tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52652842361219059772024-02-07T03:08:02.486+01:00All the time in the worldCheck out my photos at http://photosalabillypilgrim.blogspot.com/!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-53726780530097557942010-03-04T12:45:00.003+01:002010-03-04T14:03:06.372+01:00An apology for the premature death of my blog (Tromsø, Norway). . . and a guest writer!<br /><br />But first: I'M SORRY. I've received several e-mails of blog-related concern ('Irene, your blog has been quiet, does this mean that you are in need of rescue?') and think it's time to explain myself to you, maybe-not-so-faithful-anymore readers. The past month has been full of travel, wonderful, adventurous and often cold, and I've preferred embracing real, solid objects to withering before the cold glow of a computer screen. Computers just make me feel <em>gross</em>. My eyes and restless nature complain. And since I probably won't have the chance again to be as disconnected from cables and satellites as I am this year, I'm taking advantage. Actually, I'll be shipping little Toby (that's my computer) home in about a week in preparation for my travels in Peru and Chile, so my blog posts will be even fewer and farther between! But I probably will never be in need of rescue. DON'T WORRY.<br /><br />In the past month, I've learned to hitchhike, and have used this mode of transportation to get to Kiruna in Sweden (where I saw snowmobiles doing back flips off a jump -- did you know this was physically possible? I'm still skeptical), and Kautokeino and Alta in Norway. Kautokeino is an important Sami town (the Sami are the indigenous population of Norway, Sweden, Finland and part of Russia), and I learned there than in the Sami language, time does not go; it comes. There's always more of it, not always less. Ha! Stress! Try to get me now! I think it's a thought-worthy philosophy (language is philosophy, no?) for reasons not related to stress-bashing, too.<br /><br />I also went to southern Norway. As much as it shames me to admit it, I was a passenger on board the Hurtigruten, which sounded, when Katarina and I were buying the tickets, like a romantic and adventurous and educationally valuable (for its historical background) experience but ended up being . . . a cruise. Trapped in a giant floating hotel. NEVER AGAIN. But the coast of Norway is, as the brochures claim, breathtaking, and I'm glad to have seen it. Tonight I leave for Svalbard, where I will find the global seed vault and applaud long-term planning and preservation of biodiversity (yes, I will actually clap my mittened hands, maybe also nod approvingly), and on the 13th will fly to Oslo, on the 15th to Santiago, on the 16th to Lima, and on the 17th to Cusco. Phew. So much space between my feet and the surface of the earth for so many hours!<br /><br />People have featured as prominently in my life the past month as places. Kristin remains a friend, as do Abbas, Maryam and their son Salman, Fatima and her husband Armin, and Atiyeh, all of whom I met at one birthday party! Another Watson fellow, Laura Candler, visited for a few days before going up to Svalbard herself and was my hitchhiking buddy to Alta for a few days after, and the time I spent with her was just wonderful. (She's the guest writer, and if you're sick of this dry update, you should jump ahead to the italicized work of art below.) The people who picked me up when I was hitchhiking were all great -- so generous, so kind, soooo talkative -- and, if there weren't over fifteen of them, I'd list and describe them all. Katarina and I stayed for a night with Jessica, whose blog I referenced in my last post, in Bergen, and we talked Minnesotan to each other. Who else can I mention? Surely I'm forgetting several dozen people.<br /><br />I've grown to love Norway, and not just its government (the one that takes care of its people!), which awed me at first, but also its inhabitants and mountains and weather and celestial spectacles of light, and the way people gasp in assent -- this last merits explanation. Months ago, I was talking with an elderly woman who, every few seconds, would inhale sharply between sentences. 'The weather has been nice recently -- (GASP!!) -- Looks like it's going to snow again, though.' My first thought was that she might have some sort of breathing problem, and I jumped every time, mentally preparing to run for help if she collapsed clutching at her chest. She didn't seem distressed, though, and I never had to run for help. Later I heard from two Germans in Sweden that the people in the town where they lived did it, too, and that it was the bizarre Scandinavian way to say 'yes.' I thought, 'Noooo. Whaaaat?' A few days later, though, this wacky claim was confirmed by Kristin, a Norwegian herself and no liar, and she furthermore explained that the gasps were simply inhaled 'ja's. Instead of wasting precious warm breath on gap-fillers in conversation, Norwegians and Swedes continue to speak <em>while breathing in</em>. It's the charmingest thing you could possibly imagine. If I could marry a cultural behavior, this would be it. Our children would inhale entire sentences.<br /><br />All right, I should stop before I get teary-eyed. My time in Norway flew -- but, the Sami would say, it flew towards me, not away. (GASP!!) Here's Laura's guest blog post:<br /><br /><em>Tall Pines in Georgia stands for more than trunks and needles, resin and fire-signalled seeds. It is a song. And a song can be with you anywhere without the weight of a pack slung around in turbulent flights. Songs pass the time without pages or folded corners, and bus stops reverberate splendidly in dry winter air. Crisp, clean, clear.<br /><br />One morning while waiting I envisioned a man saddle a horse and cross the Blue Mountains through tall, dark pines filled with mockingbird mimicry - all the way to the Allegheny, and all for love. The same day showed me Sweet William and Lady Margaret flowering beside a bench in musical ignorance, oblivious to seasons, to sunlight. It was winter in the air, on paper and peoples' faces, but nevertheless, Tall Pines in Georgia clung to their needles white-knuckled and didn't mind being the only ones in green. They grow on.<br /><br />And the song. The song stays in my head like stars in the Arctic darkness, hiding above clouds that pass by below but there all the same, all the time, light years away, and fills me with warmth. The clouds today are lithe, stretching thinly over the Barents like a furrowed field of Mama's white hair. Sometimes the earth needs a gentle covering; sometimes the stars shine too sharply. The ocean needs its islands, as much as it abuses them. And empty bus stops call out for songs from travelers' mouths, even if only in passing. </em><br /><br />by Laura Candler.<br /><br />Her blog can be found here: http://swooningblue.blogspot.com/, and I highly recommend it! She's studying curious clouds this year, and the way and extent to which people include the skyscape in their sense of place. And she has great eyes that see beautiful things, and fingers that can play the guitar while she sings.<br /><br />I don't know when I'll update my blog next, but in the meanwhile, be well and, if you're reading this, I probably love you. Looooooove.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-26868742634445529942010-01-27T12:49:00.004+01:002010-01-27T12:58:52.227+01:00A post inspired by someone else's blog (Tromsø, Norway)Norwegians are, I guess, famously reserved, which I failed to notice until I read <a href="http://jessicainbergen.blogspot.com/2010/01/beauty-of-fitting-in.html">this blog post</a> by Jessica, the younger sister of one of my good friends in Minnesota, who is spending a semester in Bergen. I thought, "But people here have been so friendly! But they've helped me when I've been lost!" Then I thought, "BUT. BUT I HAVEN'T BEEN IN A SINGLE NORWEGIAN'S HOME." (Brynjulv's apartment doesn't count, because, being a CouchSurfer, he's not, you know, <span style="font-style:italic;">normal</span>.) And then, even worse, "BUT I HAVEN'T EVEN DONE ANYTHING SOCIAL WITH A NORWEGIAN." No coffee, no walk, no romp through the snow.<br /><br />This was a blow to me. My impression that people here are, in fact, friendly and helpful, even friendlier and more helpful than the people in Bergen whom Jessica describes, was backed up by several other people, some of whom said, "Well, it makes sense! The southern parts of the country have been relatively densely populated for a long time, but in the north, many people have come from other places to work, and the help-thy-equally-lost-neighbor legacy lives on." I've experienced the present-day version of help-thy-equally-lost-neighbor, which is help-this-equally-lost-foreigner. On the streets and in cafes, fellow foreigners just <span style="font-style:italic;">talk </span>to me, or vice versa. I've met people from Eritrea, Iran, Gambia, and other parts of the world in public places; we are magnetically attracted to one another. (And it's not hard to find foreigners here; over half of Tromsø's residents aren't originally from Tromsø.)<br /><br />But we repel Norwegians, who are friendly and helpful, but, I guess, famously reserved, even here in Tromsø. They will show me how to get to the library, but they won't ask where I'm from. And they will smile back if I greet them, but wonder if I'm a little off my rocker. It took me a long time to understand the distinction between friendliness/helpfulness and openness. Sometimes I still mix them up.<br /><br />(Writing about this, I'm reminded of a hilarious incident in Pavel's dorm kitchen. He had just moved in, and we were having lunch at the table, discussing Norwegian reservedness, when a tall, Norwegian-looking guy walked in and started preparing his meal. Pavel asked where he was from. "Here." Then Pavel asked, "And do you think Norwegians are reserved?" And the Norwegian said, "Maybe . . . maybe we are reserved. But I don't know why." Then: SILENCE. End of conversation. He turned his back on us to finish doing the dishes. I think this was the real answer to the question.)<br /><br />Fortunately, some Norwegians break out of the reservedness mold! They crack the shell of reticence! They smash the wall of polite disinterest! I was lucky to meet TWO of these in the past week. One I've mentioned already: Kristin, whom, it seems, I was fated to meet. We first met on the street when I asked a man walking by Brynjulv's apartment how recycling in Norway works (it's great! five colors of bag, each for a different material!). This man is Abbas, and we became friends while we walked into town. This was possible because we are both foreigners and therefore magnetically attracted to each other. He is from Iran, but has been studying engineering in Norway for a few years. Walking with us was his son, Salman, and behind us came his wife, Maryam, and Kristin, their friend and neighbor. I explained to them what I was doing here; we agreed to have dinner sometime; I hoped to see them again.<br /><br />And a few days later, I did see Kristin again! On Wednesday we both attended the first meeting of Tromsø's chapter of Save the Children, and I discovered that she speaks near-perfect Spanish. That night we took our relationship to a whole new level when we facebook-friended each other, and I learned from her profile (how much more intimate can you get?) that one of her favorite books is Michael Ende's <span style="font-style:italic;">The Neverending Story</span>, which has long been my all-time favorite book in the world. This boded well for potential friendship. On Sunday we spent the whole afternoon together at the Tromso Museum and later at Salman's 5th birthday party (about which I'll write in another post -- this one is supposed to be just about Norwegians), and actually BECAME FRIENDS. She's coming over for dinner on Thursday -- this is, in case you don't know, something FRIENDS do -- and at some point in the near future I'll be allowed to enter her apartment. She insisted that it was too messy when we stopped by there on Sunday.<br /><br />My first Norwegian friend! And an invitation to a Norwegian home! The second invitation came later on Sunday night, at the TIFF volunteer party, which I spent entirely with Maiten and a Norwegian woman named Tove, fellow volunteer at Fokus Kino from Monday to Wednesday of last week (again, I'll write about the film festival in another post -- this one is about Norwegians). Tove is kind and tolerant of my obsession with the northern lights, which I've still only seen twice, and she invited me to eat with her sometime next next week. This is particularly exciting because her children are all much older than I am, which means that she is much much older than I am, and I love spending time with People Who Are Not My Age (and who are usually calmer and wiser than People My Age, myself included). There's just so much to learn from everyone.<br /><br />So: This week was groundbreaking. I was invited to TWO Norwegian homes -- I didn't even have to threaten them! -- and made friends with the Norwegians who live in them.<br /><br />Yesterday I said that I had to write about people, movies, and Norwegian culture. This is the "Norwegian culture" post. I will write about "people" and "movies" sometime soon, but probably not today. My plan for today is to go for a walk in the snow, read and people-watch in the library, and eat dinner with Katarina and two of her friends. It's amazing that I manage to stay so serene while leading such a stressful lifestyle.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-62681096539505874462010-01-26T21:47:00.002+01:002010-01-26T21:50:26.706+01:00A couple of welcome-backs (Tromsø, Norway)Oh geez. This is one of those intimidating blog posts -- the ones for which I first write an outline (the outline for this post has thirteen bullet points), which, instead of giving my writing any structure, makes me a little bit twitchy with stress and raises my heart rate. So much has to be reported! So many people have to be described in full detail! So many adjectives have to be employed! Fortunately for me, as soon as I start the next paragraph, I'll forget about all about my outline and write about, oh, say seagulls, which are not one of the bullet-pointed items.<br /><br />The seagulls:<br />They have come back! I noticed them when I was walking into town last week, and thought, "Have they been there all along? Had I become desensitized to their loud, insistent cawing the way I'm deaf to the hum of the refrigerator? Did I just wake up from a silent dream? Does anyone else see them? <span style="font-style:italic;">Are they really there?</span>" Just before writing this paragraph, I asked Katarina the first of these questions, and phew! my sanity appears to be intact. The seagulls, which fly south for the winter, seem to have returned north for the winter. I'm really not sure if this is normal -- it has, after all, been colder and snowier in the south than usual, and warmer and rainier in the north -- but even if the poor birds have gone loony, I'm glad that they're making a racket by the seashore again. The other prominent winged inhabitants of this island -- magpies -- have given me the creeps ever since I watched one of them knock a featherless chick out of a nest, peck it to death while it squirmed on the ground, and eat it in a park in Madrid. Ungh.<br /><br />The arrival of the seagulls almost coincided with the return of that most beloved celestial object, Mr. Sun, to the skies above Tromsø. I'm pretty sure that nobody else was as excited about this as I was -- I squealed and bounced and thought it appropriate to stare directly and meaningfully into it for a while, while my retinas thought, "Whoa whaaaat?" -- but on January 21st, some stores sold <span style="font-style:italic;">solbolle</span>, and this past Sunday was SUN-day (cute) at the Tromsø Museum. There was a presentation on the northern lights (for which, of course, we can thank our own Mr. Sun and his unpredictable temper) and a choir concert with a sunny repertoire. The songs were in Norwegian -- shocker! -- and Swedish, but Kristin, a new friend, translated some of the lyrics for me, and the melodies were so upbeat that everyone walked out smiling. Yes! This is a happy time! In olden days it was an even happier time for schoolchildren, because they had January 21st off from school, but at least they can enjoy bread and music. And, you know, SUNSHINE.<br /><br />I've made it sound like it was dark until, suddenly and hallelujah, the sun rose above the horizon and all was brightly lit and glorious -- like a revelation, or a lamp -- but actually the days have been getting longer since December 21st, and weeks ago already the daytime hours lived up to their name. It's strange to think that the days will soon start encroaching upon the nights, and that in a few months the sun won't set at all. I think of it as a pendulum -- here, the arc is almost a semi-circle, with light on one extreme and dark on the other, and the farther south you go, the smaller the arc becomes. Surprisingly, several people I've talked to aren't so thrilled to be swinging back to the light. They call the winter "cozy" and "calm," the proper state for a winter land, and complain about insomnia in the summer. Apparently Mr. Sun slacks off when it comes to warming this part of the world, too, so that even when it <span style="font-style:italic;">looks </span>like a summer paradise, it feels like, oh, Norway. Never-hot-Norway. I can see how that would dampen some already sleep-deprived spirits.<br /><br />I've addressed only one of the items in my bullet-pointed list (the sun concert) so far, and lightly touched on another (new friends -- Kristin is one), but the oomph, the oomph is GONE. I'll post this now and tomorrow write about people, movies, and Norwegian culture. Ooh, when I put it like that, it's not intimidating at all! I just have to write about three things! Very doable. Hardly a challenge. TOMORROW.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-84322355919892382242010-01-20T22:21:00.004+01:002010-01-20T22:50:40.541+01:00A shortie about the SUUUN (Tromsø, Norway)I am just writing to say (ahem):<br /><br />1. The sun will rise tomorrow. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />2. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />3. The meeting with the nun (in the singular -- Sister Hedwig) on Sunday was WONDERFUL. Amazing. Life-changing. I am going to write a full report tomorrow morning and send it to the convent for a blog post go-ahead. Then I will go ahead and post it in my blog.<br />4. Between "morning" and "and" in the last sentence, somebody called Katarina to tell her that the northern lights were putting on a show. We ran outside to look at them. My first time! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />5. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />6. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br /><br />Please excuse me while I go and have a heart attack.<br /><br />Nun report forthcoming! On a day with SUN.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-72634447778966567992010-01-16T19:55:00.010+01:002010-01-16T21:04:01.414+01:00A reason for breathless anticipation (Tromsø, Norway)In about thirteen hours, I will be attending mass at the Carmelite convent in Tromsø, after which my new friend Pavel and I will eat breakfast with the nuns and then talk with them about time. WHOA WHOA WHOA. This was Pavel's idea, and, because 1. he speaks Norwegian and English (among other languages), 2. the nuns speak Norwegian (among other languages) but do not speak English, and 3. I do not speak Norwegian but speak English (among other languages), he was my interpreter during our first visit and will be translating all of tomorrow. For this and other personality traits, I am convinced that he is an angel. And I'm so excited to meet the nuns and learn about their lives! I'll give a full post-meeting report.<br /><br />Pavel is a friend of Katarina's, my new housemate, who is also wonderful. He spent a few nights with us while he was looking for an apartment, and every evening the three of us drank industrial amounts of tea, chatted into the night, and sometimes engaged in less mature activities like balloon soccer and phone book-ripping (after I explained the theory to them, they both ripped a phone book in half -- the hot dog way!). Katarina is from Slovakia and Pavel is from the Czech Republic, both of which I have added to my List of Places to Spend Time in Before I DIE.<br /><br />Now Pavel is gone (sob), but I hope to see him a lot in the next two months. In the past week, Katarina and I have watched three Tromsø International Film Festival movies (<span style="font-style:italic;">Mid-August Lunch</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Same Same but Different</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">35 Shots of Rum</span> -- recommended, not recommended, and not recommended, respectively), and I have watched another (<span style="font-style:italic;">Alle Anderen</span> -- highly recommended) with a fellow passer-through, Maiten, a Dutch girl who is making a documentary on the polar night. We get in for free because we're volunteers! While waiting for Katarina in a cafe one night, I met a very nice man from Eritrea, Mateo, with whom I had tea two nights later. He has been in Norway since 2005, a refugee from religious persecution. I hope to see him in the next two months, too.<br /><br />What else to tell? Well, I suppose I should apologize, faithful readers, for failing to write in a whole week, and then writing such a booooooring post. Your head is probably nodding as you read these words. Your eyelids are heavy . . . your chair is so soft and squishy . . . your feet are so warm . . . But there is a reason I haven't written! The reason is this: Katarina and I are STEALING wireless internet, which we know is <span style="font-style:italic;">bad </span>and for which the technology gods will surely punish us, but which has also introduced a new personality into our household: IngerOnline. Inger is our mysterious neighbor, the victim of our wireless internet theft. Katarina and I joke that someday, we'll run into Inger while we're taking out the garbage, and, after introducing ourselves, we'll blurt, "BUT WAIT! Is your last name Online?!" And if it's not, we won't have to feel guilty. Inger Online -- a faithful companion for those lonely winter days.<br /><br />But not that faithful. Inger Online sometimes TURNS OFF her wireless unit (the nerve!), and even when it's on, reception is so weak that we can only connect to the internet on the windowsill of Katarina's bedroom, which is at about chest level. This means that every second we spend on the internet is another day we'll suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome in the near future. This, combined with my general aversion to screens (which naturally prevents me from writing this in a text editor in a more comfortable place and copying and pasting it into my blog at the windowsill), is the excuse I present for non-communicativeness and a booooooring post (who can write inspired words standing at a windowsill?).<br /><br />I'll write more, and better, about my new acquaintances, friends, and activities soon. And the nuns! I'll write about the nuns! But for now I'll spare my wrists.<br /><br />Until soon, then, Inger Online permitting.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-6490131165500898662010-01-08T22:33:00.005+01:002010-01-09T17:51:09.458+01:00A resource for young'uns (Tromsø, Norway)"Young'uns" is a category into which I, being under the tender age of 25, fit, so I didn't feel too creepy yesterday afternoon when I walked into <a href="http://www.tvibit.net/english/">Tvibit</a>, Tromsø's youth house, even though in spirit I've been an old granny for years. I walked past several tables of hip-looking teenagers engaged in relaxed conversation over cups of hot coffee (of which, I noticed, there was a full and free-for-the-taking thermos nearby) and made my way to a sign in the next room that said "Information". Oh, but what information! What enlightening clarification!<br /><br />Once again, Norway takes the cake for public resources. Here is an excerpt from Tvibit's website:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">At Tvibit anyone can arrange events, concerts, exhibitions, plays, dance performances etc. free of charge! All you need is an idea, and we will help you getting started. As long as the event is in Tvibits spirit, we enqourage it (this means that we don’t throw parties, birthdays etc. here). We will help you with equipment, rooms, people and other things you might need to make your event happen.</span><br /><br />This was all explained to me in more words by the smiling woman behind the desk under the "Information" sign, who also told me about Tvibit's free health center, where anyone can drop in for a consultation with a doctor four days a week, and existing clubs (writing, photography, international, and, of course, I could start my own if I wanted to). There was a cafe downstairs with computers available for my use, and, if those were occupied, several computers in this room and in the project rooms with which I could surf the net, write a paper or plan a project. If I needed video equipment, I could check it out of the film house, and if at any time I had further questions about anything, I shouldn't hesitate to drop by and ask. I half expected her to offer me a trip to the Balearic Islands for inspiration -- but she didn't.<br /><br />I'd walked by Tvibit's two glass-walled floors many times and seen groups of young'uns chatting in map-lined rooms equipped with computers -- now I know what they were up to! They were SOWING THE SEEDS OF CULTURE. For fun and with government funding. I just think that's the goshdarned greatest thing in the world. Don't you?<br /><br />Yesterday I also had my first encounter with the Norwegian educational system. I hope to audit a class at the university called The Sami Nation, and, prudent student that I am, attended the informational session mentioned on the web page. This was all fine and dandy, except that the informational session was in NORWEGIAN. Who knows why?! I had sat in the middle of my row and couldn't get out without breaking some kneecaps, so I settled into my chair, pulled out a book of plays by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and perked up whenever I recognized a word (the toughies, like "historie" or "klasse" or "bok", e.g.).<br /><br />I never feel so klutzy as when I don't understand what people are saying to me. I've been missing Berlin recently -- I think because Tromsø is more like it than any other city I've visited this year, which is not to say that they're at all similar -- and one major difference between my stay there and my stay here is that, there, I was the one who had to make the extra effort to communicate. I was the one speaking in a foreign tongue and saying things like, "Now we must make goodbye" or "Excuse me, I have to go inside the toilet." In Norway, I cringe whenever I say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Norwegian. Do you speak English?" Of course almost everybody does, but it feels unfair to force them to go through the discomfort of trying.<br /><br />Three more things to tell:<br /><br />1. I took another ice bath this afternoon, this time IN THE DARK (the group's usual meeting time is 5:00). You know, no big deal. Just had to dig a hole in the snow to put my things in. Managed to get dressed with frozen lumps for fingers. Same old, same old.<br /><br />2. I went to the Tromsø University Museum today, where there is a temporary exhibit on homosexuality in animals. I almost teared up when I saw the pair of lesbian swans who had mated for life (and were still together in death, taxidermied and romantically posed). Did you know that lesbian swans raise cygnets together? And sometimes lay eggs in the nest of a pair of male swans so that they can raise cygnets, too? Did you know that homosexual behavior has been observed in over 1,500 species, and some species are almost entirely bisexual? Did you know that male flamingo couples can actually raise more flamingo chicks than male-female couples, because they have control over more territory? (The English translations were poor, and I read over and over again that the gay flamingos could "raise more chicken" until I laughed out loud.) They are called "super-fathers". There are also "super-mothers". <span style="font-style:italic;">I</span> want to be a super-mother! The museum website asks: <span style="font-style:italic;">Is it reasonable to use the word "unnatural" about homosexuality?</span> I think the correct answer is NO.<br /><br />3. Tomorrow I move out of Brynjulv and Ellen's apartment and into Katarina's living room. A new temporary home! A new housemate! Oh, the potential.<br /><br />It is snowing fingernail-sized pieces of fluff. Ten points for Mother Nature!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-79236050896050062482010-01-08T12:15:00.004+01:002010-01-08T12:40:13.373+01:00A blue sky! (Tromsø, Norway)As I type, I am looking out the window at a BLUE(ish tinted with yellow) sky. IT LOOKS LIKE DAY. Oh glory be! Now I know that my real enemies are the clouds; the sun and I are on speaking terms again.<br /><br />In the time I've spent sitting in front of my computer looking up the idiom "on speaking terms" (<span style="font-style:italic;">in a relationship close enough for or limited to friendly superficialities</span> OR <span style="font-style:italic;">in a relationship of open, willing, or ready communication</span> -- the sun and I are "on speaking terms" in the former, and limited, sense of the idiom), clouds have crept across the sky and it has started to snow lightly. Coastal weather. What a crusher.<br /><br />But I know that there is a blue(ish tinted with yellow) sky behind those clouds! And the snow is very pretty.<br /><br />Soon I'll write a rave review of Tromsø's youth center, which is almost as amazing a resource as the library.<br /><br />The snow is gorgeous.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-36194280165943599942010-01-05T17:41:00.005+01:002010-01-05T19:45:28.275+01:00A sparkling island (Tromsø, Norway)Well, this post is long overdue! Brandon has left (sob) (as in "how sad," not that he has a mean mother), as have the two young Dutch men who served as my adventure buddies for the two days following Brandon's departure (sob), and now I am alone, again, with Tromsø, this slug-shaped artificially lit island city that manages to be beautiful and warm despite the dark and sub-zero temperatures. Sub-zero on the Celsius scale, I should say. The temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is not as impressive as I'd hoped it would be, although I've been assured that, when wind and humidity are taken into account, the residents of Tromsø suffer more than the residents of, e.g., Karasjok, where it is a whopping 29 degrees Fahrenheit colder than it is here (18 and -11 degrees, respectively).<br /><br />On New Year's Eve, after our polar bear swim (fortunately polar bear-free -- the night before I'd had nightmares/involuntary violent fantasies in which I was dismembered by a hungry polar bear displaced by global warming) and meal of whale flesh, Brandon and I walked across the bridge to Tromsdalen, where we took a cable car up to the top of the first swell of a line of snow-covered mountains. We arrived unfashionably early and spent several hours walking along the mountains, which glittered in the light of the full moon. At one point, Brandon turned to me and said, "Irene! Do you hear the silence?" Which should give you an idea of how heaven-like the landscape we were exploring was. Here is a picture of that landscape:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGROp590n2uzMkN7KmDIACYr2ApmfZrwzkA5dTp8h_gNH7orerhLYMgLK7lBUvndFTBbZPp7sb1Y8yM8Y27ZYnMmdiGp202QIlC_rXTwbSW5naM2pS_j_ONGoH_anqngbBgHWKyOHv5Nk/s1600-h/12.09-03.10+Norway+135.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGROp590n2uzMkN7KmDIACYr2ApmfZrwzkA5dTp8h_gNH7orerhLYMgLK7lBUvndFTBbZPp7sb1Y8yM8Y27ZYnMmdiGp202QIlC_rXTwbSW5naM2pS_j_ONGoH_anqngbBgHWKyOHv5Nk/s320/12.09-03.10+Norway+135.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423303820529204738" /></a><br /><br />(Notice that the snow ACTIVELY SPARKLES. That's no passive reflection you see going on there. This snow is ALIVE.)<br /><br />Towards midnight, we headed back to the cable car building to watch the fireworks in Tromsø from above, feeling much like Zeus and his cohorts on Mount Olympus, but before the show we caught a wee glimpse of the Northern Lights, pointed out by a very friendly Irish or Scottish (Brandon and I disagreed about this) couple. It was more like one very faint light smeared out, tinting the grayish sky a little bit lighter gray. Disappointing, to say the least, but we of indomitable good cheer and optimism recover quickly from such letdowns. After cursing and loudly disbelieving our bad luck, we went to watch the night's main spectacle, which did not disappoint at all. This is what Tromsø looks like from above:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Jg6AZsT8uiBPfTrtk-p0pfYDCmXclZWvzStAZiEh758wDtA3crS_KCDffCGDmf2-YYVcviEy4TbOiS4l95GAvw0sRqP530kZy1zYKGKBQWNdQfzoQv8lNSrCqi00iXxBGApOrrv22xg/s1600-h/12.09-03.10+Norway+138.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Jg6AZsT8uiBPfTrtk-p0pfYDCmXclZWvzStAZiEh758wDtA3crS_KCDffCGDmf2-YYVcviEy4TbOiS4l95GAvw0sRqP530kZy1zYKGKBQWNdQfzoQv8lNSrCqi00iXxBGApOrrv22xg/s320/12.09-03.10+Norway+138.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423305795834287698" /></a><br /><br />Now imagine it sizzling and popping with fireworks. You have to imagine it because my camera ran out of batteries long before the stroke of midnight, but maybe it's better that way. It was beautiful! There were fireworks up on the mountain, too, and we were surrounded by children with sparklers and other Things On Fire, so we started the New Year with a dazzling display of light. I hope that this means that the whole year will a dazzling display of light -- you know, metaphorically. I am always up for being dazzled.<br /><br />Brandon left on the 2nd (sob), and that afternoon I met up with Tim and Ruben, who had written to me via CouchSurfing and asked me to show them around town. We went to the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and the Perspektivet Museum, which both had excellent exhibitions, and then we walked around town, which was already starting to come back to life after the holidays. The next day was more eventful -- both Tim and Ruben swam in the icy sea under my inexpert supervision (they joked about weak hearts and having just one lung while I played out about a hundred worst case scenarios in my head) and survived.<br /><br />After getting on the warm bus to head home, we decided to go on the cheap tour of Tromsø and the surrounding area, i.e. we rode a bus for about an hour and a half as it looped to the northern end of the island, back through the center and over the bridge into Tromsdalen, and finally close to the apartment where I'm staying. The bus driver, a tattooed ex-seaman, eyed us skeptically at first, but towards the end of our tour opened up and even boasted that he had never once in his thirteen years as a bus driver scratched the side of the bus while passing through a bridge that was only eighteen centimeters wider than the bus (we had commented on the narrowness of this bridge the first time we passed through it; the second time I was mentally cheering for the bus driver and dreading even more the day when I will have to get my driver's license).<br /><br />Tim, Ruben and I ate, watched "Pulp Fiction" (I ran to the kitchen whenever somebody pulled out a gun, and read in the staircase during the most violent scene), and then I almost forcibly ejected them from the apartment, overwhelmed by an inexplicable flood of antisocial feelings. It was really very rude of me -- I lost major Social Interaction Points -- but they were kind enough to overlook it and invite me to eat with them at their hotel yesterday evening, which I did.<br /><br />Today was a successful day, even on the social interaction front. After sleeping a few hours -- insomnia, which I will get to shortly -- I showered and headed to the library, which still holds Wonder of the World status in my book. I read half of a book of poetry by Stephen Dobyns, whose poem <a href="http://www.cosmopoetica.com/cpb/library/2005/08/14/dobyns-tomatoes/">"Tomatoes"</a> I really like, and made zero friends. However, I did manage to locate the Tromsø offices of Save the Children and Amnesty International, reconnected with Kine, a woman I met at the Christmas Eve volunteer dinner, and gave both her and the sole AI employee my e-mail address and a smile that meant, "Thank you so much for letting me have tea with you and telling me how to volunteer with your organization! You have no idea what this is doing for my state of mind! I am so happy that I'm smiling!" But they probably just thought I was being polite or, likelier still, a weirdo.<br /><br />It's good that I'll be volunteering with these two organizations because I just found out that I'm not allowed to take university courses (against the Watson philosophy!), which was one sure-fire way that I was planning to meet people. I will be attending one lecture class on Sami culture and history, because they're here and I'm here and it seems silly not to, but that's it for academic structure in my life. In response to this sudden change of plans, I spent about two hours feverishly planning excursions to other cities (while a tiny voice inside my head reminded me, "Budget! Budget! Budget!"), and have decided to go to:<br /><br />- Jokkmokk, Sweden for the first week of February to attend the Sami winter market.<br />- Karasjok, the Sami capital of Norway, shortly thereafter.<br />- Svalbard in mid-March to witness the sun festival.<br /><br />!!!<br /><br />The sun makes its first appearance here in just a few weeks, and I have to say that it is coming none too soon. Yes, people leave their houses, walk around town, and even ski in the dark, but it's just not the same as having a few hours of real daylight during which you WANT to go outside. Residential streets are quiet as graves -- you hope that there are living humans inside all of those brightly lit houses, but there's no way to know. They might all have disappeared! So: the darkness turns an otherwise pleasant city into a playground for existential fears.<br /><br />Also, I've been having quite a bit of trouble sleeping. At night I lie in my bed, staring out into the dark, for hours, and it seems that as soon as I fall asleep my alarm clock starts beeping wildly at me. I set it for 9:01 in the morning so that I can be ready to leave the house shortly after 10:00 and take advantage of the twilight hours, and I've started using the large sunlamp in Brynjulv and Ellen's living room to simulate morning before that. It's wearing me down, though. I've been moody and sad, and I'm eating like a moody and sad person does, and my interactions with the outside world are moody and sad unless I make an effort to look less moody and sad. IT IS ALL THE SUN'S FAULT. But I'll forgive it as soon as it comes back in T-minus 16 days.<br /><br />Now I'm going to go for a walk -- perhaps I will buy an overpriced tea at a cafe and try to chat someone up. PERHAPS I WILL SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. I obsessively check <a href="http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html">this site</a>, but so far it has done nothing but give me false hope. PERHAPS MY HOPE WON'T BE FALSE TONIGHT.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-29245007982491303812009-12-31T17:52:00.006+01:002009-12-31T19:22:28.421+01:00A 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Here are our divinely inspired haikus (Brandon says, "These are the whale god's vengeance upon humanity" -- but I think that we are artistes):<br /><br /><br />plunge in arctic sea<br />would see breath if I could breathe<br />hy-hy-hyperventilate!<br /><br />Are you still there, toes?<br />I cannot see or feel you.<br />Come back. I miss you.<br /><br />eat whale, swim in sea<br />a new years never to be<br />forgot, auld lang syne<br /><br />Bad people eat whale.<br />Masochists swim in North Sea.<br />I need therapy.<br /><br />I will not shiver.<br />Shivering is for the weak.<br />The Force is with me.<br /><br />run back to the fire<br />hunch fetal, warm feet and hands<br />melt inter-toe snow<br /><br />The haiku above<br />brings back painful memories<br />of when I had toes.<br /><br />Circulation -- pah!<br />It is so overrated.<br />Blue is the new black.<br /><br />a walk in the park<br />saw statue of amundsen.<br />in blue bathing suit<br /><br />Envious of whales.<br />Envious of polar bears.<br />So composed. Not me!<br /><br />I need some blubber<br />or a pelt of waterproof<br />warm fur, or something.<br /><br />yes, whales socialize,<br />the canaries of the sea.<br />but taste like tuna.<br /><br />Breath freezes in scarf.<br />Thigh skin like metal armor.<br />Welcome to the north.<br /><br />See: snowy mountains,<br />frosted sand, nothing living.<br />Let's go for a swim!<br /><br />"Next time, wear thick clothes,"<br />they tell me, smiling. Next time?<br />Am I crazy?! Yes.<br /><br /><br />That's it for the haiku therapy.<br /><br />HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We hope that 2010 brings you love and joy and wisdom and many, many hot showers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf-cq9mEtyFaT8mzRIxRp3zaCfAH3-Aqwuqmd3vDUqOQS8otoBBAELb_82TS2HAU92UY2X67i9ULr-r7iljW1UR1yJnEapwaU1yqwYk2659zV_T-gwdlHUy_s3w4L5skofjRuRal__JIc/s1600-h/103_1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf-cq9mEtyFaT8mzRIxRp3zaCfAH3-Aqwuqmd3vDUqOQS8otoBBAELb_82TS2HAU92UY2X67i9ULr-r7iljW1UR1yJnEapwaU1yqwYk2659zV_T-gwdlHUy_s3w4L5skofjRuRal__JIc/s320/103_1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421455656575012562" /></a><br /><br />We love hot showers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-24937089932861192932009-12-29T00:14:00.003+01:002009-12-29T12:11:08.555+01:00A 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.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-13478291402476435772009-12-23T16:29:00.013+01:002009-12-23T17:57:19.753+01:00A video (Tromsø, Norway)Brynjulv showed me <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGTzbj3fRSw">this video</a> last night -- a bit of "Norwegian propaganda," he told me proudly. He says that everything in it is pretty much accurate, but:<br /><br />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<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />This country is so <span style="font-style:italic;">rational</span>. 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />(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.)<br /><br />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 <a href="http://vimeo.com/8196963">these crazies</a>. They're so <span style="font-style:italic;">happy</span>. (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.<br /><br />In early January I'll train to volunteer at the <a href="http://www.tiff.no/?lan=en">Tromsø International Film Festival</a> 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.<br /><br />I just discovered the "insert link" button -- can you <a href="http://xkcd.com/559/">tell</a>? (No pun intended.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-82656686311789630252009-12-21T21:42:00.008+01:002009-12-22T00:27:25.103+01:00A new motto (Tromsø, Norway)"There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style:italic;">need </span>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.<br /><br />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!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-48424457137983287552009-12-17T16:43:00.006+01:002009-12-18T16:59:31.874+01:00A 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.<br /><br />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.)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-55441844266839555962009-12-16T23:29:00.016+01:002009-12-17T18:50:00.919+01:00A 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.<br /><br />My last few weeks in Mexico passed quickly and wonderfully. I:<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />I have wireless internet now, and tomorrow evening I plan to start posting my Mexico pictures. They are plentiful and diverse.<br /><br />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.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-70518247704552106762009-11-23T13:19:00.004+01:002009-11-23T20:32:00.496+01:00A beautiful tradition and swarms of praiseworthy insects (Morelia and Ocampo, Mexico)A little over three weeks ago, I was walking with Adriana along the streets of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan and Adriana's home city, crying my little heart out. "It's so beautiful!" I kept saying. Adriana, who has a heart of stone and, I suspect, faulty tear ducts, rolled her eyes at me, as she does every time I cry at a movie or song or, in this case, the Day of the Dead altars that lined the stone pedestrian avenue and filled the yard of a nearby junior high school. She does not understand what it is to have feelings. But it was so beautiful! The altars were being set up during our walk the night before Halloween, and they would stay until at least November 2, the Day of the Dead.<br /><br />Each one is made in honor of a person who has died, whose picture sits on a table at the center of the altar, and whose achievements, personality and tastes are reflected in the altar's elements. An altar in honor of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for example, featured a life-sized figure sitting at a desk, pen in hand. There is also an offering of food -- in the cases of people who are being remembered by their families, this consists of all of the favorite foods of the deceased: tamales, corundas, chocolate, pan de muertos, and, often, tequila, among other tasty edibles and relaxing drinkables. Behind the food, and all around the altar, hang flowers and colorful sheets of tissue paper that have been stenciled and cut with death motifs, and there is usually a clay skull, skeleton, or Catrina (elegant and gaunt female death figure) on display. The floors of the altars are the most impressive part. They are made of corn, seeds, colored sawdust, orange and purple flower petals, sand, salt, and other grainy things that can be turned into elaborate designs. I noticed that many of the altars showed salt footsteps leading to a grave, and Adriana explained that this was so that the dead could find their way back to wherever they had come from after visiting the world of the living. See?! So much love and caring. Doesn't it make you want to cry, too?<br /><br />I cried again on November 2, when Sergio, Adriana's father, took me to the main city cemetery. No place for a claustrophobe. It was packed with people bringing bouquets to graves, or decorating tombstones with marigolds, or setting up crowns of plastic blossoms, or simply sitting together holding hands. My eyes had trouble focusing on any one thing -- there was so much color, so much activity. Just outside of the cemetery was an enormous food market, equally overwhelming and bustling, and as soon as we went out to buy coconut water, I felt silly for crying. This was a celebration! A day of remembrance, not a day of grief. Of course, the dead are missed, but, more than anything, their lives are celebrated.<br /><br />I wish that Americans did this! It seems to me that most Americans are terrified of death. We do everything in our power to avoid it, to postpone it, to distance ourselves from it -- we even put old people in nursing homes so that other people can deal with their medical problems. We should be learning from our grandparents, who have decades' worth of stories to tell and wisdom to impart, but instead we discount them because they are no longer young and immortal. The Day of the Dead brings the idea of death into every mind in Mexico, at least for a few days, and does so with colorful tissue paper and comical skeletons and fond memories. It embraces death instead of denying it -- surely this is a healthier approach to the inevitable? (It is also so beautiful!)<br /><br />A few days after we returned to Ocampo from Morelia, I came back home from my daily English classes with Karina and Marcelo, and Adriana, who had been fiddling with the water tank on the roof, said, "Irene, have you seen the butterflies?" I said, "NO!!" We expertly climbed our rickety ladder, La Roña, and stood on the roof looking up with our mouths hanging open. There were butterflies everywhere! They were flapping their little wings in the wind, blowing thither and yon, but all going in the same general direction -- as they had been doing since late August, when they started their journey in Canada and the northern United States. These insects had flown 4500 kilometers! And here they were, arriving to their winter resting place. I kept thinking, "Welcome, little buddy! Hello there! Welcome! Oh hi hi hi!" Very exciting.<br /><br />I went up to El Rosario, the biggest butterfly sanctuary, on November 7, expecting to see little. It was a cold and cloudy day, and after my guide, Rosalio, led me up the mountain to the four trees where the butterflies were clustered, I thought, "But this is not little!" They weren't flying around, as they do when the sun is shining, but the brownish-orange masses of insect wings bending the branches with their weight were impressive. (I keep thinking how different a phenomenon this would be if it weren't butterflies that migrated and hibernated in the forest but rather, e.g., cockroaches. Surely they would have been exterminated by now, no? Monarchs are lucky that we think they're so goshdarn pretty and delicate.) Rosalio told me a few stories about the butterflies -- the most interesting one was that they were drawn to gold and other metals in the mountain, which, he said, had been detected by satellite but never found on the ground. I had heard before the link between the butterflies' orange wings and the color of gold, but never in the context of science. (And I must confess that I'm highly skeptical, although: who am I, short-term visitor with little knowledge of biology and history, to doubt the word of a man who has lived here all of his life? Everything is a form of understanding, after all. We just explain things the best way we can.)<br /><br />Yesterday I went up to the same sanctuary with Alma, a friend who stayed with us this weekend while her husband was away on business, and oof! wowee! oh man! it was spectacular! I can't do the experience justice in writing -- nor in talking, nor in pictures and videos -- but I'll try. It was a warm, sunny day, and, as soon as we arrived to the entrance of the sanctuary (two hours after leaving the house -- the transportation gods were not pleased with us), we knew that we were in luck. There were butterflies fluttering about over the fields and in the parking lot outside the hut where we had lunch, and, a few minutes into our walk up the mountain with our guide, Maria, we passed a big, wing-flapping group of them drinking from a puddle of water. A bit higher up, we stopped and gaped in awe -- there were streams of butterflies coming at us from all directions. They glided down the wooded slope, and flew around our heads to impress us with their gentle flapping sounds ("Bravo!" I thought, "What a powerful wingbeat!").<br /><br />It got better. A few minutes later, we looked up and, holy shamoley! there was a whole river of butterflies in the treeless part of the canopy that mirrored the path. So many butterflies! You cannot imagine. It was like a two-level highway, with ugly, loud, clumsy humans on the ground and delicate, silent, unassuming monarchs passing above. We reached a field, where they were flying around like snowflakes, and finally made it to the trees where they had chosen to cluster. There were now more than four trees almost entirely covered with butterflies, and, all around the trees, thousands of them were swarming. Again, if they had been cockroaches, I would probably have feared for my life or, at least, my hygiene. (Why do cockroaches have such a terrible reputation? And I consider myself open-minded when it comes to insects!) They were monarchs, though, and Alma and I both sat on the ground and smiled like little kiddies. Even though our fellow visitors were shamelessly ignoring the sign that said, "Silence, please!", we could hear the flapping of wings like rustling leaves.<br /><br />How amazing that the people living near these forests have seen this year after year for generations! And the people in Ocampo and Angangueo have watched the butterflies drifting in the sky every November, nearing the end of their long journey. Interestingly, though, very few people from Ocampo have ever gone up to the sanctuaries, and the children in Adriana's classes don't know the first thing about the monarch's life cycle. The monarch butterflies are Michoacan's claim to fame -- every tourist brochure features at least one photograph of a butterfly resting on a leaf -- and the people living closest to the action don't feel a strong connection to it (except for the tourist dollars it brings in). This is partly due to the lifestyle and resources of most of the residents -- Adriana tells me that the farthest away from Ocampo most of her students have been is Zitacuaro, which takes about half an hour to reach and is a relatively small city -- but also has to do with education. The goverment could decide to get people pumped up about the monarch butterfly, to teach them about its history and why it is important to protect it, from an early age, so that the sanctuary guest lists featured visitors from nearby as well as people from Canada and Germany. The butterfly reserves are currently a rich person attraction, even though the entrance fee is minimal; I wish that they were an everyone attraction.<br /><br />The last thing I promised to write about was the celebration on November 20, when, in 1910, Francisco I. Madero declared that he intended to take the presidency, which had been held by the dictator Porfirio Diaz for decades. The start of the Mexican Revolution! This is, I was told, the most important political holiday in Mexico, and Ocampo partied appropriately hardy. Alma and I watched the two-hour long parade, in which red-, green-, and white-clad schoolchildren of all ages danced (the very youngest just wiggled with spirit), made impressive human pyramids, performed acrobatic tricks, and chanted, "¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva Madero!". After the parade there was a Mexican dance competition in the main (and only) square, and at night there was a dance at the worst locale in town, which has a dirt floor and only half a roof. It was splendid. We stayed until the wee hours, and I felt bold enough towards the end to dance to every song with either Freddy, Ricardo, Jacob or Cesar, patient young men endowed with remarkable hopping abilities. Duranguense -- my new favorite kind of dance -- is not much more complicated than bouncing from one leg to the other with bent knees, either alone, in a loose embrace with a partner, or plastered onto a partner like another article of clothing. It's ideal for cold climes (aerobics + body heat), and also highly entertaining when the whole crowd is doing it: it looks like a sea of bobbing heads. Last night Adriana and I spontaneously decided to attend another dance, in our very own neighborhood of La Junta, and we danced with Eduardo, Fierros and Freddy.<br /><br />I am so fond of all of these people! I am so fortunate to have met them! I often wonder what my life would be like right now if I had decided not to live with Adriana, or if the good-hearted people who showed me around during my first few weeks hadn't introduced me to their friends. All of my present happiness is due to the kindness and generosity of strangers -- strangers who are now friends. Gush gush gush.<br /><br />As I've been writing, the clouds have been doing all sorts of wacky things. Right now they look like seaweed, or hair in water. In another part of the sky they look like cotton balls that have been pulled apart. And Nina the Lopsided Kitten just jumped through the window and rubbed up against my legs. It's a glorious day! I'm going to get dressed and venture forth into it aiiiiiiiie!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-50959061052468016152009-11-20T23:02:00.002+01:002009-11-20T23:07:41.920+01:00A guilty feeling -- part two (Ocampo, Mexico)I haven´t written in almost a month! And this is not a real post, either -- just an acknowledgement of my failure. I get last place in the Blogger Olympics. I´ll write within one week about: the Day of the Dead, the arrival of the butterflies, and today, November 20, Mexico´s most important holiday (the beginning of the Mexican revolution). Until then, be well, amoebos!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-58782866552211103292009-10-27T11:24:00.003+01:002009-10-27T18:35:31.593+01:00A continuation of the last post (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)It is appropriate that I'm starting this post with Marifer's explanation of time -- a human invention -- because on Sunday most of Mexico "gained" an hour during the switch to the winter schedule. This means that, while last week it got dark shortly before eight, now it gets dark shortly before seven, and my poor body is so confused that I conked out at 8:30 last night. That doesn't make too much sense, because my usual bedtime is not 9:30 (I do suffer from Old Grannie Syndrome, but my case isn't that severe) -- but I can at least say that I find it amazing that everyone in this country, and most people in other countries, have such trust in clocks that they will alter their biological rhythms to fit them (dinner in the dark?). Also, I fully understand the riots that the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar caused in Britain and its colonies in the mid-18th century -- 11 days "lost"! If I were told that tomorrow was going to be the 28th of November instead of the 28th of October, I probably wouldn't feel a month older, but I would feel that the year was a month shorter. How strange that we listen more to calendars and clocks than to the universe! We try to make uniform and constant something that varies in nature depending on location and season (I'm not saying that time itself varies -- maybe it does! -- but that natural cycles do).<br /><br />Now back to my interview victims at El Bosque Village: I left off with Marifer, who said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. What do exist are events and processes, like the different stages of life, which are different for every person. All cycles of life are relative to each other -- there is no single basis for comparison. So, we measure not time, but changes and differences, without which time makes no sense. She said that we can experience "timeless" states, such as dreams, in which you can be thrown out of your life cycle, which reinforces the idea that time is mere perception and not a tangible reality.<br /><br />Marifer also told me about something that I found fascinating, prefacing it with the disclaimer that I would think she was crazy. (I don't think she's crazy at all.) When she was young, she discovered that, whenever she imagined something, it didn't happen. If, for example, she imagined going on a walk with her father after swimming at the beach, she'd come home from the beach to find that her father had left the house and wouldn't be back until after dark. She said that she can "manipulate the future by creating it in her imagination," but in a negative way, and for this reason she tries not to imagine good things in the future and live only in the moment. Oof! Not only is that the most interesting reason I've heard for living in the moment, but what a way to live, no? To be scared of imagining good things because you know that, as soon as they pop into your head, they won't happen? I think that I'd go crazy. Marifer is a toughie!<br /><br />Margret, with whom I went to the bread class, told us that she thought that time was an experience, and one very much linked to our bodies. When her body is moving quickly, time seems to pass quickly, and when her body is moving slowly, time seems to pass slowly (so, if she is sitting and thinking, time drags). For this reason, people are able to manipulate time by controlling their bodies. We can choose to live slowly or quickly, for time to linger or rush. Like Brian, Margret said that age affects our perception of time; she babysat back home, and she found it amusing that the children were always rushing, trying not to lose time by filling every moment with activity. Margret, older than the children, was capable of sitting and doing nothing -- she knew better than they how much time they "had". Margret also drew a distinction between different scales of time. Humans can understand time as a lifespan -- we have a sense of what that means -- and also as a day-to-day experience. Some people around the table thought that animals were capable of the latter but not the former, and we wondered what it would be like to live for several centuries rather than just one. Desirable or tragic? (Basically: Would we want to be bitten by a vampire?)<br /><br />Finally (actually, this was the first thing that she mentioned), Margret brought up the coil or spiral theory of time. This is the idea that our lives are spiral-ish in nature, that we go through cycles but each time at a higher level of understanding -- a combination of repetition and progression. Those are the two things that I have the most trouble reconciling in my head, and I liked hearing about them in the context of our lives (much easier than in the context of, e.g., the universe). Before moving onto Forest, Margret's boyfriend, here is a snippet of the conversation with Margret that I appreciated enough to write down verbatim:<br /><br />Margret: "Words are so . . ."<br />Irene: "Limiting."<br />Margret: "Well, you just have to pick the right ones sometimes."<br /><br />Yes! Exactly the issue!<br /><br />Forest was quieter than the other three, but, to my pleasure, based many of his ideas on observations of outer space. He said that he did believe in a universal time, because we could witness the birth and death of stars (whose lifespans are more or less predictable), but that our time, on our planet, was cyclical. The Earth spins around its axis and orbits around the Sun, giving us the days and the seasons. When I asked if there was a universal point of reference for time -- something against which to measure our cycles -- he said no, but then mentioned lightyears. (It's funny: the phrase "speed of light" sounds so spacey and sciencey to me that I fail to connect it to the light that my computer screen is emitting, or the light coming in from the open kitchen door. But it's the same deal!)<br /><br />The observation that I found most interesting didn't actually have to do with outer space. When I asked Forest how his perception of time had changed since coming to El Bosque Village, he said that time was the same, but how he used it was different. He's slowed down, in large part because he is confined to a smaller space. When he lived in the city, he had to get places, and those places were far away; he spent two hours a day biking to and from work. In El Bosque Village, everything is within walking distance. It sounds obvious, but I hadn't made this connection with my own experience here. I spend most of my time in or between Ocampo and Angangueo, which are only fifteen minutes apart by bus; my functional world is much smaller here than it is in Washington, D.C. And the people who live in Ocampo spend most of their time there. They never have to rush to work, and (ha ha) nobody worries about arriving late, because they know that the person they have to meet is somewhere in town (maybe even looking for them already). The pace of life here is anything but frenetic -- because life is confined to a small volume! (Well, now it sounds even more obvious. I often wonder if I am really stupid. Oh, I am, I am! What a bummer.)<br /><br />Also, I finally spoke with somebody about butterflies (after all, the point of my stay here)! On a walk to the outskirts of Angangueo, high up in the mountains, I met a man named Salomon and his father, Vicente. They have lived in Angangueo all of their lives, and, after Salomon showed me a book about the monarch butterflies, Vicente shared some of his memories of the butterflies when he was little. They were nothing special then -- the migration pattern hadn't been discovered, and no tourists came -- so he and his friends thought nothing of killing them for sport. Over the course of the winter, many would die on their own and cover the forest floor with a carpet of orange and black; farmers would bring their cows to the forests to eat them. Since those days, and even after the two sanctuaries were created and tourists started coming, the forest has been diminishing in size (due to legal, and a lot of illegal, logging), and the resting place of the butterflies has been shifting. Before, they could be seen in many parts, but now they go almost only to the sanctuaries, and there are fewer of them. Salomon expressed anger at the government for not doing anything about this -- it's bad for the people, too, because the tourist industry suffers -- and predicted that things would only get worse this year, with H1N1 influenza hysteria and the economic crisis. I am curious to see how many tourists do end up coming -- and from what countries. I bet a chocolate bar that there won't be many Americans.<br /><br />I'll wrap up this post now. I think that I've more than made up for not writing in my blog for three weeks, no? Now I wish that I could show you the pictures that people have drawn in my little blue book! Someday I will scan them all and put them in my photo blog, which has sunk into an even deeper coma than this one. Someday, someday . . .Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-16310018553773816862009-10-26T13:42:00.002+01:002009-10-26T20:57:32.503+01:00A great deal to report (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)WELL. It's been a while. In fact, it's been so long that this blog post is intimidating -- I want to write about so many things that my fingers are cringing in apprehension. Don't worry, fingers! The suffering will end by 11:30, when I'll leave for Ocampo for my now daily English class with Karina -- we are learning the present progressive (just like that!) and I have to walk and hop and run and stand around town, asking her, "What am I doing, Karina?" ("You are walking, hopping, running, standing," I hope she will say.) These exercises are good for me, because -- oh pain and suffering! -- it is getting colder and colder every day, and if I'm not walking and hopping and running around town, I'm blowing on my hands to warm them up. Who knew that I was such a weather wimp? California spoiled me.<br /><br />The classes are also good for me because Karina and I usually go to visit Anaisa, her niece, afterwards, and we do things like go on walks to Las Cruces (Ocampo's lookout point) (also its makeout point for those romantic young couples with nowhere else to go) or relax in Anaisa's house. We've also gone on a longer afternoon trip to San Jose del Rincon, a town in the state of Mexico, where we visited Anaisa's aunt and uncle and cousins. The highlight of that day was an unexpected rainstorm that caught us on the drive back to Ocampo -- we were riding in the back of Anaisa's parents' pickup truck and were soaked to the bones by the time we got home. We giggled hysterically between shivers.<br /><br />A while later, Adriana and I were standing at the kitchen door, watching the backyard river flood. Oof! We renamed it the Rio Bravo -- before it was the Rio Miranda -- and lamented the fact that our backyard would be full of garbage again by the time the flood ended. It is amazing how much trash accumulates by the riverside, and sad to think that, after we pick it up, it is just going to end up accumulating somewhere else. What will future archaeologists say when they find our giant piles of plastic bottles and bags? ("Pigs!") Plastic bags are the worst. I have done some planting in the backyard, and, everywhere I dig, a few inches down, I find a layer of plastic bags that I have to pull out with my herculean strength (they are ornery! and I'm sure that I can hear them laughing when I slip and fall on my butt). Now when I look at a pretty green field, I think, "Plastic bags!" They are probably there, beneath the grass, snickering, not decomposing as well-behaved things do. Readers: avoid them! Or reuse them a thousand times before throwing them away. Also avoid products with lots of packaging, and give away your old things instead of throwing them away, and . . . well, you know, the three R's. LOVE THEM.<br /><br />On to other things: Adriana and I have continued to live in harmony together with Nina the Lopsided Kitten (who is now so bold that she stalks and chases the sheep that graze in the neighbors' backyard and also their large dog, to whom she is snack-sized). We sit and talk and watch movies -- I am now acquainted with world-famous Mexican actor Cantinflas, who is hilarious -- and look at the stars when the sky is clear and cook (she does) and eat (both of us do) (I do the dishes, though, so as not to mooch shamelessly) and drive to Angangueo or Ocampo to do social rounds or eat tacos. When we're feeling more ambitious, we go to Zitacuaro, where we shop at the market or at a giant grocery store, and I have started to frequent the Thursday tianguis (weekly market). Adriana's friends drop by occasionally for an evening visit, meal, or smoke, and also to help us with things around the house. We call it "the perfect house (with defects)," but there are so few defects now that it may soon be upgraded to "the perfect house (defectless)." We have a constant water supply, electricity where we want it, a fridge (!), a mirror in the bathroom, doors that mostly close, plenty of kitchen utensils . . . all that's missing is a jacuzzi, and someday we plan to fill up the concrete water tank in the backyard to serve that purpose. Then even rich celebrities will be jealous of us!<br /><br />In addition to cohabitating our perfect house harmoniously, Adriana and I have discovered that we are excellent travel mates. A few weeks ago we drove with a friend, Brian, to a "balneario" near a town called San Jose Purua, where we spent the day swimming in the green, murky waters of what used to be a luxury swimming pool in an abandoned private club. Well, almost abandoned -- it is now run by a staff of about three, one of whom charges a minimal entry fee at the gate and two of whom sell potato chips and instant noodles at the bar. Adriana and I spent some time exploring the decaying buildings, some of which already had plant-covered floors, and walking along a road in the surrounding forest. We gaped at the Mother of All Trees (enormous, old, beautiful), oohed and aahed at interesting flowers, and speedwalked back to the main facility when we heard suspicious whistles and hushed men's voices coming from the nearby vegetation. Later, Brian and I went along another path that overlooked a great green canyon and had been taken over by a stream, so that our feet were always wet. We realized at some point that the wall above us was full of eroded stalactites and rock curtains -- we were walking in what used to be a cave! We thought about how many other caves we had walked over unknowingly and bounced in excitement.<br /><br />This past weekend, Adriana and I went to Los Azufres, a forest with natural hot springs. I laughed at Adriana for bringing what I thought were the entire contents of our perfect house (including the stereo) on a camping trip, but insisted that she share her blanket that night when my extremities were numb and I couldn't sleep from the cold -- then she laughed at me. We walked, read, lounged in the warm pools, built a fire with Gabriel and Ricardo, two friends who visited, admired the stars, and came home smelling like rotten eggs. The smell lingers; even after scrubbing away at my clothes like a madwoman, using detergents and softeners that smell like "roses and jasmine," "fresh spring," and "fiesta" (?), I catch a faint whiff of sulfur every time I walk past the clotheslines where they are drying. I consider it a souvenir -- essence of Los Azufres.<br /><br />Adriana also invited me to attend her school's anniversary celebration last Wednesday. We arrived late to the footrace from Ocampo to the school (about three kilometers, I think), so Adriana had to cheer on her students from the car instead of from her assigned spot by the side of the road, but she made up for her tardiness when we got to the school. Her job was to organize the students welcoming the visitors -- mostly members of the municipal government and students from primary schools -- and they were very welcoming indeed. Even I got to wear a little badge, and I was introduced around by Adriana's friend Luis as "a fellow English teacher." The morning ceremony was predictably boring; I don't understand why people think that speeches have to be humorless and dry, especially ones directed at junior high school students. There should be jokes! There should be music and dancing! There were, in fact, music and dancing, but they came after the speeches. The school's drama club, dressed to the nines in long colorful skirts and suits, the boys with black mustaches painted on their upper lips, danced a little routine, which I applauded wildly. I also watched Mexico's important historical figures (well, small and adorable impersonators of them) march by; I was the most enthusiastic spectator for this part of the show, too.<br /><br />My absolute favorite event, though, was the hot air balloon competition. Several groups of students constructed big balloons out of crepe paper, and, after filling them up with gas, lit the wick at the bottom opening and let them fly! Most burned instead of flying, which was tragic, because they were so beautiful -- a red heart, a multicolored star with tassels on the points, a multicolored cube, among other works of art. And sometimes the flaming pieces of balloon fell in the midst of the students, and I'd think, "Well, that's it. Somebody's hair will light on fire and things will turn gruesome." But nobody's hair lit on fire, nobody died, and, if someday I work at a school, I will try to convince the higher-ups to let our students play with gas and fire and highly flammable materials.<br /><br />And, finally, I have to write about something that I did alone, but which was certainly a highlight of these past three weeks: I spent four nights and three days at El Bosque Village, a planet-loving community in a forest near Patzcuaro (if you Google-image "Patzcuaro", you will see that the people living at El Bosque Village are lucky ducks). It is run by Brian and Marie, who are from Washington and Wisconsin, respectively, and several volunteers from all over the place who live there for periods lasting from several weeks to several months. I spent the first morning helping to build a chicken coop out of cob (a thick mixture of dirt, sawdust, pine needles and water) with Judith from Germany and Margret from Oregon, and that afternoon played legos with Gonzalito (the son of Soco, a woman from the nearby town of Zarzamora, who comes every Saturday to help cook) and Brenda from Mexico. In the evening I sat in a sauna with Brenda, Trevor from England, and Marie. The next day I walked in the forest and read, played volleyball, failed miserably at archery, and learned basic trapeze tricks with Judith, who has done trapeze for ten years! And on the last day of my visit, I spent most of the afternoon in Zarzamora, learning how to make and bake bread in a wood-fired stove with Soco's mother, Alicia. My fellow pupil, Margret, and I were exhausted by the time we got back to El Bosque Village -- making bread is not for the weak of spirit! We kneaded like it was our number one purpose in life, and, when our empanadas turned out deformed and bleeding apple butter, we did not despair but rather rejoiced, because we could eat them (the good ones were sold). Poor Alicia. She is patience and tolerance embodied.<br /><br />All of that sounds decadent in a hippie-dippie way -- and it was -- but it was also an invaluable learning experience. In addition to working on an eco-friendly building with my own hands, I read about eco-friendly architecture in El Bosque Village's relatively extensive library (it rivals Angangueo's public library), and was inspired by all of the neato things people have come up with. As a result, I have revised my Future Fantasy: I'm not only going to live in New Mexico, the state of states, geographic apple of my eye, but I'm also going to build a house there out of bags of dirt. Yes, dirt! Bags of it! You can come visit. (If you are intrigued, look up "earthbag building" and be amazed.)<br /><br />I also learned from the people there, and this was the best part of all. Brian, Marie, Margret, Forest, Marifer, Brenda, Judith, and Trevor were all interesting and open and friendly, and we talked about a variety of things that made me happy. We also talked about . . . time! And finally, after all those paragraphs about happenings, I come to my project.<br /><br />After writing about my Watson project anxiety in the last post, I was possessed by Watson project fire and started "interviewing" people with a vengeance. I informed Anaisa and Karina that every time I saw them, they had to draw a different picture in my little blue book (they took this well), and talked with several Ocampo friends and acquaintances at length about my project. The most interesting conversations were the ones I had with Gabriel and Jacob, who had vastly different opinions about humans' interaction with time. Gabriel mentioned linear time (we age), cyclical time (we eat at around the same times every day), and then said that, now that technology allows us to "control" time, we are the ones losing control. We are lost without our cell phones and watches, and we think little of hopping on a plane and emerging in a different world a few hours later -- travel is losing its meaning. We are getting used to being able to be wherever we want to be whenever, and think that we are "wasting time" when we're not there (e.g. when we're in the car). That time wasn't "wasted" before.<br /><br />Jacob had a very set view: the world is governed by cycles, but humans are exempt from these cycles. We are different from animals and other living things because we can control our activities, and even our lifespans, while they are the slaves of instinct. I asked if this was true of evolution -- if humans weren't a part of that, either -- and he said that he believed in evolution, but that humans weren't a part of it. Humans were made in God's image, and we were not subject to the same rules that govern other things in the universe. This was fascinating to me: a mixture of science and religion, with humans set apart from the rest of the universe. I discovered how close-minded I am when I kept having to bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him -- I am so convinced that some things are true (like the Big Bang, even though it is such a wacky theory, and evolution, and our un-special status) that I completely discount other possibilities (humans created by God, not part of evolution). I don't think that I should believe everything -- I'd explode -- but I should at least be able to listen to everything.<br /><br />At El Bosque Village, I spent the last evening interrogating Brian, Margret, Forest and Marifer, with whom I practiced my goal of listening to everything. It was the first time I talked with a group of people, as opposed to an individual or two people, and it was great! Brian said that time was like the third dimension to beings in Flatland -- we can't point to it. My questions (like, "How would you explain time to an alien?") invite BS, because they encourage people to wax philosophical and say things that don't make sense, but, in a real, down-to-earth sense, time is simple: we are born, we get older, we go through a number of biological phases, and we die. As we age, we discover the ratio theory of time -- the older one is, the shorter a day (or a month or a year) seems because it is a smaller part of the whole. When he did wax philosophical, Brian said that he did believe in a universal time, and that he thought of it as a bunch of vectors -- the present is the intersection of the past now and the now-now and the soon-to-be-now. The past doesn't exist the way the present moment does, but rather as a remnant; the remnants of the past are the now. And the future doesn't exist, either, until it becomes the now. Brian was convinced that all humans had to believe in the past and the future. How could people make plans, or think about their lives, without placing them in that framework?<br /><br />Marifer, in contrast, said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. And -- shoot! -- my watch tells me that it is 11:39 in the morning and I should be heading out the door to my English class with Karina. In fact, I'm probably going to be late. What an anxiety-causing invention! I will finish writing this entry in the afternoon and post it the next time I am online. It is long enough already, no?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-34742233643852412342009-10-25T14:53:00.000+01:002009-10-25T21:53:34.530+01:00A guilty feeling (Ocampo, Mexico)My poor blog has sunk into a coma. But fear not -- I have high hopes for its recovery. In fact, tomorrow morning, after planting some green things in the backyard, I plan to write a long post about everything that has happened in the past three weeks -- in Too Much Detail! Our favorite! I am ensuring the success of this plan by announcing it online, here in my blog. If I don´t write tomorrow after promising to today, I will suffer from guilty feelings, and nobody likes those. My plan is foolproof!<br /><br />Hasta bananas, then, amoebos. I hope that you are doing well!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-34136913615301291292009-10-05T19:37:00.001+02:002009-10-05T19:37:27.944+02:00A successful settling-in (Angangueo and Ocampo, Mexico)I'm sitting on the floor of the kitchen with my legs sticking out the back door onto the spiral staircase that leads into our yard. Nina the Lopsided Kitten (she has hurt her left hind leg twice already in her five months of life, so it sticks out when she sits down, and she is slightly cross-eyed -- but don't be deceived! she is a fierce huntress, the bane of all insects in the Diaz Villanueva-Toro Martinez household) is sunning herself lopsidedly on the third step down, and a black and white sheep is staring at me from the neighbor's yard. Hello, sheep. The sky is blue, and the hills beyond the little river that runs behind the back yard are covered with patches of magenta and orange-yellow flowers, pine trees, and other green beings that are just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. Behind me I can hear cars and vans and buses and trucks whizzing (or crawling, if it is a truck) along the road connecting Angangueo and Ocampo; soon I will be in one of the buses on my way to Ocampo to give an English lesson to Karina, whom I met last week with her cousin Anaisa and who took me on a ride in her dugout canoe in the Laguna Verde. We did not drown -- one of my successes du jour that day. My success du jour today might be forcing some unwilling victim to draw his or her conception of time in my little blue notebook.<br /><br />Now that I am settled in, I'm starting to suffer from Watson project anxiety. "Am I doing this right?!" I think to myself in the wee hours of the night, sweating, eyes rolling wildly, gripping the sheets in my white-knuckled fists and wringing them like wet towels. That's a lie. But I am a bit worried, because, to my dismay and great amusement, nobody with whom I have spoken about the butterflies thinks about them! That is, almost everyone I have asked about them says something along the lines of: "Oh, the butterflies. Yeah, they come every year. You'll see them in your yard. No, I've never been to the reserves. It's only the tourists who do that. Stories or legends? I don't think there are any. They're nothing special to me; I grew up with them." One man has told me a sketch of a story that has to do with the butterflies -- they are drawn to the gold in the hills near Angangueo, which were mined intensively until the early 20th century -- but I have yet to hear about the souls of orange-and-black-clad warriors returning for the Day of the Dead or harvest time markers I read about online. The most important things that the butterflies bring with them are not dead souls but living ones -- tourists like yours truly. Several people have told me that, in the past ten years, more tourists have been coming than used to, and the towns' economies clearly depend on the tourist dollar, which rolls in between November and March each year. There are empty hotels waiting to be filled, monarch butterflies painted on many public walls, and the names of businesses in Angangueo, the more touristy of the two towns, are even decorated with a common butterfly motif. This is also interesting, and I hope to meet more people who were around before the reserves were reserves and the tourists came in flocks. Watson project anxiety, begone! (Right?)<br /><br />I am living, as I wrote before, with Adriana, whom I like more each day (and I liked her to begin with, so this is a great thing!). We cook and eat together, and often have people over for late lunch or dinner -- I am still getting used to socializing every waking moment of the day and night, which is the norm here. Actually, I crack sometimes and retreat to the bedroom or backyard staircase to look at the sky, which is always doing something exciting. Among the things we have cooked (to say "we" is somewhat dishonest -- I generally chop and follow the directions that Adriana, Master Chef, gives me) are: tamales, pozole, pork with pumpkin (this was all her), quesadillas, soup, and . . . and . . . shoot. So many more delicious glutton-satisfying dishes. And I am such a glutton. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, including some that I had never seen before, like sapotes, which look like shiny deflated green rubber balls (i.e. unappetizing) but taste like capuccino when blended with milk. That, at least, is my opinion. 10/10 stars. I plan to weigh at least ten more pounds when I leave Mexico than I did when I arrived.<br /><br />When we're not cooking or eating, we are usually doing things around the house. I'm acquiring practical skills, like learning how to make a water pump start, and washing the water tanks, and setting up a water boiler (I didn't set it up! I watched and cringed when Jacob, who did set it up, was fiddling with the gas tank; tanks make me think pressure makes me think explosion, and loud noises are one of my weak points -- take note, enemies). A lot of plumbing knowledge, it would seem. We have set up clothes lines in the backyard, and picked up more garbage, and will soon plant more green beings that will be just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. The house is very homey now, thanks in large part to Adriana, who is a stickler for detail and whose adoring friends -- the many young men I listed in the last post -- happen to be handymen who all want to contribute to the effort by fixing doors that don't close properly or awkwardly placed electrical cords.<br /><br />We have also gone on excursions! Last last Saturday, Adriana, Edwin, Ricardo, Jacob and I drove four hours to Uruapan for a wedding. Luis, another teacher who lives in the hotel where Adriana and Edwin used to live and I almost lived, was married for the second time, a Christian-style ceremony which, to our disappointment, lacked happy music and dance (also funny was toasting with grape juice instead of wine). It was lovely to see proud families and little kiddies throwing rose petals on the ground before the bride, though -- especially lucky for me because I had met Luis exactly once before attending this most important and holy event in his life. Adriana, Edwin and I have also gone to Zitacuaro several times. Zitacuaro is the city closest to Ocampo, and where we do our major shopping in a giant grocery store and in the markets. This past Saturday we stayed until the early evening to eat at the booths along the Calle del Hambre, inaptly named because it is really the Calle de la Gula -- we booth-hopped and stuffed ourselves until another bite would have meant a sudden and tragic explosion. I also went to Zitacuaro's enormous Thursday tianguis, the weekly market, and finally bought clothes for cold weather. Bring it on, Father Winter. Irene the Finally Appropriately Clad can withstand your frosty mornings and snows-upon-the-mountain. (Actually, since I bought the sweaters and coat it has been gloriously sunny and warm, and I am sunburnt. Go figure.)<br /><br />I have to stop writing now to stand outside and wait for the next bus to Ocampo, but there is much more that I want to mention! I didn't write about how "punctual" here means showing up, and "very punctual" means showing up within an hour of the prearranged time, and I haven't described the people I see most often, and I haven't raved about the backyard fauna, which includes cows and sheep and lizards and butterflies and all sorts of interesting insects and spiders and caterpillars and worms and grubs, and I haven't said anything about Angangueo, which I finally explored thoroughly. It will have to be next time if I want to be "very punctual" -- and I do, because that part of my upbringing is too deeply ingrained for a few weeks in Mexico to vanquish it. I hope that somebody draws in my little blue notebook today! Maybe Karina will do it in exchange for the English lesson.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-75411756770451466292009-09-24T17:01:00.004+02:002009-09-24T17:49:06.529+02:00A cold and colorful place (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)Well, I am already behind in my weekly Mexico updates! Not too much of a shocker. And this one will be a shortie -- I started a longer post in a document on my computer, Toby, but he had a bout of grouchiness (my ability to break computers just by touching them has not diminished) and I couldn´t finish it.<br /><br />Now I am writing on a nameless computer in Ocampo, where I arrived a week and a day ago to a parade with music and colorful banners -- not welcoming me, but celebrating Mexico´s 199th year of independence. It was lovely. I got to see most of the town´s adult residents lining the streets, proudly sprinkling confetti on the heads of most of the town´s schoolchildren, who were marching in step, looking proud or confused. Since that auspicious beginning to my stay here, so much has happened that I can hardly keep it straight in my head. Here is a list:<br /><br />- I decided to move in with Adriana, an English teacher at a nearby school, instead of spending three months in a dark hotel room. Excellent decision. Adriana is wonderful, and we have spent the past few days cleaning and organizing the house (she more than I, since she moved to the house about a week before I arrived). Among our successes are: a garbage-free yard and river (at least the part of the river that we can see), a mostly functional kitchen full of food, a fixed ladder, and a compost bin with some fruit peels in it, which we plan to use on what will soon be our splendid garden.<br /><br />- I met Adriana´s friend Edwin, who is the leader-type of a group of about ten young men (sometimes a few more, sometimes a few fewer) (a few fewer?), with whom I have gone to a dance, played soccer (´played´ is perhaps misleading -- I jogged around and dodged the ball), and hung out on several nights in Edwin´s room and in Adriana´s house. The young men -- Isaac Fernando, Javier, Gabriel, Eduardo, Chafai, Brian Alexis, Ricardo, Fierros, Freddy, and others -- are friendly and funny, and I´m glad to have been adopted by the group, even if I am still quiet and awkward around them.<br /><br />- I met, went on walks with and/or had meals with several other people (a woman named Carla, her father Don Manuel, and her mother Dona Remedios; a girl named Anaisa who works at a taco stand; a man named Jacob who works at a telephone store; a woman named Angelica who is the director of a kindergarten) in Ocampo.<br /><br />- I saw 1200-to-800-year-old pyramids with Adriana in Zirahuato de los Bernal. !!! We then went to Zitacuaro, the nearest city, to go grocery shopping and drink fruit nectars.<br /><br />- Now that I´ve mentioned fruit nectars, I should also say that I´ve eaten: tacos with beef and pork and nopales, mole, rice, Michoacan mushrooms, chicken, enchiladas, pumpkin seeds, atole (a hot soupy sweet corn beverage), pan vaso (bread dipped in chili sauce, fried, and stuffed with your choice of meat), a lot of tropical fruits, and . . . well, chocolate, of course, but that´s not nearly as exciting. I´ve only gotten sick to my stomach once. Made of steel (I am). Adriana is going to show me how to cook other delicious things, among them tamales. The thought makes me salivate.<br /><br />- Learned the Mexican names for many words! I hadn´t realized how different the vocabulary was.<br /><br />That´s it for the list, I think. Now I should describe the places! I`ve spent the most time in Ocampo, which is flat and surrounded by tall forested hills (where the butterflies gather starting in November). It is a tiny town, with one main plaza, one main street and not too many others, and a river. There are always people in the streets, and there are always food vendors selling tacos, so some parts of town smell delicious. There are several wood processing shops, which turn wood (legally or illegally logged) into crates and sticks for mops and other such things. There are a lot of arcade game rooms. There are a lot of homeless dogs. There are corn fields and farm animals at the outer edges of town and beyond. There is a lot of rain, and there is visible breath in the mornings (it is cold! and humid) (the first few days I felt like I was in the rainy period of ´100 Years of Solitude´). There is a big market on Saturdays.<br /><br />That description doesn´t do the town justice, and I think that I achieved my goal of sounding like a third-grader who doesn´t want to put much effort into her English homework. Yes!! I´m actually living much closer to Angangueo now, which is quite different from Ocampo. It, too, has one main plaza, but this plaza has two churches and they are taller and grander than the one in Ocampo. Angangueo is much more colorful and much more vertical than Ocampo, since it is located higher up in the hills; walking around is good exercise (for legs and eyes). In general, it seems better cared for than Ocampo, and has more hotels and nice-looking food businesses (the ones in Ocampo are nice, but not nice-looking) -- it is the more touristy of the two monarch butterfly reserve gateway towns. I have yet to meet people in Angangueo. Next week I will wander around looking friendly and eager to make the acquaintance of anyone who is nearby (but only if that person looks at least half as eager as me -- I don´t want to scare anyone).<br /><br />´This one will be a shortie.´ I am so funny! I will write another update within the next, oh, ten days -- one better organized and more informative -- and send best wishes to you, kind reader.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-6420617121275451792009-09-14T22:24:00.006+02:002009-09-16T04:00:34.863+02:00A chapter ending (A Corunha, Spain)Oh, shameful neglect of blog! But I plan to write weekly (that's not too ambitious, right?) updates when I am in Mexico -- I leave tomorrow morning! In fact, this post is largely an attempt to put off packing, not because I have to rack my brains deciding what to bring with and what to leave behind (I am bringing everything with, of course), but because zipping up my suitcase tonight will be an awful lot like closing a chapter in the Book of Watson Adventure, and I am in a state of disbelief. Leaving Spain already? Quoi?!<br /><br />The past few weeks have gone by incredibly quickly, and I've met more wonderful people than I can mention and describe. In Santander I spent every night with a group made up of Germans (there are a lot of these in Spain), American (just one), Cuban (also), Argentinian (also also), and Spaniards; we walked around, drank chocolate and ate churros, and admired the light of the moon on the water. No joke. It was really pretty. In Madrid I stayed with Rosa, who was the friend of a friend of my mother's and is now my friend (a shorter and nicer title), and with whom I felt completely at home and happy. She introduced me to her friends -- more feelings of comfort and happiness -- and pointed out every cute thing that her two young cats did. During the days I explored the city (enormous! grand! overwhelming!), went on a day trip to Toledo (narrow-laned, beautiful and touristy), and spent an afternoon with Alberto, my Foz friend. This past weekend I've been back in La Corunha with Sylvia, Juan and not-so-little Giulia, who has grown a lot since I met her three months ago! Her favorite word is "agua". You say, "Hooola, Giulia" and she responds, "Aguaguaguagua. Agua. Aguagua." (There are infinite variations of this exchange.) I wonder what she thinks she's saying.<br /><br />All of these people have been incredibly good to me and admirable. I love admiring people! And I've been sad to say goodbye to them.<br /><br />The topic of time has come up on many occasions during my travels. Almost everyone I meet is willing to talk with me about it, so I have learned oodles from people. I have also noticed that artists are obsessed with time -- many museums that I've visited have exhibits with creative titles like "Representations of Time" and equally creative artwork (that I often fail to get, like a painting of a cute little dog face that was supposed to make me consider the meaning of "instant" and "present"; it made me consider the weirdness of dog breeding). Historical museums, too, are filled with interesting time-related things; I like to see how different ones set up exhibits that span many centuries. I hope to write about these things in my journal when I am less computer-averse, and I'll post something more concrete in this blog (as well as a summary of my fishing knowledge!).<br /><br />I'm not sure what my internet situation will be like in Ocampo, Mexico -- I'm not even sure what my living situation will be like! -- so I'll publicly apologize to anyone who tries to get in touch with me but doesn't hear back for a while: I'm sorry.<br /><br />Now I'm going to go back to packing, and at some point I will zip up my suitcase (my personal soundtrack will be playing dramatic orchestral music, lots of violins). Ciao now, Spain! Hooola, Mexico!<br /><br />I hope that you are doing wonderfully.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-90725967922666156612009-09-06T10:51:00.000+02:002009-09-06T11:19:24.122+02:00A collection of very old art (Santander and Puente Viesgo, Spain)A one-paragraph update, because I am getting behind in my blog duties (but am also increasingly computer-averse)! Yesterday I went to a town called Puente Viesgo, where I saw, for the first time in my life, prehistoric cave paintings. The experience ranks high in my List of Mind-Boggling Historical Experiences. Over the past many millions of years, dozens of caves have been carved by water into the rock of Monte Castillo, the big hill by the town, and in the past century, people have found cave paintings in five of them. Two of these -- la Cueva de las Monedas and la Cueva del Castillo -- are open to the public. La Cueva del Castillo is the main attraction for paintings. Excavations in the opening of the cave have revealed twenty-six layers of human-produced materials, ranging in age from 150,000 years to about five centuries. This cave has been a home for a long time! The paintings themselves, deeper inside the cave, date from about 12,000ish years ago, and are of bison, deer, horses, hands, and symbols that haven't yet been deciphered. What I found most fascinating was that the painters used the contours of the rocks as part of their art. They didn't say, "Oh look, a flat wall -- I will draw a horse there!" They said (something like), "Hmm . . . those cracks look like a horse's hind legs . . . and look how the rock protrudes here, that could be the horse's head . . . I will draw the horse's torso and front legs." They saw the pictures before they drew them! My favorite one of all involved shadows. The guide pointed out a painting that looked pretty odd to us -- a large pair of legs with no body attached. She asked us, "Why would they do that?" We failed the pop quiz -- nobody knew. Then she put the lamp in a certain position behind a rock formation -- and suddenly there was an upright bison body to go with the legs! The people had seen the shape of the bison in the shadow and added legs to turn it into a shaman. That's the theory, at least. WOWEE!!! I almost bounced up and down (might have actually). I think it's so exciting that we can see the same thing in a shadow that people saw ten thousand years ago. The other cave was more geologically impressive -- stalactites and stalagmites and curtains and organs and falls and other beautiful formations galore. Our planet is so great!<br /><br />That's it for this update because it is breakfast time. In nine days I will be in Mexico -- holy shamoley.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-87298812408637328812009-09-01T18:37:00.002+02:002009-09-02T14:58:55.671+02:00An exultation (Picos de Europa and Oviedo, Spain)I think that I must be the most fortunate person in the world. My legs, on the other hand, consider it a great misfortune that they were paired up with me, and went on strike yesterday to protest the abuses to which they were subjected during the weekend excursion to the Picos de Europa. They haven't lifted the strike yet, so I cringe every time I go down stairs -- but all I want to do is go back to the mountains and abuse them all over again.<br /><br />I arrived to Oviedo on Friday evening and was met at the station by Chus, my CouchSurfing host, who also studied physics (but is now an independent graphic designer) and with whom I have another 79348579345 things in common. Any attempt to describe him and his hospitality will end in gushiness; suffice it to say that I am glad to have a new Friend. He had organized our weekend excursion into the Picos de Europa, a vast mountain range about two hours from Oviedo, and that night we won the gold medal in Last-Minute Preparation -- when I confessed that I didn't have hiking boots ("but my sandals should be all right, no?"), Chus said, "Impossible!" and we drove to a delightful outdoorsy store at a suburban strip mall (Spain has these, too) to buy a pair. Castor and Pollux, my new spiffy boots (and trusty steeds), would end up saving my life, or at least my ankles, many times during the next few days. We also bought food for our hikes; in retrospect, two loaves of bread, five packages of sandwich cheese and meat, and 725 grams of chocolate (my idea) was overdoing it a little, but better that than (e.g. and oh horror!!) a chocolate craving left unsated. We had a late dinner at home and conked out after looking at an Ansel Adams book -- photographs of big wild spaces! We would be in one soon!<br /><br />The next morning, we picked up Alina, a German student who is spending eight months in Spain and who came adventuring with us, at the bus station, and we all set off for the mountains. Alina, too, is gush-worthy, and almost the same person as me because 1. she spent a year in Minnesota, 2. she speaks Spanish, German and English, and 3. she will be doing her master's at Boston University either next year or the following one (in International Relations, though, not Science Journalism). Twins! Upon reaching the mountains, Alina, Chus and I left the car near a lake and hiked up to the refugio, where we would spend the night. Alina and I were delighted at every turn -- mountain walls of gray stone with purple flowers! cows with gently tinkling bells munching on the grass! some pretty trees! -- and Chus, who had visited these mountains many times before, said, "You'll see what the places we hike to are like!" Also auspicious was the almost sudden disappearance of gray clouds and fog that had hung over us until we stopped for lunch and Chus said, "We just have to hope that the clouds clear up." Lo and behold! They did.<br /><br />Not everywhere, though. After dropping off two of our backpacks at the refugio and filling the third with water bottles, we hiked to a nearby mirador (passing the occasional cave in a wall or in the ground) and sat on a ridge that overlooked a valley, presumably forested but so completely filled with clouds that we couldn't see the trees! All around us, we could see mountain tops and ridges in the hot sun, and to our left was a steep mountain wall, wet from the water that seeps out of the rock, but below there was a cloud sea. At one of the edges of the cloud sea, I watched the fog spill over a low mountain ridge into another valley -- it is absurd what beautiful things this planet is capable of creating. Way to go, Planet. We reluctantly hiked back to the refugio and arrived just in time for our eight o'clock dinner, which was exquisite and especially impressive because the three people who run the refugio have to bring up all of the supplies on horseback. That night, after a peach-rainbow sunset over another cloud sea, the fog around us cleared up and we saw the stars. Ugh. We are part of such a big universe.<br /><br />The next day was our Big Adventure (the one for which my legs still haven't forgiven me) -- a full-day hike to the top of the highest mountain in the part of the Picos we were in, complete with crawls up steep slopes of sharp, football-sized rocks, slips down snowy valleys, and scales up walls that were significantly more vertical than horizontal and significantly higher up than Safe Falling Altitude -- but we didn't fall. Castor and Pollux, and Alina's also-brand-new-but-six-times-as-expensive hiking boots, saw to that. I'm passionately in love with the Picos de Europa, which I feel incapable of describing. Such a big part of being in the mountains, and particularly these mountains, so big and harsh and dry (I kept thinking of Mars and the Moon on steroids), is emotionally responding to their presence. I can't write about what I saw because it wouldn't explain what I experienced. So: go to the mountains! Have a mountain experience! It will be super. (And even more super if you have companions like Chus and Alina.)<br /><br />We made it back to the car at ten at night, now a company of four, because Javier, Alina's CouchSurfing host from Gijon, surprised us at the refugio! On the way home, Chus introduced me to Bruce Springfield, who is now on my List of Artists to Discover and Admire, and, after showering, we went to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. The next day was decadently relaxing. We slept in and spent the afternoon strolling through the old part of Oviedo, sitting at a bar and a sidreria (a place to drink sidra, or cider), eating gelato and fine chocolates, and sitting again at a park . . . "watching life pass by," as Chus told me Arturo Perez Reverte puts it. Watching life pass by is delightful. The park was full of elderly people who walked slowly and sat together or alone on benches, and parents with children, some of whom were entertaining themselves by chasing and popping the giant bubbles a man was making with a sticks-and-string contraption. We were surrounded by big trees, which were around before we were born and will, I hope, still be around after we're dead, and I'm sure that the park will be full of the exact same people doing the exact same things then (there's no "then" word for the future!).<br /><br />In the evening, Chus and I cooked mofongo (plantain balls with garlic and pork) and fried okra, my attempt at an introduction to Puerto Rican and Southern U.S. cuisine, and Javier and Alina joined us for a lovely and long dinner. I have learned so much from so many people in the past week! Chus, Javier and Alina all indulged me by starting conversations about time, but these always morphed into conversations about life philosophies, ways of living, trends in society, goals for the future -- and I am forming a clearer and clearer picture of how I'd like to lead my life. Two concrete examples:<br /><br />1. Alina told me that she had recently become interested in Zen and Buddhism, and that, several months ago, she had started meditating and making an effort to be present in the moment (a mentality that both Chus and Cristiano also shared with me). If she is doing the dishes, she is DOING THE DISHES. If she is walking in a park, she is WALKING IN THE PARK. It doesn't make sense to be stressed about what awaits her at home while she's walking in the park, because she can't do anything about it in the moment -- instead, she should enjoy the park. Since she started focusing on this way of living, she is happier. Moments are fuller, and sweet ones are less bitter; before, she wanted to hold everything close, and the knowledge that good things would disappear was painful, but now she is trying to accept that all things come and go, and they are no less wonderful for going. It was helpful to hear Alina (and Cristiano) talk about this, because I have struggled with it, too, and especially during this trip. It has been very difficult for me at times to be fully in the present when so much of what has shaped me, my family and friends and familiar environments, are far away. I miss them, I think about them, I fantasize -- and my mind ends up being somewhere different from my body, clinging to what is not there. Part of the reason that the mountain excursion was so glorious is that this didn't happen -- it was so easy to be exactly there, in the mountains with Chus and Alina, and not somewhere else in my head. I have to keep working on this!<br /><br />2. Javier talked, among many other things, about his dissatisfaction with this society's consumerist ways. We're so used to consuming that it's what we do with our free time (think going shopping), and we value things that cost money more than things that don't (in his opinion, people don't go to the mountains because they're free; if they were fenced off and a 30-Euro entrance fee were charged, crowds would flock to the gates). We've become slaves of industry giants, who survive because we fall into a consumption-need cycle -- the more we consume, the more we need. Javier is currently working on freeing himself from this cycle -- a long, multi-step process -- by needing less. Last year, he looked around and said, "I have enough stuff! I'm not going to buy anything this year." He gave his fancy motorcycle to a friend, and is trying not to buy clothes, furniture, music -- material clutter. I admire this greatly! And I, too, am going to try to need as little as possible by consuming less. Also, when I do consume, I want to consume better. If I can choose between an imported apple at a grocery store and a locally-grown apple, I'll pick the latter, so that my consumption habits better reflect my philosophies and ethics. I think that this is much easier in theory than in practice, but it is also how I am (indirectly) relating to many parts of the world -- and that is pretty important! A life-long Thing to Work On. Those are the best.<br /><br />Now I'm in Llanes, where I'm spending just a day, and tomorrow evening I go to Santander. So much so fast! I can almost feel myself growing up.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5265284236121905977.post-42307153567355894702009-08-28T10:57:00.002+02:002009-08-28T12:04:23.765+02:00An uninspired haiku series with questionable grammar (Gijon, Spain)My last few posts have been so long that even I am intimidated by them -- so this one is going to be a shortie. I considered writing it in haiku form, but . . . wait, that's an excellent idea! Genius. Here goes:<br /><br /><em>MONDAY</em>:<br /><br />Jesus at the docks<br />shares the history of Foz,<br />does not like pizza.<br /><br />Ex-seaman Pepe,<br />friend of Alberto's, tells me<br />about Moon's effect.<br /><br />Full moon: fish spread out.<br />New moon: fish stick together.<br />Plankton glow in dark.<br /><br />He knows, too, about<br />life cycles of anchovies --<br />now almost fished out.<br /><br />Fishermen seem all<br />to have a firm grasp on each<br />species' life cycle.<br /><br />Later, evening-time,<br />Alberto introduces<br />me to old cousins.<br /><br />They see love sparks where<br />there are none. They wink and smile.<br />Wonderful people.<br /><br /><br /><em>TUESDAY</em>:<br /><br />Bus to Gijon -- five<br />hours. Once here, I see two<br />art museums. Then<br /><br />I meet host Daniel,<br />who takes me on a great tour<br />of non-tourist parts.<br /><br />Daniel is a vet<br />with well-developed views on<br />politics, world, us.<br /><br />I learn much from him.<br />(Bifidus mystery solved:<br />yogurts not suspect.)<br /><br /><br /><em>WEDNESDAY</em>:<br /><br />Hours among plants<br />at botanical gardens.<br />I really love plants.<br /><br />Then, motorcycle<br />ride to nudist beach below<br />glorious cliffs. Wow!<br /><br />I hike, fully clothed.<br />Sun is bright, people outside.<br />Drink water or die!<br /><br />At night, dinner with<br />another CouchSurfer named<br />Cristiano. Hmm. (Is "Cristiano" three syllables or four? Ergo "hmm.")<br /><br />Also mmm: good food.<br />Italian politics<br />outrageous, I learn.<br /><br />The late-night habits<br />of the elderly also<br />surprised Cristiano. (This time it's three.)<br /><br />Girlfriend's theory is<br />that old women have worked hard;<br />now this time is THEIRS.<br /><br /><br /><em>THURSDAY</em>:<br /><br />Two-hour walk to<br />the industrial port, which<br />is like a city.<br /><br />Another Jesus,<br />kind-eyed man, tells me about<br />seaweed collection!<br /><br />Fascinating, but<br />alas! I do not see it.<br />Maybe in Llanes.<br /><br />Long conversation<br />with Cristiano that evening.<br />He is so thoughtful!<br /><br />Impossible to<br />sum up life philosophies<br />in haikus, but here:<br /><br />Live every moment.<br />Find beauty in the small things.<br />Material things fade. (Oh no. Is "material" mah-tee-ree-al or mah-tee-rial? Probably the former. I'm a big-time haiku cheater. Also, I need to go back to elementary school and learn about syllables.)<br /><br />Made me think a lot.<br />Lucky to meet people who<br />make one think a lot.<br /><br /><br /><em>FRIDAY</em>:<br /><br />Gray and rainy day.<br />Soon my toes will be chilly<br />as I walk around.<br /><br /><br /><em>WEEKEND</em>:<br /><br />The plan is to go<br />to Picos de Europa<br />with a CouchSurfer!<br /><br />Big mountains, big sky,<br />trees and rocks and bugs and birds --<br />my friends. Peaceful breaths.<br /><br /><br />Well, I would call that a dismal failure. But I'll bet it took a lot less time to read than my usual posts!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2