Homeward Bound...

First, let me say that I do not feel ready to go home or happy to be going home. I would gladly stay in Beijing for a couple more weeks in a heartbeat. But, given that is not my reality here's what I am most excited about in only rough order:
MY BED
My cats
My friends
My garden - specifically the tomatoes and cucumbers
Burritos
Climbing!!
Whole Foods or Berkeley Bowl
My computer?
Streaming Netflix and HBO
Not having a frizz-mop of hair
Putting toilet paper in the toilet
A shower without worms
My car!  (That should be higher)
Speaking with people and understanding them
Having more than three shirts and a skirt to choose from
Wearing heels
The 10 quarts of pickles I made the night before I left
Drinking cocktails
A different hoodie than the one I've worn daily for the past five weeks
Facebook (China blocks it along with twitter and YouTube and others)

What I am not looking forward to:
Regular work days
My computer
Stress

Musings on Mongolia

Mongolia was definitely different than what I expected and defies description in some ways, but I'll try... It was not galloping horses across wide open plains, the wind in your hair (though likely for some travelers it could have been). It wasn't a series of cultural treasures from glorious times. It wasn't mind blowingly beautiful monasteries preserved for thousands of years. What it was for me was a feeling, once which had to grow over time with experience rather than being handed to me in a forbidden temple or summer palace.

Three weeks was the perfect amount of time there because it took at least a week for the experience to reveal itself. I'm more used to the sensory overload of travel - trying to communicate when you don't speak the language, bombarded with cultural sites and somewhat immediately thrown off the dock and forced to swim. This was a slow creep, nearly imperceptible. At first it barely felt different at all. Then as we checked out some sites it felt disappointing. They were small or in disrepair or were grossly exaggerated in the book. Then you start to realize Mongolia isn't about moving from site to site, it's about getting a glimpse of how people live in the country side, which likewise is not about visiting one or two family gers and then just "getting it". It's about exploring the vast expanses and slowly the feeling grows from seeing only steppe or desert day after day after day after day. You can't force or get spoon fed a substitute for being in and seeing vast, vast vistas of green with rolling hills of various height day after day and week after week. It puts you in a different mindset entirely. I was waiting for Mongolia to "click" for me for lack of a better term and then realized it had already - so subtly that I hadn't even noticed. We spent nearly a week driving around ostensibly to check out this temple and that waterfall but it quickly became obvious it was not the destination rather the journey that was the important part. Some days, particularly when we drove across the Gobi, we'd see maybe five gers all day and the requisite herds of sheep, goats and some horses, usually herded by the iron horse (aka motorcycle). The gers nearly always had a solar panel and TV and cell phones which at first was disappointing. How unauthentic! But then you realize what an extremely tough existence they live and why not have a TV? Should they live in the technological dark ages just because they live on the steppe in a ger?

There's something special that happens to your mindset, to your brain after being in a vast expanse for that long that I didn't anticipate but feel extremely lucky to have experienced. There are few places left with that much open space.

The Sanitorium - Part I

So normally Lonely Planet is pretty good with their information. Sure - stores close, food may be better or worse than they describe, maybe they make a hostel sound better than it is, but I have never experienced a less accurate description than what was given for the shargaljuut hotsprings. Bree and I really wanted to go to hot springs. There were two nearby where we were traveling, and after hearing not-so-good reviews of one we decided to go to the hot springs that all of the local Mongolians go to, so at the least it wouldn't be too touristy. We met a couple of girls who had been and told us there were different pools for healing different body parts. How cool! So we had hired a driver for about a week and that was to be the third and fourth nights of our journey. According to lonely planet "international travelers" could stay at the shargaljuut resort - yay!!  A little splurging and pampering...
We had a brutal day of driving en route - maybe an hour of pavement and 8 hours of bumpy dirt roads. An important note here is that our driver did not speak English except for okay, stop and daily greetings. So we arrive around 6 and see a really rundown Soviet cinderblock style monstrosity, replete with peeling pale pink paint and no obvious Ger camp. Where is the resort? Is this the sanitorium with a resort inside? We called the phone number in the book but no one answered so we sent BimBa in to the decrepit building armed with the name shargaljuut resort. Out he comes at least 30 minutes later with a confused look on his face and seems to be saying with charades that he could not find the place. Crap. So i decide to try the number again and someone answers! I hand the phone to BimBa and he's on for longer than really makes sense and he did not seem to end the call with any resolution. So we stand around starting to get worried since we were a good three hours from anywhere. Then he gets a phone call back from whomever he spoke with the first time and signals that yes, this is the place and he goes back inside to talk to someone. Mind you until then I had been holding out hope that there had been some other building or set of gers that we just weren't seeing. Nope. The building looked like a cross between a prison and a short term residence hotel for seniors if such a thing exists. We wait another 30 minutes or so and finally he comes out and tells us to come in.
The inside was something to behold. Small mirror Mosaic tiles covering columns and a reception desk. Black marble perhaps. Really shabby chic furniture. It was something alright. So they tell us it's 50 dollars per person per night. What??!  That is super expensive for Mongolia especially for the condition of that place. But, the manager explains in partial English there's food and TV (um, yay Mongolian TV?) and the hot springs included and he decides to throw in a massage as well so we acquiesce because now it's even later and what else would we do? There may or may not be one ger camp there but if there is it's full. Mind you, this manager is 25, has a spiky short Mohawk situation, wears tacky sunglasses inside at night and a matchy matchy Tracksuit with some logo repeated all over it. So we pay the money for two days and then go to get dinner after too lengthy a tour from him only to find it's closed. He procures a bowl of meat soup for Bree but nothing for me unless I want slices of white bread, which I don't. So I ask because if seemed strange dinner wasn't included for that night and he explains the fee is per day so it starts with sleep and runs through the entire next day.  Ah! So I explain to him we are only there for one day. Two nights sleep but only one day and he understands so he writes down on our paper we would get 50% off the second day since a "spa package" makes no sense if we leave at 6am. I'm to return the next day to get the refund.
The place reminds me of a Catskills resort from the 40's or 50's which has never, ever been repaired or updated. Literally chunks of wall and ceiling are falling off and lying in small heaps - it's pretty clear they won't be cleaning them up.
Our room. For some reason I was still holding out hope that it may be decent. Why? Because sometimes I am delusional. It was one of the worst rooms we have had and we have been staying in guest houses and hostels, for sure nothing fancy but the beds had only filthy blankets, no sheets, and repulsive pillows. But hey, at least there was a 10" TV with four Mongolian channels.
So during this time it is slowly becoming apparent that this is not really a hot spring as the book described, it's really only a sanitorium, meaning people are there to heal specific health issues. The people in our long hall all seem to have children with physical as well as developmental disabilities who scream a lot. Very. Loudly. The average age of the cliental in the other building is likely mid-70's. We have been asked to report to the hospital at 9am the next day for what reason we are not sure but we suspect it has to do with our massage. No, none of the other staff speaks any English.
The next morning we go to the hospital amongst screaming children and the elderly and have no idea where to go. We have a slip of paper we were told by the manager is the the golden ticket so after seeing if we could decipher where to go (we couldn't),  I go into a room upstairs that looks administrative and show her the paper. She ushers us downstairs into what seems a triage room with two health professionals in it and we stand there. We are totally unable to communicate even with my Mongolian book and the first woman who started to help us walked away and never returned. I can't even count the number of times that's happened during our travels. During this time it was impossible not to notice that the other clients had these official looking books with pages of writing and dates and stamps... finally one of our saviors, Savior #1, speaks English to us and explains that you need the doctor to give you a plan. She was there with her son. We wound up with the nicest staff person who went with us everywhere, certainly above and beyond the call of duty. She didn't speaking English but we sort of understood her. She wrote us a little plan on the back of our golden ticket in Cyrillic and took us up to the hot springs. Then we realized you can't go and soak for however long you want nor can you just go in any of the 10 or so gers with the soaking tubs. You needed to be assigned and then you had 10 minutes. 10 minutes! All of that for 10 minutes. I was prepared to love those 10 minutes more than any other. She also showed us around the side of the hill where trickles of hot water were erupting from numerous,  numerous sites and rolling down the hill. Many of them were marked with a word and the temperature of the water in Celsius. Each word was a different body part or ailment like ear, eye, nose, head, stomach, leg, lungs, asthma, etc. The general idea was that you either drink a little of or do something external with the water from each. It was really cool but of course we didn't quite know what to do so we fudged it a bit. We also found out from Savior #1 that people stay for 10 days of treatment when they go, hence the treatment booklets, and that no one should go without a translator. Would have been good to know!
Thanks lonely planet. So instead of hot springs anyone can soak in with a resort for international travelers we are at a medical facility that does 10 day planned treatment programs for people with medical issues.
Continued in The Sanitorium - Part II.

The Sanitorium - Part II

(Continued...)
I had already tried to get our refund in the morning but the manager had told me to come back at 3 and when I had, he told me he needed to talk to his manager about it so I should come back again at 8. I was definitely getting a sketchy vibe. Of course there is a full power outage before 8 so I go back with my headlamp into the main building which is as dark as a crypt and knock on the office door. No answer. I am pissed. He has clearly been giving me the run around already - he's quite the weasel.  So there I am in a dark, nearly deserted hallway with no idea what to do. It's not like we could deal with it the next day, we were leaving at 6am. So I just hung around trying to figure out what I could do with no real ideas and maybe 15 minutes later he comes out of the door I had knocked multiple times on! What a bastard. So, I ask him about the refund. He tells me it's not possible. I ask why and explain again that they charged us for a day we won't be there. He says it's not possible. I get angry and tell him he had better give us a refund as he had promised and the raised voice, as often happens, got him to say he would go check with his manager again so off he scurries into the darkness. I'm not sure I'll see him again. I call BimBa even though I am loathe to involve him in this crap. I can't tell if he understood my Mongolian rendition of "issue help office" or not. Enter Savior #2 stage right. This very nice woman asks in good English if I need help with something. I almost cried. I explain I am trying to get money back which the manager said he would give me but now he won't.  I show her the evidence. She stays with me and BimBa arrives and she explains the situation to him so far as I can tell. Then surprisingly the manager boy and his manager come back. They all start speaking in heated Mongolian.  Then they decide we should move into the office out of the reception area. Now more staff members are involved.  I am just standing there mute and mostly ignored. They all haggle for at least 20 minutes with my advocate asking a question to me about some specific detail here or there. Thank goodness I had the paper where he wrote down 50% because that was clearly the winning evidence.  Keep in mind the power is still out. We are in a pitch black room with eight Mongolian folks heatedly arguing amongst themselves with the occasional mini flashlight illuminating the 50% on the paper. Finally good prevails and they say they will give us the refund but they can't tonight because it is too late and do I have a Mongolian bank account they can wire it to instead. Um, seriously? Do I look like I have a Mongolian bank account? I explain I had come twice during the day when they had been open and was told to come back now after hours. The head manager actually said she was sorry but the weasel had never told her. So I suggest (all through the Savior #2 translator) that the weasel give us the money and they can pay him back the next day. They all laughed, but I was serious! So they agree BimBa will get the money in his account and give it to us and we adjourn for the evening.
Needless to say, I told BimBa the next day to keep it for his troubles and help.
So while this was a stressful and somewhat disappointing experience, it was really quite educational and intense. Rarely, if ever, am I someone who is unable to advocate for myself but here I was that person. I can only imagine what immigrants in the US go through on a daily basis between the language barrier and discrimination... it's good to be on the other side sometimes and live in other shoes for even a day or two.

The Skies Opened

I was already planning to do a post on this subject describing the storm that took us by surprise as we walked up a couple of miles to a hilltop monastery. That story has officially been usurped by the storm we had this morning which was by far the biggest electrical storm I have ever experienced.
First, a word about the Gobi. Any picture I have ever seen of the Gobi is of those tall carmel colored sand dunes, nearly always with a couple of camels thrown in or at least some footsteps in shadow. In actuality the Gobi bears little resemblance. Sure, there are two small areas with those dunes, but the vast majority is a massive spread of scrubby, green (at least in summer), low rolling hills that goes on seemingly endlessly with a faint network of tire track pairs spider-webbing across. I will say this: it is truly a miracle that destinations are ever found. It all looks the same. There are certainly no signs. You drive for hours on end without seeing so much as a Ger where the set of tire tracks your driver has chosen have branched off at least five times with no indication of which split to take. We played musical Ger while driving across the Gobi attempting to find our Ger camp. Everytime we saw one we stopped to ask directions. Of course not speaking Mongolian I have no idea how they give directions but there is arm gesturing, pointing and a lot of description but what could be the landmarks? See the fourth flat hill? Go over that rise over there and look for the next Ger to ask? It is truly mind boggling and I consider myself to be good with directions. Finding the Ger camp last night which consisted of a couple of very small buildings and about 10 gers which was hundreds of kilometers into the Gobi was easily the work of wizards and magicians - talk about a needle in a haystack!
So back to the storm. I'm awoken at around 6am by the loudest thunder I have ever heard - ever. I felt it vibrate through the floor of the Ger and shake the sides. I felt it come up through the short wooden legs of the bed into my pillow. And the amazing thing was it went on that loudly mixed with nearly as loudly for about an HOUR. Growing up on the east coast we had some decent storms and we were taught to tell the distance by the amount of time between the rolls of thunder. There was no time between any of these rolls save for milliseconds. We were enveloped. At first it was only thunder and wind... and then the skies opened. I know people like corrugated tin roofs for the sound of rain but I daresay they have never heard rain on the fabric top of a Ger before. It was the best sound and I felt happier than I have in ages.
Thank you Gobi and bim ba!

Universal signs

It's amazing what you can get by on when you don't speak the language...

Beats me: shrug
Onion: make a chopping gesture and then rub your eyes like a baby crying
Time: tap your wrist
Girl's Pee: squat down and make a peeing noise... note that it takes longer for men to understand this than women
Money: rub your fingers together on one hand
Lighter: pretend there's a lighter in your hand and light it.
Sleep: head tilt to either side with both hands in prayer position under your ear.
Eat: pretend there is a sock puppet on one hand and put it to your lips and give yourself some kisses.
Drink/alcoholic: the old head tilt back with hand wrapped around imaginary container.
OK: thumb's up.
Cold: put each hand on the opposite arm and rub.
Hot: fan your face with your hand as if you are southern.
No: shake head side to side
NO: shake head side to side vigorously, widen eyes and firmly move hands in a horizontal motion from the center of your body outward
Yes: move head up and down
YES: move head up and down, put a big goofy grin on your face and clap your hands like a giddy schoolgirl.
I don't understand: really any contorted look of confusion, especially with one or both corners of the mouth downturned. Oftentimes followed by "English?"
Drive/driver: pretend you hands are at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock on a steering wheel and rotate it back and forth.

Expectations

There are many wise quotes about expectations.  Of course none come to mind specifically, but you know how they go... if you let yourself live in expectations then reality is going to be disappointing. Or if you are not flexible enough to adjust your expectations once reality presents itself, you will also be disappointed - and on it goes.

I definitely had different expectations of Mongolia than what we've experienced thus far. There is no question that the country is beautiful with wide open spaces and very, very few people. A smattering of gers here and there and lots of sheep,  goats,  horses and yaks. The scenery does not disappoint. However a large part of why I came here was to experience the culture - to learn about the people and in that respect our first nomadic family homestay was disappointing. We spent over two hours getting oriented to the ways of the nomadic people and their traditions and practices prior to departing for our white lake excursion - and worrying about how we would possibly remember all of it - only to find we weren't actually staying with a nomadic family up in white lake once we arrived. Nor were we staying with a herder's family... we were staying in a Ger camp. Ger camps are run by local families as an alternative to the herder lifestyle,  but you don't stay in their family Ger,  you stay in one of a series of guest gers which have only beds and a stove,  occasionally with a light or outlet which works for a couple of hours after dark. Tourism is a large part of the lives of many families in Mongolia because herding is extremely difficult. Their winters are bitterly cold and one bad winter can wipe out a large percentage of their livestock. Once that happens the only choice is often to move to town and set up your family ger in the Ger slums around the capital. Apparently it used to be the case with communism that there was more of a collective animal sharing so if one person lost a lot of animals there would be a redistribution of some sort so they would not suffer the full brunt of the loss. Now with democracy that is no longer the case and there would be no incentive to give another family some of your animals. Tourism gives families a much more reliable and steady income and is really a win-win for Mongolians and tourists. At the end of the white lake trip we did go to visit a nomadic family on our way back. It was extremely interesting to see how they live but I found myself relieved we hadn't stayed with a nomadic family for days because the language barrier is really difficult and they seem to feel obligated to entertain you which is a bit awkward.  So there was an initial disappointment but then a relief and a change of expectations.  We then planned the next seven days to see the geological and religious sites rather than focusing on how to try to expose ourselves to more native tradition because that can't be forced. It's more of a slow osmosis here... rather than being bombarded by facts and culture the learning comes in trickles which makes sense considering the Mongolian pace of life.

Twice bucked, once shy.

There are so many different sayings to describe the low probability of the same thing happening twice, especially in the same time period. Well, lightning may not strike twice but apparently my wild Mongolian horse does buck people off twice. And by people I mean me.
I was apprehensive before we got on the horses but once we were on and started walking all fear disappeared.  This was not going to be a gallop along the shore of white lake, this was going to be a slow walk with a number of other tourists as well. After a couple of hours we started trying to trot the horses which would work for short stints that eventually got a bit longer but a canter was as fast as we got, and we had to work for that.  Bree's horse cantered a little. My horse, Billy as I called him, kept pace with the canter but just went at a very fast trot which meant super bumpy. I had a silly school girl grin on my face the entire time. We were on the home stretch and my horse had taken the fast trotting lead when all of a suddenly I saw the horse torquing under me when I was somehow above it flying through the air... flying and then BOOM. Slammed down on my lower back with a shot of pain before the rest of me settled on the ground. Holy crap it hurt. All I could say over and over again was ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I wasn't concerned that I was paralyzed or had broken anything but I knew that crunch meant that I would be in serious need of a chiropractor.  Needless to say that will need to wait until we return to the states. Bree ran over and made sure I could feel both of my feet and then we slowly got me up over the span of many minutes and started hobbling home. She saw the horse spook for literally no reason at all and buck me off. What luck I have!
Fast forward to the next day when we were supposed to ride horses to the volcano. It was unclear if I was going to be able to ride again since I felt all banged up but you know what they say - back in the saddle!  I thought I should give Billy the benefit of my doubt and got back on. Felt okay. Certainly it hurt a bit but nothing too serious. Bree's horse was really feisty though and after only a short walk and bucking about she decided to leave the horse back at the Ranch so to speaking and go on foot. Walking was more difficult for me so I stayed on Billy with a vow to have a walk-only trip. No trotting for you Billy! Everything was going so well... we were back near the Ger camp, maybe a quarter mile away and I had managed to keep Billy under control despite the continuous march of the iron horses (motorcycles) which spooked him a bit. Home free! Yeah. Until he spooked again and bucked me off onto my arm. The low-speed Buck-off is much less painful than the higher speed but still sucks especially when you are already sore. My arm is still recovering but luckily we are horse free for a week or so. Here's to hoping camels don't buck!

Anticipaaaaaaaation...

So maybe it's not only the adventure itself but the preparation for it and the anticipation of how challenging it may actually be that's part of the learning process?  Bree and I are sitting here about to leave on a four day trip where we stay in nomadic family gers and ride horses for two of the days - to white lake and a volcano. The horseback riding is FREAKING me out. During our orientation we got instruction on how to best place our feet in the stirrups so if we need to jump off a galloping horse we can!  Holy crap. I am pretty terrified of these half-size wild horses to begin with. A friend who did the peace corps here told us a story of a friend who was off on a horseback riding adventure and his horse decided it was time to go home so he took off lightening fast in the other direction and the poor guy got dragged for a while with his foot in the stirrup. I definitely don't want that to happen to me - so maybe it's actually good that I visualize leaping off of the crazed galloping horse...

There's a lot to be apprehensive of. There are more rules than you can shake a stick at when it comes to appropriate family Ger behavior. The eldest enter first. Don't point your feet north when you are sitting in the Ger. Receive everything with your right hand. Don't shake hands with your sleeves rolled up. Don't turn your back on the altar. Ever. And the list goes on. Of course for me not eating dairy makes it more complex because you have to try everything they give you and unless it's alcohol you should eat it all. Let's hope the lactaid works!

What happens if I screw up a rule and offend the family?  What if I fall off the horse?  What if the food makes me sick? What if we can't communicate at all? And the list goes on. So what I think is that the anticipation and anxiety is part of the learning experience. Mind over matter. Mind over matter. Mind over matter. It's okay to be scared but best to not let the fear affect either the experience itself or my ability to enjoy the journey. It's about calmly reminding myself that this entire experience is about learning, not just the parts I have identified as difficult or scary. And with that, I'm really looking forward to the challenges to come and also trying to be good to myself in the process. I may tend to be a wee bit hard on myself so now is the perfect time to let that go and enjoy the imperfections - or at least tolerate them!

Comfort zone

So I guess traveling is all about getting out of your comfort zone,  because until you do that you don't really test yourself or see your inner strength. How do you respond to adversity?  How do you solve problems?  What reaction do you have in stressful situations?

We only just arrived in Ulan bataar yesterday so I can't say there has been much adversity thus far. In fact,  it feels a bit easy but I think that may also be because I am traveling with a good friend which I have never done before. I think being alone adds a layer of anxiety which doesn't exist when there is someone else with you who speaks your language and can help you if needed which is all a new experience for me. Mongolia is actually much,  much easier than the 12 hours we spent in Beijing. Not being able to read the characters of a language makes you feel really helpless.  Just trying to get to our hotel was so difficult because i only had the english name and address printed out which no one understood. It took at least six people and one incorrect attempt to get us there. Talk about helpless!  At least we can read the Cyrillic characters here even if the meaning of the words is unknown. It's a relief to know with a little studying we'll be able to pronounce words,  read a map,  etc.

The strangest sensation thus far has been not having a computer and not compulsively checking email,  Facebook, etc. I am so used to a rapid-fire multi -tasking that I definitely went through a bit of withdrawal at first. I recall reading an article in the new York times about top neurologists who went on a trip to study what happened to their brains when they disconnected for a couple of weeks and it took them only a week for their brain chemistry to change. I am looking forward to that! I know my work has changed my brain patterns for the worse and hope disconnecting will be a much needed reset.

I think the trip is likely to feel somewhat easy until we head out west on Monday and stay in Ger's, ride horses and commune with nature which is always a wonderful challenge. It's guaranteed to rain when we are out in the steppe so I look forward to being wet and miserable at times and learning more about what I'm made of and who I've become over the past few years. Though it just recently ended, I grew and changed immensely throughout my relationship with Brian and I look forward to seeing all of these changes through the inevitable adversity to come!

Papi te amo Areta dice todo el tiempo

First Question - Why do airplane bloody mary's taste so good?

57 pages of notes. Nearly 400 flashcards with over 40 of them having full verb conjugations. Learning a new language is so incredibly intense - willing your brain to comprehend. Straining to decipher. Taking far too long to compose a response before speaking. Repeating it to yourself over and over before it comes out. My teacher Rochael was incredibly good, but 5 hours of one on one time for five days straight all in Spanish was a bit mind numbing. I remember thinking before I left that I wasn't sure a week would even be enough to gain a basic comprehension. Wrong! Trying desperately to not get hung up on one particular word you think you must know but can't remember and unintentionally ignoring the next 5-6 words and missing the meaning entirely. On the other hand there's the listen to all but comprehend none because you can't take the time to stop listening to process anything. The fine line of paying enough attention to be able to identify the words you know - a skill like skimming or speed reading. Maybe even some of the same mechanism behind a photographic memory? taking a snapshot of an auditory stream. Then you just hope the words you understand are ones which can impart the meaning. I was able to understand about 80% of my teacher (from 0% to 90 by the end) but he spoke really slowly and repetitively - unlike the native older women i spoke with - that was more like 25% comprehension. If that! I haven't stretched my brain like that in ages - probably since math proofs in grad school. It felt good and i actually think it made me smarter. or i should say less dumb - lately I have been suffering from poor word retrieval, absent mindedness, losing items still in my grasp... I think I may have actually reversed some brain trauma from an extended sleep deprivation and over exertion at work. I also slept a lot. 8-9 hours each night along with at least one daily nap, sometimes two for two weeks straight. Did I mention how great Guatemala is? I love sleeping!

The terrain reminded me a bit of Rwanda - many a volcano. I think even though a majority of the population lives below the poverty line, the poverty is somehow less obvious than the developing countries in Africa I've been to. I think it may be the building materials used? Like somehow a one room concrete block house looks less impoverished than a one room mud house with a thatched roof? Apparently it does to me. The yearly wage in Tanzania is nearly the monthly wage in Guatemala - though having a stronger currency does not seem to make much of a difference in their daily lives. Guatemala is full of extremely hard workers - no question there. The other aspect is that Guatemala has amazing indigenous textile production which the Mayan people wear every day. Superficial though it may sound, traditional mayan dress looks infinitely better than old ill fitting clothes from the US with blaring branding. The aesthetic dissonance of seeing someone in tanzania without any shoes, but with a large blue shirt proclaiming "Tommy Hilfiger" is extremely jarring.

My second week was spent visiting 5 NGO's that are supported by one of our clients - Global Giving - a great non-profit that helps to fund and support over 800 projects worldwide, and the sponsor of this second week. First to WINGS http://wingsguate.org in Antigua. Oooof. Family planning in a country where children are a sign of a man's power and sexual prowess and the Catholic church outlaws birth control? They are doing amazing work educating not only women about their options, but they have a youth program as well as Men's education - not only discussing reproduction, birth control, anatomy but also the proper way to treat people in relationships. Fostering respect in an attempt to curb what is a tragic widespread acceptance of domestic violence against women. It's important to keep in mind that the subject of peoples bodies and anatomy is completely taboo. The girls there don't play soccer because they think that their uterus will drop if they run?! So treading lightly and garnering respect first in the community is paramount to their success. They can't just barge in and talk about birth control or they would be shunned. In an even more tragic twist it turns out our guide, who is a very well-educated British woman has been in an abusive marriage for years. While we can see how it would be near to impossible for impoverished women with 8 children (the average for indigenous women) and no means of income to leave an abusive husband, we can't forget it can be just as hard for a well-educated, well informed professional as well. Don't ask me how, but whenever my mother goes somewhere she gets people - strangers or close to - who confide in her their personal trials and tribulations. Must be she has some sort of psychologist magnet even though she's retired. So although WINGS only operates in two regions, they are making impressive headway and are growing rapidly as an organization. I wish there could be 12 more such organizations to cover the rest of the country!

We also visited a women's textile collective - Santiago Zamora. Again, the way too common story of the illiterate Mayan women with abusive husbands and the potential for more children than they wanted. But here they had an amazing strength, willpower and lack of fear which somehow grew out of this hopeless situation. These women went off and learned a trade, with the understanding they could never be free of the abuse and control unless they took control of their own lives and had a marketable skill and a means for an income. They went against their husbands wishes and eventually started up the textile collective and really bettered their lives - inspirational to say the least. When asked what happened to her abusive husband, she smiled and said oh, he's fine now. Once they saw we were serious and successful they became more respectful and started treating us better.

Over to Lake Atitlan which is stunning if not infected with cyanobacteria and used as a dump for pretty much everything dumpable. Pueblo a pueblo http://www.puebloapueblo.org/ is a smaller operation focused on helping indigenous families whose village was destroyed in the mudslides of 2005. They're building a library for the school and just started a large organic garden to supplement the healthy lunch program where a different town mother cooks lunch for all of the school children each day. One of the largest problems in Guatemala is the malnutrition. Ironically farmers whose livelihood is growing fruit and vegetables are better off selling it since it brings in more money, so they subsist off of very little food and not nearly so nutritious - primarily corn. They also have two sponsorship programs both of which are 300$/year - one to support one child throughout the school year to provide them with supplies and to support their classroom and teachers. The other is a maternal program for pre and post natal care and nutrition through the first 5 years of the child's life. 10% of children in Guatemala die before the age of 5. TEN percent. That's nearly incomprehensible.

I guess the sign of a good vacation is coming home rested and feeling like you have been gone for far longer than you actually were. Check! Aside from a stone pillow and a happy family of fleas that ate off of me for over a week it was a wonderful trip and I learned more about Guatemala than I thought was possible in such a short time. Plans are a brewin' to return and study for longer next year - we'll see!

Travel

So now that I am back home I am of course reflecting on my travels - a reflection I had started about half-way through my trip. People ask how the trip was with the expectation that it was amazing, fantastic, incredible, etc. I feel like I have to say 'oh yes, it was wonderful' or they think i am a complete ingrate when they were at their desks working the whole time. Maybe I am completely spoiled, or maybe I just am getting to know the kind of travel I really like, but I wouldn't say this vacation was any of the aforementioned descriptors. It was definitely fun, somewhat relaxing, but also a little bit one-toned. In the past, I have visited friends in numerous locations, most of which I formerly lived in (Boston, NY, Chicago) - i didn't consider that travel, that was visiting. I have also traveled to new places where I didn't know anyone - predominantly by myself at least for the last five or six years. this is the first time I have traveled to new places I have wanted to visit AND had friends there as well. A melding of friend visiting and travel. I didn't have much time to contemplate this at all before I left because I was so horridly overworked. I didn't even buy guide books or do any research in part because I knew I would be staying with friends. In hindsight, this was a mistake. I should definitely have done my own research anyway and gone with some sort of agenda of what I wanted to see and do. There's no way my friends could know that! They certainly did a wonderful job of taking me places and showing me terrific sites with little to no guidance on my part.

I did learn a great deal though about what I am looking for when I travel - which is ultimately going to make my future time off that much better. I like difficulty. I like challenges. I like to be somewhat nervous in that excited anticipatory way the first time you try to speak a new language or navigate a new public transportation system or even just try to get yourself from point a to point b with no guidance. It's a puzzle - and i love a good puzzle. I like to wander aimlessly and I like to go on adventures. Even if they are only adventures to me! I never know when I am traveling what the experiences that leave lasting impressions will be, but my most memorable time in Portugal in 2007 was renting that piece of crap, 2-stroke engine toy car and driving across the northern part of Portugal for a day with a really old map and no actual destination. It was so beautiful and wonderful and difficult to read the map and signs simultaneously in Portuguese (which I do not come close to understanding) while navigating round-abouts and being utterly lost and yet somehow knowing where I was anyway. Being passed by old men on the highway and nearly blown off the road. Discovering windmill farms in the middle of nowhere and stormy tumultuous skies. Okay, that and getting drunk in Villa Nova De Gaia on Port wine. This trip was not like that. I hung out with my friends, visited a couple of museums and saw a few performances, drank wine at every possible opportunity, drank some more, ate food I would never eat here, suffered some ailments, slept, forgot about work for at least a day at times, played guitar hero, got drenched in the rain, got a real flavor for the cities, shopped, drank some more and got to know my friends better. Overall a success, for sure. However, not the type of experience I would choose again for my one 3 week vacation of the year. I guess I always assumed that traveling alone was something I was doing by default but now I think it is something i will do with intention. Sure, it gets a little lonely sometimes especially when I don't speak the language well, and for someone who lives alone, works from home and has a lot of solitary time to begin with my incessant chatter to myself can get to be a bit much. but overall i think the freedom and challenge really do invigorate and excite me. Next stop: South America.

Window or Aisle?

For the majority of my adult life, I nearly always choose an aisle seat - especially for flights over 2 hours. This is mostly because I feel a bit trapped and claustrophobic in a window seat. It's also because due to other issues, I need to drink a lot of water when I fly, which means many trips to the bathroom, and I can't stand bothering people when I need to go. Hence the aisle seat. Breaking from tradition I actually took a window seat the entire way back from london and I realize how much I missed looking out of the window! Admittedly there was nothing to see from London to Chicago, except a few brief glimpses of a very frozen looking Quebec and north-eastern Canada. The US is really truly an amazing piece of land. From the compulsively gridded midwest with the rivers and rivulets the only disturbance to the regularity, along with their crop circles which makes it look a bit like a piece of fabric from the 70's. To the Rockies which start as small ripples in sheets to the peaks of a rumpled velvet duvet. One of the most amazing sights are the infrequent cloud poofs suspended in a completely clear sky that look like they must be frozen in some sort of clear resin or glass that they don't just plummet to the ground. Some of the foothills look like a 100 mile long tractor rode over them leaving behind its rutted, monster tire tracks along the ridge lines. The mountains in colorado are nearly identical in color and texture to the ashed rind of the goat cheese we consumed in Berlin. Salt and pepper coloration with far more of the charcoal color punctuated by exposed slabs of creamy white on the plateaus. yum. The rivulets are branching out from their main stem like tree roots creeping towards the mountain tops. Then there are the brown lands as I like to call them that look like a mud flat full of partially submerged giant writhing lizards followed by the salt flats like an elephants hide covered in dried, cracked, flaking mud. Finally back over California and I wonder - what are all of those green mountains so close to San Jose with the cool little roads all over them? Then it occurs to me they are logging roads and I notice the reduced size of the nap on those hills. And last but not least the crazy colored pools cut into the very south end of the bay which are salt farms? rice paddies? Not sure what but they are quite large and three of them are bright red, two are chartreuse, the rest run the gamut of the blue, green, brown spectrum. So many interesting areas so close to home sweet home.

Berlin

So my first impression of Berlin in comparison to Barcelona is the incredible difference in proportions. Berlin is definitely wider than it is tall, while Barcelona is much taller than it is wide. Buildings, roads, empty space, all of it. Berlin reminds me most of LA just in terms of its space – very large buildings that are very solid and rectangular and seem to weight down the entire block they run. And these, my friend, are not small blocks! Some seem to be half a mile long. No kidding. The streets themselves are incredibly wide – people park perpendicular to the street on *both* sides, and there’s still room for two lanes and a green space down the middle! Not to mention the sidewalks themselves could nearly all be two-lane roads. Even the small side streets are wider than most in San Francisco. Barcelona on the other hand has very, very skinny buildings, and even thinner streets. I don’t think I saw more than a few two lane streets the entire time I was there. Many of them even require three or five point turns to get around the corner - which is pretty hilarious to watch. This makes for very shaded tight feeling spaces which can be comforting but then again a bit restrictive. the perspective of only being able to view a building from at most ten feet away from it is very different than what the building would look like half a mile away. The inner spaces follow suit – giant, and I do mean giant apartments in berlin – and teeny, tiny apartments in Barcelona. Six of the Barcelona bathtub I had could fit in the berlin bathtub. Because of Berlin's wide open spaces and long, lumbering buildings it does certainly feel much heavier and more solid than barcelona, it's old, thin, dainty cousin. There's nothing dainty about Berlin, including its people!

The Germans have a really obvious group personality. They are really into rules and upholding of those rules for the sake of upholding them. Take crossing the street for example – the germans will not Jaywalk. It doesn’t matter if it’s a one-way street you can see for miles down with nary a car in sight – they will *not* cross that street until the cross-walk light turns green. It blows my new Yorker mind – I can’t even conceive of such a thing. It’s not like they think a car is going to fall out of the sky and squash them if they do cross before it’s okay to, it’s just that they like to uphold rules. They also won’t smoke where they’re not allowed to (which is fantastic!), and as we saw a couple of times, if one German thinks another is doing something wrong, they will certainly be sure to let them know. As Shawn said - there is no sugar-coating here. Whenever I asked someone a stupid question, they were sure to answer me as if I were an idiot. One night in a bar I asked for a fork for my food, and the guy was like 'your fork is right here' and gave me a look like i had three stupid heads. I guess I hadn't looked at the bottom of the breadbasket to find it! He later warmed up to me though. You definitely need to have thick skin to live here. No lightening up the moment with a joke either, they are not jokers. It is refreshing though to have people be so straightforward, and being pretty tactless myself I certainly appreciated the directness. Of course I also couldn’t understand most of what was being said, so that may help too!

Everyone bikes here. Shawn and Flora convinced me I should rent a bike which I was apprehensive about 1) because no one wears a helmet except a few small children and 2) because the only time in the last 9 years I have ridden a bike was at Burningman on a very flat desert riding a no-gear heavy cruiser. With no vehicular traffic to speak of. It was so much fun! It took me a really long time to get used to the back pedal = brake idea. I tend to back pedal a lot during the normal course of biking and each time would get lurched forward until I trained myself not to do that. The really amazing thing is how integrated bikes and vehicles are here! Truly amazing. The cars completely respect the bikes, are aware of them, don’t hit them… don't open their doors without looking first... and there are bike lanes on *nearly* every road! Sometimes painted on the road, and sometimes a separate part of the sidewalk. Fantastic. I can’t imagine a day when it will like that in San Francisco, which is unfortunate because now I see how fun biking around a city can be.

The one thing about berlin I didn't get to participate in which was a slight disappointment is their intense ping pong matches. Parks have permanent stone ping pong tables! Even the women in work clothes, tight skirts and high heeled shoes pretty much kicked ass. I for one am a big sucker for ping pong. Ah well, something for next time.

Barcelona

Not so much to say about Barcelona. I feel like I was somewhat robbed of the real feel of the city being there over the easter holiday since everything (and i do mean everything) is closed for not one, not two, but three days!! Can you imagine? they even made up a holiday - easter monday! I could not believe it. between that and the rain I think I had one day and a half that was beautiful weather and open businesses. It's hard to get the feel of a city when everything is boarded up with corrugated metal doors that are covering up completely unknown entities. They all look like collision repair shops until they roll-up their doors to expose the very varied interiors. I like the people of barcelona. I like their passion. never have i seen so many people making out so vigorously in public during the day. imagine the ravers in a dark corner of a club high on who knows what at 4am going at it and put them at a bus stop or in a pub at 2pm. shocking, but appealing nonetheless with such a care-less attitude. Bicing – the city bikes there completely kick ass. You can pay a nominal monthly fee and get a bike from a bike rack with the swipe of a card – the cool thing being the bike racks are huge (15-30 bikes on each) and every 4-5 blocks! Even though the woman whose room I was staying in left me her card, I must admit I hardly used the bikes – mostly because I like walking and it rained a lot. Tapas. Granted I am not eating gluten right now and all tapas technically comes on bread (or else it isn’t real tapas) but I was able to scrape off the top and eat it anyway. Very, very good and so beautiful to look at. Works of art some of them were. Gaudi. Of course you can’t go to Barcelona without a huge gaudi tour. I spent a fair amount of time traveling to different parts to see his park, sagrada familia, the two apartment buildings. And while I do think I like his work I also find it to be pretty busy (especially some of the tile work in the park) and definitely a bit much, especially the church. It will be a spectacle indeed when it is finally finished. I do think I probably short-changed some other architects though and in hindsight maybe should have checked out some other work, but I did get to walk around nearly all of the old city and saw a bunch of beautiful architecture, especially in the gothic quarter. Smoking. Everyone smokes. Everywhere. It really is awful. the house i was staying at was populated by 5 smokers, and they smoke as passionately as they do everything else. the room i was staying in had a door that didn't close or have a knob so i was inundated by a cloud of smoke every night. I, of course, am a spoiled Californian when It comes to that although London and Berlin are both smoke-free as well so maybe there is yet some hope for Spain following suit? Doubtful I guess as they already smoke in the very few places they are not allowed to - like in the train. I really like the public recycling receptacles everywhere. in berlin they even had a 4th receptacle for used clothing to donate! How cool is that?

Web Addiction

So I will be the first to admit I am completely addicted to Facebook. I can't even say how many times per day I check it (because I can't even admit that to myself), but it's often. Especially when I am working - it's great to distract myself briefly with someones new photos or perusing the new status updates which have come through. With nearly 500 friends it does mean that I miss many of the status updates just due to the sheer volume, but it entertains nonetheless. Of course having that many friends, or "friends" I should say, is part of the issue. How could I possibly have that many friends? I've even culled through and un-friended at least 50 people! I don't even think I know that many people. Do I want that many friends? No. Could I possibly keep in touch with that many people? Hardly. Do I have some voyeuristic urge to look through peoples profiles who I haven't seen in 20 years and didn't even necessarily know or like then? Yes, yes I do. Why? Boredom. Need for distraction. Some desire to see if they seem to be happier than I am. Of course that is utterly ridiculous since the photos people choose to post can hardly be indicative of their mental well-being, or even physical well-being. Who knows how old those photos are? I am curious though. It's the same reason I would go to a high school reunion - this is just one big virtual reunion for the classmates of John Jay.

That's one aspect of it - and then there's the reality that many people choose to post on my wall or send me messages instead of writing me emails anymore. I can't stand that. It's somehow even less personal than email - which in itself as we know is not very personal. People post status updates asking who wants to go to a movie that night or see a show or do some other activity. How would i even necessary see that? With as many "friends" as I have, I can only see the last 30 minutes of status updates at any given time - which frankly makes it not very useful. And the new interface? What a piece of garbage. Whomever took away all of the useful filtering functionality was a complete idiot. I would daresay their user testing group either 1) didn't exist or 2) was also a bunch of idiots. but I digress!

The problem here being my constant need to check facebook. Update my status. Pick a few people and read through their walls and look at their photos. WASTE OF TIME. I mean, with my complete lack of sleep and overabundance of work I still would have to check facebook a couple of times before I went to sleep - even if I was exhausted and had my eyelids closing as I tried to cram in one more wall-to-wall. So, I've decided I need to back off. It's so unhealthy as to be pathetic, really. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to do it (talk about a real addiction!) but then I realized it's actually easier than getting over most addictions. All I need to do is not log in. I'll admit the first couple of days were hard. Especially being on vacation now with little to do at night - but the relief I felt at not needing to use it far outweighed my bits of curiosity on what people were up to. It's been 3 days now going on 4 - with one last status update and I think I'm over the worst of the withdrawal. I'm going to need to be one of those people who logs in once a month, misses out on 20 events because people no longer invite you to things outside of facebook, and be okay with that. The Luddite in me is really, really happy with this decision. This is bringing much more of a separation of work and life as well - my life needs to be as far away from the computer as possible since my work is married to the computer. No PDA's, no email-ready devices, no computer except for work and the paltry amount of personal email I receive (none on most days). Living for me just can't be done through a computer, I need to remember that and keep my distance. I will always be a letter writing, phone calling friend at heart and hopefully in practice.

Ouch

I thought for sure I could escape the stomach bug. or, rather, i was really hoping not to get it! jim sounded miserable the night before and I certainly had no interest in that. well, apparently other plans were laid for me, because i woke up at 2am with terrible stomach pain. but before i even realized that had happened (because waking up for me in the middle of the night always involves some serious confusion) i already knew i was sick - how you ask? because i had 'living on a prayer' in my head and it would NOT leave. I mean i tried every trick in the book to get it gone - yelling at it, putting replacement songs in, talking over it to drown it out and nothing worked. it had been the soundtrack (on an endless loop) in my head for my 2 hours of dreams prior - i was playing air drums to it in one dream i remember! so that's how i knew i must be sick. i never lose control over my brain's radio unless i am ill - and a fever is involved. sometimes when i was a kid i would get the a&w rootbeer jingle stuck, but i guess i just didn't know how to stop it then. so here i am with living on a prayer over and over and the most terrible stomach pains. oh, and hot sweats every minute or so along with nausea. perfect. it was almost a blessing i couldn't sleep through it because if i could have i would have had fever dreams. i have tried before to explain this to a couple of people with little to no success. so, being a glutton for punishment i will try again. fever dreams for me are metallic. meaning there is that quality to them - they are grey or silver tinged and dark and repetitive. nothing happens in a fever dream, or at least no plot moves forward. and no amount of waking up will change them to a new scene. once the fever starts to go color will return and plots will move forward, but until then it's like being in a robot's dream. none of that to worry about - because no sleep would come. too much pain.

luckily i was smart enough to stay in london through tuesday and take a mid afternoon flight so i will still be able to get out and about for some photography tomorrow morning before i head off to barcelona. this day is definitely not turning out as expected! the best laid plans...

Deliquent

I have been so delinquent in writing it's damn near pathetic. Work has overrun my life as of late and writing is always one of the first things to go, whether it should be or not. I'm in London now - on a long awaited and much deserved vacation. A vacation I only began packing for 1.5 hours prior to departing San Francisco, which for those of you who know me even moderately well know that is entirely out of character for me. I didn't even make a packing list in my packing list notebook until the day before! luckily i had a prior europe list i just copied.

One of the interesting aspects of traveling is all of the things about myself that become so much more exaggerated. The constant run of life and meeting to meeting to meeting rat race really distract from listening to yourself and existing as a person rather than a part of a greater work whole. It is so hard for me to not do. I try not to do, and just be, but i wind up doing anyway. On this trip I am only working one day per week, yet I find myself curious about what work email may be waiting for me. It's hard to describe the dread each morning when I first open my work mailbox and all of the email starts loading. Especially when I have been up the night before working until 2am and a mere 6 hours later I have already accumulated 25 emails. Such is the problem with east coast clients! Can't I get a break? Oh, right, like this vacation? Part of me almost prefers just dealing with the email on a daily basis to keep it down to a manageable level and avoid the anxiety of a weeks worth of messages. But i know the only real way to forget about work and really enjoy this vacation is to just cut it off and deal with the repercussions later. That's so against my grain! It's really harder than you would think. So that's my first challenge. No work until next Thursday.

London is great, because I love my friends here and I always have so much fun visiting - they are the ultimate hosts. It feels like vacation, but it doesn't really feel like traveling yet. Mostly because I have already been here a number of times, and London is pretty similar to San Francisco save the architecture. and the hard core 80's styles. mc hammer pants have not quite made it across the pond into the mainstream just as of yet. thankfully.

I go to barcelona on Tuesday and berlin the following Tuesday. Two cities I have never been to before where I don't speak the language. Now that will feel like traveling. Not to mention visiting some more of my most favorite people. what a lucky girl i am!

Goodbye Winthrop, Hello Tahoe

Well, despite my best intentions, plane tickets, hotel reservations, a rental car and fully paid 3 days of ski camp, I didn't make it there today. I got in the cab at 7:55am, got to the airport on time, boarded the plane - pleased with my bulkhead aisle seat - and started knitting. Then there's this odd announcement about a - delay? What? It's sunny and beautiful outside! Ah, but not so in the pacific northwest. Apparently there was a crazy snowstorm in Seattle, replete with 0 mile visibility. Then I started worrying about this crazy storm and our 2 hour delay - since it was covering the 2 passes I would need to drive over. Washington was in the process of getting dumped on. I talked to some Washington locals who said I definitely should not try to drive from Seattle to the North Cascades today, so I looked in the Alaska Airlines magazine and lo and behold! They fly to Wenatchee. So I cancel my rental car in Seattle, buy a ticket to Wenatchee (which is only 2 hours from ski camp) and go about getting a rental car. Funny thing, there were none. NONE. Enterprise, Budget and Hertz - the 3 rental car companies in Wenatchee, had no 4 wheel drive vehicles. Shoot. I mean really none - none to the point of my asking to see if I could get one the next day they said there were none available until next year. ! They were trying to get some over from Spokane, but they just got 22 inches of snow in the last day or two themselves. Apparently they'd been getting totaled more frequently than expected.

So as my flight delay grows larger making my connection to Wenatchee look less probable I realize I am kind of screwed. No way of getting from Wenatchee to Winthrop. Unsafe travel conditions to go from seattle and at that point it would mean driving probably a minimum of 8 hours through treacherous terrain alone. Plus, it was looking a lot like I would need to stay the night somewher eon route - and what is the point of missing the first day of a 3 day camp?

Then there's the other reality that I have been dreading going! Once I heard the weather would be highs in the single digits the whole time I got a knot in my stomach each time I thought about it. I mean starting out at 8am when it's -2 outside without windchill? UGH. Not enjoyable! Not for me at least. There are some people who would either enjoy it or enjoy the challenge of it, but I am not those people. Especially in a coaching situation where you ski, get sweaty then stand around and *freeze* with chattering teeth and all.

So I said screw it at the very last minute (literally) that I could get off the plane, they somehow miraculously pulled my bags off and home I went, 4 hours later.

Luckily I remembered Tahoe - where I am part of a winter ski rental! So I ran inside, grabbed my ski wax, started the dishwasher, took my whole knitting needle bag, fed the cat and ran back out to drive up here. Unfortunately this drive was treacherous too - took 6 hours with a record 1 mile in 54 minutes (record for me that is) and was a bit white-out-ish at times near the summit - but I made it and I am now warm in the cabin watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (with Gene Wilder), drinking whiskey and relaxing. Yeehaw!!

The skiing will be good - if not tomorrow then definitely the next day and it is about 20 degrees warmer than Winthrop. Phew!

un-friended

It's been a good 6 months since I've written, I guess that highlights the Lazy in 'Lazy Overachiever', eh? Not much has has happened except that my work took off at the speed of light, leaving me to run after it all hours of the day, every day of the week. Things have settled down over the last couple of months, thankfully, and I am working at balancing a personal life with my career so my friends who have written me off will once again start asking if I actually want to leave the house... ever.

One thing that has kept me sane is Facebook - or more specifically satisfied the voyeur in me. I get to read the status updates and view the photos that my 412 "friends" post. Do I really have 412 friends you ask? No. these days I hardly feel like i have any since most are either long distance or expanding their families. I would say that all of the local people I have accepted or sent friend requests to are definitely friendly acquaintances at the least. There is another contingent though of "friends" from my high school nearly all of whom I have never spoken to in the 18 years since I have left. I am fascinated by these folk though. It's oftentimes such a mystery, too, as to who they even are! You have a married name and a profile photo of children with no parent. Who are you?!? Why are you testing my memory in such a way that makes my head hurt? After a fair amount of sleuthing i can usually figure it out - or I ask another friend who may know. There are only 2 people I never figured out. Then the question remains - was I friends with you in high school? Did I like you? Did you torture me? Were you a raging bitch to me? Did I want to run you over? I have actually gotten friend invites from people who made my life miserable in high school. Why be my "friend" now 18 years later? Is this some sort of new popularity contest I should know about? I actually went through the other day and unfriended at least 10 people who no longer met the facebook definition of friend - whatever that means. I hate to have too many of anything - clothes, stuff, friends. I like to keep it as efficient as possible! I am a minimalist after all.

So then one of these new-found high school friends moved to San Francisco, so we got in touch and went out for some wine 19 years later. I don't think I had ever spoken to him in high school - really. He was a grade ahead and really popular and hot. He probably smiled at me once unknowingly and that was about it. So it was really very fun catching up - he agreed he wasn't sure we had ever spoken, but that he remembered me in some sports jersey. He is surprisingly unmarried as the lion share of people from my high school are long since married with kids. I would say maybe 5 of us are not - out of 100+ people. The funny thing was he was asking why I was single and I was saying I hadn't met anyone I was interested in - the usual banter. I explained that having been a math major with a degree in computer science is really not much of a turn-on and that owning a house usually chases them away completely. He was kind to say that those should be turn-ons and men should like strong, successful, smart women... how those guys are *clearly* the 'wrong guys'. Easy enough to say - of course it turns out that he is dating a 24 year old girl! Hey, 38 year old guy, how about the strong, successful, smart women?! He's like eh, no thanks.