Keeping it real like a spray-snow tree...

I realize that a post about my international students is long overdue, but this simply has to come first. Thankfully, it is mildly related.

"Meine Kinder" and the "Crazy Finnish Guys" recently took a weekend trip to Vegas. When I picked them up at the Nashville Airport, they were giggly little boys rambling on about inside jokes of maintenance man exhibitionism and Santa Claus.

Apparently, it's a Finnish legend dating back to a popular 1920's radio show that Father Christmas lives on top of Korvatunturi peak in Savukoski, where he can eavesdrop on all of the Finnish children to make sure they aren't being bratty little bastards.

I guess in a fit of that "what happens in Vegas..." kind of drunkenness one of my Fins made a Korvatunturi reference, and it soon became integrated into our everyday jokes. In yet another drunken fit a week or so later, on my birthday, I made some snide comment about Santa. I was commanded to write Santa a formal apology within the next twenty-four hours and then deliver it to the Finnish guys for review. This is the result.

------------------------

Dearest Santa Claus,

Remember me? I came to see you at the Rivergate Mall in Nashville, Tennessee in the United States back in 1992. I asked you for World Peace, and you never delivered. What the fuck is up with that? This letter was intended to be an apology, so let me begin by saying I am sorry that I have several bones to pick with you. Here lays the list the bullet holes.

Firstly, I do not believe that some magical, bearded wanderer who can absolve all of my sins was born two thousand years ago in a stable in the Middle East in the dead of winter, and therefore I don’t need a fat, jolly, old fogey with a bad case of rosacea to fly from Korvatunturi, Finland, and sneak around my house late at night on the aforementioned savior’s alleged birthday. Not to mention, I think the radical fundamentalist Christians are a little pissed about you stealing Jesus’ thunder every year. I do, however, admire your humble and inspiring sense of giving. In fact, I would probably like you more if you performed this selfless act on another holiday, perhaps New Years Eve. Since you insist on performing your deeds on a holiday that I don’t celebrate, you have become useless to me.

Also, have you ever stopped to ponder repercussions of your actions? I realize that your heart may have originally been in the right place, but your traditions have resulted in greed, materialism, over-consumption, and devastating amounts of pollution and landfill waste worldwide. I suppose that I cannot blame you for all of this. I mean, it’s not like you invited the corporate sphere to bastardize and corrupt what was once an innocent act of caring… or did you? I feel I can never trust you, Santa. You are one relentless mother fucker. I am unable to escape you. You have completely infiltrated the psyche of my society, so even if I did want to escape your grasp, and I do, I would be unable to do so at the risk of offending or disappointing friends and family who wouldn’t understand my adamant lack of gift-giving. It’s not that I’m stingy. They’ll still get something for their birthdays, and maybe even New Years, if that whole concept ever takes off. Geez.

My only hope is that your reaction to my opinions will not result in my banishment from Korvatunturi. From what I’ve heard, it is the place to be.

Sincerely,
Kassi Elizabeth Thomas

Gypsy Rose, pt. 1

As I haven't been utilizing this blog to its fullest potential, I thought it would would be silly to start another. So I'll be posting the setlists to my radio show, Gypsy Rose, here as well. Since it's a world music show, focusing on the music of Eastern Europe, it seems appropriate to incorporate it into this quasi-travel blog. And maybe I'll find the time to hash out some of the thoughts bouncing around my skull as well.

---
Tuesday, 9/7/10
Gypsy Rose, 1
Csokolom - "Amari Szi, Amari" (slow version)
Fanfare Ciocarlia feat. Esma Redzepova - "Ibrahim"
Leningrad - "Mama, Nalivay!"
DeVotchka - "Head Honcho"
Beirut - "The Gulag Orkestar"
Kal - "Oh Ma Cherie"
Zdob Shi Zdub - "Na Rechke, Na Rechke"
Gogol Bordello - "Illumination"
Perkalaba - "Boogay"
Shukar Collective - "Gipsy Blooz"
Romano Drom - "Deta Devla"

We put our bare feet upon the red rock soil...

In an attempt to organize the mass of files on my computer, I stumbled upon this blog that I'd typed in a word document last summer, while Kelsey and I were globe-trotting in our 2009 European Misadventure. We would often write things down and never get around to posting them, though I'm glad we spent every second trying to soak it all in rather than freaking out about finding internet all the time (we only did that some of the time). This post claims to be abridged but is actually pretty verbose. I blame all of the Jewish screenwriters I've been exposed to for my love of wordiness. Anyhow, here's a little blast from the past:

--
Now that we’ve essentially reached our halfway point, let’s catch up in a rather abridged fashion. Shall we?

One week ago I reluctantly left Vejer. My homestay mom packed me a snack for my bus ride and my teacher, Alejandro, gave me two mix cds. The ride to Cadiz was spent holding back tears because I know I won’t have a chance to return to Vejer soon enough.
Upon arriving in Cadiz, wandering around trying to find the bus stop for my ride to Madrid, my mom called me to tell me that Kelsey’s flight from Philly to Madrid had been cancelled due to storms on the east coast, which would delay her trip about 24 hours.

And I thought it was always sunny in Philidelphia.

After cursing God and all things holy for about 10 minutes (read: 2 hours) because it seemed that, yet again, I was being ass raped by air travel and because I wanted so bad to just go back to Vejer for that extra day though I knew I couldn’t, I decided to suck it up and board my bus to Madrid. The ride was long and monotonous, with roads bumpier than Kentucky. The only thing that kept me sane on this sleepless night was Ale’s chill flamenco mix. In Madrid I wandered around, found a hostel, saw a few sights, read some poetry in a park, and enjoyed three things I hadn’t had in two weeks: a private bathroom (I’d been sharing with 5 people), dependable wi-fi, and air conditioning. The next morning I took the metro to the airport to meet up with Kelso and our adventure began.

We were running a whole day behind, so we decided to try to book an overnight train from Barcelona to Milan, skipping the south of France in order to catch up. The bad news was that train was full, so we had to re-route on an overnight to Geneva, Switzerland and cut out Italy all together. We were both bummed, but there’s always next time.

After a few hours in Madrid we hopped our first train to Barcelona. We stayed in the first hostel we saw when we got out of the train station because we didn’t want to carry our shit. Luckily, it turned out to be pretty nice. After that we took a stroll down La Rambla to see the luster from the city lights on the coast at sunset, and then, after a few wrong turns down dark alleys in an attempt to find a place suggested to us by our buddy Waldo, decided to turn in for the night. But not before a tiny debacle concerning leave-in conditioner and Duff beer.

I’d like to take this moment to express how much I hate Catalan. Just get over yourself and pick a language - French or Spanish. Quit acting like you’re so damn special, Catalonia. Don’t tease me with the prospect of understanding only 50% of the population.

The next day we went straight to the beach first thing to let the Mediterranean waves kiss our feet. We could have sat in the sand all day, but instead we bought a reggae CD from some buskers from Chile and Paraguay, and shared some sangria at a sidewalk café near the coast where we could watch the palms blow and talk for a few hours.

Whoops, we lingered too long. It was almost time for the train to Geneva and we still hadn’t seen any Gaudi, so we took the metro to La Sagrada Familia, picked up our luggage from the hostel, and after being sent in the wrong direction by a well-meaning ice cream salesman, ran until we got to our train.

The train was so booked when we made our reservation that Kelsey and I had to be separated, but I was fortunate enough to be placed in a sleeper cabin with a chick from California who had also been separated from her companion, and he just so happened to be on the same train car as Kelso! So they switched places, and all was well. After catching some shit about switching places from the grumpy train attendant, we embarked on a nine hour journey with two amazing ladies from New Zealand. Kath and Jen are both fifty-somethings who left their husbands and grandchildren to go train hopping through Europe for a month on EuRail. They gave us Swiss chocolates and told us stories of their journeys. They were utterly hilarious to the point that I could never dream of translating it to blog form.

So that puts us in Geneva, where they don’t use Euros, public bathrooms cost money, and swans have snooty French accents in my mind. We cleaned up as best as we could at a bathroom in the train station, wandered through the streets, drank from the fountains of youth, climbed to the top of the North tower in the St. Pierre Cathedral, fed ducks and swans peanut butter crackers in Lake Geneva, and took a million pictures of things that weren’t anything important, but just looked cool. After just a few hours of this, we hopped yet another train to the smaller town of Fribourg, known as “Western Switzerland’s hidden treasure.” And oh boy, it is.

My friend Roger picked us up at the train station in his brother’s fancy-shmancy Mercedez Benz and sped through the Swiss country-side to his home in the village of Giffers...

--
Apparently this is when our prepaid internet access at the cafe ran out, our train arrived at its destination, or I just grew weary of typing and decided to look out the window at the premium countryside.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS IN GIFFERS?!?

Roger, the overly gracious host, feeds us - A LOT. His brother with a revoked license drives five people in a tiny convertible with one window missing down winding roads in the middle of a storm to a castle. We drink hot chocolate. We sleep, and we skip town. It's abridged, people. Abridged.

It's more than a year late, and the stories have all been told and re-told in hookah bars and awkward situations since then, but I couldn't really stand to have this document sit in a rarely accessed folder on my desktop unopened any longer. I apologize for being a bad blogger.

And what about the sausage?

I had a very Jonathan Safran Foer moment earlier this week.

I was eating lunch with Paqui and Jose after class. Jose (my homestay dad) always points at food and tells me the name of it, even if I already know. It’s cute. He had just pointed out to me that Spain was Europe’s #1 producer of oils (olive, sunflower, etc), and assured me that the oil used in preparing my meal was completely vegetarian. So imagine my surprise when I found what looked like a brain or an eye in on my plate. Mixed in with my pasta and vegetables was something definitely…. animal. So I asked.

“Qué es esto?”

Paqui responded with a word I wasn’t familiar with. When I indicated that I was confused she used another word to describe it. “Marisco.” Uh oh. Not good. Not only are mariscos shellfish and therefore, by my definition if not by the Spanish, an ANIMAL, but I am also allergic to shellfish.

Whoops.

I tried to clarify the definition of “vegetariana” to my family. The entire situation was so Everything Is Illuminated. Think, in a strong Ukrainian accent, “And what about the sausage??”

I told them no meat, no fish, no ham, no shellfish, no animals. “Nada con una cabeza,” I said. To which Paqui responded, “Pero atún en una lata no tiene una cabeza.” Wow. Really?

--
It is also noteworthy to mention that before I left the States, when I thought I was going to get a chance to go to Africa, I consulted a friend about what to wear in Morocco. The heat, from what I’ve heard, is unbearable, yet Muslim women are still required to stay covered. I’m generally a modest gal (anyone hear remember the “the Lord wants us to be chaste” joke?), but probably not by Muslim standards. I didn’t want to offend anyone or get offered employment in an African brothel, but I also didn’t want to pass out from heat exhaustion in the middle of the desert… and wake up in an African brothel.

My friend’s solution: Hammer pants.

Hammer Pants?

If you’re like me, you thought the fashion police outlawed these long before the turn of the century. Think again, folks. Hammer pants are EVERYWHERE in Andalucía, and get this – they’re actually cute. And practical. I’ve considered buying some on several occasions, but every time I come across a cute pair in a tienda, “Can’t Touch This” starts to play in my head, and I immediately back away with a mixture of amusement and discomfort. I guess that makes Hammer pants kind of like a racist joke, and in a way, I guess they are. Sorry, M.C.

--
I can’t believe that today is my last day in Vejer. It’s all been so surreal. Two weeks went by too fast. From the tiniest of the whitewashed alleyways to wide open Mediterranean coast, I’ve really enjoyed taking in every second of it. If you get a chance to come here, please do. But while you’re at it, do me a favor, and don’t tell anyone about it. I’d like to keep it our little secret. The less American tourists here, the better.

In the spirit of last year’s Mexico posts, how about a list of things I’ll miss about Vejer de la Frontera:
-The sunsets.
-All of the Spaniards walking around exclaiming, “Que calor!”
-The cute, little, old Spanish men that meet at the same bench on La Corredera every afternoon to gossip.
-Hearing three different churches’ bells ring the hour at once.
-Gazpacho. Mmmm…. Gazpacho.
-Not having to rely on fossil fuels.

Things I won’t miss:
-Trying to fall asleep when my room is 87 degrees.
-Ice cold showers when I wake up before Paqui lights the pilot light.
-Showing up to school soaked in sweat because it’s HOT and I had to ascend a hill as tall as the Empire State Building to get there (Because you haven’t been here, you can dispute my exaggeration! The truth is, I don’t get winded on the hill anymore. Yay!).
-This creepy doll hanging in the corner of my room.



--
The next time you hear from me… I’m not sure where I’ll be. My bus leaves Vejer tonight at 7 PM. I’ll have a couple of hours in Cadiz before heading to Madrid, where I’m supposed to meet Kelsey at 8 AM. We plan to hop a train to Barcelona around 3 PM, but considering my luck with travel plans thus far, we’ll see how that goes. Perhaps, I’ll be in the south of France the next time I have enough time and reliable Internet access to compose a blog. We’ll see. In the meantime, there are some new pictures on my flickr.

I've taken the highs, taken the lows...

…Just, in the opposite order. Now for the good news. Don’t be fooled. Andalucia No Es El Cine. Andalucia Es La Vida. This is seriously the coolest place I’ve ever been in my entire life.

For me, the culture in Spain is like a huge clash of my last two experiences in Mexico and Europe. Obviously the Spanish influence and heritage in Latin America translates back to the motherland, but at the same time parts of it are so much nicer and more vogue because it’s in Europe. The set up of the school is pretty much exactly like ICO. Breakfast is at 8 and then class is from 9:00 – 13:00. Since I’m in the intensive course, I have an extra two hours of class after that, and then I return home for lunch at 15:00. I’m living with Paqui and Jose Manuel Nunez. They were both born and raised in Vejer and have three kids. Paqui bought me apples yesterday because they’re my favorite. How sweet. Last night I watched the evening news with them and we talked about Obama. I much prefer being the only student in the house as opposed to Mexico where there were four or five of us at a time. I didn’t really bond with the family there. The housemaid was the only one there to see me off when I left Oaxaca.

I have two different teachers. Alejandro is my morning profesor. He’s really awesome. Yesterday our topic of conversation was music. GeorgeMy class consists of nine people, and here’s the cool part. They are all from: England, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, or California. In the afternoon, I work with a woman named maria Jose, who turned out to be the niece of my homestay dad. In that class I’m with 4 other people from the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, or Switzerland. And every one of them speaks English. HAH.

Tuesday evening I went exploring in the city. It’s really not that big of a town. The population is smaller than that of Cookeville, but it’s constrained to this tiny surface area atop a mountain. I think it’s funny because last year I used to stare at the Sierra Madre from my bedroom window and tell my housemate (the one that looked just like Bill Nye the Science Guy) about how much I wanted to go climb up one of those mountains. I never did make it up one of those (but I did survive a terrifying bus ride through them!), but I’ve definitely topped that by living on atop on one now! I tried walking the entire outer edge of town yesterday, at least where there wasn’t a wall or building blocking la vista.

Time for a tangent. Vejer is not outlined on a grid system. I guess the Moors were just like “to hell with that.” For that reason, I can’t just head east with the knowledge that my school is not the east side of town and hope it get there. No, sir. What this map doesn’t show are the physical aspects of Vejer, as in the fact that I climb like 3 mountains to get to school each day. One second you’re ascending the steepest hill ever, and the next you start going down and have to walk funny, toes-first, like you've got a stick up your ass just to avoid face planting on the descent. It’s then that you realize walking down isn’t much of a relief… it just means you’ll be going up again soon.

Anyhow, I tried to conquer as much as I could on my first full day in Vejer. If the pictures (still to come) look like I had to do some serious climbing to get them, it’s because I did. And you’re welcome.

As it was getting close to 8 or 9, I started walking southwest so I could try to get a view of the ocean. I found a pretty awesome path leading out of the city towards some of the new wind turbines and what looked like water in the distance. The path ran parallel to a road. After a while of having the path narrow on me as I listened to all of the rustling going on in the bushes next to me, I started to worry less about stepping in donkey shit and more about getting bitten by a snake. It was worth the risk, considering I got these pictures. On the way BACK UP THE HILL into town, I decided not to try my luck con los serpientes so I walked in the middle of the road like a badass. Or a dumbass. You’re call, really. The point is I lived.

Finally I decided to sit down and navigate my way back home. It was here, seated on the ground, that I took a moment to appreciate the little things in life. Like a chorus of children singing “Feliz Cumpleanos” somewhere in the distance while a donkey brayed and a dalmation sneezed in my general direction. Andalucia es la vida.

When I got home that night, my luggage had arrived. YAY!

Yesterday I bought a bus ticket for Algeciras for this Saturday. I’m going to go check out Gibraltar while I’m down there (technically owned by the UK while still in Spain), but I don’t have enough money to take the ferry over to Africa. I’ll just have to stare at that dark, mysterious continent from across the Strait and hope that next time I’ll be able to venture into it.

There’s a big festival going on tonight. The 90th anniversary of something. I was hoping to catch up on sleep, but it seems to be the Spanish mentality that you can sleep when you’re dead. So anyway, I hope to post another for you on Monday, but this is it for now.

Ciao!

Talkin' Spanish Transportation Blues

This is long, boring, and you’ll hate it. Actually, if you’re Brittany Wilkey, this is a lot like a Bob Dylan song. Hence the title.

I hate to be one to bitch and moan in a blog, but I wrote this at a bus station in Sevilla before I had access to the internet, and I feel that it is absolutely necessary to post it. I hope -promise- that even if things go wrong for the rest of the trip that this is it for the whining. There’s humor spattered through intermittently through the rant, and I assure you it has a happy ending.

---

Literally NOTHING has gone according to plan yet. Let’s start on Friday.
Friday was the last good thing that happened to me. Thanks to everyone who spent what I thought would be my last night in America with me. I had a really great time with all of you.

Saturday morning I arrived at BNA exactly on time, had a wonderfully cheerful lady help me at the baggage check-in for once, and practically walked straight through security because the airport was so dead. I didn’t even get frisked or randomly searched like usual! I stopped wearing Obama shirts to the airport, too. Maybe that helps. All the redneck Homeland Security officers aren’t staring me down like I’m some secret muslim. Or maybe it’s because they work for him now that they have to me nice to my granola-eating, hippie-dancing ass. Who knows.

Anyhow, The flight from Nashville to Dallas-Fort Worth was great! I sat next to a cute little old man who is a native Forth Worth-ian, so he pointed out the window at everything and basically gave me a window tour of the Lone Star State as we flew over.

My flight from DFW to Madrid changed gates twice and then was late to board. I pretty much forgot about all that once we got on the plane. I had planned a 3.5 hour layover in Madrid, so things like that wouldn’t throw kinks into my plan.
Except something went terribly awry. After just crossing the East Coast border into the Atlantic, we made a sharp turn northeast and the pilot alerted us that we would be making a pitstop at JFK before crossing the pond.

WTF.

Still okay, still thinking things would work out, I told myself that I’d rather be stuck in NYC for what turned out to be not a quick pit stop, but a FOUR HOUR DELAY, than finally getting a chance to utilize my seat cushion as a floatation device in the mid-Atlantic. We were told that some part of the plane was inoperable and would need to be switched out or we would need to find ourselves a new airbus. The folks in Nueva York gave us free food and booked a new connecting flight for me from Madrid to Sevilla. The bad news? The bad news is that we left JFK at the time we should have originally been arriving in Madrid, so my final flight was not due in until 9:10 PM Sunday (Spain time) in Sevilla. That’s an hour after the buses to Vejer de la Frontera stop running. Since I didn’t have access to internet that wouldn’t suck my bank account dry like airports do, I had to call mi madre in the middle of the night and have her research every other possible option (Cadiz, Jerez, Malaga, etc.) that could get me to town in time for class on Monday. Finally I realized that I would just have to miss my first day of class. Which sucks.
Furthermore, after finally re-boarding our Madrid flight at JFK at 3 AM, we were without a captain. We sat idly on the runway for an hour while the flight attendants tried to distract us with cheese and crackers. It wasn’t working. After our captain remembered that we existed and came to the rescue, the rest of the flight to Madrid wasn’t all that bad.

Madrid’s airport is really cool. It allows you to get a complete panoramic view of the area, which I did by walking the complete length of it while listening to the Talking Heads during my layover. Then I headed back to my gate where to my surprise I encountered two guys from the ill-fated DFW flight. One was a scraggly looking psuedo-Andrew Bird guy from Indiana that I’d had my eye on all day. The other was the guy I’d been sitting next to on the flight to Madrid and flight to Madrid Strikes Back. I’m pretty sure I drooled on him and probably snored. We hadn’t said more than two words to each other in the entire 20 hours that we’d essentially been sharing the same 5 foot space, until we stood in line for our flight to Sevilla while it was delayed not one, but two times. That sucked, but I got put in business class for the flight, which lasted all of fifty minutes, I guess as a “sorry we’ve been fucking you over” gesture.

Also, I feel it’s necessary to mention that “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” played by a tenor sax is what was playing on the plan as we boarded. I was really confused by that. Abort tangent.

When we finally landed in Sevilla, at 10 PM and during a breathtaking sunset, I felt as though the three of us, all students coming to Spain for language immersion in different schools, had really accomplished something. I felt that in the past 24 hours we had all conquered the odds and really made a good hustle at being slightly-perturbed-but-still-civil airline passengers. I was ready to give them both high fives and a round of “FELICIDADES!”

Then I noticed that we were the last people left at baggage claim. With no luggage.
Lucky for them, they were actually staying in Sevilla so they had a place to go last night, and their luggage won’t have as far to travel when it turns up (still hasn’t). I, on the other hand, had to spend the night in the Sevilla airport. It’s about as boring as Nashville. I felt very Tom Hanks-esque (and also got deja-vu from Lolla 07!) when I was washing up and changing clothes in the airport bathroom. I found a nice quiet place to study my spanish flashcards and maybe sleep, and when I got bored with that and started to wander around, taking pictures of privatization protest signs throughout the airport. An employee then caught me and told me that the airport closes at 1:30 AM and reopens at 4:30 AM. Whatever, I can sit on the bench right outside the door for 3 hours. No big deal. Everyone was doing it. I was going through my flashcards and minding my own business when they decided to shut off the lights.

Great.

Fast-forward to 5:45 AM when I hop on the first bus from the airport to downtown Sevilla, because anything would by more fun than sitting at that airport. I arrived in a beautiful part of the city at exactly 6 AM. It was still dark.
Let me digress about how if my experience thusfar has been any indication, Spain is totally my kind of country. The sun sets and 10 PM and the sky doesn’t even begin to hint at a chance of light until at least 6:30. This is perfect for a my lazy, nocturnal ass. Nothing was open at all and the only people roaming the streets were the ones still borracho from last night.

I wandered around and took pictures, bought a ticket for the first bus out of Sevilla to Vejer, and the wandered around and took more pictures until my buses departure time arrived. I watched and watched for my bus, but it never came. I kept thinking that maybe it was just late. I would expect such from a Mexican, but not a Spaniard. Thirty minutes after the scheduled departure time I went and asked about it, and the woman told me that I was supposed to be on the bus to Algeciras. Gee, thanks for telling me when I bought my ticket. Thanks for printing “Algeciras” on my ticket. Thanks. Now I’m stuck in Sevilla for another four hours until the next bus. I would sightsee, but I already did that for three horus. I have missed one day of class, lost my luggage, and have been running on no sleep, no food, and no shower. This is supposed to be Europe, not Bonnaroo. WTF. All I could do to not lock myself in the bathroom and cry was chant that I’m a strong independent woman while staring at Lindsey Lohan’s latest nip slip on the cover on some magazine at the stand across from where I was sitting. Luckily, it worked.

The shitty part is, even when I do get to Vejer, I will have no shampoo, no outlet adapter, no towel, no toothpaste, no underwear… (sings “Free Ballin” to the tune of “Free Falling”).

Bienvenidos a España, Kassi.

Things Mexicans like #8 - Being Late (llegando tarde)

Here, like traffic regulations, time is merely a suggestion. The bell system at the Institute is one of the office workers grabbing a small hand bell and walking around the campus ringing it more or less at 9 AM. This is not exact, and even after the bell rings, people still mosey to class. I can leave my house at 9 and still be “on time” by Mexican standards. The first few weeks I was generally on time, and therefore very early and very bored in the mornings, so I started sleeping in a little later… now I’m more like my old self in the States. If you know me, then you know that I am perpetually late. Therefore, I fit right in like a native… a really obviously white, foreign native.

Thing I won’t miss #5 - Gas de Oaxaca (and various other morning vendors)
Potable water and gas (for use in water heaters, etc – not cars) are delivered to the population of Oaxaca each morning. Great, right? Exactly what you need brought straight to your doorstep. No. Mexicans have an unspoken pact to share noise. But for me, like the fireworks, dogs, and violated monkeys, the various delivery men shouting out whatever goods they boast at the asscrack of dawn is far from cool. First there’s always the guy with the bell. I don’t know what this guy is selling, but he generally paces up and down each calle at bright and early while ringing a cowbell. What the Fuh? Next comes the water truck. This one is just a dude screaming “AGUA…. AGUA.” And last but not least is the Gas de Oaxaca camión (truck). This is a truck that comes through around 7 or 7:30 every morning and honks its horn. There is a speaker attached to the top of the truck that announces “GAS DE OAXACA” and then commences to play the jingle. Yes, there is a Gas de Oaxaca theme song, and it is thoroughly annoying. I saved this “thing I won’t miss” for last because I was hoping to get a video of it to show how absurd it is, but considering how I’m usually half naked, half asleep, and cursing under my breath when it passes by, that never happened. This morning, though, my new housemate Maria (from Ireland) asked me if it was always this noisy. She, Marta, and I were laughing about all the people who come through in the mornings when I heard the Gas de Oaxaca theme song. I quickly excused myself from the table, ran upstairs to grab my camera, and snagged the above photo. Anyhow, I’m happy to be heading back to a world where people respect others sleeping patterns.

Thing I will miss #4 - Instituto Cultural Oaxaca (ICO)
I really did have a good experience at this school. It’s a beautiful, comfortable, small campus, the people are gracious, and I feel like I really learned a lot here. I met a girl at a bar who had transferred from ICO to another language school in Oaxaca because she felt that the Institute was too “capitalist”. Maybe I’m blind or numb to capitalism at this point, but I really disagree. To me, ICO feels like much more of a grassroots effort (did I mention the class bell system was usually a guy in a lucha libre t-shirt ringing a handbell?). Most of the teachers and students are incredibly progressive, forward thinking, and independent people that I had a great time associating with. I will miss sitting in the garden; I will miss watching people dance on the roof; I will miss looking out the window during class to see palm trees and mountains; I will even miss class itself.

Today is my last day in Oaxaca! Twenty four hours from now I will be near landing in Chicago. I can’t believe it’s time to go home. I have been so ready all week, but today I was walking down the road that leads to my cul de sac and I had to walk through a mariachi band warming up. It really hit me then how different my life has been here and how strange it’s going to be to go home. Tonight I’m going out with a slightly large group of people to celebrate my (and Jennifer’s) last night in Oaxaca. I’ve already booked a collective taxi to pick me up at 9 AM tomorrow. A taxi that will drive me away from this land where dogs live on roofs and spend their days talking shit to the people that cross below them, a land where it’s commonplace to yield for donkeys, turkeys, and men with scythes, a land where everyone and everything (especially the architecture) is very open. The taxi will take me to the ridiculously small Oaxaca airport, and I’ll begin my journey home, along with my funny tan lines, a pocket full of memories, and Spanish skills slightly superior to those of Peggy Hill.

I’m coming home.