict of eras.
And then I got back to Duino and went trick-or-treating around my residence. Most of the time I had to explain what it was and half the time I got hugs instead of candy, but it was fun, and I got some chocolate and oranges and cookies and gum. A far cry from the hundreds I used to get, but whatever. It's the thought/act that counts.
And long weekend is almost over, a wonderful and relaxing weekend.

Halloween

2005-10-28T08:23:00.000-06:00

We had a Halloween party last night. Such a small imitation of such a wonderful holiday...
Oh well, at least we had something. It was fun - we dressed up all day and then had a semi-party in the evening. I dressed up as a mermaid - wore my sparkly jeans and my blue scarf as a fakebra and had my hair long and wet. Then in the evening I became Little-Mermaid-as-Princess and went to the party, barefoot but not mute. We came late, Nevin and I, and didn't stay long, but long enough to get some cool pictures.

Michael went as the Hulk. He had a lot of fun flexing his muscles and making scary faces.

My roommates and I. Marta (in the middle) went as a mummy but had lost most of her toilet paper by the time I got there. Nevin didn't dress up because there's only so much you can do with limited supplies and religious restrictions.

Ramadan

2005-10-23T13:13:00.000-06:00

I probably should have talked about this before. Oh well, here it is.
I'm doing Ramadan this year, the Islamic month of fasting. It's very interesting, it's changed my perception on a lot of things.
One is levels of hunger; I don't consider myself hungry until I'm truly unable to think of anything else because it's impossible to ignore the pain in my stomach. Where I once said, "I'm starving!" I now notice the feeling impassively and go on with my work - it's not important. Also, the psychological difference between can't eat and won't eat is huge. When, for example, I was in Florence and fasting, I tried to ignore the hunger until 6:30, when I suddenly became ravenous and searched for food like a maniac, and if I couldn't find it, I was furiously frustrated. It wasn't that I was more hungry, it was that I could eat but wasn't.
Another is my take on food in general. Wow. Do any of you know how gloriously wonderful an apple or a piece of bread is? Have you savored every bite of it, reveling in the foreign sensation of something in your mouth? Food is so good! I'm amazed that I've taken it for granted for so long.
There's a strange psychological/physical dynamic about evenings in Ramadan. After one meal, I'm full, but I want to/need to keep eating. It's like my head is hungry but not my stomach. In the beginning, this ended with me having a constant bellyache - in the day because I was hungry, and in the night because I was too full. But now I've figured out a pretty good balance of eating and not eating at night, and so I'm relatively comfortable all the time except the 3ish hours before I can eat again.
My favorite hour of the day is now 5:30 to 6:30 - half an hour before I can eat and half an hour after. It's wonderful to count down the minutes until you can eat, and that moment of finally putting something in your mouth is heavenly. Then the half-hour after is great too, because you can eat happily and heartily without worrying about getting overfull. (after that I have to start controlling myself)
And it's more than half over. I'm enjoying it a lot, but I will be very happy to see it end. I really miss breakfast and lunch, and the weird eating schedule is making me fat. :(
It's really great bonding time with the Arabs, sharing break-fast and late night snacks. My rooma is surprised each day that I fast - she keeps thinking that I'll give up half way through. Ha.
Funny how much impact it's had on my dreams. Nearly every night for the first weekish, I dreamed about forgetting and breaking my fast unintentionally, and I still have those dreams periodically. you'd think the subject would be exhausted by now, but there seem to be endless variations on what food I accidentally eat and when. Very interesting.
And now all this talk about food is making me hungry and I still have 3 hours to go. ug.
Ciao!

2 months

2005-10-18T17:02:00.000-06:00

It's been officially 2 months since I left home. The longest I've ever been away from my home/family. And yet it doesn't feel like that, I catch myself thinking that perhaps life in the US was just a dream or something, certainly not as real as this.
Sure, random bursts of homesickness are more common, but not as bad as I thought they might be, and on the whole I'm noticing a distinct sense of home radiating from this place.
symptoms include:
1. Being bored with class
2. Dreaming of people here more than people at home.
3. Thinking in broken/accented English. (There's hardly a person here who speaks "normally" but I'm totally used to it.)
4. Having both good and bad days (in the beginning, it was only good days)
5. (Sadly) not being awestruck by the view out my window. (though that might have something to do with the scaffolding that completely blocks the sight)
speaking of scaffolding:
Foresteria (my residence) has been defiled for the sake of its roof. The walls are covered in plastic and metal scaffolding and there are strange men walking about at eyelevel to our 2nd floor bedrooms (sort of uncomfortable...). It's annoying because we can't use the outside stairs, because our view is ruined, and because the bathrooms look right out onto the scaffolding. (or, more importantly, the people on the scaffolding can look right in) Grr. Hopefully it'll go away soon.
I have to do Climbing homework now: find my way to the top of the mountain and back before sundown. Good luck to me!

Dinners

2005-10-17T20:51:00.000-06:00

As Mensa food is not high-class cuisine, students tend to plan lots of dinners, where everyone gets together to cook and eat food of a much higher quality. Some of the most noteworthy of these dinners happened this past weekend: Christian dinner, Asian/Middle Eastern dinner, and Nonlatin, American dinner.
Christian dinner was friday, and I decided to go because (despite being a rather reluctant christian) I was hungry. (they noticed that there seemed to be a lot more christians in the college once there was food involved. I wonder why...?) It was well worth it. I was struck by the blessing before the meal, though. It wasn't really like our grace at home, but just the act of holding hands with people around a table before a meal made me homesick for "for health and strength". I wonder what my family is doing without my voice in the rounds we sing? Can McKinley sing strong enough to hold her own? I feel minorly bereft, without that evening ritual.
Asian/Middle Eastern dinner was Saturday, and exclusively for the aforementioned, but I managed to get in.
How, you ask? First I told everyone that I was really close to being Asian, having lived in Japan and all. Then I helped make dumplings with the Chinese girls. Then, in case people still had problems with me joining, I dressed up Middle Eastern: I borrowed Nevin's jacket and she dressed me up in her veil. She loved it, said I looked much better than with my hair out, and proceeded to bring me around to all the Arab guys to get their concurrence that I was "very beautiful". (she got it. yay! :) )
So now it's up to you guys: do I look better with or without a veil?

Then, on Sunday evening, I had my first triumph: I successfully arranged a Nonlatin American (US and Canada) dinner, because this week is Latin week, so we needed some North American Pride to tide us over through the onslaught of Latinness. :)
We had a lot of fun, I made Banana bread, donuts, and pancakes, three people made chicken of some sort, we had French fries and fried rice putine (aka heart attack in a bowl) and spinach dip/bread. And Ayanda made chocolate cake and Deanna made the most heavenly apple pie...
By the end I was bursting with way too much food. It was fantastic, but not particularly healthy - of course, it was american. And the next day I was just as hungry as I would have been without it. It almost seemed a waste to eat all that food.

Florence

2005-10-13T07:24:00.000-06:00

I spend my 1st long weekend of my UWC career in Florence.
Great fun, many surprises.
1st of all, it was a heck of a lot of money. Wow. 130 euros for 3 days, and I was on the low end -Toni says he spent 250 - where did it all go?? Food, (gelato...aah) and sleeping and transportation. It's so different when it's your own money you're spending.
I went with Raisa, Nick, Alejandro, Artemis, Shahar, Evita, Umberto and we met other people in other groups. We all pretty much hang in the same place: around the Duomo.

It's so amazing to be walking around a city and then look down a side street to see this fantastic structure, and watch people passing by like it's nothing special... Everything there is like that: even the mundane is spectacular. That was one surprise.

My favorite surprise was how we were greeted: the first night we were there, we were met by fireworks on the river. An amazing show of lights and music, they were some of the best fireworks I've ever seen.

Another shock was how we spent our time after dark. We stayed out until 3:00 or later every night exploring Florentine nightlife. Bars, discos, we did it all. It was really fun, and strange, because I'd never encountered this kind of culture before. I'd always thought that it was somehow only in movies. Wrong. I've officially partied all night long in Florence now, and it was very entertaining. We had a train to catch at 5:30 am, so we slept in the train station:

It was a bit chilly, so we used my skirts as blankets (I love skirts) and we curled together both for warmth and so the crazyman wouldn't bother us.
He tried to offer me beer and talk to Evita, but none of us could understand him - it sounded like he was making a language up. It sounded a little like Hebrew, so Shahar had a long pretend conversation with him before we left. We all laughed superhard about it, but then again, everything's funny when you've been up all night.
(interesting, the parallel between going and returning, this is how we got to Florence:
maybe we just like sleeping.)

Nuova Rooma!

2005-09-29T08:35:00.000-06:00

I have a new roommate!!

She's finally come, and I'm so happy. She came late Monday evening, and we've been showing her around ever since. She's picked up things quickly, and I really like her. She's so sweet, she showed me her Koran today (not letting me touch it) and read me some of the beautiful words (no idea what they mean) and talked to me about Islam, the fundamental principals behind it and how it relates to other religions... I was late for college service because of it.
She covers her hair (a shame, it's so beautiful) and it's interesting how the veil changes her face, she looks so different with and without it. I'm excited to be able to talk to her - of all the cultural differences, I think this will be the biggest/most important.
I watched her pray this afternoon, she donned a white veil and skirt and spread out her carpet, faced the wall and knelt down...I've heard of it so often, but never seen it done. I guess it'll be common to me by the end of the year.
And I have to be careful about when I bring guys into my room now, because she takes her veil off inside, so I have to knock and check if I'm getting something or showing someone music or anything. It's so strange.

Friends

2005-09-27T06:28:00.000-06:00

Just to prove to you that I'm not hanging out with mutant semi-humanoid creatures, here are more pictures of my friends.

Toni, from Finland. The one who taught me my favorite word so far: blue in finnish "sininen". He's the only one here who can outdo me in constant sarcasm. He's fun to talk to, though all our conversations tend to end up with America Bashing. Funny, that...

Vanessa (singapore) and Eitan (Israel) They're also posing for another camera. Nessie (as I call her to her giggling annoyance) lives right next to me, if we knew morse code, we could communicate, but it's just too much work right now.
Eitan provides endless entertainment for us northerners when it gets cold - he puts on two shirts, a sweatshirt and a down parka when the thermomiter dips below 55. I still grin at the memory of the first time I saw him like that. I'll get a picture as soon as he does it again.

Tara (Sri Lanka). She's standing in front of the Bridge of Sighs - where the prisoners take their last look at the sea before their excecution. She's got the prettiest hair here, thick and rich and black. I'm just itching to get my hands on it sometime. She's also really sweet and calm, a good contrast to some of the more energetic friends.

My co-years. Nik, Elad, and Leah. Elad's nicknamed "The Lion King" and because Nik's always with him, and is smaller and has less hair, he's called Simba. I knew I'd be friends with Leah even before I met her, so when she got here on the 3rd day, I overheard her saying something about America to someone and jumped on her - "you're here!! I'm Anika!" and we've been friends ever since.

Michael (Canada) and half of Eitan. Michael is holding the only sugary thing I've ever seen him eat (but he sure went all out this time!!) He's crazy-buff and a little obsessed with health/muscle mass, but he says it's perfectly normal where he comes from. I never knew the Maritimers were so crazy...
He's a fellow fantasy lover, and we have fun on the nights when the moon is partly obscured by clouds by telling each other stories about what could be in that band of moonlight: a pirate ship? a sorceress? a procession of elves making their way to the otherworld?

And finally Bilkan (my International Show date;) ) who returned last week from Moscow where he'd won 4th place in an international physics competition. (I feel so small...)

Venezia

2005-09-27T05:28:00.000-06:00

Ah, the joys of Venice on a sunny day.
We went on a school trip on Saturday: all of Venice for 5 euros: good deal, except we had to get up at 6 am. And it was Saturday morning so we'd been partying all the night before. Life is so harsh sometimes... But we managed, and I spent the two hour ride sleeping on Eitan who was sleeping on Michael who was sleeping on the window.
We got to Venice and spent the boat ride there taking pictures of each other:

That's Jale, Leah, and Hanne.

Then we went into the real deal. First thing we did was look at the Basilica St. Marco and learn about its history, that it took 400 years to be fully decorated and that the Venetians stole St Marks body from the Muslims in Istanbul and smuggled it out by covering it with pork so the customs officials wouldn't look too closely. Then they brought it to Venice and made a mosaic about it:

I had been disappointed with the Basilica last time I went. It was darker out, and more people, so I didn't really get a good impression. But this time was amazing - the combination of light to make the golden ceiling sparkle and a fantabulous teacher to bring the art to life was enough to set the Basilica in my memory forever.

Then we had free time and went to have lunch. Picture this: A Ukrainian, a Guatemalan, 2 Russians, a Latvian, and an American sitting in a Cuban-themed pizzeria eating Italian pizza and listening to Salsa music. crazy.

This is us:

Iryana, Rinato, Anna, Bulat, Me, and Evita.

Then we went on another art/church tour. It was amazing. This is Henry Thomas talking about the bubonic plague and the church they built to commemorate the salvation of the city when only 1/3 of the city died of a disgusting and painful disease instead of all of them.

Can you see the passion and interest radiating off of him?

Then we went to a Scuola that had been decorated by one (very good) painter who worked on it for 25 years of his life. w.o.w. It was fantastically beautiful. I wanted to stay in there a month, but we only had a few hours.

I managed to sneak a picture of it before they told us cameras weren't allowed.

And that was about it, except that I managed to be exactly on time for the boat home (i.e. they were just leaving and saying, "we can't wait for the late people, we have to go. Peter, you stay behind and take them back on the train." but we squeaked in just in time) and if it weren't for me Michael and Eitan wouldn't have made it. yay.

I'll leave you with the last image I saw of Venice. No more need be said.

A Room with a View

2005-09-20T17:51:00.000-06:00

I bet none of you can top this bedroom window view:

And someone asked for pictures of my friends, here are the ones I could find (Bilkan's still not back from Moscow yet)

This is Michael (Canada)..And Voytec (Poland) and Julian (Swiz.). And Alahandro(Venezuela) And you can sort of see Ayanda (South Africa)
There are lots more, these are just the people who are in the computer room with me now.

And I'm being a good ee friend, look what I did for Salim:
I'll deliver it this evening.

Ahh, Mensa calls again. I must fly.

Classes

2005-09-19T14:09:00.000-06:00

It's been a weekish of classes (though not a full cycle-it's crazy, we have 8 day weeks) and I think I can definitively say things about my classes.
World Cultures: My favorite. We spend the entire class time looking at slides of African sculptures and discussing where and when they could have come from and why they were made and what kind of culture was behind them... It's fabulous. The teacher is so passionate about it, and he engages us all to be really involved too.
Italian: second favorite. I don't know why, because it's really hard, but I love it. The teacher speaks solely in Italian, and makes us speak Italian too. It's hard to understand and we do a lot of work, but I feel so stimulated and smart when I get something right. I'm learning tons and tons.
Music: Third favorite. Once again, it's hard to understand the teacher, because his English is not so good, but it's really fun and I'm learning a lot. There's a huge range in our class - from people who know everything (virtually) to people still not sure which note Re relates to and unintroduced to a minor third.
Environmental Systems: Hmm, a hard call between 3rd and 4th. It's science, so I have a natural aversion to it, but it's useful science, and the teacher's great. She's really funny and a master at self-deprecating humor and teasing. A woman after my own heart. And the people in the class are cool too.
Math: Boring. We're learning about the magic of exponents. yay. I've been spending my time writing little stories in my everything book. So that part's fun. What's weird is that he went around the class, asking if we had graphing calculators and only I and Tara (from Sri Lanka) had one. It's so strange; everyone has a calculator at home, and here, half the people haven't even seen them.
Health Watch: Absolutely useless. But we have fun anyway, talking about nothing. It's basically a slacker-block. But Bilkan's in the class... ;)
English: Sigh. Boring. Disappointing. Annoying. Daze-inducing. We're working on The Outsider, and I seem to leave every class with the mentality (or lack thereof) of Meursault: a nothing-matters-what's-happening-I-don't-care kind of mood.
So those are my classes. On the whole they're pretty nice, I'm quite happy. Besides World Cultures, my favorite block is my free block, which I have every day (yay!) because I'm a native speaker.
I'd post pictures of my friends and the views from my window, etc. But I'm on the wrong computer. Later, then.

EE Friends

2005-09-18T10:47:00.000-06:00

The thing that's taking up most of my time right now is this: EE Friends.
Until November 2, all the secundi are stressed out about their Extended Essays, a requirement for the IB. So us primi help them out a bit by sending them chocolate, encouraging notes, flowers, coffee, and generally make their lives more interesting and happy. Each one of us chooses a second year to play secret-admirer to, and there is much intrigue and plotting among the secundi to find out who we are, and among the primi to keep it secret.
I, crazy person that I am, chose two, because I was feeling altruistic at the time. So I'm EE-friending Salvo, the boy who picked me up at the train station, and Salim, a guy from Afghanistan. It's great fun (they both think I'm someone else, which is quite interesting) but expensive - chocolate (and flowers and toys, etc) for two people every couple days adds up. And there's a toll on my imagination too, to make it exciting and interesting for both of them in completely different ways is hard mental work.
But I'm managing. I'm going to lead Salvo on a treasure hunt around Duino, and I'm working on a painting of the cliffs for Salim right now. And Trieste has lots of stuff I can get for them.
And they send me chocolate back, which makes it all perfectly fine by me.

Pictures!!

2005-09-18T02:42:00.000-06:00

Ok. so I finally figured out how to get pictures here. Yay!

This is the castle I can see out my window. It looks really cool in the nightime.
This is my quarter of the room. As you can see, I've tried to make it as blue as possible.
These are the flowers Bilkan gave me. (aren't they pretty?) When I manage to track down the pictures of us, I'll post those too.
These are my co-years, Elad and Nick (the blond ones), on 80's night. Eru save us all.

I'd go around taking pictures of the landscape, etc, but it's crazily windy and rainy and gray today, and Duino deserves a better setting. So those will come later.

One Week Later...

2005-09-13T17:30:00.000-06:00

So it's been a week.
wow.
It feels like eternity. How could it not? An eternity of sunshine, sparkling seas, adventure, consternation, and parties.
We'll address each issue in a linear order, as I'm officially in school now, and that's how we do it.
Sunshine. Weird. So, I'm used to sun, like all weather, it happens. But for an entire week straight? No rain, no clouds, no anything imperfect (except a bit of heat, and even that wasn't that bad). It was ... Unnerving to have it be such perfect weather for so long. Maybe I should get out of the "top ten cloudiest cities in America" more often.
Sparkling seas. beau-tee-ful. Especially out my bedroom window. We get the gentle sound of waves all night long and I make a point to look out at the fantabulous view every morning and evening. Unfortunately, not quite so spiffy to swim in. I don't know what all the hype is about seas, I'm really not partial to them (and never have been - ask anyone who went to cape may with me when I was a little. I was a sandbaby) they're salty!! You get it in your eyes and your mouth and all over your body and it's ick. And not only that, they have nasty creatures residing in them like jellyfish and sea urchins. I haven't encountered a jellyfish yet, but they're around. And I have had close, personal contact with a sea urchin. It's funny, when I wasn't allowed to go in the water it was all I wanted to do, and when I was allowed, (having passed the swimming test) I never want to go in again (sort of). I was walking out to go swimming, and I was mid-thigh-deep in the water, just about to kick off, and I slipped and landed straight on an urchin. I look down into the water to see black spikes sticking out of my heel. Ow. I went back, obviously, and to the nurse, who couldn't pull them out, and so walked on tiptoe for the next two days, until she said they weren't dangerous and I could walk on my foot normally. I still have little black spots.
Adventure. I went climbing on the cliffs near the sea, which was amazingly cool, or rather hot. It was the hottest day yet, and the rocks were scalding to the touch. But we had fun, and I did some crazy cool rockclimbing moves, like maneuvering the corner that half the people (including the leader) fell from (into the sea, no problem. We actually wanted to fall, it was so hot) I was so proud of myself that I jumped into the sea. It felt great, and there were no urchin problems, but I was insanely thirsty by the time I got back. Oh well. And now I'm officially doing climbing as my physical activity. Starting tomorrow. yay!
And there were some other adventures, like the 20-some-odd people who got caught by the Carribinierri (police) for singing too loudly and drinking at 2:00 in the morning. drinking was no problem, but singing made people mad, so they had to write down their names and they're all not so happy. I, of course, was innocently minding my own business in Pala (one of the residences) singing yellow submarine and playing pingpong.
Consternation. Oh, I guess that is summed up in the phrase, "help! What classes should I take??" and other variations. I ended up dropping philosophy and taking world cultures, math, environmental system, English, Italian, and music. All classes but one are going to be cool. Some more than others, like World Cultures. Wow. I can say no more, I'm in too much awe. Maybe later. And music is cool too.
But -*gasp*sob*- English is awful. The teacher is no good and the reading material is all previously covered. I've read everything from Waiting for goaded to 12th Night to The Stranger. Poor me, I've been spoilt for the past ever-so-many years by fabulous English teachers, and now I get a normal one, I can't stand it. Sigh. I guess y'all will have to send me care packages of great classics. I'm requesting Dickens, Tolstoy, Shelley and some really great poetry. email me if you want to take up the job. I'll send you something cool and Italian back if you want.
Ah, Parties! This is great. We seem to have them for no more reason than someone has a laptop and speakers. It's great. Not only that, but I've lost my phobia/selfconsciousness for dancing. Now I'm the one telling people to let go and have fun, not the other way around. It's cool, I like it.
The secondi put on a great show for us primi Saturday night. It was really funny, they did everything from an abbreviated version of the coming year (unnerving) to a stripshow (male) to a modern dance piece (really beautiful).
And I had a date! =) The secundi assigned us all partners for the show, to make it more interesting. We knew about it all day, but weren't sure how it was going to work. So while we were on our excursion to Trieste (on a treasure hunt in which our team won a huge jar of Nutela: ambrosia-for-mortals) Bilkan, a Turkish primo, asked if I would be his partner. I said sure, and we left it at that until we got back. I found a card on my desk saying I was going with Marco, so I went to Bilkan and said I was, unfortunately, taken. He asked if we could switch, and I said, "I dunno, why not?" so he talked to Marco and it was all arranged. He came to "pick me up" at my room 5 minutes beforehand, and when I opened the door he presented me with a bouquet of roses "for a lovely lady" !! Hey, guys! What's with that? You all warned me about Italian men, but you never said anything about Turks!! ;)
Anyway, we descended the stairs to flashing cameras and jokingly jealous comments: "Hey, Bilkan, you were supposed to be my date!" I'll try to get some of the pictures of us and upload them when I figure out the camera-computer connection (along with all the other pictures I've taken so far). And the show was great and the dance after was wonderful and yay.
And gosh, it's time for mensa and I've written a crazyhuge amount. I wonder if any of you are still reading...
More posts (and pictures, I swear.) coming.

My First Day

2005-09-03T14:21:00.000-06:00

I'm at UWCAd!
I got here yesterday, and was overwhelmed by introductions. I can't count how many times I said, "hi, I'm Anika from America" and got a name in response (which I promptly forgot) I seem to remember countries better: I've talked with Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Palestinian, Venezualen, Canadian, Sri Lanken, and, of course, Italian students, but I can't remember their names at all.
I got to the train station at 5:00 ish, and saw a group of teenagers with big bags. I introduced myself, and got a list of names and countries back: Finland, Italy, Singapore, and Vietnam. Then we got on the bus and came to the school. When we got off, I was surrounded by people shaking hands everywhere I turned. I would introduce, shake hands, and turn away, not remembering a thing about the person because I was meeting someone else. One introduction stood out though: One of the second years shook my hand and said, "hello, I'm __, from Iraq." I introduced myself normally, but thoughts and emotions were flying. "so here I am, meeting a guy from the country my country just decimated. wow. maybe I should say 'Anika from Vermont' I don't want to be known as an american. Does he hate me? I hope not. I want to disappear..." I felt awkward and guilty and excited - I wanted to be able to talk to him and learn what his life is like. (still do: I haven't been able to find him again)
My roommates are Italian (second year) Polish (arriving today) and Palestinian. She was supposed to arrive at midnight last night, so I stayed up to welcome her, but I went to bed at 1:00, and she never came. Now they say she had visa trouble and can't come until the middle of the month. oh well. Julia, the Italian, is very nice. she's shown me around Foresteria (our dorm) and talked to me about school and life and given me advice. Most of the second years' advice consists of this: life is good for you now. you have no work, no worries. enjoy it while it lasts. in a couple months, you will go crazy.
So here I am, enjoying it. There's a lot to enjoy. The view from my window is exquisite; we look out onto the ocean and on one side are cliffs and the lights of Trieste, and on the other side is the Duino Castle. There's a beautiful mountain behind us, and the houses are so picturesque - yellow walls and red tiles. There's a trail up over the cliffs beginning right at my doorstep, and it has great views. I want to hike the entire way, but I haven't gotten to that yet. The people are wonderful, all as excited as I am, and really fun to talk to. Last night, the Italian who picked me up (Sergo, I think.) took me and a group of other people down to the "Porto" the port, and we sat on the rocks, looking at the stars and the sea and the lights across the water (it reminded me of New York, and I had to keep reminding me that this was a sea, not a lake that I was looking out onto) and talking. It was beautiful, wonderful, relaxing.
And, of course, I sent my mother off this morning. It wouldn't be right not to mention it - it was important; now I'm all alone. But I don't want to think about it. There's so much else to do, I don't want to be caught up in homesickness the second day.
And now: off to meet more people!!

Italy's Finest

2005-09-01T08:48:00.000-06:00

Doing the mini-grand tour here - venice and florence, and then to school.
Venice was spectacular. we skipped the major tourist traps and wandered around back alleys and had much more fun. I think, when I have free internet (this one's 1 euro for 15 min. bleah!!) I'll devote an entire post to it.
Florence is nice too, but hotter and much more expensive: all the muesums cost waaay too much. so we've been biking around and gazing at the river and the pretty houses.
And tomorrow I go to school for real. I can't belive this, maybe on, like, sep. 28th it'll sink in. oh well.
more later, the countdown's on for my internet.

Weeeee're Off!!

2005-08-28T06:42:00.000-06:00

In the minute left before the airport internet guy kicks me off the computer, let me just say:
I'm off!! in 15+ hours I will be in Italia and in a couple days going to school. Aaaaaaaa... (help?)

A New Home for the Jameses

2005-08-20T22:13:00.000-06:00

My family's found a house! It's huge: 3 stories and lots of rooms. They have no idea how they'll fill it all, it doesn't have much furniture, and what it does have is not fully functional. But it's a lot better than the other options, and it has lots of potential for future coolness. They're moving in today, after the cleaners come and make it spick&span, and the first thing they're installing is an air conditioner, closely followed by a fridge. (it's blue! I helped choose it. :) ) And beds. But the rest is going to come from Ikea (there are 4 in Taipei, the capital, (yay!!) so we'll get stuff there and drive it down with their new car) It's so hard to write they instead of we. I still can't believe I'm not really part of this all. That I don't have to make every appliance blue because I won't be able to see them... But it's fun to watch and help and I'm glad I know where they're staying. We're checking out of the hotel now, so I've got to go, and there's no internet for a while. Oh well.

The Voyage Begins

2005-08-19T21:14:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting in a hotel in Taitung, Taiwan, having left my home for good. Yesterday (sort of - it's all so complicated with time zones...) we flew up and away from Vermont through cotton-candy clouds that peppered the sky, making the departure almost magical in its perfection. We fulfilled our family description once again and got to the plain in the nick of time: 30 minutes before the flight left. (I hope to cure this addiction to lateness, but I'm not sure how much success I'll have) After that, though, most things went well.
Have I gone over the general plan yet? It's this: I'm going to Taiwan for 10 days with my family, who are spending the year there to give my 8-year-old sister, McKinley an international experience (their blog: adventurejames.blogspot.com). I'm helping them find a house and make it a home and see their schools (my dad's a teacher and teaching English in 5 schools in Taitung) and get a car, etc. Then my mother is flying with me to Italy for a few days to do the same (minus the car part...sigh)
I'll write more later, I'm really tired.

2005-06-20T10:46:00.000-06:00

The crown of ribbons

2005-06-20T10:30:00.000-06:00

Birthday Party Fingerpainting

2005-06-20T10:28:00.000-06:00

Pinatas

Summer

2005-06-20T10:17:00.000-06:00

School's out, the parties are over, and summer is finally truly here. It's a wonderful feeling to wake up in the morning and find that the usual list of "things I have to do today" (go to school, homework for math, paper for english, practice violin, project for history, fill out form for Guidance, read packet for science, study for french test...) consists of: "hmm. I think I want to take a bike ride today - it's sunny. And I should write the Thank You cards for all those wonderful gifts I got yesterday. Maybe I can bring my laptop outside and work on them there. Oooh, I want to read my book for at least two hours..." It's so relaxing.
I had two fabulous parties this weekend: a birthday party on Saturday with twenty-odd teenagers smashing pinatas, fingerpainting, and discussing how to change the world; and a graduation garden party with thirty-odd adults (and me) in fancy dresses eating pastries and discussing my (very bright)future. Great fun.
My mother made me a crown of blue flowers and pearls and asked everyone in their invitation to write a message on a ribbon, which she attached to the crown and gave to me - an inspirational crown of flowers. It's gorgeous, and I'm so glad I'll be able to take it with me when I go.
Well, I should get back to writing the thank you notes...

The End of the Beginning

2005-06-17T17:00:00.000-06:00

My last day of school was last Friday (the 10th), my 17th birthday was Tuesday (flag day. ug), and graduation was today. Everything's happening at once, and I feel like I'm being hurled into the future at light speed. I still don't believe that in exactly two months I'll be getting on an airplane and leaving my childhood home forever.
I guess I should explain all this.
My childhood home: perfection personified (or rather objectified...) We live in a beautiful house that we redid four years ago to our own (very eccentric and quite cool) tastes, so we have a secret passageway connecting my cubbyhole bed to the playroom across the hallway, two bookshelves that open up to reveal secret rooms, grass and flowers growing on the roof, and what seems to be a tropical jungle set to order for a garden, with beautiful flowers coexisting with rows of strawberries and Swiss chard. Out back is a large field (not ours - we only have 1/3 of an acre - but we get to use it like our own) and woods and two small ponds.
This is where I've grown up, the place I've called "home" for all but two years. Those two years (my 6th and 7th) my family took me traveling: first to Japan, where I went to public kindergarten and 1st grade, and then to Norway, where I went to the Montessori school up the road from our tiny house. Those two years changed my life - I returned to the US with a mind like a field: bright, open and inspired. I went to the local school for three years then and assimilated back into the American way of life (or as much as I could). I skipped the social rollercoasters of 6th and 7th grades by homeschooling for two years and in the process discovered myself fully (for the time - I've obviously changed since then, but I had the base to work off of from those years).
I returned to school in 8th grade and went on to high school excited. High school was completely different than I'd read or seen in movies: I noticed no obviously exclusionary cliques, bullying or the other social epidemics people say are running rampant in our school systems. Instead, I found myself a nice, diverse group of friends, (ranging from intellectuals to gamers to "punks" to just plain teenage boys) interesting classes that I did well in, and lots of stuff to do outside of school - violin, soccer (a little), folk dance, German and English classes left over from homeschooling, and other seasonal activities.
While this was happening, I was beginning to feel that my life was perfect - too perfect to be truly fair. I felt that I had a debt to the world that I had to repay by giving others at least some of the joy I had felt growing up. As I explored this feeling, I realized that not only did I feel like I had to do this, but I wanted to. The idea of bringing people understanding and a global vision resonated with me like nothing else except the dream to work for the New York Times Book Review (what a life: read great books, write about them, and get paid for it! :) ) and was better, because it fit with what I now thought of as my calling.
My only problem was that I didn't know what to do or where to start. I looked, but nothing specific called out to me yet. Until a cousin told me about UWC: the United World Colleges. 10 colleges spread out around the world, promoting global understanding and change. Two years in a school composed of 2-400 students coming from over 80 different countries dedicated to an international vision and community service, all together in an academically rigorous International Baccaloreat program. I felt like the schools were founded with me in mind - there was nothing in the description that wasn't exactly what I'd always wanted, from being surrounded by my intellectual peers to going to school in another country to having the oppertunity to talk politics and philosophy with people of vastly differrent backgrounds. On top of that, there was a college in Italy that had a partnership with a nearby music school so I'd be able to continue studying violin while I was there as well as learn Italian, my dream language.
Unfortunately I was ending freshman year at the time, and the college was for senior and gap years: two years away. Not only that, but it was a very selective college, and the Italian college was supposedly the hardest one to get into. I waited for two years, building my "resumee," wishing, dreaming, and hoping that I would get in. I decided to graduate a year early so I could go to UWC and have two diplomas instead of one (always fun) and have a backup if I didn't get in.
This year I finally applied, got an interview, and was accepted to none other than the Italian college. And having graduated today, I'm officially done with my beginning and on to the middle of my life. I hope it's as spectacular as the first part was and more involved in promoting my dream of spreading understanding.
Here I go!

2005-06-17T10:24:00.000-06:00

My home