Interestingly, no

Home Base

2010-06-24T01:20:00.003+02:00

The road has brought me back to Michigan once more, which means that it's time for a relax-and-reboot transition. I hope you'll stick with me as I soak up the last of my memories and prepare myself for the next leap forward. For now Mission Moving On is still a work in progress.

There and back again

2010-05-18T06:20:00.005+02:00

With less than a week now to go before our flight back to the States, I'm starting to get asked: how does it feel to be leaving New Zealand? And let me tell you, no one is more interested in finding an answer to that question than I am. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings flying around right now, and not a lot of them are very articulate.

But here's the best analogy I've come up with so far: it feels like you're nearing the end of a truly delicious dessert. And even though you know you're not really hungry anymore, and so it's really the right time to run out, you still feel a little anxious about being finally, irrevocably out of mouthfuls. Because it's so incredibly scrumptious, and because you don't know when you'll get a chance to have it again, and so part of you still wants the dessert to go on forever. Or at least, if you have to be done eating it, you wish you could keep tasting it whenever you wanted to. You feel nervous that the memory of the taste just isn't going to be enough. And yet at the same time you know that in a while, after the "where did my pudding go?" sadness wears off a little, you'll be glad that you didn't overeat. You'll know that your portion was that "just right" amount that leads to maximum appreciation of your dessert experience.

So here we are, taking our last bites of New Zealand, trying to enjoy every one. And watching New Zealand like you watch loved ones, when you know you're going to be apart, and you want to memorize every little detail about them to keep with you while they're away. Here's some impressions of what our last road trip to the Coromandel had to offer.

Will Work for Beer

2010-05-13T10:30:00.001+02:00

Tommy and I were quite keen to have one last WWOOFing experience before leaving New Zealand, so we'd been keeping our eye on the WWOOF "hotlist," which features last-minute requests for workers. And when we saw the listing for Mike's Organic Brewery, just outside beautiful Mount Taranaki, we knew we had found our place...

Good Beer

Good Views

Great People

WWOOFing is one of those exciting opportunities to work for something other than money. Not that the cash overfloweth at this stage of the trip, but our time is even shorter. And it seems to cut out the middle man somehow: instead of menial labor in exchange for petty cash that probably would have gone toward pasta and beer anyway, now we can go straight to the source. We can clean, rake, paint, and bottle and seconds later have a cold lager in our hands, great new friends all around, and the afternoon off to explore. It makes the work itself seem so much more intimately connected to all that goodness.

Neverland and camp sites at the end of the rainbow

2010-05-09T04:27:00.000+02:00

There's more than a little magic in New Zealand, and sometimes you know for sure that it's gotten inside you. This is our cliff, at the northmost tip of New Zealand, where we napped and made up fairy tales.

And here's our campsite at the end of the rainbow. I know...it's a little gratuitous.

If there's one thing I really hope I can hang onto from this experience, it's the sensation of moving through mythic space. We weave ourselves into new stories every day, whether we write, speak, sing, or walk them, and here I know that being a storyteller is sort of like being a magician. Choose your own adventure. As Captain Planet would say, the power is yours.

Car meets curb and we meet friends

2010-05-03T23:59:00.006+02:00

Once upon a time, Tommy and Lauren set out in their friend Kev's car to visit Northland. Several hours into the drive, that car met a curb, and jumped right over it in excitement. Which, as Lauren and Tommy now know, is not good for either tie rods or drive shafts. Things seemed likely to get a bit pathetic. But who should happen along at that moment but an ex-pat American couple with a swanky, Victorian-style B&B overlooking the sea. "Come stay with us," they said, "and we'll give you food and a room you could never in your life hope to afford in exchange for painting walls in our new house." And so Lauren and Tommy got to experience the flashest, most unexpected WWOOF stay imaginable while their car got a whole new set of parts.

There's another way to tell that story, which would involve some supernatural narrative structuring and the drawing of some divine-type conclusions. Our hosts put forward the idea that the whole ordeal was possibly "meant to be." And I can't deny that there is something that feels extra-coincidental about it all: the timing of it, our increased ability to accept and let go at this stage in the trip, our hosts' incredible generosity. But I also feel a sort of postcolonial, postmodern inhibition about implying that we were somehow singled out by the universe for special treatment. I feel nervous about making a religion out of being fortunate, overextrapolating from being incredibly lucky. In equal measure I desire and fear to construct universal principles from the experience of being taken care of. Is it possible to talk about blessings without talking about their opposite? Not curses, necessarily, but even the absence of good and comfort and care? Why me, yes, and also why not someone else?

And so, since that particular question seems unlikely to resolve itself anytime soon, having kept many quicker and wiser minds awake for centuries already, for now I'll stick with the more straightforward story and allow you to come to your own conclusions. We had an accident that could have been much worse. We were taken in by a lovely family and got to stay in this house...

in this room...

with this view...

and we were filled with gratitude and wonder.

Fakatonga

2010-04-25T01:32:00.017+02:00

One of the motivating factors for embarking on my New Zealand adventure this year was the Peace Corps placement of my friend Alicia in the tiny Pacific Island chain of Tonga. Only three hours from New Zealand, but isolated and tourist-free enough that I probably wouldn't have ever heard of it, much less visited, if not for Alicia. We had talked about crossing paths in the Pacific for at least a year, and then a few weeks ago I found a magically cheap flight and booked myself a ten-day holiday from my holiday.

The trip was incredibly rich and packed with new impressions and thoughts. I spent time with Peace Corps volunteers, crazy expats, Tongan families, as well as beautiful beaches and palm trees. Because Tonga receives few tourists, and because I was blessed by a friend who's now pretty much fluent in Tongan, I got to see a very varied slice of Pacific Island life and get some insight into the Peace Corps experience. I'll try to show you a bit of it via a (perhaps overly long) photo tour.

The domestic flight from the island of Tongatapu to the Ha'apai island chain. I flew over on a tiny six-seater plane, sitting next to the luggage, and gaping shamelessly at the islands and reefs and little waves that I pretended were dolphins. Those are colors I don't think I had ever seen before in nature.

I arrived in Ha'apai to a greeting party of Alicia, several curious Tongan children, and Mui Mui, Alicia's singularly adorable adopted dog. The pampered "palangi" (or white people's) dogs are a source of endless amusement to the Tongans, whose dogs - like the pigs and chickens - generally roam at will, feed where they can, and eventually are eaten by the family for a special treat. But don't worry...Mui Mui is off the menu now.

Most Tongans work at subsistence farming, and Alicia's neighbors kept us well provided with food from their bush plot. Like these "hopa" bananas, which we later fried for breakfast or made into countless loves of banana bread.

Sunsets in the Pacific seem invariably beautiful and are the Tongans' favorite time for a warm evening swim. Here's Alicia with the neighbor kids and Mui Mui, followed by the spectacular sunset on our night at Uoleva.

And here's Uoleva during the day. Thanks to Alicia's friendships with the residents of Ha'apai, we got to spend two gorgeous, practically free days on this uninhabited resort island, swimming and snorkeling on the reefs: a nice look at how the slightly less poverty-line tourists might see the Pacific.

We even got a free snorkeling trip on the way back.

We also got to spend a lot of time with Alicia's incredibly hospitable and generous neighbors. They invited me to spend a traditional Sunday with them, making lu in the umu (coconut oven, pictured above) and then dressing us up in Tongan mats to go to church (below...Alicia and Tupou) while our big meal cooked. The afternoon is then spent in a colossal nap.

And when I left, the family even presented me with some traditional Tongan gifts, including this gorgeous sea turtle shell, which the Tongans are allowed to harvest, but which U.S. Customs prohibits me from taking home. We called to ask and they basically laughed in our faces. Would you like some ivory and gorilla hands with that? Maybe a nice tiger-skin rug? O.K...point taken.

All in all, I had a wonderful stay, experienced incredible hospitality, and also got eaten alive by mosquitos, sunburnt, and stung by a tiny jellyfish. I grew quite attached, actually. I hope I get to cross paths with some of those beautiful people again soon.

Kiwi Hospitality

2010-04-18T11:57:00.000+02:00

There's another horn that needs tooting, I've realized. The New Zealand countryside can't steal all the glory. Tribute must also be paid to my wonderful hosts, the Kiwi friends and friends-of-friends who have been taking me into their homes and and bringing me along on their holidays. In Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Tongariro, Akaroa, and Arthur's Pass, I've been fed and housed and driven about by the most wonderful people, and I'd like you to meet them too.

Me and Tommy with Beth, Laura, and Kev: youth workers and North Island hosts extraordinaires. They worked at a summer camp with our friend Luisa last year, and this year they have offered us their homes and cars whenever we needed to clean up, rest a bit, or stage some northern adventures. Pretty incredible for people who had never met us before January.

Tommy with Juliette, Jane, and Megan; Tommy with Richard. I met Juliette, Megan, and Richard in France (you may remember them from the photos of the castle holiday), and they've since introduced me to a whole network of fun-loving Kiwis and to a variety of typically Kiwi holiday destinations down south. You couldn't ask for more delightful, silly, and generous friends.

Giving and receiving hospitality is one of the most marvelous parts of travel for me. The "pay it forward" economy of helping someone along on a journey seems such a strong proof against the lie that humans are inherently selfish. It restores your faith in the potentially exponential effects of friendship. And I hope that someday, I'll be able to pass some of this good energy on to others. Negative emotions aren't the only ones that snowball and pick up speed when you roll them down a hill.

So long South Island, bye bye Bilbo

2010-04-10T03:11:00.007+02:00

As I flew over the Cook Straights last night, leaving the South Island for the North, I started thinking about how often lately I've actually been able to feel the emotional and existential sandshiftings that signal "transition time." I've been putting my ear to the ground for them, trying to give myself time to absorb the aftershocks, miss the old and realign to the new. It's gotten me to wondering whether life is actually moving faster and hitting harder on this trip, or whether I'm just paying more attention. Maybe life has always been changing from moment to moment with this much color and noise, but I had my eyes on a bigger picture that just hasn't existed while I'm here.

Anyway, there's a wee semi-philosophical moment for you, prompted by the emotional weight of leaving the South Island. After cozy visits with Kiwi friends, an amazing road trip with Devon and Ross, and a fabulous WWOOFing stay, Tommy and I have both made our separate ways north to start new adventures. And to make the whole transition that much more weighty, we've even left our beloved car, Bilbo, behind, where he will hopefully run free - low on battery life, but mighty in spirit - with new travelers some day. As for us, we've got our packs on our backs again, we've bid adieu to the Southern Alps, and the trip seems totally new and unknown yet again.

So I'd like to propose a toast to the South Island and to our trusty car, via some last travel photos of our final weeks in the south.

Queen Charlotte Coast Track

Kaikoura

Abel Tasman National Park

Arthur's Pass

And here's to you, Bilbo. You taught me how to jump a car, how to believe in empty-tank miracles, and how to throw the schedule out the window.

Life at Ngaroma

2010-04-01T11:18:00.012+02:00

Tommy and I feel like we got pretty lucky with our first WWOOFing experience. As I shared in my last post, our hosts really helped us get our hands dirty and make ourselves at home. So here are some photos to take you through a day in the life of a very happy WWOOFer.

Greeting the Morning

Shifting the Sheep

Puttering in the Gardens

Walking the Farm

Running the Dogs

Dining with the Family

Calling it a Day

Wonderful World of WWOOFing

2010-03-21T22:51:00.003+01:00

Farming Firsts So Far at Ngaroma Homestead

1. Shearing a sheep

2. Firing a rifle

3. Driving a quad bike

4. Running a pack of dogs

5. Herding sheep with the dogs and the quad bike

Picture your very favorite city-girl-goes-down-on-the-farm story - it can be anything at all, as long is it's not the Hannah Montana movie. Now picture me fulfilling a lot of those timeless tropes: she intentionally tries to miss actually shooting the Canadian geese; she's not terribly gifted in the arena of gear changes or tire pressure; and she's a vegetarian, for crying out loud, on a sheep farm (who after the sheep-shearing incident, incidentally, is probably off of the wool as well). In short, I'm having an absolute ball here. I hope to get you a couple photos of the farm (and my pack of dogs) soon.

And Whither Then? I Cannot Say

2010-03-14T10:37:00.000+01:00

So after all the wonderful photos and countless days of joy, tears (mostly mine), and silliness (of the most meaningful sort), the era of the Road Trip has officially come to a close. Tommy and I dropped off Devon and Ross at a (remote and unbelievably gorgeous) WWOOF farm in the Marlborough Sounds, where we sang one last round of "The Four Best Friends" in front of a herd of sheep. And then, unexpectedly, I dropped off Tommy at the Picton ferry terminal so that he could start a long, difficult journey back to the States for his grandfather's funeral. Lights up on me, alone in the Sounds, the lone driver of our car, the sole guardian of our fuel canisters and musty cooler bag. When life decides it's time for you to make a change, it's not always a gentle process.

It's always surprising how quickly a travel experience, even of the least stable sort, begins to feel like your one and only "real life." Leaving Devon and Ross felt like The Band breaking up or your kids leaving home, and when I said goodbye to Tommy I told him to come home soon. You may well ask: by "come home" do I mean leave his family and his hometown and come back to a foreign country where we live out of a car...to meet me at a farm that neither of us has ever seen before? Yes. Strange as it sounds, that's actually what I mean. And I know when I see him coming up the driveway, that's exactly how it's going to feel.

But now, for a short time, home is just me. It's a butterflies-in-the-stomach kind of feeling. I have five days to myself, then a journey to our first WWOOF stay near Kaikoura, which I'll be starting solo, and then Tommy will be back in about a week and a half. Not a ton of time, really, but with all the changes in the air it feels very new and unknown.

There's a new chapter heading on this next page of the story, I think, but I don't get to read what it is right away. You have to listen slowly and carefully. You look for clues. And no use trying to guess early - you have to let the story reveal itself to you in its own sweet time, or you risk not hearing everything it has to say. It's sounds a little mystical and zany, but that's the best I can do for you right now. It's time to set out on the next leg of the adventure.

Pursuing It With Eager Feet

2010-03-12T08:00:00.000+01:00

And now the grand photo finale: the second half of our 4 Best Friends Road Trip, and the end of an era, it feels like, down here in New Zealand. These pictures span the waning weeks with all four of us together in Bilbo Wagons (our new name for our trooper of a car), and remind me of everything I've loved and learned from traveling with these cats. (More on that in my next update...)

Wine Tasting

West Coast

Eating out at an organic garden/pizza joint in the town of Ross

Or eating in over the camp stove

Jumping out of planes

It's been a good ride

And I Must Follow If I Can

2010-03-09T22:30:00.010+01:00

Interlude: Rees-Dart Tramp

Day 1: 16.5 km, 3 mountain streams, 1 magical forest, 18 disbelieving muscles, 2 completely mud-saturated hiking shoes, 4 exhausted but very happy trampers

Day 2: 15 km, 1 saddle crossing, 3 fit and ready warriors and 1 totally exhausted tramper (yours truly), countless top-notch mountain vistas

Day 3: 15 km, scattered showers in the Misty Mountains, 1 golden field through Rohan, 8 sore feet, 3 blisters, 3,574 sandflies at the end of the day

Day 4: 16.5 km, unrelenting downpour = wet tents, soaking clothing, rising creek levels = getting a late start and sprinting to catch the shuttle bus out = 3 hours of pretending to be chasing orcs to keep my feet moving, followed by a warm night of hot tub, pizza, and beer

The Road Goes Ever On and On

2010-03-07T09:11:00.008+01:00

Internet ain't cheap here in Middle Earth, so consider this the first installment of road trip photos. No plans, no reservations, just following the clues and enjoying the ride.

Mt. Cook

Nugget Point

Beach Time

Fiordland

Staying in Shape

Setting Up Camp

To be continued...

On the road again

2010-02-24T06:34:00.002+01:00

Our lovely car Smeagol, a.k.a. The Miracle Machine, a.k.a. The Mystery Mobile, at our camp site outside Aoraki Mt. Cook. One week into the camp-a-thon road trip and life is good, my friend.

The art of waiting

2010-02-15T21:38:00.003+01:00

Take a moment to refer back to my list of goals, specifically the item known as “practice free-spiritedness.” If you’d like to, you can also take a moment to mentally assess, on a scale of 1 to 10, just how free spirited you believe me to be. If you’ve spent time with me in a time-sensitive situation (catching a plane, getting the last bus home, or showing up to a movie in time to see the previews) then you’re probably more likely to rate me at the low end, somewhere between “trying hard to play it cool but exhibiting some pretty questionable facial tics” and “your nail biting is getting fairly annoying for everyone around you.”

Week two in New Zealand: I have unexpectedly found myself in just such a time-sensitive situation. Tommy and I arrived in Christchurch a week ago, met up with our two lovely traveling companions, Devon and Ross (www.devonitelyrossome.com), whom I lured to us with the promise that we had a car. And I really thought that we did. My generous friend Juliette had already offered me her car for the duration of our stay in New Zealand. But I was about to be blindsided by one of those big scary words (like “mortgage” or “tire pressure”) whose meaning I have been so studiously avoiding learning for years: insurance. One of those grown-up Achilles’ heels.

For days we only know that Tommy and I still need to be added as drivers on the insurance policy and so the car isn’t ready for us. Then for a few more days, complete loss of communication. Radio silence. Devon and Ross have now paid for several nights at a hostel, and my guilt-o-meter is rising steadily. We start kicking around the idea of just buying a car to speed things along. We visit the backpacker’s car market, and it’s like leaving an animal shelter without a puppy: cars parked everywhere, their owners seemingly living out of them, waiting every day to swarm the few buyers who come in and to beg them to please buy their cars so they can make their flights home. I have a very un-free-spirited vision of us at the other end of our trip when we need to resell the car and we move in with these people, who might still be here for all I know, drinking 40s and heating soup on the radiators of their sad station wagons.

Then yesterday a moment of hope: we make contact with Juliette’s mom and things seem to be moving forward. But alas…the insurance company isn’t sure that they want to add two non-residents to the policy, sensing the potential for an international-scale hit-and-run. We have to look into finding a different insurance company, but in the meantime there’s nothing much that I can do. Just wait and see.

Based on the “free spirit” number you gave me at the beginning of this post, you might now have a pretty accurate idea of just how well I’ve been handling these developments. The answer is: “not entirely gracefully.” I’m surrounded by truly, beautifully easy-going people. Devon says that this is the way things are supposed to go this week. It’s meant to be. She’s some sort of a zen master. A river can flow through a straw, if only the straw points itself downriver. That kind of thing.

I say: another glass of wine, please.

“Que sera, sera” is a mentality that’s a lot easier to embrace when things are going your way. Or when there are steps you can take to herd things your way. But it turns out that free spiritedness under fire is going to be something I actually have to practice. Like exercising. Which for me means that the first couple of repetitions might be a wee bit painful - they might even involve some dramatic groaning/curling into fetal positions and whimpering.

So here’s the exercise for these next few days. Yoga, gardening, writing in cafes, reading Rumi, taking walks. I am missing my Routeburn track reservations, but I am loving life. Insurance is a river and I am a straw, baby. Yeah.

Thanks for waiting with me.

The bright side of life

2010-02-06T23:56:00.006+01:00

I've been feeling lately that I owe a profound apology to any loyal readers still out there continuing to put up with my lazy posting. Friends who have started blogs recently have already put me completely to shame with their punctuality and reliability. Speaking of which, if you'd like a more constant correspondent from New Zealand, you can check out Tommy's blog for updates as well.

Reliable blogging may in fact end up being put on Tommy's list of delegated responsibilities. It's one of the nice things about having a travel partner - the opportunity to share the load and play to each other's strengths (or, in my case, obsessive-compulsive tendencies). For example, my list of responsibilities currently involves keeping track of all paperwork, making budgets that are promptly blown on Wellington's cornucopia of vegan cupcakes, and secretly making plans behind Tommy's back. Tommy's list of responsibilities includes having a positive attitude.

And let me tell you, I never really appreciated before how useful it can be to put someone else in charge of your positive attitude. I'll illustrate with an anecdote. A week ago, visiting Tongariro National Park, Tommy and I decided to attempt the Tongariro Alpine Crossing (they added the "Alpine" a year ago to dissuade foolhardy hikers - read, us - from taking it lightly) in weather that the locals descibed as "absolute shit." Despite the increasing numbers of hikers warning us to turn back as we journeyed upward, and despite the complete saturation of our clothing and the total depletion of my limited muscle strength, we kept on keeping on all the way to the topmost volcanic ridge of Mount Doom, where we truly began to appreciate the meaning of "high velocity winds." Picture, if you will, a thin ridge of volcanic rock, Tommy trying to convince me to keep walking, and me hunched over in downward dog, clinging to the ground to keep from falling over, snot literally being ripped out of my nose by the wind, wondering if this falls under the heading of "poor life decisions." This is a spectacularly good moment to have delegated your positive attitude. With Tommy in charge of finding silver linings (I bet this would be a really terrific view in the sun!), I was free to continue muttering my stream of expletives and imagining the headlines of tomorrow's paper: "Delusional Americans Blown Off Volcano on Second Day of Vacation."

The rest of week one has been slightly less intense, though equally invigorating. Wellington's vegetarian cafes are pleasantly munching away at my bank account (with my full and enthusiastic consent), the hole in the ozone layer is chipping away at my pasty Michigan-winter skin, and so far the "ugly island" continues to impress with gorgeous green hills, turquoise beaches, and surreal volcanic valleys. Tomorrow we're off to the South Island and Christchurch, where we will be enjoying the hospitality of yet another incredibly gracious friend. I'll try to be more worthy of your readership with more attentive blogging. Cheers, mates.

Dangerous business

2010-01-23T23:17:00.002+01:00

Over the last month I have been amassing my camping gear, plowing through guide books, sending out emails to generous friends and friends of friends down under, booking bus tickets and backcountry hut passes, and now the time has finally come: New Zealand ho, my friends. A friend, a tent, a backpack, a car, the mountains and farms of Middle Earth, and me.

I'm going to do my best to keep this blog periodically updated with photos, stories, and the status of my (decreasing) personal hygiene and (correspondingly increasing) rugged awesomeness. For now I can tell you that current plans include a mixture of hiking and fruit-picking, a good deal of sleeping outdoors, and hopefully a swift and meteoric rise in my physical fitness. High on my to-do list: sky dive, see a whale, and stalk the film crew of The Hobbit. Grander goals? If pressed, I might admit the following: I want to get some experience with agriculture, write about food, practice free-spiritedness, practice spiritedness, and do at least one thing that's so beautiful to me that it doesn't need a reason for anyone else.

Thanks to you all for your continued interest and enthusiasm. I love having people to listen to my stories.

P.S. If you got the allusion in the title of this post, ten points. You're officially as nerdy as I am. For the rest of you more well-adjusted readers: remember what Bilbo used to say. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

For More Information

2009-11-17T17:48:00.005+01:00

Life here in Boulder is busily hurrying along: just five weeks left before I pack up my classically Colorado Subaru and head back to Michigan for the holidays. But in case you were all wondering how I'm carrying on, I thought I would provide you with a (slightly late) half-time show. The highlights so far...

1. I have a new, second job at the Boulder Book Store, only one of the most fabulous independent book stores I have ever set eyes on. You can read a write-up of my experiences at "rep night" in Avalanche magazine here.

2. The GREs are officially over! That is, barring an absolutely disastrous score on the subject test...so cross your fingers. I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I've never spent so much time preparing for such arbitrary (and meaningless) exams. Although I did learn several important facts, including (a) someone should really find smarter writers to work for sparknotes and (b) eighth-grade math is harder than you remember.

3. I have my ticket for New Zealand! I'll be leaving January 27th and returning on May 23. The terrific Tommy Gordon, for those of you who know him, will be accompanying me, and we have big plans to live out of a car and work on farms for five months, interrupted by backpacking trips and visits to friends down under. More on those plans as I actually formulate any.

4. I posted a poem of mine on my writing blog, a little ditty inspired by yoga, the texture of Ethiopian flatbread, and a subtle feeling of self-conscious whiteness. I continue to delight in so many aspects of Boulder life - yoga, vegetarian cuisine, great cafes and independent businesses, and especially the mountains - but I'm also trying to suss out how I feel about the way we Westerners encounter, interact with, and appropriate other cultures, in which area Boulder is a fascinating study of hippie-meets-yuppie-meets-bro-meets-immigrant-meets-me. Anyway, check out the poem if that sort of thing floats your boat (or if you're just a terribly supportive friend).

Ras Kassa's Halloween

Happy Roommates

Our House, Occaisonally Blanketed in Snow

White People Like...Living in Boulder

2009-09-13T17:43:00.006+02:00

This update brought to you in part by Stuff White People Like, and, of course, by readers like you. Feel free to keep track of your score as you go along.

Stuff White People Like About Boulder

5. Farmer's Markets: If you've spent more than a half an hour with me in the past couple of months, you've probably heard me evangelize for local produce. I'm currently deep in the foodie thrall of Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Marion Nestle and I love to tell anyone who will listen all about it.

15. Yoga: I think it's good for the ego every once in a while to do something for which you have no absolutely natural aptitude. Our first days in yoga class were hysterically humbling. Instructor: "Now cartwheel forward into chatarunga, exhale chatarunga dandasana, inhale into urdhva mukha svansana, meeting in adho mukha svasana, downward dog." Meanwhile my roommate Emma and I are looking around like "which leg do I lunge with for sleeping pigeon?" I absolutely love it. Today I managed to get into my first inversion (crow pose), which I held for all of .2 seconds. Namaste.

20. Being An Expert on YOUR Culture:

Voila! My uniform at my new job serving Ethiopian food at Ras Kassa's restaurant. I'm now officially working at the pretty much the only diverse work place in Boulder (diversity being another thing white people like), reporting to a tiny little Ethiopian woman named Tsehay who calls me either her daughter or "the midget." If ever I'm moving around too quickly to fix a drink or take out an order, someone is guaranteed to grab my hand and say "Lauren...how are you? Come eat" and hand-feed me some flatbread. It's good being the baby.

32. Vegan/Vegetarianism: My lovely new roommate here in Boulder is a vegan, so I've been adding some fun new recipes to my repertoire. Are you interested in making some fabulous vegan bread? I thought you might be...

2 cups nondairy milk mixed with 2 teaspoons white distilled vinegar (this makes "buttermilk")
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 grains (I used my hot cereal with some millet)
2 tablespoons Earth Balance

Oven at 425. Mix the milk and vinegar and let it sit. Mix the dry stuff, add the butter and rub it in until it looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the milk until the dough is nice and sticky, then knead it about 10 times and put it in a lightly greased bread pan or cake pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Delicious.

43. Plays: I'm currently volunteering as a house manager/set builder/costumer/extra for the Upstart Crow theatre company. We're about to start work on Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors.

53. Dogs: Here are some of the dogs I've considered adopting in the past couple of days: Cookie, Fruity Pebbles, and Rocky.

81. Graduate School: the 280 dollars I just signed over to ETS will bear me witness on this one. I am now officially in the process of preparing for graduate school. Someday. Probably entering in the fall of 2011. For those of you who haven't heard my plans, I'm thinking about doing a PhD in literature, hopefully focusing on drama and theatrical performance. (See number 43.) And while getting ready for the GREs (especially the wretched subject test) has been a fairly tedious process, I'm actually experiencing a sizable excitement about going back to school. And not just because that means I can finally get a dog. (See number 53.)

115. Promising to Learn a New Language: The Mexicans in the kitchen at Ras Kassa's are teaching me about a word of Spanish a night. I say "muchos gracias" when I bring them my dishes and Rodrigo always responds "This is Spanish, senorita!" Rodrigo's pretty generous.

120. Taking a Year Off: for frequent readers of this blog, this one requires very little explanation. Although they didn't say "taking three to ten years off," so I'm not sure whether that makes me less white or uber white.

128. Camping: I haven't actually made it to Rocky Mountain for a camping trip yet, but I wanted to end my Boulder update with a little gem from Stuff White People Like:

"Ultimately the best way to escape a camping trip with white people is to say that you have allergies. Since white people and their children are allergic to almost everything, they will understand and ask no further questions. You should not say something like 'looking at history, the instances of my people encountering white people in the woods have not worked out very well for us.'"

I think white people also like irony.

That's all for now from Lake Woebegone, folks. I'm living the hip life.

Here Today

2009-08-06T23:26:00.004+02:00

If I had a dollar for every time I've told myself "you should really update your blog" this summer, I'd buy you a big fancy dinner, complete with dessert. But these past months have been by far the fastest of my (admittedly pretty short) life, and - let me tell you - my shameful lack of blog activity is not the only evidence of it. Since returning to the States in May, I've been to L.A., Washington D.C., Outerbanks North Carolina, Clemson South Carolina, the Black Hills, Glacier National Park, Seattle, the Oregon Extension, San Fransisco, Sonoma, Boulder, Ann Arbor, and soon Chicago. I've seen just about all my closest friends who live Stateside, both sets of grandparents, and quite a few uncles, aunts, and cousins. I've spent extensive amounts of time with my dogs. And I've watched three of my best friends get married. (Those things are not in order of priority, as much as you might suspect me of caring more about dogs than weddings.)

All of this has been wonderful, unexpected, and also like a long, slow vice-grip to the heart. Glass is half full: I never in a million years dreamed that at 23 I would have such a long list of meaningful relationships and incredible experiences to make me grateful to the world. Much less did I imagine that I would get so many opportunities to make new memories with old friends. I never thought I would have so many amazing people in my life. Glass is half empty: I also never thought that I would reach a point where I live most of my life without seeing any of those people at all. That most of my "life events" would happen with hardly any of my closest friends or my family there to witness them. And that I would see some of the most important people in my life for only a couple of days or a couple of hours a year.

Most of the time I'm a glass-is-half-full person, as most of you probably know. I like to focus on hope (and please don't turn that into a double entendre...that unintentional pun is my least favorite thing about Hope College), because I don't think much comes out of focusing on despair. But at the transition times in my life, I often experience these moments of loss, of really appreciating how many people and places we will have to mourn in the course of our lives. There are really very few emotions I fear as much as I fear loneliness.

And yet - to swing back into the realm of optimism, perhaps accompanied by eye rolling - I haven't yet found a way to appreciate what something/someone/someplace means to me without losing it. As hard as I try not to take my present for granted, it's my past that really teaches me what and whom and how to value. Who really knew what a terrific show Arrested Development was until it got canceled and all other television failed to live up to its standard? And who knew that Dostoevsky was the greatest author to ever live before he died and couldn't write the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov? (That's a little joke for all of you who hate me for ever recommending it to you.)

I usually don't wax quite so philosophical in these posts, but that's the taste I have on my tongue as I near the end of an incredible summer. I am so grateful for my friends and family. I think maybe some people never get to care about in a lifetime as many people as I've cared about in 23 short years. It's wonderful and awful. And as much as I love them, and as far away from me as they are, I've still got to find the energy to be here, now, wherever I am, ready to throw everything I have into whatever/whoever new comes my way. In a few weeks I will move to Boulder and for four months, that will be home - that place and those people will get inside me and change me and make me a new person and after that, Boulder will be mine forever, but I'll also have yet another place to be homesick for. It's a high price to pay, but also a fair one. More than fair, when I consider how good the good times are.

The accelerating rate of decomposition in my grammatical standards signals that the time has come to draw my reflections to a close. I'll leave you with some photo highlights from my summer so far. Thanks for reading and thanks for being one of those people I'm talking about in this post.

Summer

Weddings

Road Trip

Friends

Assorted Americana

2009-06-03T05:11:00.010+02:00

So even though re-entry is now in full swing, I've decided to keep my little travel blog up and running. Because one of the most important things I've learned from leaving the United States is how great the United States really is for adventuring and exploring. In fact, toward the end of my stay in France, I was talking about Michigan in a way that probably gave my friends the impression that it's one of the world's great undiscovered jewels of natural beauty and charm. Which in a lot of ways, it really is. And just to show you how much I've grown to appreciate my country, 'tis of thee, I'm going to put up a few pictures of my American explorations so far this summer. As ridiculous as it sounds, I've already swum at both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts since returning at the beginning of May, thanks to a week in L.A. and a long weekend road trip to a friend's wedding in South Carolina. Which...when you think about it...that's about as far apart as France is from Kazakhstan. What a ridiculous country we live in.

Venice Beach

Hollywood Hills

Gerald R. Ford Airport, Pure Michigan

Indiana, state with the inspiring motto "Crossroads of America"

What other country has an entire district devoted almost exclusively to government buildings? And phallic monuments?

Lost Colonies, Outer Banks, North Carolina

David Gritter's wedding, Table Rock State Park, South Carolina

Living an absurd French fantasy? Who, me?

2009-04-20T16:46:00.023+02:00

So just when I had finished my job, my face nice and sore from smiling encouragingly, just when we had finally finished the unaccountably difficult process of moving out of our apartment, and in short, just when I had been feeling good and ready to go home, Brianne and I left for two weeks of vacation in France and now I'm attached to Europe again. Our trips were so incredible that I'm going to have to subject you to a cruel number of photographs. If you're really a glutton for pain, you can go check out a slightly different selection on Brianne's blog here.

We started the vacation off right with a stop at EuroDisney in Paris with our Kiwi friend Juliette (see left) and her Russian boyfriend Dimitriy.

Next Brianne and I headed down to the south of France, where we explored little towns on the Cote d'Azur like this one (St Jean Cap Ferrat).

Then we took a ferry (much like this one) from Nice to the French island of Corsica...

...where we were amazed to find landscapes I didn't even know existed in the world. Above is a picture (you can just make out some snowy peaks) I took on our bus ride from Ajaccio to Bonifacio, where we camped with a Canadian, a Colombian, and a Brazilian whom we'd met along to way.

Here's a view of Bonifacio, our town, which is perched right on the edge of some spectacular limestone and granite cliffs.

The cliffs, with the famous Graine de Sable.

One day we took a morning boat tour to the Isles Lavezzi. The guides told us we had the option of waiting until the afternoon boat came to pick us up, and since Brianne and I (along with our Colombian and Brazilian friends) were the only ones to take them up on the offer, we had the whole island to ourselves for an afternoon. We scrambled around on rocks, through tide pools, and hung out on gorgeous beaches like the one above.

And when you have a private beach that magnificent, of course you have to go swimming, even if it's body-numbing cold water.

After a couple days in Bonifacio, we hitch-hiked (our first time!) back to Ajaccio and spent a day on the beach and in the food markets.

And our last night in Corsica, we decided we had better take advantage of our hotel room's little terrace and have a picnic of local foods: goat's cheese, bread, strawberries, spinach and onion pasties, a selection of olives, and a bottle of wine made by the half-American half-French winemaker who picked us up hitch-hiking. Words cannot describe.

And our second week of vacation was, if possible, even more ridiculous. Brianne and I, along with Juliette, Dimitriy, and two of Juliette's crazy Kiwi friends (Megan and Richard) rented the above chateau in rural Vendee.

Welcome to our dining room. Ridiculous enough for you?

What about some morning archery practice?

And adorable French neighbors who give you eggs straight out from under their chickens and ducks.

And deciding to amuse yourselves by filming a mockumentary about the history of the castle, complete with epic battle scenes

And for a final touch of absurdity, check out Puy du Fou, the ridiculous French "theme park" we visited, where we were treated to Viking, Gladiator, Middle Ages, and Muskateer battles set to the soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean.

And here's our crew (from left, Dimitriy, Juliette, me, Brianne, Megan, Richard). All in all an incredible bunch of goofballs to share a castle with for a week. I can't wait to hang out with them all again in New Zealand.

Now, post-vacation, I'm in Nantes for two and a half weeks without work and without permanent habitation. And because we're staying with the same friend whose apartment we shared at the beginning of the year, the strange limbo-like feeling of this transition period is even more pronounced. I can't really tell whether I should be getting excited about going home (which I am, of course), or feeling sad about leaving Europe for who-knows-how-long. A month ago I was ready for pancakes and Captain Sundae and all things familiar. Now after two weeks of incredible vacation the idea of going back to the United States for eight months is making me feel...frankly...a little claustrophobic. I have to remind myself that my plans for those months still involve a lot of adventuring, and more importantly a lot of the quality friend time that I've been missing for much of this year. And also I have to remind myself not to be an overly dramatic commitment phobe. But surely my series of contradictory posts about my changing plans for next year haven't given you the impression that I'm feeling non commital?

Someone really ought to give me a nice firm reality check.

New Zealand...Like Lord of the Rings!

2009-03-11T16:28:00.007+01:00

So here we go, continuing on the update journey, and making up for lost blogging time. Next stop: plans for next year. Which with today's economy, let me tell you, is a very exciting topic for the casually employed. Now if you've kept abreast of all the waffling I've done in the past months (and bless your little deeply-unimpressed-with-my-decisiveness heart if you have), you know that I've had some trouble zeroing in on exactly which of my many travel wishes I was going to make a final commitment to for next year. But what I've settled on is: a short-term job somewhere in the U.S. for the fall, and then leaving for New Zealand in January. Why New Zealand, you wonder? First, because...

Yes, it's true. My fascination with New Zealand does suspiciously coincide with the first time I saw Fellowship of the Ring. I may or may not be listening to the soundtrack as I write this post, but I'll leave you to your own conjectures as to the actual extent of my nerdiness. In any case, ever since I saw those gorgeous landscapes on the big screen, I've been itching to see them for myself. And, since every Kiwi I've met has been so warm, laid back, and fun-loving, and every backpacker I've talked to who's spent time in New Zealand couldn't wait to tell me how incredible it was, time has only made me more and more keen to go. So I figured...

And indeed, why not? When I made my list of "Places I Absolutely Have to Go or I Will Regret It During My Mid-Life Crisis," New Zealand was at the top of the list. And even though living there for a few months won't really add any shining gold stars to my C.V., if I'm ever going to do something just for the sake of it, throwing responsibility to the wind, now is quite possibly the last chance I will get. So what exactly will I be doing while I'm there? Well luckily...

...for temporary work visas. O.K. that transition was a lot less brilliant than the others. But bottom line: New Zealand allows Americans to enter with a 12-month holiday work visa, which will permit me to pick up odd jobs during the three or four (or five?) months that I'm there. And I hope that a lot of those jobs will be through an organization called WWOOF, or Willing Workers On Organic Farms, which hooks volunteers up with organic farms/orchards/ranches who are looking for temporary workers. The host feeds and houses you, and in exchange you do whatever odd jobs need doing. I've had a couple of friends who have done it in the past, all with great results. And I will also have quite a few people to visit: a Kiwi assistant I've befriended here in France (and, through her, a smattering of other locals), a young French woman I met here who has since moved down under, and my good friend Alicia, who's with Peace Corps in Tonga. So I don't think I'll have any trouble keeping busy. And if I have some extra money, I'm going sky diving and learning how to surf.

And that's the long and short of it, folks. I hope you recognized those lovely New Zealand tourism posters from the incredible television show Flight of the Conchords. If you didn't, you're missing out, and you should really check out this little sampler video, in honor of New Zealand and Lord of the Rings...

Frodo, Don't Wear the Ring

The Great Vacation Update

2009-03-02T22:12:00.017+01:00

So first things first. And for me, when trying to make up for months of blog inactivity, that means a photo tour of my vacations. I hope you'll agree. I've tried to keep things pithy, and if it still seems lengthy to you, just think about how many photos I haven't posted...

Week One

Words could not describe our happiness when our friend Ian decided to come visit us for the first week of our vacations. Since Ian and I both spent a semester in London, and are both shamelessly and slavishly in love with it, pubs and pints like these ones were our first stop. We also saw a comedy at the National Theatre, browsed through Camden market, and of course ate ourselves silly like the vegetarian (or vegetarian-tolerant, as the case may be) gluttons we are.

Also, thanks to Ian's friend Dan and his Hilton points, we got to stay one night in the poshest European accommodations I'll probably ever be able to afford.

After we got back to France, we took advantage of some unexpectedly glorious weather to take a day trip to a coastal town called La Baule. We may have even gotten the tiniest bit sunburned.

We (me, Brianne, Ian, and Dan) then got to fulfill a romantic-at-heart's dream and spend Valentine's Day in Paris. It was a great way to celebrate how much more full and happy I felt after spending quality time with real, in-it-for-the-long-haul friends (one of the things in which this year has been a little lacking), and it was a wonderful stop-over on our way to...

Week Two

Poland! We landed in Krakow, which instantly jumped to the top of my "most beautiful cities in Europe" list. Golden domes, snowy parks, scrumptious pierozki, and War and Peace in my purse: now that's a recipe for romance. And to top it all off, our hostel offered free breakfast and dinner, free coffee and tea all day long, and even free shots of vodka on the owner's birthday.

The next stop was Warsaw, a city that combines modern skyscrapers (not quite American-size, but some of the biggest I've seen in Europe) and beautiful "historic" quarters like this one, which were actually entirely reconstructed after WWII, when most of the city burned or was destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising.

But the best part of the day was without a doubt the 2 hours we spent walking across the entire city in search of what our guidebook called the "floating palace" - me growing grumpier at every park we passed that did not contain a celestial mansion - and finally arriving, just as the sun was setting, only to realize that, of course, a palace that is supposed to float by being reflected in two mirror lakes will, when those lakes are frozen, look rather like a very ordinary large-ish house. You can see how well we appreciated the irony.

The next day we took the train northward and got a look at the Baltic Sea, which was gorgeous, aside from the terrifying number of swans.

While there we stayed in the town of Gdansk, where we had a really interesting historical moment while exiting the Solidarity museum, dedicated to the Polish resistance to Soviet occupation. We had just spent a few hours underground and watched footage of riots and martial law and then as we were walking out we suddenly heard police sirens and air horns and people shouting. We looked at each other with "are we nervous?" faces and climbed out onto the street to see a huge demonstration of police officers, who were all marching to commemorate the men who had died in the shipyard strikes in the 1970s. Suddenly, seeing how many of those police officers had lived through the years when men in uniforms inspired anxiety instead of security, I realized what a charmed period and place in history I've lived in so far, and how lucky (spoiled?) I am that even most of the atrocities that have happened in my own lifetime seem distant and "historical" rather than real and present.

Continuing our exploration of Poland's history (if there's one thing this trip taught me, it's that my knowledge of European history is in sore need of a tune-up), we took a trip to the Aushwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on our way back through Krakow. Words are obviously inadequate to describe that experience, and in a lot of ways that experience is itself an inadequate expression of all the symbolic weight that the word "Aushwitz" carries in my mind. We arrived at the camp just in time to hear a group of Jewish teenagers singing in Hebrew in front of the barracks, an incongruously beautiful sight that was somehow incredibly fitting.

Well I hope that was a decent sort of catch-up, and bravo to you if you've made it all the way through. More updates to come soon.

Update Outline

2009-02-13T22:42:00.002+01:00

I. Plans for next year: DISCLAIMER obviously, as evidence shows, don't believe a word that comes out of my mouth until I actually follow through and move somewhere.
A. Brianne has decided to stay in Europe next year, ergo...
B. I will be moving back to the U.S. to work somewhere fun and exciting for several months and then...
1. Going work on farms in New Zealand
2. Meeting up with Brianne in India
3. Probably having another existential crisis about what to do next

II. It's time for another two-week vacation!
A. We just got back from a couple days in London with our friend Ian
B. Tomorrow we're off for two days in Paris and then six in Poland
C. Pictures to follow

III. My job here in France...
A. Is done at the end of March, though I'm staying in France through the beginning of May
B. Is going well, but using only a very small percentage of my brain power
C. Has allowed me to perfect the perfect French accent, but only in English

So in all seriousness: my apologies for falling so far behind on my updates. January was a month of crazy existential upheaval, February is half taken up by vacations, but in March I will be all yours. I promise photos and details when I return.

I strike, therefore I am French

2009-01-29T15:57:00.005+01:00

I couldn't resist attempting to share with you one of the greatest French cultural experiences of all time, ranking right up there with cheap wine, baguettes, and cheese you don't refrigerate: the nation-wide strike. Today is the occasion of a very exciting "greve generale," or a strike in which all of the salaried workers in France are invited to participate. This means pretty much every public service is disrupted in some way: trains and buses, the police, airports, gas and electricity, and schools, since many teachers are on strike as well. (This is not to be confused with the two-week period in December when the high school students were on strike and barricarded the schools so that no one could enter or exit.) A lot of workers in the private sector are joining in too: cashiers, factory workers, and apparently many ski lift operators. Hundreds of thousands of French people have either taken to the streets en masse, or just decided to stay home and catch up on their soap operas.

When I walked through downtown Nantes this afternoon, I found myself having a little bit of a laugh attack seeing everyone marching/standing around in the streets, shouting slogans and drinking wine. There was even a marching band and - I kid you not - an accordian player to provide entertainment. And the funniest thing about French strikes is how they actually seem to be more efficient and organized than the normal, "functioning" French society. At the post office today there was a sign saying, "We are on strike from 1:00-2:30 and after 6:00." And even though many fewer trams and buses were running in Nantes, the transport officials let us know in advance what the adjusted time table would be, so that we could still get to our appointments on time. I love strikes that go out of their way not to actually inconvenience you.

What are they protesting you ask? It's sometimes difficult to say. Apparently this particular strike is concerned with the effects of the economic crisis. Which just goes to show you: an American's first reaction to a global economic recession is probably not to take up placards and take to the streets. But this is how change is made - or more often resisted - in France. When French people hear how seldom we strike in the United States, they react as if I'd just told them that we regularly employ indentured servitude. To them striking is one of the most important demonstrations of a free nation. To Americans, I imagine it looks like the French take an unaccountable pleasure in disrupting the functioning of an economic system that already makes do with a lot less efficiency than ours.

Then again, I suppose most Americans would be in awe of the fact that in France, Brianne and I can afford a two-bedroom apartment, fine wines, and weekend trips to London while working twelve hours a week and taking eight weeks of paid vacation.

Here's a picture to give you a little taste of our greve generale. And you can follow the link to watch a video of marchers in Paris. Happy Strike Day!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7858563.stm

Put that in your king cake and smoke it

2009-01-13T19:21:00.005+01:00

So since I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your metaphorical seats waiting to hear where I will be next year, I've decided that it's time to end the suspense. After a marathon of emotionally and intellectually confused conversations with Brianne, ending in a semi-epiphanic moment just two days after the actual Epiphany, the two of us have decided to spend next year in the United States working with Lutheran Volunteer Corps. This may come straight out of left field for some of you, so I'll try to explain. It's a long story, but here's the short version. After wrestling for a while with all the thoughts I talked about in my last post, I boiled down my dilemma thus: I knew I was feeling a longing for a long-term community, but also knew that when I imagined settling down somewhere right away, I experienced a strange sense of panic. And when I asked myself what specifically I was panicked about - in other words, what were the most important, essential things that I had to do for myself before I became a "real adult" and settled down - I came up with this: (1) doing some sort of "hands-on," non-academic work before making the graduate school decision, (2) experiencing environments that are entirely alien and therefore uncomfortable, and (3) exploring what it would be like to be a total free-spirited hippie.

And then I started to think that since the list of things that I want to do (Asia, South America, Russia...name a place on the map) is endless and inexhaustible, I had better start by working on the list of things I have to do or I will regret it later in life. And then if some long-term opportunity ever presents itself, I won't have to compromise essential parts of myself to accept it.

So the new, revised plan is to spend a year working with a non-profit through LVC, which will take care of the first step (and maybe little bits of the second two). And after that - and after working for/shamelessly begging for some money - I'll try to spend a few months WWOOFing and backpacking in New Zealand (#3), and then a few months wandering around/doing occasional work in India (#2).

I'll understand if you greet this announcement with a little bit of skepticism, given that - depending on when you last saw me - I probably recently told you that I was going to be in Chile, Peru, China, or South Korea next year. But I have actually completed my application for LVC, so that's a step in the right direction. And if you need a better reason to believe in our intentions, look no further than this picture of our own personal Wise Man, whom we found in our King's Cake (a traditional French dish for Epiphany) just a day before seeing the light. We credit him with overseeing our decision-making process.

If that little man isn't a trustworthy authority, I don't know who is.

Auld Lang Syne

2009-01-07T18:17:00.004+01:00

So I'm aware that I'm probably not going to get any sympathy votes by complaining about the difficulty of readjusting to my retirement-style work life in France. And frankly I don't blame you for doubting that it's a real hardship to return to a country with over 360 varieties of cheese and the highest number of guaranteed vacation days in the world. But even so, I thought I would try to explain why my return to France has been a highly surreal experience.

When I used to leave for my various studies abroad, it was always with the understanding that some sort of stable "real life," with my family or at Hope, would be waiting when my time away was over. I could go anywhere I wanted, because the metaphorical and literal anchor of my alma mater was holding part of my life in place: saving me a seat, as it were, in a community where I had long-term friendships, connections, and a continuous identity.

These past two weeks when I was home on break made me realize for the first time that that equation had changed. I was back in what was supposed to be my "real life," running around to spend as much time as possible with my immediate and extended family, my best friends from high school and college, and yet all that time I knew I was not returning to something solid and permanent; I was on vacation. And the amazing, all-too-short times that I spent with the most important people in my life were now going to become a sort of annual (if I'm lucky) treat.

Which I suppose makes what I'm doing this year in France my "real life": not just a little adventure to look for new experiences and good food, but the actual work that I'm doing and the real person I'm becoming. I had never thought about it that way. I mean, honestly, how can a year spent with the time commitments of a kindergartner seem like my real adult life? And if I do end up spending the next couple of years living abroad, how long will it be before I'm able to create a community like the ones that I've left - something that gives me a sense of being rooted and invested? I always knew that that was something I wanted eventually, maybe after a couple years of being a rolling stone. Now I think for the first time I'm examining the vertigo I'd be feeling in the meantime, that period of trying to maintain long-term relationships while still staying open to what's immediate and present.

Over vacation, my cousin told me what her college professor had once told her: at any given moment, we have an array of doors-of-opportunity open to us, but when one of those doors closes, it doesn't always make much noise. Sometimes we don't realize which doors have shut until they're already barred to us. I'd heard enough adults tell me that they regretted not taking some time away from stability and commitment to follow absurd dreams like (barely) working in France, so I knew that I wanted to give my own travel fantasies a chance. But my wonderful/spastic/confusing/amazing time with my family and friends has made me wonder if relationships are doors that can close too. Obviously there's no place in the world where I can have everyone who's important to me around me at once. But does putting more and more countries and more and more years between us mean that I'm choosing something more final than I realize? Can I miss the chance to have my closest friends stay in my life, or to see my brothers grow up? Or am I simply feeling a very normal, but unrealistic post-graduation nostalgia for college towns where everybody knows your name? Maybe I would be feeling this way no matter what I decided to do, and so I might as well be feeling it somewhere exciting.

So, in conclusion, I'm now enjoying the crazy ambiguity of having no solid idea what I'll be doing this time next year. And I'm hoping that as I get over the initial shock of realizing I've actually become an adult, the next couple weeks/months will give me some clues about whether I'm ready to start putting down at least short-term roots in work or graduate school, or whether I'm still feeling the wander lust for another year on the road. I'll keep you updated: New Zealand, South Korea, Chile, Chicago, Portland, Denver...almost everything's on the list at this point. Luckily years of watching Lost have cultivated my ability to rejoice in cluelessness.

Joyful Tidings of the Season

2008-12-17T17:08:00.007+01:00

My last few days here in France before heading home for Christmas are turning out to be pretty busy (we hosted a holiday party last night with 11 different countries represented and with way too many bodies and voices for our tiny apartment), but I wanted to at least leave you with a couple of photos of our trip to Bruges, both so that you can sample the chocolately, waffley joy that is a weekend in Belgium, and so that you can join me in enjoying a bit of festive cheer. (Here in France, my students finally illuminated for me why it's harder to get in the holiday spirit: when I asked them after a lesson on A Christmas Carol if they have any traditional Christmas stories, songs, or movies in France, they described a movie about people who call a suicide hotline because they're alone on Christmas. They assure me it's a barrel of laughs.)

Happy Holidays!

Me Sleep Pretty One Day

2008-12-08T10:31:00.001+01:00

As far as sleeping habits go, I typically tend toward the insomnia end of the spectrum. In the past, I’ve had so much trouble falling asleep that I used to name presidents and square roots to try to throw obstacles in the way of my brain’s mad rampages of sleep-avoidance. I’ve also tried running through entire movies or books in my head scene by scene, much to the annoyance of many of my friends, who find my ability to playback Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings more of a nerdy tic than a charming social demonstration.

I’ve told you all of that to tell you this: when your brain has two different languages to ramble around in, sleeplessness becomes a whole new kind of irritating.

To explain: since I spend about half my days here in English and the other half in French, I haven’t been able to settle my thoughts into either of the two modes of expression. As a result, I now frequently say things like “I pay very expensive for this apartment,” and “But it will make them so much pleasure.” And even in the safety of my own head I have been known to think, “It’s not so bad, the cucumber.” In short, exactly at the rate that my French is not progressing, my English is also disappearing. My students asked me the other day whether we could say “She is too directive” in English, and I responded: “Yes. No. Ummmm...no?” Way to be, native English speaker.

And all of that means that when it’s time to fall asleep, my brain works itself into an even more frenzied state of frazzled when it finds it can worry in two different languages at once. I’ve taken to listening to my IPod at night to try to force my mind into English mode, but lately my party shuffle - which sometimes demonstrates a remarkable capacity to anticipate my musical moods - has started perversely throwing in each of the 15 French songs on my computer, out of what I can only assume is spite.

So now I’m trying out some different techniques to help coax myself to sleep. I’ve tried making myself a glass of warm milk, ploughing through pages of Henry James, and putting “Thundering Rainstorm” on repeat (take that, IPod, with your dirty Les Choristes tricks). I’m thinking about asking our neighbors to drive me around in their cars, which always worked well when I was a baby. And the next stop may be a medicinal glass of Bordeaux every night at 11, which is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Danke sehr, Deutscheland

2008-11-26T15:00:00.002+01:00

So wouldn't you know that after driving without incident in every single major snowstorm in Michigan last winter, I would get in my first ever car accident during a light snow in Germany? It's so bizarre that I'm going to go ahead and give you the blow-by-blow.

To set the stage: Brianne and I had gone to visit our friend Verena in Neustadt for her birthday. After a nice afternoon in Strasbourg, a party with a bunch of Germans where we confirmed cultural stereotypes by being the only dancers on the floor for about an hour and a half (until German songs about big red horses turning around and swishing flies with their tails came on, at which point everyone except us got Saturday Night Fever), and a lovely day with Verena's family, Verena was driving us from her parents' house to her place in the Black Forest. We had literally just finished telling her about how many of our friends have had crazy accidents in the past year, when all the sudden a huge station wagon flies around the corner in front of us turned completely sideways. I think my irrational thought was "Man...that was really close" right as the car actually hit us. The air bags fly out, and I crack my way too long legs on the dashboard.

Almost before we had come to a stop, Brianne snaps into action: "Is everyone o.k. the car is smoking GET OUT OF THE CAR!" Of course it was actually only the fibers flying out of the air bags, which were flopping about rather ineffectually, but since Brianne has had two cars spontaneously light on fire while she was driving them, I suppose I can understand her reaction. In any case, Brianne jumps out of the car and into the snow with no shoes on, runs to the passenger side door where I'm sitting and flings it open, ready to drag me bodily from the car if necessary. Meanwhile my thoughts are running approximately thus: "Ouch. Shit. If my kneecaps are broken, I don't know if I have insurance in Germany." And unbeknownst to me, Brianne is thinking: "Don't die, because our French insurance doesn't cover the repatriation of remains!"

So we get out of the car, Brianne throws her coat on the ground and makes me sit down, tons of German people show up from everywhere and start asking me if I haben schlecht, and the driver of the car who hit us has lit up a cigarette and is staring into space while Verena cries and yells at him. I ask Brianne to get my bag from the car, which was really important to me at the time, and since she was pretty sure the car was going to explode at any moment, it was an act of considerable bravery to comply.

And the best moment of all: when I started pulling up the leg of my jeans to see how my knees looked, Brianne asked me, in what seemed like a decent suggestion at the time: "Should we cut your pants off?" But since I was wearing the only pair of jeans I own that fit me, I declined.

Anyway, all that to say that even though poor Verena's car is totalled, all three of us are fine, apart from some whiplash and bruising. Brianne's coming down with a cold after running around with no shoes, and I've experienced an increase in the crazy nightmares I always have anyway. And we're both very glad that we didn't have to learn the limits of our insurance coverage.

Well you're rather posh, aren't you?

2008-11-19T13:42:00.003+01:00

Highlights of a Weekend in London

1. Seeing the ever-articulate Kenneth Brannagh in Chekhov's Ivanov. Brianne and I waited in line for two hours in the early morning to get tickets and ended up sitting in "Box A": which sounds like luxury but in reality more closely resembles a literal box, except with Victorian wallpaper, our own private toilet, and a box attendant with whom none of us knew how to properly interact. But it was all worth it to see in person Brannagh's acrobatic voice when he's giving a monologue, especially during the particularly impressive gem in which he ran through almost two pages of text in about thirty seconds of a nervous trance.

2. Eating. I'll admit that food is pretty much always half my reason for traveling, but that's especially true in a vegetarian-friendly city like London, where even the fast food places have veggie options. (Real veggie options too, not like in France where they offer you a plate of cheese.) In one day I had a chocolate croissant for breakfast, lunch at Hummus Brothers, a pumpkin-pea burger with basil mayo and fruit relish for dinner, and a passion fruit creme caramel with ginger bisquit for dessert, or for "pudding," as I now say (see point 3).

3. Learning that the technical name for my speaking disability is WAS: wandering accent syndrome. I swear: you put me in a room for five minutes with a Londoner and I'm throwing around words like "rubbish" and "brilliant," saying the phrase "when I was at uni," and generally making a linguistic ass out of myself.

4. Feeling that wonderfully relaxed feeling you get when you go back to a city that you know really well. Going back to London felt less like a vacation and more like going home: no pressure to see everything as quickly as possible, no nervousness about figuring out the transportation system, no looks of vacant, smiling confusion when someone asks you a question in German (although there were maybe a few looks of vacant, smiling Anglo-philia when someone spoke to me in a Scottish accent). I just felt quietly happy the whole time, and was perfectly content to spend hours in Battersea Park watching dogs running around.

Enjoying the view from Box A

Two-week vacations from 12-hour work weeks, and other European experiences

2008-11-06T15:16:00.023+01:00

So as my title suggests, I certainly have no excuse for tardiness in updating this blog. You have my apologies. I'm going to make serious efforts to reform, though, and write more steadily, so that you won't be forced to read many oversized, bloated entries like this one. I've let far too much pile up to say all at once.

But the main point is...Brianne and I have just returned from a week and a half in Switzerland for our first big vacation of the year. We made a tour of Geneva, Lausanne, Interlaken, Luzern, St. Gallen, Liechtenstein, and Zurich and for the most part we used a network called CouchSurfing to stay for free with people who live in the country. You sign up and create a profile and then you can contact people in cities you want to visit to see if they'd like to host you for a few days. In Interlaken we stayed with a group of 40-something adventure guides from all over the world who help people jump out of planes and down canyons in the summer, ski in the winter, and take off to Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, and New Zealand during the off seasons to learn to kite surf or to teach surfing workshops. And in Liechtenstein we stayed with a heavy metal rocker who took us to a bar filled with fake dinosaurs and Kiss music and who spent a half an hour showing us videos on YouTube of European "heavy metal folk" bands who scream into microphones while playing bagpipes and hurdy gurdies.

But the best experiences we had were in Luzern and St. Gallen, where our generous hosts helped us combat the foggy weather by driving us up into the mountains for sunny hikes above the clouds. They walked and explored with us, showed us their favorite spots, and overall made me feel like I was getting spoiled silly by strangers. But the wonderful thing is that it gives you this huge urge to pay it forward: I would love to host someone here in Nantes, or better yet in Michigan, where I could show them around and make them feel at home. It gives you the feeling that everywhere in the world there are people who are open, warm, generous, hopeful.

Just one more thought before the photo montage (much-anticipated, I'm sure): being around mountains and mountain-loving people this past week has made me feel like I'm really only one small step away from throwing grad school in the maybe-later closet and taking off to live in a Vanagon with a friend and two dogs, hiking, rafting, and farming across the seven continents, stopping in one place for a couple of months at a time to meet new people and lay down new roots. It's not a lifestyle that I could live for ages, but it's got a strong pull for me now. The me that I imagine living in the back of her car, walking her dog down the beach in Thailand or rafting down a river in Nepal: she's a pretty happy person. But that just goes to show you how many shapes your life could have/would have/might still take(n) depending on what little influences come along to push you in one direction or another.

O.K. enough existential pondering for one post. On to the photos! You may think I've put up quite a few of them, but you have no idea from what a horror of vacation-slideshow-induced stupor I have actually spared you. I could create an entire photo album titled "Leaves, Berries, and Swiss Farm Animals." You're only seeing the highlights. You're also not seeing any of the nice photos of me and Brianne together, since those are all on Brianne's camera and we're having technical difficulties at the moment. Click to enlarge, if you so desire.

Feeding one of Switzerland's countless swans in Geneva

Lake Geneva: a partly cloudy day and our first rain

Lausanne: a very beautiful city, which we saw almost entirely in the rain, and of which consequently I have almost no photos. But we had a great day nonetheless visiting the Olympics Museum (I tear up every time someone shows footage of people winning medals set to triumphant music) and a museum of "Art Brut," or art done by people with no artistic training, which was simply incredible.

I had to put up at least one wildlife picture. Hanging out with goats on a rainy day in Interlaken. After three cloudy days, we were about to give up hope of actually seeing mountains, but never fear...

The next day we woke up to two feet of snow! We went up the mountain a little ways to Lauterbrunnen, where we trekked through the drifts alongside a river and made a couple snowmen.

After our morning walk, we took the cable cars up to Murren to try to see some mountains over the clouds: great success!

And our last day in Interlaken, we even got to see the mountains around town.

Next stop was Luzern, of which I've chosen a night photo, because the view was actually nicer than during the cloudy daytime.

But luckily our host Remo drove us up into the mountains, where we had an awesome view of the Alps in snow.

After that we stayed outside St. Gallen in a renovated farm house with Sebastian and family. This was my attempt to capture the joy we felt when we woke up to a huge Swiss breakfast, sunshine, and cows out the window.

Sebastian took us on a walk through the hills of Appenzell

Alpen cat

And then we had a layover in Buchs, where we managed to take about 80 pictures in two hours.

Case in point #1

Case in point #2

And then...drum roll...we spent a day in Liechtenstein! 160 km2, 30,000 inhabitants...just about the size of University of Michigan.

Fun with reflections

And just before leaving we got to spend one night in Zurich, where we wandered about admiring the beautiful food/kitchen stores, taking pictures of the lights in the river, and eating at an amazing vegetarian cafe.

Thanks for reading, folks. You have my word that the next entry will not be so long.

What...this old Louis XVI fauteil?

2008-10-08T17:34:00.000+02:00

So how's the economic crisis treating everyone? Over here in France, the exchange rate actually got better! So as Monty Python suggests, always look on the bright side of [my] life.

This week I started strong on my 12-hour work week. You would think that standing in front of a class and speaking my native language with my natural accent would not be a terribly difficult job, but it was fairly intimidating when the professors started giving me students for hours on my own on the first days of class. Many of the students haven't had an English class in years and still can't understand me when I slow down my speech to the speed of molasses. And I'm having to catch up quickly on strategies for teaching English as a foreign language, because when my professor tells me to "correct the students' mistakes," it takes me a while to invent useful ways of explaining why we use "during" here and "for" there, or why we "go to England," but "stay in England." On top of that, since I'm working at the IUFM (a preparatory school for future primary school teachers), all of my "students" are trained in education and probably recognize every pedagogical mistake I make. But having said all of that, I'm very excited when I think about how much I'll learn about teaching English. And let's have a perspective check here: I work 12 hours a week.

Next, as promised, some photos. Just to give you all an idea of the Antique's Roadshow/art gallery/flea market lifestyle I'm now living:

Our "salon"

The all-important corner-of-the-pink-chair

The breakfast nook, currently being used for an evening glass of French wine

Our kitchen, now complete with a "triptych": part stove, part oven, part dishwasher

And last, but not least, my large and lovely double bed.

So there you have it, folks. If that doesn't make you want to come and visit us, I don't know what will. I'm also willing to bribe you with pastries, crepes, and gelato. Expatriation: it's totally in vogue.

Bonjour, mes amis!

2008-10-03T15:33:00.002+02:00

For those of you who aren't yet bored with hearing me talk about myself, I thought it might be nice if I put together a little record of my travels, along with some photos, anecdotes, and maybe the occasional metaphor or allusion to prove that my college English education has actually been of some practical use, despite my poverty-level salary. The reading of it is of course entirely voluntary, which means lucky you. If you were here with me, you'd have no choice but to hear all about every single pastry I ate.

In case I've been a horrible correspondent and you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll back up and give you the "Previously, in France..." So far I've found an apartment in Nantes with my friend Brianne (photos of the finished, old-French-grandmother's-yard-sale-style product coming soon), visited the school in La Roche sur Yon where I'll be working 12 hours a week with future primary school teachers, and sat through a several-hour, entirely unhelpful orientation on the MEDN, ANAEM, CAF, AARPNAACPNASCARDOWJONES paperwork I have to fill out in order to stay legally in France. My French is coming back gradually, Brianne and I are making some new friends (an alarming number of which are 30-year-old French engineers), and I start my official work on Monday.

Coming attractions: photos of our Louis XVI arm chair and our Louis XV couch, details about my first days of class, possibly a review of the concert we'll be seeing on Friday, which involves "plants, animals, and Cowboys," and almost definitely a witty reference to The Faerie Queene.

Thanks for reading!