A very short swim in very cold water (Tromsø, Norway)

At exactly 1:00 pm this afternoon, Brandon and I walked over icy sand and into the ocean, which was cold. We stayed in the water for approximately 58.98 seconds. Five hours later, we are still trying to process this traumatic experience. Our therapist, my imaginary friend Zargon, suggested that we write haikus and share them with a few supportive friends in order to move on with our lives. Please -- help us to heal.

Also, we ate Minke whale for dinner tonight. Chef Brandon turned our "whale flesh" into four edible steaks, two of which he consumed in about fifteen minutes' time. I am waiting to see if he will live through the night.

Here are our divinely inspired haikus (Brandon says, "These are the whale god's vengeance upon humanity" -- but I think that we are artistes):


plunge in arctic sea
would see breath if I could breathe
hy-hy-hyperventilate!

Are you still there, toes?
I cannot see or feel you.
Come back. I miss you.

eat whale, swim in sea
a new years never to be
forgot, auld lang syne

Bad people eat whale.
Masochists swim in North Sea.
I need therapy.

I will not shiver.
Shivering is for the weak.
The Force is with me.

run back to the fire
hunch fetal, warm feet and hands
melt inter-toe snow

The haiku above
brings back painful memories
of when I had toes.

Circulation -- pah!
It is so overrated.
Blue is the new black.

a walk in the park
saw statue of amundsen.
in blue bathing suit

Envious of whales.
Envious of polar bears.
So composed. Not me!

I need some blubber
or a pelt of waterproof
warm fur, or something.

yes, whales socialize,
the canaries of the sea.
but taste like tuna.

Breath freezes in scarf.
Thigh skin like metal armor.
Welcome to the north.

See: snowy mountains,
frosted sand, nothing living.
Let's go for a swim!

"Next time, wear thick clothes,"
they tell me, smiling. Next time?
Am I crazy?! Yes.


That's it for the haiku therapy.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We hope that 2010 brings you love and joy and wisdom and many, many hot showers.



We love hot showers.

A guest writer -- Brandon Horn (Tromsø, Norway)

I came and knocked on Irene's door at 11pm last night. Despite this, she let me in. We planned out the following morning--buy whale meat, circumambulate the island of tromso, and buy some bread. It was almost a complete success. We stopped walking and caught the bus after Irene learned that I cannot walk on ice, and that the island is kinda big. But my main goal, that of buying whale, can now be checked off the to-do list. After our initial disappointment in a fish market that smelled strongly of fish, which made Irene hungry and me less hungry, where we learned that the hunting season for fresh whale is from April to August, we went to the grocer and got 2 frozen blocks of whale flesh packaged in blue cardboard boxes. The box doesn't say what kind of whale it is--I think its Minke. We got bread and 5 liters of milk on the trip to the grocer. Then we tried to walk around the island, or at least to the North Bridge. We failed in this aspect, but succeeded in buying gummy candy men and discussing what it would be like to be the last person from your community or society or culture. This is my first full day in the arctic and in Tromso, and the first time I've seen Irene since Claremont. Tromso may not be geographically antipodal to claremont, but it is close. We haven't made our to-do list for tomorrow yet. I'll let you know when we have.

A video (Tromsø, Norway)

Brynjulv showed me this video last night -- a bit of "Norwegian propaganda," he told me proudly. He says that everything in it is pretty much accurate, but:

1. it is rare for the government to pay for somebody to recover from an illness in a spa in some southern country, although it does happen in special cases, and

2. the island paradise prison is where inmates are sent to serve the last years of their sentences; they don't spend all of their time there.

But conditions in normal prison facilities are good, and it is rare for somebody to be sentenced to more than 10 or 15 years. Also, the government is toying with the idea of simply putting a bracelet locator on convicts' ankles and letting them live at home (with, of course, a strict schedule and restrictions on travel). You know, keeping them integrated in society, so that they can continue to contribute as the citizens they are and lead purposeful lives. What an idea.

This country is so rational. They do so many things right. I feel like a barbarian coming from the United States, where almost 1% of the population is behind bars and the death penalty is still legal in some states.

In other news, I found out that I can attend university classes for free, and I'm salivating over the list of English-language courses. I KNOW, I know what you're thinking: NERD. I've been out of that closet for years. And just think: Arctic Biology. Marine Ecology. Aquatic Animal Welfare. Techniques for Investigating the Near-Earth Space Environment. The Sami Nation: Indigenous people, Ethnic Minorities and the Multi-Cultural Society. Tell me those don't sound REALLY COOL.

(I'll sidestep back to the wonder that is Norway: Education is extremely cheap here -- well, Norwegians pay for it in taxes -- and accessible to everyone, including retirees. There was a 78-year-old woman in one of Brynjulv's literature classes last semester! And when we were walking around the university, he greeted a 40-something-year-old man. "Professor?" I asked. "Fellow student," he answered.)

Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, I'll be volunteering at a church, giving out food and presents from 15:00 until 21:00. I'm so excited. I can't speak Norwegian, but I can smile at people and wash dishes. Maybe I'll make a friend. New Year's Eve I'm spending with Brandon Horn, one of my best friends and a fellow Watson Fellow -- he arrives a few days after Christmas and we're still trying to decide if we can eat whale and not go to hell (not Satan's; the hell that our consciences will raise). We do, however, plan on going swimming -- IN THE SEA, IN THE DARK. Apparently it is the thing to do. Look at these crazies. They're so happy. (Thanks to Maiten, who appears in the video in a black t-shirt and hat, for sharing her footage with me!) Maybe we will be that happy, too.

In early January I'll train to volunteer at the Tromsø International Film Festival and watch some of the movies for free (so they claim, at least; I wonder if I'm walking into a trap!), and . . . that's it. Those are my ambitious plans for the next few weeks. I will report successful carryings-out and failed carrying-out attempts as they occur.

I just discovered the "insert link" button -- can you tell? (No pun intended.)

A new motto (Tromsø, Norway)

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing."

If I told you that I had spent 1554 Norwegian kroner -- that's $265 -- on two pairs of long underwear, two undershirts, and three pairs of socks, you might guffaw in disbelief or, worse, hit me repeatedly over the head with any heavy, blunt object within your reach, screaming, "Think of the starving children! Think how much food you could buy for them with that money! Think of the medication you could buy for the sick!" until I cracked and fell to my knees, sobbing in guilt.

That's why it's good that you, reader, are so far away from me, and I am in Norway, where it is normal to wear a "second skin" that costs more than a plane ticket. The box in which my long underwear came claimed that they might become my "new best friend." Wenche, with whom I stayed in Oslo, and I thought that that was kind of pathetic -- clearly they were meant for misanthropes who used Norway's snowy wilderness as a retreat from pesky humanity and who had no breathing, warm-blooded friends.

WE WERE WRONG. I LOVE my long underwear. I'm seriously considering naming both pairs, so that my future housemate can say, "Irene, don't forget to bring Otto/Bruno with you when you go outside!" and mean, "Irene, wear your long underwear, forgetful non-Norwegian fool!" My legs owe their continued existence to Otto and Bruno, just as I owe my life to Wenche, who gave me (yes, gifted me with) an old winter coat of hers. These cost more than all of my underclothes combined, and I nearly hyperventilated when I first tried to go shopping for one. When I told Wenche what a traumatic experience I'd had ("They're so EXPENSIVE. I just can't believe that they're so EXPENSIVE. I didn't know things could be so EXPENSIVE." -- sometimes I fixate), she said, "Irene, I have a coat that I don't use anymore. If it fits you, it's yours." Can you imagine?!

Wenche, if you are reading this, thank you again . . . and again and again and again. You win the 2009 Generosity Award -- a most difficult prize to get, considering the wonderfully giving people I've met during this trip.

Now that I'm on the topic of nice people: When I was in Oslo, everyone I met was thrilled when I said that I was going to be living in Tromsø. "People there are so open!" "The Northerners are the friendliest!" "You'll see -- everyone will want to give you something." In the day and a half that I've been here, I've confirmed these claims. Exhibit A: My CouchSurfing host, Brynjulv, who is letting me stay in his and his girlfriend's apartment for three weeks while they are on vacation in the Netherlands and Spain. He has given me the long version of the newbie orientation session, complete with marked map, photos, and handy vocabulary. Thanks to him, I know what food is cheap (mainly fish), at what grocery stores it's cheapest, and where I should go if I need, e.g., a cheap monthly bus pass. (Do you notice a pattern? I am a bit anxious about the cost of living in Norway.) He is also a very pleasant fellow and who reads sci-fi and enjoys a good bar of chocolate.

Exhibit B: People on the street. I have asked several strangers for directions or about buildings, and they always stop to give me detailed answers. One man didn't know the street I was looking for, and pointed me towards some other people a ways away. After they had told me which way to go, I looked back, and the man was still standing there, half a block away, to make sure I had been able to figure it out! I nodded and waved to him, and he went along his way.

Exhibit C: People off the street. Today, in the Tromsø public library, which I will rave about in the next paragraph, a man sitting at a computer using the internet noticed that I was looking at the internet sign and stood up, saying, "You want to use computer?" I can't for the life of me imagine the same situation in the United States. Nobody would offer to give their place at a public computer to a stranger before they had finished whatever they were doing (important things like watching YouTube videos of people slipping on banana peels). Such an act would be beyond considerate and go into the realm of self-sacrificing; here it is the norm.

So: There's no dearth of kindliness in Tromsø. There's also no dearth of books, movies and music. As I was exploring today, I passed by a beautiful, large building with a double arched roof and glass walls -- it was the bibliotek! And what a bibliotek it is. Four floors of books in all sorts of exotic languages (like Norwegian and Finnish); the entire bottom floor is for children, full of color and games and pictures on the walls. It was on this floor that I found "Harry Potter og de Vises Stein" in both book AND CD formats. My master plan is to listen and read simultaneously until I am fluent in Norwegian. I estimate that this will take about a week.

But back to the library: It is so easy to get a library card in Tromsø that I was not surprised that the library was bustling with (quiet, considerate) activity. All I had to present was a student ID and an address. I warned the attendant that my address would be changing in three weeks; she smiled and said, "Oh, no problem! Just come and change the address in your file when you move." No fee, no processing time -- I checked "Harry Potter" out minutes after I had entered the library for the first time. This is how public services should be! Accessible and well-maintained, with a helpful staff and a comfortable environment. I plan to spend many an hour at the public library. Maybe I will make some geeky bookish friends.

The rest of Tromsø is just as beautiful as the library. It is a small city, full of nice shops and restaurants, sparkling with Christmas lights and the lit-up windows of houses. A big bridge connects the island to the mainland, and the view from the center of the bridge is stunning -- towards the mainland, you can see the faint outlines of snow-covered mountains looming over the yellow lights of streets and buildings, and, in the other direction, Tromsø looks like an illuminated electric blanket warming up the hillside. (They don't make long underwear for hillsides; it needs some warming up.)

The only bone I have to pick with Tromsø is that it is Too Dark. Latitude is no excuse -- there's no reason for it to be nighttime twenty hours a day. I woke up this morning at 8:30 and had one of the severest internal struggles of my life: to get up and dressed and go outside IN THE DARK? Or to stay in bed, in pajamas, trying to sleep until the sky told me that I should do otherwise? In the end, my better half won, and I was out the door by 11:00 (after eating breakfast with Brynjulv), even though it was still dawn. I walked until the sun was setting again -- actually, it never goes above the horizon, but a suggestion of the sun rises and sets -- at 1:00 pm, came back to the apartment to have lunch, and wandered for another few hours in the dark, feeling wild and daring.

It's not just me who is thrown off by the darkness! I spoke with Brynjulv and one of his friends about it today, and they said that their sleep schedules become irregular in the winter; they just don't know when they are supposed to get into and out of bed, since it always looks like sleepy-weepy time (my words, not theirs). Brynjulv's friend works odd hours (5:00 am - 11:00 am), so not even his job helps keep him synchronized with the rest of the population, which is more or less active between 9:00 and 5:00 (and later, of course, in the bars). Wenche in Oslo said that she sleeps much more in the winter than in the summer -- up to two hours more in the winter! She doesn't need as much sleep in the summer. Her body functions without it. I, obsessive recorder of banal events, almost always write down my wake-up hour in my agenda. I wonder if I will notice that I'm sleeping more in the next few weeks than I did in Mexico, and I wonder if I will start sleeping less after late January, when the sun reappears.

In any case, I will henceforth force myself to get out of bed as soon as my eyes open, lest my weaker half look out the window and try to convince me to stay put, and my long underwear, Otto and Bruno, will have lots of fun traipsing around town with me. We (Otto, Bruno and I) almost forgot: Happy winter solstice! Welcome, waxing days!

A very cold, very dark place indeed (Oslo, Norway)

It was five o'clock all day today, except when the sun was setting at four o'clock. It is bizarre to walk around in perpetual late afternoon! Shortly after it got dark, I wandered back to my temporary lodging with Wenche, a CouchSurfer who is going to teach me to cook fresh codfish tonight (!), because I'm used to going home when it gets dark. I'm going to have to break that habit soon, or my existence in Tromso will be an unhealthily solitary, indoor one.

During the four hours of five o'clock that I walked around, I saw much of downtown Oslo -- very pretty, very chic -- which is full of Norwegians successfully leading healthily social, outdoor existences despite the bitter cold. The streets and parks were bustling with people of all ages, walking, skating, rolling (the babies in their stroller cocoons), and speaking Norwegian, which sounds very pretty to me. I wonder if they are always saying very pretty things. (Must find Norwegian classes in Tromso.)

I went into the Nobel Peace Prize Museum, where my eyes, as usual, teared up when I saw the pictures of President Barack Obama. The exhibit was not just about him, but also about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, and I wondered what all of this history means to the (surely mostly European) visitors to the museum. Does it seem very distant? Very foreign? Unbelievable? It seemed a bit unbelievable to me as I read the captions that went along with pictures of Civil Rights protesters and Freedom Riders -- was that really just a few decades ago? In the country that I grew up in? I wonder what changes will occur in the next fifty years that will make my grandchildren tear up.

Tonight: After eating codfish, Wenche and I will stand on her balcony and look for the International Space Station. We will wave at it with numb, mittened hands -- maybe it will wave back!! Tomorrow: Vigeland Park, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, and the Viking Ship Museum, in that order, so as not to miss the park by day (i.e. at five o'clock). Ja!

A cold, dark place (Oslo, Norway)

I've slept about six hours in the past lord-knows-how-many days (well, I do, too: two days), and I'm curled up in a warm sleeping bag, covered with a heavy comforter, looking out of a frosty window into the dark Norwegian night and watching my computer clock work its way towards midnight -- but I am not asleep. Why am I not asleep?! One of the great mysteries of life. I hope that I'm not turning into a vampire. If I am, though: well-planned, Irene! The days are so short that I won't have to worry about turning into dust -- and in Tromso even less. And maybe I can get away with drinking hot chocolate instead of human blood.

My last few weeks in Mexico passed quickly and wonderfully. I:

1. blazed touristy trails with my motherdearest, who visited for five days at the end of November and gave me Mexican history lessons whenever I wasn't force-feeding her my favorite corn products (like tamales, huchepos, corundas, and corn ice cream -- just the thought makes me salivate). We wandered around Morelia, ferried to Janitzio island from Patzcuaro, visited the pyramids at Tzintzuntzan, rode horses in the monarch sanctuary in Angangueo, and bonded with Adriana and Nina the Lopsided Kitten (RIP -- see item 5). All in all, a wonderful visit. I confirmed my unoriginal theory that parents are good for the soul, and, since history lessons are good for the brain, and corn products are good for the body, my mother left me healthier than ever.

2. hiked up the Cerro Camacho, the mountain/big hill that looms over Ocampo, and climbed the military tower at its summit. The views would have made Ansel Adams's pulse race; unfortunately, I am not he, so the photos that I took probably won't make your pulse race. Appreciate the effort, though, and imagine yourself there. It is a very pretty spot on Planet Earth. (The aforementioned photos will be posted tomorrow! I think.)

3. hiked/swam up a river to El Salto de Agua, Niagara Falls' little little little little little little little little little brother in the outskirts of Ocampo. Once there, Eduardo, Fierros and I flirted with death by swimming in the icy pool at its base -- who's scared of a little hypothermia? Not we. My lips were still purple when I got home two hours later. I'm sure that it built character.

4. went to a secret butterfly colony in a private forest that is usually only accessible to biologists. This was not only a breathtaking natural experience (so many butterflies!), but also allowed me to make peace with Don Gato, who owns a taco stand in Ocampo and invited me to come. He has always suspected that I'm gay, which, I think, is a little like suspecting that I'm a crack addict (because it means that I'm psychologically unstable, potentially dangerous, and could be a bad influence on others). Things have always been a bit awkward between us. Now he still suspects that I'm gay, but also knows that I like butterflies, which is in my favor, no? What morally unsound person likes butterflies? (Note: I don't think that crack addicts are morally unsound.)

He and his nephew, Julio, gave me a big lecture on corruption: it is everywhere, and you cannot escape it. One man, they said, has taken complete control of El Rosario, one of the monarch sanctuaries. As he is the intermediary between donor organizations like the WWF and the El Rosario ejido (the people who communally own the sanctuary), he decides where the money goes, and it is rarely distributed fairly. They also told me about La Familia's doings in Ocampo. La Familia is the Michoacan mafia; it has a hand in every government office and almost every business in every town in Michoacan. Don Gato told me that he had to pay La Familia a monthly "contribution", and that he had once walked into the city hall to see the municipal president opening a cardboard box full of two hundred-peso bills -- not for his residents, but for the mafia. The local police are in on it, and sometimes the federal police, too, and nobody knows what the soldiers are up to; there is nobody to turn to. A frightening state of affairs.

5. watched Nina the Lopsided Kitten die of poisoning on the morning of December 9. Adriana and I were devastated, and wept many a bitter tear. She is buried in the backyard under the tree that she used to scramble up in her wild fits of huntress passion, and we hope that her atoms will become the petals of a wildflower or the wings of one of the moths that she so cruelly abused in life. The saddest thing about her death is that it was almost certainly not an accident; people poison cats and dogs on purpose. Nobody was surprised to hear how Nina had died, and nobody understood why Adriana and I were so sad about it. And they're right: Nina was a cat, and, in some parts of Mexico, people, not cats, are starving to death. I keep trying to temper my outrage at the poisoning of cats and dogs with this thought. Perspective, Irene, perspective. It is wrong that Nina was poisoned, but it is also wrong that Nina was better fed than some of our neighbors. But: all of it is unfair!

At least we are 99.99% sure that Nina was the happiest kitten in Mexico, and possibly in the Universe, during her months with us. And she died very quickly. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

6. co-hosted a posada, part of a Mexican Christmas tradition that starts on December 16th and goes all the way until Christmas (ours was an early posada). The tradition goes as follows: people carrying statues of Mary and Joseph go from house to house asking for lodging (just as Mary and Joseph did when she was about to give birth to Jesus) by singing and setting off little sparklers. They are rejected once, rejected twice, and finally welcomed into the house, where they eat pozole and drink ponche, receive aguinaldos, which are little bags full of candies, and, if they're lucky, get to take a few whacks at a piñata. Our guests were lucky. We had a great piñata.

7. fantasized about returning to Michoacan next summer for a visit. It all depends on my bank account -- do you think that there will be more money in it the next time I check? You never know. There can be miracles. I guess that it also depends on my prudence -- do you think that I will choose to manage my finances wisely or toss hundreds of dollars out the window to soothe my aching, Mexico-deprived heart? Mmm. Things are looking grim for my financial future.

I have wireless internet now, and tomorrow evening I plan to start posting my Mexico pictures. They are plentiful and diverse.

I will also write about Oslo! I've already eaten reindeer sausage (Rudolph . . .) and met four delightful strangers, one of whom thrust her e-mail address upon me and one of whom just gave me her card. People are so kind! One who speaks Norwegian might say that they are "snil" -- THAT'S RIGHT. My list of Norwegian vocabulary is now about four words and three expressions long. I'll be fluent in no time.