From 2010 to 2067 to 2011 in a month

Itinerary

Bus from Bangalore to Chennai

Train from Chennai to Delhi

Meet with Aileen take local train then local bus outside of Delhi to Vipassana Center

Vipassana Meditation Retreat http://www.sota.dhamma.org/ December 16^th - 26^th

Bus, Rickshaw, local train back to Delhi

Kathmandu, Nepal

-Stayed with a host family for a week

-Volunteered at a local school 

-Then went to the touristy area called Thamel

-Traveled to a farm that practiced permaculture, called Hasera farm

I went to Vipassana not knowing I was in the year 2067…in Nepal. I only lived 2 weeks in that year (most of which was spent sick) but it’s ok because I will get another chance as a 75-year-old woman after years of living and decaying in the same body, 2067 will come around with my second chance…

This is an excerpt from a diary entry that I wrote in the beginning of my trip:

I walked fast out of the bus saying goodbye to Dia from Finland who I met at the bus stop and ended up sharing seats with. She was surprised by how small my backpack was. I was worried that I would miss my train so I sped walked through the crowd of people. A driver came up to me and asked where I was going, he quickened his pace making sure I was behind him as we talked price. I was basically running after this man as he took me to his rickshaw. When we got to the rick I began to have doubts about my hasty choice of drivers, he had trouble getting the car started. Then when I asked how much it was to the train station he said 250rps! I knew this was too much. So when the car started and we were still arguing the price I almost got out. But stayed in because I could tell he realized how serious I was. We ended up spending the first half of the ride-arguing price: me, threatening to get out and get another rickshaw and him, driving while not looking at the road. The thing I could agree with in the situation was that wherever he was taking me, he was going there fast. He used a different tactic and switched to speaking to me half in English and half the local language so that I couldn’t understand his argument. He even resorted to singing his price to me. We got settled after a while and he introduced himself, Ganesh was his name, and he asked what my good name was and where I am from. He acted so hyper I was almost positive he was high on something but, as we talked more, and I didn’t see any glaze in his eyes I concluded that it was just him, his character. I was able to relax a bit after this and I asked him jokingly if the big hotel that we passed on the way was where he lived or if he owned it because it was called, “Hotel Ganesh”. He liked the idea and then started calling the city, “Phoebe city” (or however he pronounced my name). We talked more about things like how he smokes cigarettes but doesn’t drink and I made up a story that I had a husband but no kids yet. He drove like we were in a video game and when he asked me if he should slow down I said that I just didn’t want to die. When we reached the station I realized how early I was and how far we had gone. So I gave Ganesh 200 rupees because I liked him mostly but also I didn’t have exact change for the 150 I had worked so hard to bargain before. I didn’t feel like arguing more over the $1. I got out of the rickshaw waving to Ganesh and his 3 front toothed smile as a boy walking by tried to cop a feel and only smiled back at my frowning at him.

December 14^th, 2010 Train to Delhi

There’s nothing like the train experience in India. You get visited by everyone; Uniks, (men dressed as women who everyone fears will put a curse on if they don’t give them money), missing limbed people who crawl along the aisles and ask for money and of course the creepers, men who think you will have sex with them in the train bathroom. Sitting in the open doorway, pee from the toilet next door (which is basically just a hole in the floor of the train) splashes my feet a little. Trashed tracks below and pure speed and wind make me feel freer then I have in a long time. No school, now one else I am traveling with and unknown land. I could get off this train whenever I wanted to. The only limits are the speed of the train and this body of mine.

After Vipassana…

It’s hard to talk and even write about. Probably because the whole time I wasn’t allowed to do those things during it. Now that I think about it, I cannot believe I went all that time without music (besides that one day I sang those two songs aloud while taking my bucket shower) reading, art, tv, processed sugar, CHOCOLATE, a cell phone, electrical machines (besides lights that only worked a couple hours a day). I spent those 10 days meditating, sleeping, and eating and that’s pretty much it. I had probably 4 hours out of the day that was not meditation. In the quiet times I went from fretting horribly about my future to digging, then trudging around in my past. Memories of things that had happened that I hadn’t thought about since the moment they happened. Like all those hours my dad would sit and do homework with me (especially the math). How impatient I was and how his seemed endless. I remembered a show my sister and I used to watch on ABC family about this group of boys who did dumb stuff with their skateboards in their backyard or how we used to share a bed when we were younger. I even thought about my old dog, Tilly, the way it felt when I pet her in my favorite spot on top of her head in the curve of her skull and on her snout right before her wet nose. I remember how she started farting more when she got really old.

CHRISTMAS

I woke up the morning after my friend and I had discovered the little presents Vipassana had given us in our heads but especially in our hair and wrote a note. The note said:

Merry Christmas!

This year I got lice and a little bit of enlightenment.

<3 Phoebe

I placed the note in my friends shoe outside her door before I left for 4am meditation. The whole day I assumed I would have trouble meditating because I would be thinking about missing Christmas at home, but I was happily surprised when I did not. I didn’t really think about it at all. The next day was the 10^th day, the day we could break our silence and talk! In our morning meditation all I could do was think about what my friends and family were doing because it would have been their Christmas night. I have for the past, I don’t know, maybe 6 or 7 years gone to my friends house for a party. I started to cry sitting there in that room full of silent, closed-eyed people. I figured it had just taken a while to hit me. When we all walked out and met in a group that’s when the silence broke. Women started crying and hugging, all with smiles on their faces because it had ended. A girl who had seemed like a grumpy person said to my friend and I, “Merry Christmas”. I stopped and had to rethink. I realized later when I got my cell phone back that I had mixed up the date of Christmas and that’s why I wasn’t upset the day I thought that it had been.

Letter to a friend January 21^st, 2011

I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. 10 days of no talking, writing, reading, music, TV, Internet, computer…just meditating… I think I described it to myself in the first couple of days as a prison camp inside my mind. Spending day after inside my mind I worked through a lot. I felt like I went from childhood to present in memories. I learned how much in life I am taught to look outside for things, when really I should be looking in. I already knew but couldn’t really put why I knew religion was not for me. Now I know, it is because I don’t feel comfortable looking to anything else for guidance. Coming out of meditation I felt like, “I am god”, that I had infinite compassion for everyone and such peace I have never known. Jealously and forgiveness were two big things I worked on and I’m still not done. But what did come up was you and I realized that I was still holding onto whatever irrelevant things happened in the past with us. So in hopes of moving on I am writing in “The Book” (lol) which I found while switching rooms with my roommate for the rest of my time here in India. So much has happened since I left last summer, I am sure we both have plenty to catch up on! When I get back to Portland I plan on chilling there for a little but longer then last time so I am looking forward to Powell’s, parks, and party excursions with you!

Wishing you infinite LOVE

Phoebe

Kathmandu

When I made the decision to take the “deluxe” bus from Delhi to Kathmandu I will admit it, I had expectations. And right there, that was my mistake. Getting to the bus that morning I was happy because everything went pretty smoothly- unlike anything about the actually ride I had on that bus. The morning of, I talked to my family on skype, ate a chocolate banana dosa (!), bought socks and pomegranates and got a ride from the travel agents uncles’ bike to the bus. All the seats from the front of the bus were packed so I happily went to the vacated back so I could spread out. I was hoping I could spend the next 32 hours to Kathmandu reading and writing. In the beginning I thought to myself, this will be great, I can see the countryside, read, and have some quiet time. I was so proud at how adaptable I had become while also pondering a question I came out of my Vipassana with: Why do I out myself in uncomfortable situations (like 10 days of silence or 32 hours bus rides) and somehow find such pleasure and comfort in it? Goenkaji, the guy who we would listen to over the tv screen give nightly discourses called talked about misery a lot. So for those 32 hours on that bus I was probably not uncomfortable for about 2 of them. After only getting a couple hours sleep the first night on the bus, I started to get car sick, altitude sick, some kind of sick. With every bump my migraine pulsated and the nausea threatened the seat that I had been hitting my head on while trying to sleep the night before in front of me. It didn’t help that the group of men who talked to each other in some language I didn’t know but could tell when they discussed where they thought I was from were also smokers. The real complications started when my phone battery was left to one bar. Then I realized that my Indian cell phone, which I was told would work in Nepal, was actually not working. So I wouldn’t be able to locate Aileen and worse I had only one contact number of someone who I had never met or talked to, in a country I had never been in or taken time to read about. When I reached Nepal after driving over mountains, passing turned over buses, it was later then they said it would arrive in Kathmandu.

Nepali Mountains [photo taken on a hike to a Buddhist temple from Hasera Farm]

I asked to barrow someone’s phone to call the contact I had and talked to him briefly saying he would pick me up at the bus stop and that I should call him when I get there. My fever was at its peak and I was sure I would throw up. I ended up falling asleep for a little bit and got woken up by the security guy’s flashlight at the checkpoint. We reached the first bus stop and I realized I didn’t know which stop to even get off at. So I tried to call the contact number again but the phone said something in Nepali and when I asked the stinky smokers they said that the phone was turned off. So bus stops went by and I decided to go ask the driver. My trusted driver and crew smelt horribly of liquor but he let me use his phone and didn’t seem like he was going to put me in any more trouble then the intoxicated driving he was already doing. We called the number probably 50 times and before the last stop one Indian guy who I had friendly talked to about Germany tried to convince me to go to a hotel with him that night. So I stayed on the bus ending up in their parking lot discussing what I should do with the bus driver. He said no hotels were opened in the area but that I could take an overpriced taxi to an overpriced hotel or sleep on his bus. The driver gave me blankets and left for his house, I had decided feverishly to sleep on the bus for the night.

NEW YEARS

Sick.

In bed.

Asleep before midnight.

Next day called my dad telling him that I wanted to quit Global College and come home.

Went to the emergency room, doctor told me I had one of the three things: a urine infection, food poisoning or an STD!!

Host Family

Pink City (Jaipur), Golden City (Jaisalmer), Taj Mahal (Agra), Oldest city in the world (Varanasi), Posh City (New Dehli only drove through on the way to the airport), Modern City (Bangalore)

My train to Varanasi leaves in a couple of hours at 9:30 in the evening…The last overnight train ended my long field trip with the group but opened new doors for next semester. A woman in a bright sari commented on my henna as I was passing her compartment. I was heading back to my seat after a friend and I had spied on a cute boy in a nice Kurta with chest hair. In our pursuit we ended up being followed by a drunken creep who ruined the whole endeavor for us. This woman though was not like any Indian woman I had ever encountered on my own, she was even more. She was the sister of a shopkeeper in Jaisalmer that me and the girls had gone to, her sister was so pushy though talking about how she was part of an organization to help local women by giving them equal share of the profit of their crafts. I was skeptical of her so we didn’t buy anything or stay very long. 

The sister now told me all of what they were doing, that she had started the shop (the only shop in Jaisalmer run by women) and was helping the women that made their products to become more empowered financially and personally in their own lives. She said the community didn’t support her and her sister and would lie to tourists leading them away from her shop. When she first opened the shop she said they smeared cow dung on her sign. She spoke so openly about how she wished she had more freedom and independence saying, “I think American women should switch with Indian women and then maybe the men [Indian] would understand”, followed by a laugh that felt contagious. She talked about how she wanted to continue in school to get her PhD and become a teacher but that her husband wouldn’t let her because he thought that she wouldn’t have enough time for him. I glanced over at her husband a couple times during this whole conversation, I wondered how he would react if he spoke English. He was such a kind of small ordinary man compared to this woman’s huge personality and sparkling sari. I went back to her that night 2 more times getting up the courage to ask her if she knew anything about the practice of Sati (my personal academic interest I have been pursuing). Contrary to what anyone else has told me she said that Sati still does exist, mostly in the villages and told me a little about how the ritual is performed on a certain moon cycle. She said i could come with her to talk to the women and do research and this seemed like the perfect idea for my independent study next semester.

I have mixed feelings about going into a field research study with Sati or issues concerning women’s rights because I know my values are different. The cultural practice Sati to me, seems like a gross moral injustice to the world but who am I to say that to whoever is practicing it. I read in the book that there are accounts of some women who voluntarily commit Sati and jump in the funeral pyre with her husband because they believe they don’t have a life without him. It’s so complicated because a widow in India in some places is treated almost as an untouchable so the reality of a life after the husband dies can be worse for the woman. Then there are women like the one i met on the train who is so blatant about how her culture treats women and is not only fighting in her personal relationships to break this tradition but in her professional life and as what she calls it “charity work”. So where is this change coming from, are western values being pushed on Indian women? Is this want for change coming from westerners themselves? From globalization? Or is it natural, like how all cultures are hybrid and the change has just been fueled by the women who have the power to help fight for it?

Where does that leave me again…in my opinion all women and people in general deserve to be treated equal with equal opportunity and freedom in life…so if gender equality is coming genuinely from the women of India then I think I would support that but how I go about doing that I think I have to be very thoughtful of.

Update on loss of material possessions

-One of my water bottles (the robot one with the suck top)

-Waterproof travel notebook from Powell’s (contained diary from independent study in Costa Rica and other thoughts)

-Exposed a whole role of film that I had taken since I had been here (rolled it the wrong direction and the film came out of the canister)

Other things lost…

-Didn’t lose but ruined the duffle my sister lent me (bag was too heavy and made holes where is strap connects to the bag on either side)

-Faith in ever feeling not tired

-Brain cells

-Moisture in hair

Gained in material possessions

-Blue silk (western) dress

-Duffle bag given as a free gift from the salesman (to possibly replace my sisters)

-Hotel ashtray

-White kurta

-White, not all silk; dress (western but with a Tibetan style)

-Blue vest

-Bell anklets

-Scarves

Other things gained

-Bug bites!

-Books finished reading: Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

*Excerpt from my diary on my opinion of the book besides it being raw poetry “reading Dharma Bums feeling like even this experience [mine] is more exotic and sincere then this fake Buddhist”. But I also wrote down a quote from the book that I really like, “Nobody can tell you that you aren’t free”.

And Death by Fire: Sati, dowry, and female infanticide in modern India by Mala Sen

-New amazing yoga routine

-Experience of riding a camel in the desert!

-Had an experience when we went out to the desert where I tripped on something called bhang (marijuana), which is legal in north India. At one point we went out on the dunes at night and I looked at the horizon and the whole sky was made up of this grid in a white twinkling outline of tiny infinite seeming squares.

-Offers for sex/uncomfortable implications (men ranging from street boys age estimated 14 although he said he was 17 to yoga teacher whose 55 married and hinted at me wanting it with him) offers for opium, hash, and marijuana

-Business cards for different hotels and restaurants (at least 10 just in Jaisalmer)

-Crazier craving for real Mexican food and Gluten-free pizza

-More “good luck”, as I walked by the Ganga and under a telephone pole I felt something drop on my head, a little boy started laughing at me. I looked up and felt my head…MORE BIRD POOP. I washed my hair in the river that’s probably infested with more feces then what I was rinsing out and thought about how I should try my luck at the lottery.

 

Chat, Chai and good “Culture shock absorbers”

   I felt initiated into India the day I went to the police commissioner’s office. I spent all day there from something like 10:30 to 2pm waiting for my number to be called, only to be crapped on…literally. The waiting area was outside with a sort of covering that looked like a nice place for pigeons to hang out in. So I was standing under this covering chatting with my friends, when I feel a warm drop of whitish-green liquid appear on my leg… bird crap. HA HA totally laughable right? Except this isn’t the first time this has happened to me.

   Last year in Costa Rica it happened. One of the always-sunny Costa Rican mornings I go for a run around the futbol field in my neighborhood and all of a sudden from the sky falls the crap and it lands, this is the best part, on my face. My host family didn’t hesitate to laugh at me (they never would) when I returned home. In India I was told its good luck to be pooped on (no, you perv not like that!) but I feel like wherever I am in the world, whatever situation it might be it will always suck to be shit on for poopsake!

   When I first got here I saw India but I didn’t actually believe what I saw. (kind of like looking at this picture from my favorite websites http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100920.html) I would be looking out a bus window or feel something as real as the wind inside the rickshaw but still didn’t really believe where I was until tonight I think. I was walking home from dinner with the girls, looking up at the palm trees trying to imagine what it would have looked like before cement streets and corner stores, it must have been a jungle I thought, totally wild. But the houses that are apartment type buildings on top of each other made up of old painted looking stone or cement almost swallow up the sky. Or maybe I just don’t care to go that far because the balconies of colored laundry, steaming dinners and curious kids are so distracting. There is too much I want to learn.

What would my blog post be without a list!

- Successful 25 days of being a vegetarian
- At 2 chai’s a day and sometimes more I have had around 57 cups of chai so far in India
- Quote from my roommate Roo about Indian men “its only a toilet if there’s foreign ladies around”
- Purchasing wine at a corner store ironically named “not just wine and cheese” that only carries alcohol
- Its not ‘karma’ but ‘karm’, its not ‘Yoga’ but ‘Yog’
- Sign for body whitening cream
- Dog licking a dirty baby diaper
- “Your breasts are like water balloons”
- got to drive a rickshaw

I miss my bike (the smooth clean pavement with fresh air, my thunder thighs propelling the wheels under and up liberal MLK street with all the freedom the distance of my existence allows me to make)

nannying neverending nausea, nerves and narcissim

I don’t understand why summer days move at a different pace then normal days. They always have and while I still have more days of my summer left I am having trouble remembering how I got here.

I cannot put my whole summer into one blog post but I can put it in this perspective, if my summer were on a graph every two weeks would peak and then start heading downhill. It would look like the mountains in Montana, at Glacier National park that I visited with my sister. Huge ruff, ragged, up scales and declines some times kind of dramatic but also very natural. But what would my post be without a list!

Here is a list of things the summer took away from me…

Items Lost

Book lent to me by friend: Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollan *found

Book lent to me by the Clackamas County Library: Why is sex fun, the Evolution of Human Sexuality by Jared Diamond *bought new copy at Powells for $10 hopefully the library will except this copy when I have finished reading it sometime in the next 5 days

Bike biked it to the bus stop and got on the bus without it…something else was probably lost with it...like my sanity *found and rescued by my sister

Sunglasses the ones that appeared in Juno the movie must have left them on the bus 

Running Shoes must have also left them on the bus, possibly the same day

Hat my sister had knit, this amazing hat was to replace my old one that shrunk to miniature happy me size in the wash. Must have lost it downtown walking to Backspace or in Backspace I don’t know…don’t have the heart to tell my sister, more like the balls she is going to be pissed, I’m pissed it was an awesome hat.

Leather Jacket (most recent loss…still mourning)

I think some of this had to do with my goal for the year, which was to become less attached to my material things…which is good, but my leather jacket…really world?

I thought I would also do a list of things I gained, as in pounds after what I have made and then quickly consumed this summer. I was so excited for Gluten Free baking and cooking with my own kitchen and oven that I decided to document everything that I made. As you look through these pictures just imagine them purified, drippingly plastered against my innards…mmm now your excited.

First was rice pudding, it looks better then it tasted...i cooked things mostly that i missed eating from Latin America and things that i missed eating from the States. 

I don't remember the contents of this masterpiece but it included beets, mexican cheese and possibly an egg. SO GOOD

This is something I ate at Ceibo (sustainable community, see other posts) and wanted to try to make it myself. The only real big difference in making it was the fire taste i got from cooking on a fire stove in the mountains. It was still really good and i made it multiple times this summer actually. Garbonzo's, Carrots, Onions and best of all Rosemary!

Gluten Free cookies!

Made and shared with friends at the first house i house sat this summer. It was for my moms landlady's mother, an elderly woman who had broken her elbow. She was an animal lady with 5 different cats, a little dog (hardly able to call it that) squirrels, birds, raccoons and some stray cats as well. i felt like i had aged a century after i stayed at that house.

Oh yess

I did...but wait

It gets sooo much better

Joy the Baker's Chocolate layer Avacado Cake! (i made gluten freeeeee)

I miss good mango's! Adapted from a recipe i got from the yoga retreat in Nicaragua

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

with lentils!

 

My dad makes the best Fritataaaaaa

ok, this was a little weird...i never had a real thanksgiving pumpkin pie

and yes i know its the middle of July or August or something..and it was like 90 degrees outside but...

It tastes soooooo good (again GLUTEN FREE)

Gallo Pinto (kind of a pathetic attempt at replicating my host moms but it looks the same!)

 *I also made a huge delicious Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Bread but never took a picture of it because i was in too much of a hurry to get to the beaaach! 

I did a lot of things I wanted to do this summer. I sort of had a mental checklist of things I wanted to do. I did the Oregon coast, voodoo, music music music and I even made some new friends! I worked doing some house sitting and assisted at a camp at Waldorf for little kindergartners. My favorite quote from the camp was: ‎"Maya, please get those ants out of your pants". No explanation needed, these are kindergartners!

 

I also worked on my writing, participating in a workshop put on by ibex studios (http://www.ibexstudios.com/) with Becca. There was a group of 7 or 8 of us who met for 4 Wednesdays in a row.  I wrote one short short essay and two poems that I like. One is a poem about this moment I had late one night trying to find a bus home. I was in some sort of bliss about Portland and how grand it is. I crossed the Hawthorne Bridge listening to drum circle that happens sometimes under the bridge and played my harmonica while walking. Completely alone on this bridge I finally stopped and looked at downtown, it seemed huge and impressive, with the different colored lights. Mostly unexplainable what that moment was, some kind of awesome.

Here’s a video of that poem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wikT5GffFB4

The other poem I wrote unintentionally, the intent was to write a body of a piece of non-fiction instead of a poem…fail. But oh well here’s another poem that I wrote while having a series of nights of intense dreaming to the point where I would be exhausted waking up. It was after I had seen the movie Inception in theaters; the last movie I had seen in theaters was last Christmas so the experience kind of overwhelmed me.

Like a dream you don’t really remember where a poem begins

You only remember when it ends

You remember the last thing you hear or read or understand

And at the end you’re supposed to come out with some big realization

Like this: the truth of a poem does not come in the beginning

What would you have to look forward to?

And if it’s proclaimed in the middle

You would miss the unnecessary, probably inevitable dull ending that would have to follow that rash statement

You can’t trust time

Or your brain

I don’t remember where the memory starts

I just remember thinking ‘that’s weird, I wonder why dad is talking to mom on the phone’

Usually the preferred communication between my always-divorced parents has been through my older sister or I

It was Christmas time because the toy carousal was out with the horses dancing

It played a song I never got tired of

I liked to sit and watch it turn

I should have been watching my mom on the phone but she had left the room while she was talking with my dad

She came over to the carousal

I don’t remember where my sister was my memory cut her out

My mom came close, phone still in hand and said “Grandpa passed away”

And then like a dream I wake up

Except its real but I can’t remember how I got there or how it ends

I write poetry as a therapeutic decompression

To recycle and understand everything that has happened to me

Or maybe it’s to wake myself from the life I have been dreaming

It’s hard to know what’s more of a reality

Is it the words that sit immovably permanent on the page?

Or the carefully, and in perfect punctuality of life,

It plays and progresses in a time-line

But some moments seem to go at different paces then others

Like the first time you know your in love

And even if a second goes by on a clock, the one you watch change while waiting for the bus to come, or something like the length of a breath or the calculable minute

You wouldn’t be able to tell

Because in this particular moment nothing as understandably measurable as time, Exists

But maybe you’ve just wasted your time listening to this poem

But only 2 minute and 17 seconds of it.

My last day, what is the right thing to say?

How do I say good-bye to a family I will probably never see again…A place I probably will never visit again but also never forget?

    It’s hard to say good-bye. I feel like I’ve spent weeks saying it and the most important one, to my family, I was too tired for. Stumbling out the door, barely being able to carry my four bags and stand upright I kissed my messy haired host-mother on the cheek one last time at 3:45am.

   Before this moment i had spent a lovely 7 days at Nosara beach. I had one day to put my things together and leave the next morning on my early flight back to the US of A. I was kind of a mess; mosquito bitten, ghost lice and i knew the place I was going back to in Portland but not sure if it would remember me. But before i left, I was surprised at what I came home to (other home) from the beach.

   Coming back to the house after going to the beach was like going backwards yet I saw the future at the same time. My room was empty and had started to be put back into what I assume was its original condition. There were hair products in the bathroom - not mine - and the absence of my post it by the toilet no longer reminded me what the word in Spanish was to urinate (orinar).

  A new student had come while I was gone. I became jealous and protective of ‘my house’ and ‘my host family’ like I never had with other visiting students.
I sat in my room, in my home, with my family and thought about where I was going next…I questioned if that place was still “home” or if I could have some sort of joint custody arrangement with both places. This wouldn’t work out because dollars always get in the way of things, like divorces and dreams.

I look back on my year in this country listing all the firsts I’ve had:
1st's
– alcoholic drink at a bar
- Bungee jump
- Surfing
- Swimming in the ocean
- Gambling
- Smoking a cigar
- Driving stick shift
- Playing with monkeys (or any other sort of physical interaction with monkeys)
- Getting a professional message

2nd's
– getting lice
- Writing and performing an original poem
- Gaining weight/losing weight
- Visiting a volcano
- Feeling out of place (this is more of a reoccurring thing rather then my second time)

  I’ve packed away all my things; my body and scent no longer occupy the space it had before. So what’s left, memories that will be forgotten after some amount of time? What am I taking with me (besides the lice)? My scars?
                 My silhouette is replaced by new dust particles filling in the empty air.
I was affected by you Costa Rica, by your uneven streets, your ability to smile in every situation (except perhaps a missed goal), your salsa clubs and high heels, your thunder storms and sunsets, your pineapple fruit and the way you make plantains taste soo good, I was affected by your mountains and the communities that lived in/on them and everyone I ever said a probably non-sufficient good bye to.

Good bye. Cao. Hasta luego. Auf Wiedersehen.

To show what I have accomplished academically this semester I made this: http://www.serioussillyness.weebly.com
It’s an online portfolio that shows some of the papers I wrote and movies I made and some pictures I drew.

I also developed the film pictures i took throughout the semester.
               here are my favorites:

My addiction with Nic

 

I went on a trip to Nicaragua for two weeks.

It’s been hard to write about because, as is my constant struggle, I feel like my words are inadequate, unequal and never enough. The day after I got back, I couldn’t do anything. My pajamas and I watched Harry Potter all day while thinking about how we should actually be doing something that needed to get done, like homework. Talking to me that day was not fun, I apologize dad, sister, host family, Harry Potter…

I took pictures in Nicaragua with my film cameras. I probably won’t get them developed until I go back to the States for lack of funds and Spanish vocabulary in the photo development process. But, what I do have are two postcards I bought at a craft sale of photographs from the revolution and a poem written by my own humble hands.

Un Montón of Mountains

April 2nd 2010
It’s the last day of my week in Ceibo-Bokis, a sustainable community in the mountains of Buenas Aires, Costa Rica. I couldn’t sleep last night, when I woke up in the middle of the night (as usual) I looked at the moon that was big and present, the rooster cu-cooed as if it was morning because of the light from the moon that cascaded over the endless valleys…I couldn’t sleep.
        Although the day started out normal, a mountain of fruit salad for breakfast and the hot sun. Right after breakfast an indigenous family that lives near by came to visit for coffee and crackers. They stayed for a very long time, all the time that I was searching for berries and getting scratched by their thorns, all the time that I was getting oranges from the trees and falling on my butt, they talked. Then it started to rain. And it rained! It didn’t stop raining and lunch preparations began.
I made more coffee for the family while helping with lunch. A whole pot of rice and lentils, carrots and potatoes and the rain let up, the family said good-bye.
       I ate this delicious lunch slowly after 3 ½ days of only eating fruits (in smoothies and raw) and some vegetables. Today, after that meal, I notice how different I feel. The weight of my body has changed, I am no longer light and airy but thick and heavy. I have a headache and feel a little like throwing up but at least I don’t want to put things in my mouth anymore.
                                                    Why I was only eating fruits?
Because I had learned about cleansing your body of built up toxins this way and thought I should try. I don’t know why I feel worse then I did before this week but I have been eating cloves of garlic and drinking tea to combat this cough that started. I love this place though…something about the air, the mountains and the people who think like I do yet speak a different language…


 It was an adventure getting to this community and i would like to tell you a little bit about it.

•      First I couldn’t get a hold of the lady Diana who was supposed to pick me up at the bus stop. The night before I was to leave to just show up and see what happened, I got a call from this guy, Sergio. Sergio spoke a little bit of English and told me he could give me a ride if I met him in San Jose.

•      The next day I wait for this guy at the bus stop and he comes with a goatee after a few hours and he takes me to this house in this neighborhood he likes to call “Los Angeles”. We end up at this really nice house of a hippie community headquarters called Pachamama (http://pachamama.com/) and what I was told the guy i met who lived there was a musician that was part of a pretty famous group in Costa Rica (I forget the band name). We picked up a bed there then headed to buy a lock box.

•     On the lock box adventure I found something that I had been looking for a long time, my key. I have passed up so many keys that presented themselves, in London, at my bus stop on my birthday and others, so I decided this was the one and i took it (hehe). Keys are mainstream jewelry now but for me, what my sister has taught me, is that your key is something that helps you make decisions. Here is a picture the key; I still need a good chain for it.

•     Next we start for the mountains with stops on the way to pick up fruit and vegetables from stands on the road. Sergio says that we are going to his moms house and I wasn’t sure why. What happened was we went through these small communities of houses on a dirt rock road (naturally) and ended up at the end of the road at a small but really new and nicely furnished house. I was not prepared to meet the mother of my goateed coiffure and luckily she was not at the house when we dropped off the bed. Sergio said that he wasn’t that comfortable driving the rest of the way to the community that evening because his lights sometimes didn’t work so he suggested we spend the night at his moms. I thought this was a ploy to get me to bed and maybe it was but it didn’t work, he fell asleep in the hammock while i was on the coach. We fell asleep watching this anime movie called Paprika.

•     Woke up to a guy looking in the window at me. He is apparently the watering guy of the yard. That morning we went to the community. Sergio and his goatee were tired and so i said that i would offer to drive (even though i don't know how to drive) but that i didn't know how to drive stick shift. He asked me if i wanted to learn...why did i lie. But i went with the spontaniatity of the trip and said yes. Next thing i know i am driving up to the mountains on another gnarly dirt road in this truck and he tells me to stop. I stop in the middle of the hill. He says ok now change gears. I say, aren't i going to go backgrounds, he takes a quick look back and says yes. Then the engine is roaring and the car rocks back but bursts forward and i start up the rest of the hill. Sergio tells me i did good for my first time, i'm not sure if i believe him or if he was just trying to get me to bed.

•      Diana and Cycril (the people I originally stayed with when I went to the community last semester) weren’t even there when we arrived but their daughter was who greeted me with a big hug. The next few days I spent working in the garden and the house getting weird looks about my juices and listening to conversations in Spanish that I could not make contributions too. I have never felt so aware of where I came the US then with these people, they weren’t mean about me being a gringa but they definitely talked some shit about the US in front of (rightfully so). Because I couldn’t really say anything to defend or even just give my view on it, I was uncomfortable. In the end I became friends with the people and this one woman in particular I got close to. I really just enjoyed what these people are trying to do, not contributing to the system. I feel lucky to have found people like this in Costa Rica where everyone is content and non-controversial. This is a huge generalization of course and there are many good things about this but I felt like I understood these people. Once again I’m not really sure if the people understood me…

I rode back with a soar butt from the second time I had fallen in that day before when I was taking pictures. I had slipped and fell on my camera. I don’t know how but now one ever saw me fall all those times but I could show them the evidence as I have some nice scrapes on my arms and a petite round bruise on my left butt cheek. This Italian guy, Ali drove me to San Jose telling me about his world travels as a transcendental music DJ. He’s also apparently famous in Costa Rica http://www.transelastica.com/djs.html.

My favorite thing about this place was the environment of course, I couldn’t stop looking around at the mass of tropical tress and birds and for some reason it always looked different. I took a series of pictures the day of the storm that shows the clouds encroaching.
                              Here's the morning (you can tell the storms rolling in)

                                        

    [pause for copious amounts of rain and down pour]

      and it passes revealing the bamboo house currently in progress

                                           and then this happens.