Work Hard, Play Hard

Gotta hitch in yer giddyup?

Had mucho requests for pics of the new digs... Check 'em out. Or just come visit :-)

Best of Times, Bizarro of Times

Welcome to Bizarro World.

Everything here is the exact opposite of what it was six months ago.

We live in The South. We consider exotic places like Chicago to be full of things like "Yankees." We have to talk with a funny accent if we want to get people to be nice to us or give us information (an essential job function). We are completely surrounded by people who use the words "white" and "Christian" an unnecessary and distracting amount.

We drive. A car. A new one. There is no such thing as a subway, and buses are few, far between, and freaky. We have to make car payments, have car insurance, and fill up the tank once in awhile... unless you're me, and you forget to do that and drive until the light comes on when you're in BFE Tennessee and are forced to coast through the Smoky Mountains on sweat and a Hail Mary.

We live downtown, next to a skyscraper, in a loft (not some old pre-war shack waiting to die, the blemish on an otherwise gorgeous tree-lined street in Lincoln Park). We have the outrageous rent to prove it. And we live with a dude (well, for the most part anyway). There are no pug puppies, no kindergarten teacher projects to help out with, no platinum blonde hair in the shower drain, and no wedding magazines.

We don't have a boyfriend, and we don't feel out of place for it -- we thank our lucky stars we're not tied down to some broke cowboy playin' guitar on the corner. Most days. We have friends though, of all ages and professions and interests -- but we're all out here trying to make it in whatever the hell we love doing so much that we moved to Bizarro World in the first place.

We don't go out to dinner though, not ever, not even once. We actually can't afford it. And for that matter we don't shop either. And we don't give a shit. Because we've lived in fucking Peru and we're over it.  And because if you're going to pay out the ass for a gorgeous brand-new kitchen, you might as well use it. Unless you're my new roomate, and the only food you consume is protein shakes.

Here, we go to work at 11 pm, and we leave at 8 am. We go to sleep at 3 in the afternoon.

We work ... NOT downtown. We drive, as fast as we can through stoplights that turn to yellow blinkers at night for your own safety, past hookers and other friendly people that would love to take that car off your hands, to get there.

Benefits. Well, we don't have one of those new-fangled machines in our breakroom that requires only a little plastic cup to brew one cup of fresh coffee flavored to your choice. No sirree. Our microwave, and I'm dead serious, is pre-1981.  We don't have "offices" or "windows." We share a computer with two other people who alternate shifts throughout the day. We joined forces with the millions of Americans who are not offered healthcare. We don't make enough to pay our bills, let alone contribute to a damn 401(k), so we waitress and pick up extra shifts and give up sleep and social lives to keep our heads above water. If we don't go to work, we don't get paid. (For anyone that knew me six months ago... I had enough PAID days off in 2006 that I could have NOT gone to work for an entire month.) If we are breaking a fever, we break a fever, and we don't bitch about it because we're actually a lot more concerned with breaking a story.

And on that subject of work, we feel like we make a difference. We use our brain, we use our degree, we use our talent to do something that makes us feel rewarded, tapped into the world, and useful. We listen to police scanners all night.. waiting... eight hours of suicides, women getting beat up, Waffle Houses being robbed, and high-pitched scared screaming when an officer is down. We don't order office supplies. We write. For pennies, yes, but still we WRITE. (And run the teleprompter, and run scripts to a director on the second floor 17 times in 3 hours, and answer to the name Julie from men wearing more makeup than us). We tell people, in 25 seconds or less, about their world. We make it easy for them to understand -- but we don't dumb it down too much, and we don't make it too nice. We do things that we will be proud to tell our children about. Or at least we try to. And it's not glamorous -- but it is lights, cameras, and action, and I'll be damned if it doesn't even feel like work.

We've come to terms with the fact that we identify ourselves by our jobs more than most people, because we couldn't sleep at night if we spent our one life selling german plumbing supplies. We've accepted that we might never stop wanting to do things that our friends think are quirky. We still want to travel when we should be working, dance in the street when we should be jogging on the sidewalk, volunteer when we need to be making money, kickbox when we should be sleeping, go to church when we should be hungover, watch The Take Home Chef when we should be doing ANYTHING else. We think that this whole thing is MFEO whenever we hear country music coming out of speakers in the ground while we walk to the gym. *This might be a form of Big Brother's prozac, but it works, because we feel at peace with ourselves. We are confident in our place in the world.  Bizarro World. We belong here. Like maybe it's better than it was 6 months ago. We feel like it's easier to live this way, because in reality, we're a bit Bizarro ourselves. Like a lot.

Welcome to Bizarro World.

Everything here is the exact opposite of what it was six months ago.

We live in The South. We consider exotic places like Chicago to be full of things like "Yankees." We have to talk with a funny accent if we want to get people to be nice to us or give us information (an essential job function). We are completely surrounded by people who use the words "white" and "Christian" an unnecessary and distracting amount.

We drive. A car. A new one. There is no such thing as a subway, and buses are few, far between, and freaky. We have to make car payments, have car insurance, and fill up the tank once in awhile... unless you're me, and you forget to do that and drive until the light comes on when you're in BFE Tennessee and are forced to coast through the Smoky Mountains on sweat and a Hail Mary.

We live downtown, next to a skyscraper, in a loft (not some old pre-war shack waiting to die, the blemish on an otherwise gorgeous tree-lined street in Lincoln Park). We have the outrageous rent to prove it. And we live with a dude (well, for the most part anyway). There are no pug puppies, no kindergarten teacher projects to help out with, no platinum blonde hair in the shower drain, and no wedding magazines.

We don't have a boyfriend, and we don't feel out of place for it -- we thank our lucky stars we're not tied down to some broke cowboy playin' guitar on the corner. Most days. We have friends though, of all ages and professions and interests -- but we're all out here trying to make it in whatever the hell we love doing so much that we moved to Bizarro World in the first place.

We don't go out to dinner though, not ever, not even once. We actually can't afford it. And for that matter we don't shop either. And we don't give a shit. Because we've lived in fucking Peru and we're over it.  And because if you're going to pay out the ass for a gorgeous brand-new kitchen, you might as well use it. Unless you're my new roomate, and the only food you consume is protein shakes.

Here, we go to work at 11 pm, and we leave at 8 am. We go to sleep at 3 in the afternoon.

We work ... NOT downtown. We drive, as fast as we can through stoplights that turn to yellow blinkers at night for your own safety, past hookers and other friendly people that would love to take that car off your hands, to get there.

Benefits. Well, we don't have one of those new-fangled machines in our breakroom that requires only a little plastic cup to brew one cup of fresh coffee flavored to your choice. No sirree. Our microwave, and I'm dead serious, is pre-1981.  We don't have "offices" or "windows." We share a computer with two other people who alternate shifts throughout the day. We joined forces with the millions of Americans who are not offered healthcare. We don't make enough to pay our bills, let alone contribute to a damn 401(k), so we waitress and pick up extra shifts and give up sleep and social lives to keep our heads above water. If we don't go to work, we don't get paid. (For anyone that knew me six months ago... I had enough PAID days off in 2006 that I could have NOT gone to work for an entire month.) If we are breaking a fever, we break a fever, and we don't bitch about it because we're actually a lot more concerned with breaking a story.

And on that subject of work, we feel like we make a difference. We use our brain, we use our degree, we use our talent to do something that makes us feel rewarded, tapped into the world, and useful. We listen to police scanners all night.. waiting... eight hours of suicides, women getting beat up, Waffle Houses being robbed, and high-pitched scared screaming when an officer is down. We don't order office supplies. We write. For pennies, yes, but still we WRITE. (And run the teleprompter, and run scripts to a director on the second floor 17 times in 3 hours, and answer to the name Julie from men wearing more makeup than us). We tell people, in 25 seconds or less, about their world. We make it easy for them to understand -- but we don't dumb it down too much, and we don't make it too nice. We do things that we will be proud to tell our children about. Or at least we try to. And it's not glamorous -- but it is lights, cameras, and action, and I'll be damned if it doesn't even feel like work.

We've come to terms with the fact that we identify ourselves by our jobs more than most people, because we couldn't sleep at night if we spent our one life selling german plumbing supplies. We've accepted that we might never stop wanting to do things that our friends think are quirky. We still want to travel when we should be working, dance in the street when we should be jogging on the sidewalk, volunteer when we need to be making money, kickbox when we should be sleeping, go to church when we should be hungover, watch The Take Home Chef when we should be doing ANYTHING else. We think that this whole thing is MFEO whenever we hear country music coming out of speakers in the ground while we walk to the gym. *This might be a form of Big Brother's prozac, but it works, because we feel at peace with ourselves. We are confident in our place in the world.  Bizarro World. We belong here. Like maybe it's better than it was 6 months ago. We feel like it's easier to live this way, because in reality, we're a bit Bizarro ourselves. Like a lot.

Music City, Shmusic City

Like Mama says, "I am officially not 22 anymore."

I have reached the end of the road with this last move to Nashville. It's gotta end. I'm beat. There is no more energy left for this journeying, wandering, just-travelin'-thru vagabond way of life -- that on a good day, could possibly be construed as living the dream -- all this hard work to get what you need to be able to look yourself in the mirror, to put the past behind you, to make a difference and feel alive and be loved.

Maybe life was easier just pretending like I was happy than it is when I'm actually trying to do the things that make me happy?  I didn't dream about taking a 50% paycut into poverty, or of an endless merry-go-round of moving boxes, shmoozing, and bad accents. Really bad accents.

Maybe it's just the curse of Valentine's Day? I went to my first interview in 4 years, and was offered the job within an hour -- for less money than I've ever made as a post-grad (even less than I made in the period of my life I used to refer to affectionately as "When I Made No Money"), but in an industry I never had the balls to pursue a career in before. Such is the dilemma of TV news. To celebrate/grieve I took myself on a date. First I went to this cafe in a really cute, young, hip neighborhood for a slice of cake and coffee, and called my brother in Seattle. At this moment, I told myself, it is so fun to be me sometimes.

Then I called for a cab and waited outside, freezing and bored, watching couple after couple after couple after couple walk by, keeping each other warm on their way to and from romantic things, and I wanted to barf all over the slushy sidewalk. Saw a movie. The movie theatre was completely packed, except for this one weird seat that was completely alone and isolated from other seats, and empty. Then I missed the bus home, at night, in a town where I am the only person without a criminal record to even ride the bus. I realized I forgot my hat and gloves somewhere along the way (sigh). But there! A minimall in the distance?  The smell of Starbucks, a lighthouse beckoning. I ordered some weird green tea infused drink, it was disgusting, it was expensive, it was the last straw. I chugged it, walked outside, turned my face up to the snow and in a sudden explosion of blinding self-pity, balled my eyes out.

More humiliation ensued the next day, when I got to pee in a cup for a hot guy in scrubs, who also had to flush the toilet I just gone #1 in... drug test for my new job (keep your fingers crossed). Followed by trudging down a muddy state road, facing an onslaught of horn-honking despite my totally non-sexual corporate business attire (a now very dirty gray silk Banana suit and white wool coat), eventually ruining my shoes and missing the bus AGAIN. I sat at the wrong stop. The stop I should have been sitting at was approximately 100 feet away. The bus comes once an hour. I walked to a Jack in the Box in the distance and gorged myself. Back at the right bus stop, I fell asleep in the winter sunshine and waited. And thought:

Have I been measuring the journeys of my life in mileage?

In the past four months, I have burned through money that took me three years to save. I've got some great passport stamps to show for it... But the biggest chunk was sunk into rent on a bedroom that doesn't have a door or a window or even floor-to-ceiling walls, in my "fabulous" new downtown city loft with exposed brick and skyscraper views. I bought my first bed, and now I have to buy my first car. I have a new gym, I have a new grocery store (for fresh produce anyway, and the Dollar General for everything else), a new 0% alcohol routine for getting through the day. I washed that man right outta my hair, I took a glorious bite out of the whole world, I met Prince Charming at a party in San Francisco and left it up to fate.  Planes, trains, automobiles; corporate ladder-climber, unemployed but unbothered, poker-faced interviewee; student, teacher, volunteer; local, expat, tourist.  Round and round we go. I have a screw loose.

But not much has changed. It's just like it was when I was 4 years old. And 6 years old. And 7. And 8. 11. And a lot like when I was 14 and we moved twice. Oh and 21. No matter what I do, I am still always "The New Girl," for better or worse. I don't know if anyone else gets that. You can spend your whole life trying to be someone who belongs somewhere, anywhere, until pretty soon you belong everywhere, nowhere. 

Or alternately, and more universally -- is facing your fears the only way to happiness? The things that always always always scared me about having to be a grown-up "woman" someday were the prospects of getting into college, getting a real job, doing my own taxes, childbirth, and the possibility of having to kill my own spiders. At 25 and 1/2, I'm totally fine with finally having conquered the first three (in your face IRS!), and calling it a day.  But the things that always scared me about my actual life -- the things that made me "adaptable" and yet OCD as hell -- were the moving, moving, moving. So I wonder sometimes if the 12-year-old-me would be proud of my choices in life, or just my eyeshadow collection. I wonder if I keep moving because I don't know what else I'm supposed to do with myself, or if I don't know how else to prove myself to myself.

I slept on the couch the entire first week in Nashville, feeling wonderfully free and strong, trying not think about how much I missed sitting by the fire at my parents' house, trying not to worry how I was going to put food on the table, trying to put my big girl boots on and make myself get off the couch and go out there and show 'em what I've got. And I think I've found just the right place for feeling like that.  I mean, it kinda sounds like a country song doesn't it?

Not just any Tuesday in January...

but on the beach in Southern California

in the winter sunshine

diving for a frisbee in the wet sand

taking pictures of surfer dudes through my open window

fending off fiending pigeons intent on sharing my caramel apple

No it is most definitely Not just any Tuesday in January,

it is sweetness, it is beauty,

it is your soul smiling out from under the hood

even though the gas light is on and you're lost as hell,

and it is poetry to the tune of VROOMVROOOOM

past the waves crashing over and over

past the bar playing its last song

past the seafood bougainvillea boys laughter full moon hotel date-shakes mermaids palm trees

dream life highway

as the sleepy town turns off the christmas lights, and closes its eyes.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

My time in Peru was divided into one month of Spanish school, for four hours a day, followed by one month of volunteer work with children, for three hours a day. Pretty simple. It delivered on its promise to be very different from the 40+ hours a week I was logging at my desk in Chicago for the past three straight years (mostly spent alternating between staring out at my view of downtown or down at my laptop's excel file jungle), trying to fix complex problems (ranging from an ex-boyfriend's commitment/identity issues to holes in corporate sales commission plans).

So before the South American trip of mine was even half over, I had a conversation with the volunteer program's coordinator, a skinny Dutch guy, and I told him that I would be happy with the project he had assigned me -- playing games with kids from messed up families in a fun after-school environment -- so long as I felt that my time and money were being put to good use, and that I wasn’t bored.

He said to me, “Well, it is what you make of it. You’re not going to change the world or anything, but hopefully you like it.”

I turned my head like I was looking out the window, and rolled my eyes. It felt like I had all the time in the world left to prove him wrong, and I was smug in my Supergirl ambitions.

Now I’m back.

Time is funny like that -- you're just as easily here as you are there. In the Now, my wanderlust is locked up inside me somewhere, and I’m locked up inside my house with a mild case of Howard Hughes agoraphobia. (Which is unfortunate, because my mother is home from school on Christmas break and hasn’t stopped asking me 101 questions about what my friends, acquaintances, ex-boyfriends, semi-friends, non-friends and celebrities and I are doing that day, tonight, with life, for lunch, for a workout, for a date, for a job, for an apartment…)

And I don’t know if I like it or not? I like having a refrigerator, I like seeing my friends, but I don’t know. I feel different, older, like when I decided I just didn’t feel like playing with dolls anymore but I still had them everywhere and they made me feel guilty so I played with them anyway. Having all these personal items, a whole storage unit full of them to sort through, a whole bedroom that used to be mine but is now decorated like a guest suite at Mandalay Bay or something that’s overflowing with random, useless, accumulated, expensive STUFF that I can’t be bothered to acknowledge.

Maybe it’s culture shock.

Maybe it’s going to the ballet tonight in a fur coat with a hickey on my neck.

Maybe it’s being 25 years old and single and unemployed, which is a mighty different thing in Las Vegas than it is in Peru. Especially when half your friends have a bobblehead of your father at their office.

Maybe it’s being back in your parents’ house, after the specialness of hearth-and-home wears off, and they start to annoy you. Really bad. So bad you want to give someone a wedgie or sniff nail polish or keep laying on the couch and never get up.

Maybe it’s that no one is speaking Dutch or German or Spanish to me.

Maybe the money is too boring, the food is too available, the TV is too close, the President is too stupid, the language too ugly, the life is too easy.

Maybe I’m being dramatic and should stop feeling sorry for myself.

Maybe I should get back on a plane.

Four airports and 24 hours away, it might as well have been another world -- but it didn't stop turning when I left. The kids have a new Profe' to bug them about their homework and lose at Chess, there are new tourists at the mercy of their high school spanish (and their bowels!), my friends there are taking shots of pisco sours right now without me.

I DIDN'T change the world.

My last day at the project, half the kids didn’t even say goodbye to me before they left with their new toys and blood sugar racing with animal crackers and Inca Kola. But that’s ok. Right before the ungrateful little brats (JOKE) left we got to have a party with a musician buddy of mine, and he asked if any of the kids wanted to say something to me before I left. A couple little girls sashayed into the center of the room, where we were all sitting in a circle, and did a little song and dance routine in my honor. And this one girl, she had Winona Ryder eyes, got up and thanked me for everything. And it clicked:

While I won’t miss the constant drinking that I did every night, I already miss those conversations I had while doing so, hearing about the world from someone who grew up on the other side of it than me. I don’t miss losing my breath every time I walked anywhere in that altitude, but I miss all the time I had to stare at cobblestone after cobblestone, the Jesus on top of the mountain, the faces of travelers and beggars, and think. And I don’t miss those kids coughing in my face, I miss their hugs and kisses at the beginning and end of the day, I miss them fighting over who got to sit on my lap, holding my hands and playing with my hair.

I'll remember it, all of it, especially the thing I miss the most. I felt like I belonged, even if it was somewhere that I clearly didn't belong. 

...No, I definitely didn't change the world.  It seems the world, in this instance, changed me.

Whys and Hows

The weirdest part about "traveling" is when it stops feeling like traveling and starts just feeling like your regular life. That's when it's time to come home.

I can't think of much else to write about on a blog that's supposedly devoted to travel and conveying life in South America because, while it's still very interesting, it's not exactly remarkable anymore. I mean, I'm still scared during the twice-daily $1, 15-minute cab ride where I can't help but pray that my last breath is not in a freaking Daewoo, but I've even gotten used to brushing my teeth with Listerine to avoid drinking the water, and I don't panic when there is no water whatsoever pumping through the pipes (not even enough to flush the toilet). I don't stare at the 30-year-old parents with only like half their teeth left who come pick up their four kids from our after school care. My alarm clock completely stopped working about two weeks ago and I haven't been bothered.  Trying to avoid massive alpaca poops on my street feels more...normal than reading the Chicago Tribune online, and spanish is sometimes the first language that I think to express myself in (although sometimes I still can't express myself at all so that's a funny thing about brains I guess).

In short, it's ok that I come home next week because I think when you have to remind yourself to appreciate something, it's probably because you weren't appreciating it.  It's been 49 days of nonstop awesomeness. But don't be discouraged if you can't quit your job and move to Peru. Some of the best trips are only a week. And sometimes you only need a day.

In the spring of 1993, when I was still 11 and my dad was 43, we went to Italy together. We divided 10 days between Rome and Milan, and we packed it all in. The family, the Coliseum, you name it. I left home being the girl that could memorize the names of rivers in foreign countries, and came back knowing what they smelled like. The experience was so burned into my mind that 10 years later I practically gave the tour of the Vatican to my friends.

When we got to Rome my lips were so chapped from spending the night on a train from Milan that my bottom one split, and my dad and I were walking around looking for chapstick. It took awhile because we didn´t realize we needed to go to a pharmacy to buy it, and a few significant moments occurred.

First of all, we walked by a sunglasses store that had some really awesome Euro chic-trashy window displays. I pouted until my dad bought me a pair (not hard when your lip is bleeding), but they came in this quality leather, padded case that was stamped in gold lettering, Occhiali da sole, (that just means "sunglasses" in italian) and the whole experience was so grown-up and sophisticated that I've had a love affair with sunglasses ever since. I could name every pair I've had since and exactly what awesome things happened to me while wearing them...

At lunch, my dad had a carafe of wine. It came in one of those straw-wrapped bottles. He gave me some. We were officially very far away from my mother's dinner table....

then we went to the Coliseum, and there was this writing etched into the stone, and my dad translated the roman numerals into some year that was a really long time ago, and I realized that someone who actually had a life and hung out in a really different world than mine had still stood on that exact same spot, that people had been standing there on that exact same spot since togas were popular, before Jesus, before Columbus, before New York. My Social Studies book turned 3-D. When he said that girls my age were eaten by lions there because they were Catholic like me, I almost cried.

And we found the chapstick, of course. It was a swiss brand, very cool, I used it only sparingly so that it would last (I had it for years, whipping it out to show off at sleepover parties, pretending like I put it on every night).  So with that small triumph, we got in a cab to head to a part of town that was closer to our hotel, Holiday Inn Vatican City.  The driver asked questions in bad English, my dad answered in bad Italian, and it was the first time I'd ever been in a cab or witnessed driving scarier than my father's.  In the square in front of the Vatican there were a bunch of dudes walking around carrying semi-automatic rifles, HUGE guns, and I had never been that close to anything capable of causing that much violence in real life -- but they were swinging them around on their necks, nonchalant, the same facial expression as the girls at school who twirled their hair.  Some of the guys even had on mob gear. And the reason for the pistol party? A pro-choice rally that we joined in with for awhile (I only felt cool enough to join because of my new sunglasses). The chant was "Papa, oh Papa..." Hence the NOW card in my wallet.

After dinner we decided to walk back to the hotel, thinking it was really close, but it wasn't, and we walked around a really long time. I kept looking at my Swatch-Watch thinking, "It's 11 o'clock and I'm still walking around ... It's 11:30 at night! ... It's 11:45 P.M. and I'm not only NOT in bed, I'm actually on the streets, in a CITY, in EUROPE, right NOW."

When you don´t know the lay of the land, it's entirely possible to have life-altering adventures while you shop for chapstick. Well, if you're with my dad anyway.

Small World

Last night I´m sitting at the irish pub, Johnny and June were singing "Jackson," the Seahawks were really giving it to Favre amid a pleasantly snowing holiday backdrop, and I was sharing a cerveza grande with a guy, himself a pleasant mixture of Brian Urlacher and Jim Morrison.... Wha?! no really. The guy was built like a bear, grew up on this indian reservation in Montana to majorly hippie parents and had the hair and the whole man jewelry thing going on, a self-described "Open Alpha Male." (When he told me this, I, of course, asked the obvious -- and oblivious -- question, "So you´re gay?"  Yeah, it kind of killed his I´m-in-touch-with-my-sensitive-side moment.) ... so he´s telling me about fighting fires and chopping down trees all over the country, and starts a story on Yellowpine, Idaho. Seriously?!  Was I seriously sitting in a bar in PERU talking to someone who had been to YellowpinefrigginIdaho, population 20, home to our (oft-discussed, rarely visited) family cabin for almost a century?  Bizarro...

In other news, decided not to hang out with the israeli guy (mentioned in a previous post) and go 4-wheeling in the mountains after all. He had never heard of the concept of global warming, or the Panama Canal (which I brought up only because he said he was going to Panama in a couple weeks) and also because he asked me if I wanted to try some meth that he bought on Gringo Alley.  Which means he was probably smoking crystallized laundry detergent. So I didn´t really feel like sitting on the back of the bike anymore.

Come, walk a mile in my sneakers

Happy Thanksgiving! (¿El dia de gracias?) I was feeling totally sorry for myself because a) I couldn´t find any turkey in this whole town -- although I know they have it somewhere because I took this picture of one damnit, b) it was also my friend Rachel´s last night in Cusco, and c) I wished I could be in Arizona working on my spiral with my cousins and uncles and cooking and drinking champagne royales with my Grandma Dollee...

So I was all prepped for a woe-is-me-the-lonely-American night when Rachel showed up at dinner with balloons, because I told her all about the Macy´s Day Parade, and she asked everyone to say something they were thankful for because I told her our family always does that.  It was really cute, Swiss-German and Dutch people making these great little speeches of appreciation for their health and family and the opportunity to travel.  I don´t think any of my buddies here take for granted the fact that we are seeing the world, unemployed by choice.  I ate chicken curry, which is at least in the bird family, until I had to unbutton my pants... and since we were at this really fancy restaurant (for Cusco that is, which means the margaritas are $5 and the dinner is $7) with all this modern artwork on the walls and big comfy couches to sit on instead of chairs, I almost fell asleep.  Very Thanksgiving-ish really. 

So...

I thought I would provide you with a Day in the Life. Just so you know, and just so I remember.

I wake up at 7 am because that´s when my roomate is rummaging around getting ready for breakfast at school next door. (She never misses the free breakfast, and I´ve never made it.) Then I fall back asleep until 10 am or so, when the sun shines really hot in my room and I have to get out of bed and open a window or die. I read a book for a minute while drinking water and eating some crackers with peanut butter -- the only food I own -- and try to wake up a bit.  Honestly I´m usually hungover-feeling (even if I only had a couple beers! it´s this crazy altitude) and still wearing my makeup from the night before.  So I get ready again... a process that only takes 15 minutes because hot water is low; I only have mascara, under-eye concealer and blush with me; and 5 tshirts to choose from (always worn with one of 2 pairs of jeans).

Then it´s off, with wet hair, to the internet cafe, or the bank, or shopping around town at the markets (that all sell alpaca gloves and hats, crazy colorful woven belts and ponchos, rugs, Machu Picchu tshirts, or some combination), or I just go sit in the square to get sunshine and watch tourists, while fending off finger-puppet vendors and shoe shiners, and wait for someone I know to walk by.

At 1:30 pm, the school serves their 3-course lunch. I´ve already paid for lunch everyday that I´m here as part of my volunteer-school-living program, so I try to go everyday.  They serve warm kool-aid, warm because it´s made from boiled water that has never quite cooled in time. We get a bowl of soup or potato salad, then a plate of rice with an omelet or cooked vegetables with tofu (my stomach has been sooo much better since switching to vegetarian lunches), then a bit of pineapple or watermelon or pudding.  We all sit together at these big long tables outside on the patio (where it´s always either 80 degrees or 40 degrees, depending on whether the sun is behind a cloud or not), and I try to sit either with the one Swedish girl or the Germans because otherwise all conversation is usually in Dutch (unless I clear my throat or interrupt them or do something obnoxiously American, like crack my knuckles). Loads of fun.

Then I go home and grab stuff to go to work. The first  4 weeks I was here, I thought I would be working at an orphanage of some sort, but I found out when I started on Wednesday that it´s more of an after school program for kids who don´t have anywhere else to go.  The room is on the second floor of a market, one of those markets where the flies and stench of rotting fruit is pretty heavy, and it´s a 15 minute cab ride to another part of town that is not touristy in the slightest, so I get to warm up and get back into spanish mode on the way there with the cab drivers.  There are supposed to be 40 kids, ages 6-16, but there are actually only like 20, and the youngest ones are 4 or 5 (which is HUGELY different than 6 I realized), and the oldest kid I´ve met is 12. From 3 pm to 6 pm, Monday thru Friday, I dance with the little girls or they sit on my lap and we practice their reading (and mine too actually), put together puzzles with the little boys, and play math games or charades with the older kids. I save my favorite games of chess and chinese checkers for 5:30, when I´m tired and hungry and running slightly low on patience. It´s humbling to ask a 5-year-old how to say the words "dice" and "marble" in spanish, but sometimes I think this naughty 10-year-old girl tells me a dirty word on purpose to get a laugh. Brat.

I go home and wash my hands like 20 times, put on another coat of makeup, chug a bottle of water, run a brush through my hair, grab a scarf and jacket and head to the plaza. There are always people meeting in the plaza for dinner.  My typical dinner crowd consists of a combination of the following (usually there´s a party of 8) -- Dutch, German, Swiss, a New Zealander, a Brit, a South African, a Californian or Alaskan or New Yorker. (I´ve never met an Italian traveling here, odd. And the Israelis really stick to themselves.)  We alternate between burger joints, vegetarian food, pizza, Westernish places where you know everything is clean and you´re paying extra for it, and Peruvian tourist menus where you can bargain and get a set menu (3 courses) for a cheap price. Did I mention I´ve finally tried alpaca meat and it´s friggin awesome?!  Dinner conversation always revolves around travel, although the girls usually drift off and start teasing each other about the boys we meet. There is a severe shortage of men here -- they don´t seem to travel alone in nearly the same numbers as the Euro girls do.  So there´s some tension as the chicks are always fighting over the same dudes... thankfully I´m like wayyyyy to old for them. I have to rely on meeting random guys at bars or something, usually Australians or Brits in town for a couple days before or after doing Machu Picchu and on their way to Lima or Bolivia, and it gets kind of old, but there´s not really any other options.

Which brings us to the bar scene, post dinner.  We go sometimes to an Irish pub for a drink and to watch a soccer game. Sometimes, depending on the crowd, we end up staying until they close it up 5 hours later. Sometimes we go to a new bar or take a cab somewhere off the beaten path, or a place with great live music that I love so much they actually know me there. But usually, the gals wanna dance, and at 9:30 the club next door has salsa lessons and happy hour. After that, we walk 5 mins down the plaza to the packed dance halls, where you can go from one to the other, until 7 am if you want to. I usually only last until 1 am, but on weekends it´s more like 4...  I met some Israeli dude last night (2 years younger than me and fresh out of the army) at a club at approximately 3 o´clock in the morning. (There´s a lot of them here actually, and more often than not, the club owners that are smart enough to learn the tourists´language mistake me and start speaking Hebrew before switching to English.)  I met up with him for coffee and OJ this afternoon, and we might go 4-wheeling tomorrow.  That´s how those things go. I don´t like to do dinner dates anymore because they last too long, and there´s like an awkward obligation to hang out that night and introduce them to your friends, etc.  Something else.  There is something definitely different and kind of weird about these "travel guys" -- when describing their lives at home they all seem to have MAJOR commitment phobia, and when describing their travel they all seem to have the need to do things that involve massive amounts of adrenaline.  The girls are more traveling just to learn and take pictures of ruins and experience other cultures, etc.  But the fact that everyone has one huge shared feeling in common -- a mixture of loneliness, plane-ticket-home anxiety, and an excess of free time -- it´s easy to bond with people. Plus you always have something to talk about: where you´re from, where you´ve been, where you´re going. And the level of shittiness you´ve attained in speaking spanish.

And that, my friends, is what it feels like.  There are brushes with mortality here and there -- sometimes there´s the trip to a neighboring village (for more Inca ruins or market shopping) and the subsequent cab ride home where you honestly think you might die. Sometimes there´s the trip to the baño, after you were a little too cheap in picking the dinner spot, where again, you honestly think you might die. But for the most part, as long as you drink a glass of fresh orange juice everyday for your health and remember to take lots of pictures, it´s all part of the fun.

Machu Picchu -- a pain in the... everywhere, rainbows and beer

Writing this now, from a cozy internet cafe with a cafe con leche and cigarette in one hand, poking away at the computer with the other, my belly full of cheeseburgers and chocolate cake from Jack´s Cafe and my muscles loose from the hour-and-a-half massage I just got, Bob Marley playing in the background, it feels like life could be divided into Before Inca Trail and After Inca Trail.  Might not be able to tell by the previous post, but I was totally panicky about this whole Inca Trail business. Anxiety attacks about my rain ponchos not being waterproof, about breaking an ankle on Day 2, the whole thing.  The closest my family ever came to camping was roasting marshmallows in our backyard, and the last time I slept in a tent was when we had a kegger in the woods for Mark Witte´s 17th birthday party. Add that up to the fact that I am absolutely terrified of any and all bugs, and we have ourselves a real fun weekend!

Picked up in the van on Friday at sunrise by our guide, our cook, a German girl from our school also doing the trail, a couple my parents´ age from Wisconsin, and Rachel, my beloved dirty dutchie. And thus the adventure began.

Right off the bat, our van was stopped at a police checkpoint for leaving Cusco and going up the mountain. The driver did not have enough insurance (need at least $2,000 worth) to carry tourists. So we had to call another van to pick us up. Fell asleep in the second van, until we pulled onto a dirt road and the holes and jumps were so big I actually got air. Finally we reached the small town of Ollaytatambo, where I bought a walking stick, which basically became part of my body for the next 4 days.

Got to Kilometer 82, the starting point, around 10 am and starting walking. First thing I noticed was that I was going to be concentrating so hard on dodging the mule shit paving the road that I hardly noticed the walking bit. Second thing I noticed was that the German girl walks like she has a rocket up her butt.  Both things held true to the end.

First day was a real piece of cake. Got used to being the object of all mosquitoes´affection, and adjusted to my rented hiking boots no problem. Didn´t really get out of breath, enjoyed the vistas, the changing scenery as we went from river valley to lush tropical mountains.  I remember thinking our tent was so cute and quaint and how fun it was to play Hiking Barbie for a day.  We had a good dinner, we met our other 6 porters that carried the tents and the food and stuff, and I bought a beer  from a local village woman that hiked around selling them to campers. Rachel had to kill like 7 moths of various sizes in our tent, and I had to go pee in an outhouse, but it was all Jolly Good Fun!  

The second day was slightly less "fun" and slightly more... intense? sharp? Painful.  We woke up at sunrise, and our guide, Juvenal, said, "We´re going to climb that mountain." And pointed at an actual mountain, in all its steep jagged Andean glory.  And that´s what I did. I don´t know how, as it was literally all up hill for hours and hours and sometimes the steps were like 3 feet tall and straight up. It was even made even more awesome by the fact that I decided to be really hardcore and teach everyone back home a lesson by being the only person to carry my own pack, even though I had the biggest pack and am the biggest wimp. There were a few times when I thought I might lose my balance and go tipping backward and create a huge domino effect on the other 200 people climbing the same mountain behind me. At these times I stopped and ate chocolate and got a grip.

We finally reached the top of the mountain, conveniently called Dead Woman´s Pass, at around noon. The view behind was specfuckingtacular, sunny and clear and I could see the camp where I started out as a little blip a million miles away. Then the guide informed us that lunch was waiting at the base of the mountain, on the other side, invisible under a layer of thick fog and rain.  You might be thinking, Oh but isn´t it easier to go downhill? And I will answer, Ummm... NO. I was wearing a poncho that was basically a black plastic garbage bag with a slit and hood for my head. And rocks that are rainy and slippery wet and have really sharp edges, and are so steep that with short legs you have to sit down sometimes to ease over the edge, are not fun to fall on.  What the hell were the Incas thinking?!  Let´s build rock steps that go right over the Andes instead of around them to a place that´s in the middle of nowhere and totally inconvenient, and then let´s build a town there on the side of the mountain, just to abandon it for the next 1000 years until some Yale prof named Hiram Bingham comes and digs it out.  And you should have seen these porters! Local guys carrying bundles on their backs that were bigger than they were, literally RUNNING down the steps in the driving rain with only these rubber sandals and a t-shirt and shorts on. By the time I reached the bottom, I had translated the entire Johnny Cash collection into Spanish to keep myself from going crazy and was soaking wet. ...And I just pitted out my shirt writing that paragraph.  Sweet.

I crawled into my smelly sleeping bag at 7:30 more tired than I can ever remember being since exiting the birth canal, shivering in wet clothes and zipped up like a cocoon with only my nose sticking out, feeling every single rock and pebble in the ground beneath me.  It started to rain again maybe 3.2 seconds later. At this point I started thinking and I started crying, and laying in the darkness talking to Rachel -- who at 26 has the wiseness of your favorite grandma -- I acknowledged heavinesses that I hadn´t realized (or didn´t want to realize) were inside of me, and by the time the rain stopped, I was different. Lighter. I felt like I was able to see my life in a weird way, more like a movie or a history book with beginnings and endings and stories and sub-plots and character flaws and cause-and-effect and fate.  Maybe it was the tests of nature, maybe it was the rainforest fresh air, maybe I was just fucking delirious, but I had a sort of clarity, like when clouds part and you can see the stars that were always there but hidden. It was probably only 1/2 an hour before I fell asleep, but I fell asleep a little bit older.

The third day was actually the hardest day physically; the cold intensified, the rain persisted, and the walking increased to 10 full hours straight up and straight down the last mountain.  Rachel and I took our time and did the entire thing together, both of us carrying our own packs this time, keeping each other going with games like, "If I were Madonna right now....(ex. I´d have porters carrying me down this mountain; I´d have a cosmo in my hand instead of a walking stick; etc.)" and divulging our juiciest stories, our most embarrassing stories, details of our favorite vacations and our favorite flings, broken hearts and farts.  If it weren´t for my choice of company I would have had no one to tell me someone was coming down the trail when I was mid-pee, no one to keep me going with dreams of Jack´s Cafe chocolate cake and cheeseburgers when I got home. 

When we saw our guide up ahead, we laughed and high-fived ... and then the guide said, "Venticinco minutos mas." Buzzkill. I felt my face get hot and tears start to come up, but then for the first time all day the rain stopped, clouds parted, and a double rainbow formed. No shit. Reached the camp an hour later (he always lied about how long things took. or we´re just really slow) and went, not to the hot showers offered, but to the BAR with actual drinks and electricity and boys. Civilization felt funny and unfamiliar and beautiful.  Went to bed, drunk off one beer, to the sounds of the German girl getting action in the tent 6 inches from ours and someone puking in the distance, and woke up under the stars at 4 am to tea being shoved in my face by the porters with a flashlight to get a move on. Awesome.  But in the end, the third day -- the day that my BO probably killed all the pretty orchids along the way and the day that my Achilles tendon decided to no longer play along with the rest of my body -- that day was the best day.

Everyone made a mad dash Monday morning, the legendary Day 4 when we would reach the ruins, strikingly similar to the droves of people exiting the subway for the office in Chicago rush hour somewhere a million worlds away, knowing that we only had 1 hour of relatively easy trail before we reached the Sun Gate and got our prize.

We were not disappointed. When we reached the Sun Gate, itself nothing more than a pile of rocks and ruins overlooking like 9 mountains (one of which held our treasure), it was the most beautiful mixture of man and nature that I have ever laid eyes on.  It was worth it, and it was made worth it by the walk there. And then it all clicked, and the Incas made more sense. The sun rose around us slowly, and ray by ray lit upon another facet of the face of Machu Picchu exposing a small town built on top of the most beautiful mountain in heaven. We walked 1/2 an hour more, and then we were there, bloodshot eyes feasting upon alpacas grazing green lawns and tourists in brightly colored clean clothes and temples to the sun constructed out of psychotically perfect architecture out of rocks that must have weighed 3 tons and outlasted at least 30 earthquakes.  And the day went like that, shoes off, laying on the grass watching hummingbirds and funny colored flies and admiring life (until French tour guides yelled at for basically looking ugly when people were trying to take pictures) and Good God, we were happy.

Walk This Way

Going to Machupicchu tomorrow on the Inca Trail at like 5 am. If you don´t know what that is...

So I have to get up at like 4 am everyday and hike for 10 hours or something ridiculous.  This girl I know did a slightly different trail, and one morning when they woke up one of their llamas had been eaten by a PUMA in the middle of the night... and I can´t shower at all for 4 days. I don´t know which is scarier.  Hopefully I can keep the whining to a minimum with copious amounts of chocolate.

Here´s a little blurb:

The Inca Trail is Peru's best known hike, combining a stunning mix of Inca ruins, mountain scenery, lush cloud-forest and rich subtropical jungle. Over 250 species of orchid have been counted in the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, as well as numerous birds such as hummingbirds, waterfowl and the majestic Andean Condor. The star of the Sanctuary is the spectacled bear - a shy, herbivorous animal that is extremely rare and close to extinction. Essentially the Inca Trail is a mountainous jungle hike leading to the sacred Inca city of Machu Picchu. The 45km trek is usually covered in 4 days, arriving at Machu Picchu at daybreak on the final day before returning to Cusco by train in the afternoon.

I´m skipping class right now... it´s a hot bright sunny day and I felt like wandering around with an ice cream. It feels like such a small town already, everytime I leave the house I see someone I know, bartenders or musicians or shop owners or fellow students. It totally feels like home! We went to this cool market town last weekend, but missed the last bus back and had to take this scary rickety cab home along crazy windy rocky half-unpaved roads in the pitch black and couldn´t WAIT to get back to Cusco. But that was ok compared to the bus driver who kept falling asleep and going into the wrong lane. Anyway, I feel like I´ve lived here forever already, and it´s only been a month. The trip is officially half over, and when I get back from Machupicchu most of my friends from school are leaving for South American adventures elsewhere. I´m staying to do my volunteer work at the orphanage for another month.

Considering extending my ticket and maybe spending Xmas/New Years up in Ecuador, then flying down to Argentina for a couple weeks. Everyone is surprised that I didn´t have more extensive traveling planned (and I thought coming to Peru by myself for 2 months was crazy). All the Dutch girls have like 6 months just to go all around S. America, totally comfortable with traveling alone, and a couple guys have round-the-world tickets. I´d never even heard of such a thing until I got here. Makes me feel like a lightweight. These people have the best stories you´ve ever heard, of biking down Death Road in Bolivia, drinking the best red wine and eating $5 steaks in Mendoza (Arg.) 6 inches thick that you cut with a butter knife, of surfing and beach towns and floating islands made out of straw in Lake Titicaca. Aaah. Who knows when I´ll have the opportunity to come back? 

Well have to go rent my hiking boots now. I just went to pick them up, but the shop was just sitting there, totally wide open with no one in it. Kinda weird. Running out of things to tell about Cusco because it feels so normal now.  The weirdest things I´ve seen lately have come while studying the behavior of Germans at my school -- not to be mean, but as a group they are the most socially awkward people I´ve ever met.  And I decided that the corners of Avenida el Sol/Mut'uchaka/Allaytambo have replaced Fullerton/Halsted/Lincoln as my intersection of choice. Cusco... Chicago.... I always have to say I moved here from Las Vegas because no one has ever heard of Chicago. I can´t believe it´s snowing there. I laid out on my back porch this morning!