stranded...

My eyes feel heavier than my limbs. I have been chasing sleep for days now with no avail. Lights, noise, or movement have kept the illusive luxury just out of my reach. The introspective thoughts stream through me but the fog that seems to have taken up residents in my brain, forbids me from grabbing them. I struggle to place my muscles in any functional direction.  Coordination, which has never really been my friend, seems more a foe today than in any past memory. My body can hardly stomach the idea of running from gate to gate. Instead I think I may make my bed in the afternoon corridor. I search for my imaginary friend. Some one who can check the boards and continually list me on flight after flight. I wonder if my sleep-deprived delusions can be considered a TSA violation. I wonder if the airlines have a limit on the number of days a person can go without showering and still be allowed on a plane.  

An Afterthought.

After spending some weeks with the orphaned boys at Azul Wasi in Peru two things have become painfully clear to me. The first is that my life and the soul that wrestles within it will never be satisfied until I find a way to make my career a catalyst in which I can help those without a voice in the world, have one. Second, I could use a few pointers in the small yet effective tools of educating children.  

Lima Flows

Recently I was talking with a friend about Peru. When posed with the typical, "How is it" question, I responded with my generic, "It's like any other big city, but everything is in Spanish." Immediately after saying it, I felt estranged from my comment.  Somehow the words that escaped my mouth didn't quite fit with a nagging but unnamed thought in my brain. I searched for a qualification to ease my separation but had none.

 

Over the next few days or maybe weeks I thought more about my knee-jerk response to the city. I thought about this while I mastered the bus systems and memorized the streets. I consideration my statement as I tasted the dishes, fresh fruits and dulces Lima has to offer. I mulled over it while I stood at the cliff of the city overlooking the South Pacific Ocean and watched the wave's crash. And finally I reconsidered my short answer as I watched the housekeepers in the neighborhood work with care and drivers offer directions while pushing buses through traffic. 

 

Lima is not just another big city, rather Lima is a rhythm. Everything ebbs and flows here as smooth as water. When one stops resisting the initially bothersome jerks of the bus and let's go of the seat in front of them, they fall into the same flow. What initially appeared as madness clears into the rhythm of waves. Traffic moves not to slow and not to fast. Drivers consider pedestrians and equally traffic around them and flow with them. In and out of the lines, vehicles of all sizes maneuver and squish four wide in streets designed with three lanes.

 

The food moves with the texture of an old river, neither to spicy nor to plain. It comes heavy and light at the same time and always in waves as it is prepared. The fruit is delicious, extensive, and plentiful, while the vegetables are slower, less frequent and heavier.

 

And finally the people, they move with conscious intention. Each housekeeper or caregiver seems to be thankful for the job, stroking the face of their charge. Each server, salesman, bus caller, and park worker taps through there job with a subtle yet strong contentment for the employment. It seems as though people in Peru never woke up with a list of what the world owes them. Rather, the majority of Limans seem to wake with the sense appreciation for current state of affairs never taking anything for granted.  

 

The locals holler directions while negotiating through traffic and not blinking. Taxi drivers drive as long as it takes to get their fare through a maze of streets for the same price quoted despite the hour of complications. People flow in and out of the numerous parks through the city, marked with the Virgin Mary as an eddy safe haven in otherwise dangerous neighborhoods. In droves people walk in and out of events with no major problems, moving with the same steady strong flow of a river.

 

Lima may not hop like New York, nor pop like Chicago, nor vanish and resurface like London, nor move with the madness of Mumbai. However, Lima moves, it just moves smoother than the rest. This extremely significant yet easily unnoticed detail is what separates this big city from the rest. This cliff high water side monument to water raised, raises the bar on what any other big city should be.  

To Bus or Not to Bus: That is The Questions…

Most people have heard some version of the South American bus systems horror story. The story usually includes chickens and a bus hanging over the side of a cliff. This clichéd tale never allows for any variation of the in town travels and subsequent horrors that happen in the “urban” bus systems far away from the cliffs and chickens. Let me enlighten you.

 

The official bus system is less of a system and more of what American teenagers might refer to as a “Chinese Fire Drill” set in side a caged rat’s maze, with hopes of rich cheeses at the end of the maze. In translation, the wonderful cheese at the end of the maze is your intact body, the rat’s maze is the selections of streets the busses chooses at random to get to said destination, and the “Chinese Fire Drill” remains graphically self explanatory.

 

The buses whip in and out of traffic closer and with what appears as more calm control than a taxi driver in New York could ever wish for. There are generally two lanes on the main road, but here as in other foreign countries, they serve merely as a nice reminder of regulations rather than a law to be followed.

 

The system is a series of three sizes of buses painted a series of colors and usually painted with names of a few street destinations on the side. In every bus no matter the size there is a driver and a caller. Because there is no bus schedules, maps or machine to politely deposit your money in, as in the U.S., there is a Caller. The Caller hangs like a trapezes artist, especially during rush hour, out the door of the bus, hustling fares on and off the buss, calling streets and stops and collecting money from each rider.

 

The money paid is not a straight fare, rather it is based on the distance you travel, and surprisingly enough, even on the busiest days, the callers know exactly where every traveler got on, where they are getting off and has pre-calculated your price in the off chance a person tries to cheat them on a fare.    

 

The busses come in thee sizes: bus, van, and what is most frequently used is the Combi. The Combi is somewhere between a Volkswagen bus and a full sized bus. It seats about fifteen tightly and stands between ten to fifteen more. Capacity depends on the size of the passengers, the relative tolerance of the riders to swing as the buses jolts in and out of traffic, as well as the desires for the Caller to want to hang out the side of the bus.

 

The next size down is the late 70’s Volkswagen turned bus called a micro, pronounced “me-crow”. The micro is an inventive peace of machinery wherein the municipalities here have found a way to raise the top of the van (not by much), throw in a bunch of seats and bars (which are necessary), and call it public transportation. Shockingly in these marvels of welding, they manage to pack upwards of twenty people in them.

 

Given the low ceiling in this type of bus, it becomes especially interesting on days that women wear skirts. Being the men are not quick to offer up their seat to a lady and after one terrible embarrassing ride for myself, I have chosen to avoid these busses if at all possible.

 

I have, as of yet, had the luxury of riding a city bus that was full sized, but they do make up only a small portion of the totality that is the bus system here in Lima.

 

Now that we have covered the necessary basics for getting on a bus, let me offer you a few pieces of advice should you ever find your self on a Peruvian city bus:

 

    One- never, never, never sit in the front seats. It is best not to know how close you are every seven second break check, to crashing into the vehicle in front of you at great speeds.

    Two- as previously mentioned, never where a skirt and ride in a Microw. It’s not good for your reputation and the stares and cat calls come louder than the atrocious sounds made by the shifting of the transmission.

    Three- never expect to get out of even five minute ride thinking you might smell the same as you did when you went in (especially during morning rush hour).

    Four- If at all possible, try not to touch the callers. A day hanging out the side of a bus in a city with nine million people and no real current emissions restrictions makes you filthier than a coal mine worker.

    Five-white is not the most optimal color to where on the bus

    Six – when the Caller yells “abajo” he is not asking politely. Rather, he is demanding for you to hurry and get out of the way or hurray and get off the damn bus. If you fail to listen, you get pulled off, left behind or worse than that, not off at all until the rat maze slows down again.  

    Seven- for gods sake hold on! As the bus whips in and out of traffic, your certain for elbows in placed you would generally rather them not be, if you don’t have a at least one firm grip on the railing.

 

 

Once you have mastered the art of riding the Peruvian bus system, there is nothing left in Lima for one to be afraid of, other than the seriously dangerous ghettos. But that’s another adventure for another day.

Surgeon Generals Warning:

It may be hazardous to your health, pride, and general well being to write and post bad poetry when drinking.

The un-argue

By denying myself nothing, my thoughts ponder through life's loves

Where would I be had I been there still

What would my life look like now

My blood tiptoes at the edge, in my mind waiting for me to respond to myself

Drama with out drama

Love with love with out showing love

His love confuses me

My brain wants to hurt more than my heart and the time is never enough

I reach for his hand and he gives me a few versus

I reach for his versus and he gives me a few nods

I reach for the nods and I get a few emotions

Finally

I think

Finally

We feel together

And the war begins

He said, she said

And now, alone in the night with my trusty light

I wish it were all better

Or I had been all better

Like the end of a good Saturday morning cartoon

I want to respond with the same naivety as ever

Yet I feel robed of my chest of innocence

Though I robed only myself

And now I want to know how to resolve the broken chest

And resolve the unresolved

To fix the fight and fight to fix the non-fights

Argue I say

And argue not they say to the self inflected hole in my soul

The family tree waves at me less a few leafs

Yet after the leafs fall, and the familiar wind moves on

The tree remains unmoved

There lives a faith the leafs will come again in the spring

Life will repair its line

In the quite night, by denying myself nothing, I give my self everything

 

Peru Week 1 - Part 3: No Bones About It…

One of the other benefits to the school is Emily, the On-staff event coordinator. She puts together excursions for students six days a week ranging in price from free to 85 soles (about 25 dollars).

 

Thursday I went on a tour of the San Francisco church (cost: five Soles) in center of Lima. The church is from the late 1600's and had old Catacombs underneath it. This tour was defiantly an experience.

 

I suspect from time to time I have found myself on top of this blindfolded high-horse where I consider myself open minded and worldly. Then, I go and do something like this little tour and get knocked off my high horse of worldliness and back to the ground of ignorant American-ness. Let me explain, I thought the catacombs would be a progression of underground tunnels, what I did not think is that I would be looking at around 25,000 human bodies that were tossed to rot in the basement of this church from the late 1600's to the early 1900's.

 

Let me clarify that the people were no longer rotting, rather in the mid 1960's they made the place a museum and cleaned all the bones and organized them all nice-like into petty designs in wells and holes. What this means to me is that these peoples bodies not only did not have a final resting place but they were scraped, cleaned, sorted and shaped for a shit ton of silly tourists, such as myself, to swing by and have a good look at. Meanwhile the tour guide rushes us to the next pile of bones so he can get through the whole tour and on to his next group of silly tourists. Did I mention that the pieces of bone that had broken or were not pretty had been tossed in a hand full of out of the way cubby holes?

 

I couldn't get through it fast enough and was bothered to say the least. Someone afterwards asked me what I was expecting to see and I felt like a babbling idiot saying, "Well, well I don't know, I didn't think that, I mean that would never happen in the U.S., families would be fighting over bodies to get bones back, and they just wouldn't do that… they, they, we, they, we, well I never, well,"  

 

In hindsight, I wanted to kick my own ass for not knowing better, for being so shocked, for being so ignorant and American. Yet still I find myself a bit out-of-sorts about it. I will use the F-bomb again. What the fuck was that that I saw?

 

Note to self: You don't do well with human remains just lying around. Try to check future school activities to avoid dead people as municipal art projects.    

Peru Week 1 – Part 2: School is fun for everyone!

I love my school! There are a hand full of administrators and teachers, they are mostly female and everyone is incredible sweet and patient. There are only about ten students right now and they range from my retard level to absolute advanced level of ambassadors and language teachers brushing up an advanced literature. They are all almost entirely awesome. We all have three beaks a day between classes. The school puts out coffee, tea, water, juice, a snack and crackers every day for all the breaks. There is a mother like woman that walks around preparing the snacks and making sure that everyone is eating.  Every Friday and Monday they do something for people that are either coming or going. Most everyone helps prepare food or clean and so on and then everyone sits around and talks in broken Spanish/English, shares stories, and eats.

 

On Fridays they provide the national alcohol of Peru called Pisco, and make the traditional drink called Pisco Sour. Pisco is basically a distilled grape with the flavor some where between vodka and a light smooth subtle tequila. It surprisingly is not that bad. The drink however, is not that great, it is Pisco, Goma (a type of sweet clear syrup for drinks) the clear part of an egg, a bunch of fresh lime and a dash of Angoras Bitters. They shake the cocktail in a shaker until frothy and drink. The jury is still out on what I think about it. I think I would be inclined to like it if we lost the Goma and egg. I will take one for the team, and experiment with the alcohol on behalf of all Americans and get back to you.

Peru Week 1: Peruvian Time & Death to The Ice Cream Man

 I pose this question: Can anyone tell me why a country that is 81% Roman Catholic, does not celebrate "Fat Tuesday" aka "Mardi Gras" i.e. the night before Lent where, "Catholics across the world are to give up a vice until Easter and because of this should spend more time eating and drinking everything filthy they can get their hands on the night before such day," does not celebrate it?  I am dumbfounded and if there happen to be any anthropologists, theologians, sociologists, or car mechanics out there that can answer this little question I promise you one Alpaca hat from Peru.

 

So, that little task out of the way and we are off with the story… I get to Peru late on "Fat Tuesday" and there is no "Fat" to speak of. There is however Peruvian time. By Peruvian time I mean this. My bags take an hour to get out of the plane and onto the baggage claim, the car service I had secured the day before did not show up and the money exchange could not exchange my money to make a phone call to the service. Some two hours later I make it to my hostel to "sleep"  though three hours of one guy hitting one two girls in the same room, in a different language, for the majority of the night.  Early the next morning I wake up, take my first shower in three days, get a map, a taxi, and head off to school, I arrive feeling more retarded and out of it than a sorority girl at a ruffy party. To top it off, the emails that I had been sending to the main office in Chili were not being communicated to the school in Peru. Thus, the school was at the same time worried that I had died and also not expecting me. They find the placement test; I take it and score just high enough to enter into course 1A. For those who are unfamiliar with placements tests. I was barely allowed into the school for as much Spanish as I got right and I suspect the administrators were surprised I knew the Spanish word for taxi, which consequently is actually "taxi". 

 

Four hours latter school ends, my brain and body hurt and the school has phoned my new "mother" Monica to pick me up. While I am not shopping for a new mother, when staying with a family in a different country, they transfer the family temporarily to you. So mother is mother, bother is brother and so forth. Luckily, I suspect they recognized my age and shinning personality so they placed me with a 53 year old woman who does TaiChi and Riki. She is very nice and reminds me a bit of an old pseudo-grandmother of mine. She has an older boyfriend named Pepe, whom drives a 76 Camero (yes in Peru, holy shit) and owns a used car lot. I am, if nothing else, amused.

 

Monica has a maid, Teresa, who brings her 13 year old son to work everyday (its summer break here so he is out of school). Teresa is here 5 days a week and whether I make my own bed or not, she will remake it tucking the sheets in so tight that for the first few times I got into bed I thought someone had short sheeted the bed. There is also a woman from Ecuador that is staying here with her 9 year old daughter. I am still trying to figure out the story behind them.

 

As I write this little tale I am sitting in the backyard at your standard plastic table and chairs. The yard is edged by a nice little garden with a few fruit trees and cactuses.  Monica usually has nice soft music playing and the doors and windows are always open. It's beautiful and tranquil here. All except for the ice cream men. These little devils ride around on pedal bikes passing by the house or in the neighborhood every five to ten minutes. They don't play the traditional American or Spanish music, rather, they have a horn that sounds like a bird has just fallen from the sky and is dying a painful death just a few feet from you. The first time I heard it I thought someone was in trouble. The second time I waited for the final painful breath. Finally when it didn't end I asked Monica what the hell was going on and she explained to me it was the ice cream man.

 

Later that day I saw one of the bastards. They ride and where all yellow. It's like the devil incarnate but rather than red and horns out of his head, he is yellow and has horns on his bike. I am going to kill one of them before I leave. Maybe not them, maybe instead I will find out where they all park their fleet of torturous ice cream bikes one night and attempt to disassemble all of them for good. I suspect if I actually did this, they would just send the little demons back to hell for a few more and then spend most of their afternoons outside my window until my ears began to bleed yellow.  My window does open and also faces the street, so in the afternoon, the few siestas that I have had, I have spent time contemplating different things to throw from my window in hopes of knocking one out. I am always open for suggestions if one should fall my way.  Chao.

A Journey To and From Home

I was home for only a few days when I raced, sadly, to get moved out of my fabulous little apartment in an attempt to flip my life around, move in with my mother and then out of the country for school. Just as I attempt to wrap up a few details and see some old friends, I land my self in the Emergency room. Almost two weeks later I am up walking around, postponed, frustrated but not defeated.

Let's talk for a moment about hassle. Those that know me, know that I tend to find my self slightly overbooked and overwhelmed. That being said I never got through blogging the rest of my India trip which I do intend to do in the near future, though I thought I would get to it right when I got back from India. And here we are, nearly a month back from India freshly stitched up, light one fabulous apartment and one severely diseased gallbladder, and desperately behind on a hand full of errands and a blog I really wanted to keep up. To follow is my poor excuse/unlikely stories as a reason for the severely delayed stories.

After a few hassles getting out of the south of India and back into the good ol' USA I landed on Monday the 26^th in the middle of the afternoon, wherein one of my best friends picked me up at the airport I went straight home and worked on some seriously gnarly jet lag for around 36 hours. After a brief chat with my landlord and a look at my future plans to attend school in Lima, Peru, I find myself in a mad dash to pack up my apartment, give away half my belongings throw away a forth and then divide the remaining forth in between sections of things going to a storage unit for later movement to a new state for grad school, a pile of things I am taking to my moms (where I will reside now while in the country) for everyday use, and a pile of things I will need while in Peru for a few months.

I pause for a moment to talk about moving. Moving, in a word, sucks. However this obnoxious daunting task can be accomplished in a mater of hours if well organized, and if all objects are simply going from one location quickly to the next. If this is not the case, moving quickly becomes more irritating than a pair of chafing dirty underwear that has not been changed in a period of weeks while in a sandy waterless desert. In short, my experience lasting over a week mirrored this irritation.

More than a week later, I finally mostly finished the move, all but a few odds and ends and a spot of cleaning. This irritation wraps itself up on a Thursday evening only hours before my gallbladder sends me into a gut wrenching late night trip to the ER, not but a week before I am scheduled to attend school in Peru. For those that know me best know that this could not possibly be the end of the story. The ER sends me home with a guess-timation of the problem, a stack full of appointments for Monday morning, and a bottle full of painkillers to get me through the weekend. Pleasantly, my family and I had been planning a surprise 60^th birthday party for my mother that Saturday, so I sucked it up and ran my errands for the next two days. There is something to be said for the soothing sensation of painkillers. Even when it doesn't relieve the pain, it's a nice fuzzy edge off the stabbing that might otherwise be consuming you.

Three days latter and a full 24 hours with no pain killers I head into my first appointment. This "scan" of my gallbladder yielded no results less the small fact that they weren't sure I had one because the radiologist couldn't find it.

Now I am fairly certain I would remember a little thing like having a gallbladder removed. It being that this was not part of my memory bank, I found myself feeling like I was ten again at the county fair where a swallowed a bit of the disappearing-reappearing ink. I spent the next few hours waiting for the doctor to call with the results of my missing gallbladder.

Luckily, I suspect given my urgent pleas in light of my schedule to leave the country, in the ER some days before, the doctor called me from his cell phone to explain the magic trick. It appears that my gallbladder is not missing; rather it is so damaged that the "scan" could not scan it. He informed me that he has spoken to a surgeon, got me an appointment for a consultation the next day and even reserved the O.R. for Wednesday. I felt like giving him a twenty five percent tip for such service and almost went as far as asking if his first name was Rumpelstiltskin wherein he wanted my first born, after all he was German and this really seemed like he was performing the impossible.

Nonetheless, I saw the surgeon and the next day, slept through the two hour surgery that was supposed to be a one hour surgery, while they yanked out the sick bastard. Later at a check up I would find out the surgery took so long because I had a bag full of stones, in a fluid sack and the damn thing was huge with chronic and acute inflammation due to the disease. I figured fuck it, treason is punishable by death, so good ridden to the organ anyway. I did however ask if the weight loss experienced during surgery counted as actually weight loss as fat content. The nurse declined to answer. The few days following recovery were less than fun, at one point I was quoted saying "almost as much fun as being beaten by a rabbit" I repeat this now because I think this phrase is something that should be used more often. This is not to say that today has been anymore exciting.

This morning I awoke at 5 A.M. to run to the airport to wait half the day on standby to board a plane headed to Atlanta Georgia and then onto Lima. Here now it's Monday February 23^rd and I am sitting almost alone in the Atlanta Airport at about midnight. My plane doesn't leave until 5 p.m. tomorrow; there is no wine, no people, no blanket, and no warm arms. Late tomorrow I will land in Lima, where the school, though thousands of miles from my life, will help me begin anew. The life in front of me has brighter possibilities than my earlier years ever thought possible. I suppose I can find some warmth for the evening in those thoughts.

33 Hours Later

One word: Funky.

Thirty what...

And now, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. No really... I am headed out in an hour on a 30 hour train ride. Yes I did say 30 hours. three Zero. 30. I can only imagine the smells coming off my body at the end of this little ride. Someone should invent scratch and sniff Internet. Maybe I can save a peace of clothing and bring it home for those that might be curious. It could be like my own personal form of torture for the ones I love. I would like to hear anyones thoughts on this idea.

The American Cake In India

The original purpose for this little jont to India was two-fold. One, it was a graduation present to my self, in the form of the "light at the end of the tunnel" while I was pushing through the last few months of school (strangely I consider this third world stuff a nice afternoon out). Two, it was my friend Matt's thirtieth birthday. Matt is a hard core traveler and wanted to have his dirty thirty in a different country. This leads me to the adventures of the American cake in India.

After we arrived in Agra to see the Taj we figured out a rough draft for our schedule for the next few days. Soon Larry (a.k.a. Lisa) and I realize that because of our days, we are going to be traveling the day of Matt or I mean Curly's birthday. Over the first night in Agra we meet this nice family who have a cute roof top restaurant here (one of a gazillion) just across from our hotel. We have a few drinks and get some henna done by the owners daughter. The next morning Larry and I plot to have them prepare (in advanced) a cake desert of some sort so we could celebrate close to midnight on the the 14th. The man at the shop takes our information and we give him a brief description, telling him we only want the cake about 4 inches in radios, thinking that some pastry thing that came close to this would be sufficient. Over the course of the afternoon as we came in and out of our hotel traveling to the Agra Fort (which, as a side note was pretty cool) the man pulled me aside asking more questions, i.e name and age and such. I am impressed that the restaurant owner thought of these details but still I am expecting not much. 

Latter that night we end up in the restaurant for dinner which mat was trying to avoid. Larry and I had to almost drag him in. Nonetheless we eat a nice dinner and one drink turns to four or more. A bit later the Owner and his daughters bring the cake out. Larry, Curly and I are absolutely blown away. They managed to make a real American birthday cake about six inches wide with a more frosting colors and flowers than a bakery could compile on one cake. The owner even managed to find the big number candles, which he had already placed perfectly on the cake and lit on the way to the table. Larry and I start the birthday song and the children of the family stand around to watch and congratulate Curly (there are seven in the family and four were regularly fixed to our table).

Mean while Curly is shocked and thus speechless. He blows out the candles and we cut the cake which we have now heard the oldest daughter spent the afternoon making. One bite later and we are all but spiting the cake out. While they can make it look real, they simply don't have the ingredients to make it taste real. The flavor and texture was more like corn meal with half an inch of colored butter frosting.

Nonetheless, we finish at least the bite and then gladly cut up the rest and send it out to all the children and every friend they have until it is all gone. Curly in the interim is still shock that we secretly pulled this task off while in India (we are as well) and has subsequently carefully taken the candles off of the cake, cleaned them, wrapped them in napkins and  placed them in his bag for safe keeping.  And so ends another surprising night in India. And yes pictures will come of this as well.

Note to Self

1- Learn how to spell one day.

2- Indian birthday cakes that look like real American birthday cakes, despite there convincing looks, don't actually taste like them, even when drunk (drunk being me and not the cake).

3- Some sales men in India consider the conversation which takes place over bartering a form of courting.

Monkeys, Cattel, and Sand Lots are Rough On The Intestines.

Sitting in a dark hole in front of a computer in the middle of India I take a minute to reflect on the last few days here. This is the first of many stories.

The train to the Taj Mahal did not work out as one may have hoped. The train dropped us in Mathura, a town over and hour outside of Agra which is where the Taj Mahal is. In the very small city there is a temple that is said to be where Krishna (a Hindi god) was said to be born. My book mentioned the temple but had almost no other information on the city other than this fact. We knew we had to get a taxi into Agra so we thought it would be easy to get a taxi to take us to the temple and then if the price was right and we wanted to continue, we would have them drive us to Agra. I get off the train and there is no other tourists but my friends and I however there is more than thirty taxi drivers happpy to help us. Thus, we get mobbed. I had a guide book with names of the temple and such information so my two friends move back out of the way and photograph this *Shit Show.

After a lot bad communication (in rural areas the English is shotty with low literacy rates and my American accent is not common) we get our taxi driver and head into the temple. We are seeing some wild rural happenings and the taxi driving has not gotten better in the rural area. Rather, they insert cows, tractors, large buses, oxen carriages and bicycles into the erratic driving and all of them are swerving around the cows in the middle of the road at mach three attempting to not hit the cows.

A few minutes later we arrive at what appears to be the kingdom of monkeys. It is a whole in the ground that has been made with some sort of a red cement and built like an inverted pyramid with each foot a new step heading down to water at the bottom. It is larger than a football field with monkey climbing all around it and no one can tell me what this incredible structure is. Nonetheless, I leave my friends in the car with the bags and head down a crazy road to see the temple, at one point on the walk two monkeys jumped toward me and landed close enough to almost scare the literal shit out of me, but also enough to alert the taxi driver who is used to this monkey kingdom.

After all of this I end up not getting into the temple due to a few communication errors (which I have since worked through, and takes some knowing while traveling in this country, and will come in a later note) I head back to the taxi and we start our negotiations to drive us to Agra. The driver is incredibly unreasonable and we end up taking our bags out of the car and walking the mile back through the cows and traffic back to the train station. This "walking" incident was so wild it could hardly be explained less you where here to see the speeds and animals thus we photographed this as well, no worries pictures will be posted later.

We manage to find our way back to the train station where we negotiate a price and take off on our journey. However we only get about five miles when the driver and his friend turn off the road and barrel through a cricket game in a field and park at the back, at which time my friends and I are having another bowel moving moment. The guy jumps out and Curly, my male traveling companion has his hand on his pocket where he caries a rather scary knife. The guys get out and start talking with two other men and tell us to get our bags so we can move to the other car parked there. One man speaks some English and after we calm down we understand that the car we were first put in can not travel the distance and so they are moving us to a new car and negotiating a finders fee. We move cars and an hour and a half later safely arrive in Agra where we find a hotel and have dinner on a roof top cafe. We eat, drink chai tea and watch the sun set on the Taj Mahal. The wild day ends well with Intestines intact and no need for a rabies shot.

*capitlized because it is a borrowed term and also because it was a proper debacle that requiers a proper name.

Note To Self

Third world states do not have particularly frequent, effective, or continuous Internet service.

Tat tas: More than just a funny word

This is my two part whore-er story...

 

Yesterday the Three Stooges and I were trying to get ready to leave Mumbai. We had decided that we should have cocktail before the train ride and during a bit of shopping. There is almost no bars in Mumbai, or rather no traditional bars that we could find. We did see one on a busy street, it was called Lucky One. During the chaos on the street rather than really looking at the store front I pushed my friends into the bar. We walk in and notice immediately a sign that states, patrons are not allowed to dance. We are escorted to a table and I notice immediately that there are only men sitting and a few girls standing around. The girls are young and dressed up quite elaborately. I start thinking maybe this is a strip club, but no one is dancing. after a few minutes and a misplaced shot of vodka and a beer in the way, I finllay figure out I have pushed the three of us into what I can conclude is a whore house. The three of us are laughing under our breath and laughing  our asses off. Meanwhile there is a man standing over our table pushing us to order more drinks and a handful of girls not staring but glaring at the three of us. Lisa, or Larry from here on out and my self start prodding Mat or Curly, as I will refer to him in the future, to talk to the girls. He in the process is blushing and laughing. We decide to finish our beer and get out as soon as possible. In the interim the man next to Larry has asked her to dance for him. She reminds him that the sign on the wall said that the patrons are not allowed to dance, I reminder her if she does she would no longer be a patron. The entire incredibly uncomfortable ten minutes ended with us leaving money and splitting, meanwhile the man in the tuxedo is chasing Curly out wanting to know where his tip is. We stumbled off down the street to get fitted for out Suris laughing and calling Curly a john.

 

Part II

 

For those who know me well know that I was, we'll say "endowed" with certain physical traits. While in the us this is, I don't think any way, entirely out of the normal. However, in India this gift of DNA is not so common. This is something I had not really noticed until to day. Larry and I were ordering Suris, the traditional Indian outfits. This is basically a tight fitting top and a large piece of cloth that wraps your body. The tops have to be tailored to you exactly. Larry and I enter the shop and talk to the owners whom, are five men. We pick a cloth and they send for the female seamstress. About fifteen minutes later she shows up and starts to measure me for the fitting. the top doesn't cover much more than you breasts so as she is measuring me she actually stops to make a few cracks to the men about the amount of material this is going to take. They all laugh, she measures another angle on my breasts stops makes another crack they all laugh and then continues again. I was slightly embarrassed, but this barley scratches the surface. A bit latter I go to purchase a few shirts (I packed surprisingly light and needed some cloths that were OK for the mosque). I go to India's version of a Target, grab two shirts hold them up to me and decide they fit. I buy them, take them back to my hotel throw one on and it does not fit.I try the other and again the same. The shirts fit everywhere but the breast area. So as we are headed to the train station I go in to return them, I have to explain why they don't fit, again the woman at the counter starts to make jokes to the guy standing next to her. I ignore them and go to find different shirts. Larry is with me in the interest of time, we start digging and the only size shirts they have that fit me up top is XL with does not fit any where else, I am now digging through piles of shirts holding them up to myself to see if they fit in the process a group of six people are watching what is going on and are laughing hysterically. I move to the men's shirts hoping that I should have luck with men's broader shoulders. No luck and the group is now laughing harder and longer. At this point I am so frustrated and embarrassed I grab the first two ugly things I can find and we leave. As we are trying to check out, the manager is hitting on Larry, while asking me if I am sure if this new selection will fit, by the end of the day I was almost ready to go back to Lucky Bar where I might be less the joke and we could go back to laughing at Curly and his lady friends.   

 

Another Day Another Love

Yesterday left off with the attempt to train out of our shady Mumbai
neighborhood and into Agra to see the Taj Mahal. However when we
reached a new train station to get on the "right train" and after some
doing we finally were able to get tickets for the now, 15 hour train
ride into a town just outside of Agra. On the downside the only
tickets available were for the next day. This of course left us
staying another night in this chaotic town. We left the train station
tired and frustrated and walking around until we found a sign for a
vacant hotel.

I tell you this boring tale, because it was a fantastic misfortune.
Because we were forced to stay, we ended up in a different
neighborhood. Our hotel was down a quiet street next to a temple and
across from a school. We spent the entire day walking down amazing
little streets where children would play with us and men and old
ladies would stop to say hello. We ate great food on the streets and
in restaurants and fell in love with Mumbai in a matter of hours.

The architecture is baffling, on one street you have a million dollar
high rise and next to it tents and shacks with families making dinner
from fires they light with the same piece of wood each night. Men
drive a million miles an hour on motorcycles with women and children
on back, I would be inclined to say "holding on for dear life" but the
fact is they are not. These whole family rides seem to be as natural
and stress free as a walk in the park. I wonder if my fear is a
natural concern or a testament to the smothering overly concerned
society Americans have created?

In an hour we board our 15 hour train ride, by this time tomorrow I
will be sitting in front of the Taj Mahal, I am sure awed by its
beauty and moved by its love story.

Hold on to Your Taxi Seat

 

We landed safely in Mumbai, after the almost 16 hour flight, and took the craziest taxi ride I had ever experienced in my life, nearly an hour zigging in and out of other vehicle and people nearly hitting and missing each one. Luckily our driver was older and Jesus so we were sure that the driving tactics were not mearly a lack of eye sight, rather that he was very experienced. The eye opening ride ended at out hotel which is by a train station but which also turns out to be the wrong train station in relation to where we are headed. The next attempted destination is  into Agra to see the Taj Mahal, The train ride is around 15 hours but it is a sleeper train. While I don't look foreword to another long ride, I suppose it will at least prove to be an interesting experience. This is of course provided we actually get on the train which as we hear may or may not have a waiting list.

 

All this logistics nonsnse aside, this town is fascinating, we are staying in a ghetto of sorts. People have built up shanty towns next to large new buildings. In the same step you walk past a rich child and an old man sleeping in a bed roll on the ground. Tourists are segregated in some of the restaurants and two American girls walking around with an American boy are something of a spectacle. Yet again I find myself in a city where my traveling partners and myself are the only blonds in sight. And though I have experienced this before, I wonder if it is something one can ever get used to.

 

It Sunday morning here. The Internet connections is sad to say the least, I am writing journals now, (on paper though it may seem a little archaic) when I have a better connection I plan to scribe them into this new little blog experiment of mine.

 

Piece of advice... Enjoy your hot water!

Good Morning America

This morning I watched the sun rise over the eastern horizon. It
raises slowly and poeticaly like a perfect orange ball mirroring
something only my dreams could assemble. The rough landing of the
plane jolted me out of my fasinating gaze. The next three hours proved
to be an episode of the Three Stooges, fumbling around bags, in and
out of wrong buses, over bums, after coffee, long lines, short walks
and around Atlanta. Due to this, I will start sending tidbits under
versions of The Three Stooges names...
To be continued

I am almost out of the fair city

For those of you who were sent a link, this is my first attempt at keeping a blog. I will attempt to update it often including pictures. We all know I am not as computer competent as I would like to be so I wish myself luck with the technical side.

I plan on spending the morning wrapping up a few details, I work tonight and then we are off with the red eye out of salt lake into Atlanta. We leave Atlanta around six tomorrow night with a direct flight into Mumbai. With no doubts, there will be more rambling soon to come.