Inaugurations

Last night I arrived home late from a weekend away in the coastal town of Almeria. Hannah (the same American friend who cooked Thanksgiving dinner with me) and I caught the bus from the train station into town, feeling weary after a long, sunny day whizzing around the stunning Cabo de Gata, a wild national park full of desert mountains and crashing waves. It was late, and the bus was empty save for us, the driver, and one other rider, a young guy who looked like he was probably arriving for another week at the technical university here.

The hum of the radio provided a pleasant white noise background for the first few minutes of the ride into town, but then I caught the words 'la casa blanca' in a news report--the White House-- and heard a recording of President Obama taking the oath of office earlier in the day. I turned to Hannah in surprise. "Was that today!?" I exclaimed; "Man, I totally forgot!"

For just a moment, I was transported to the east coast of Australia. Four years ago yesterday, I was just starting my trip around the world. I stopped for a few days in Elliot Heads, a small town huddled around a sandy strip of blue water, famous for its relaxed RV community and nesting sea turtles. The second night I stayed awake late, walking the beach looking for laying mothers under a sky I described in this blog as 'incandescent' with stars. The next day, I went into the town's small general store to buy breakfast and found the front page of the local paper festooned with Obama's face. I remember feeling a strange surge of emotion: pride at my country's step forward, plus the sudden weight of distance, the importance of all those things, large and small, happening while I was asleep.

Yesterday, four years later, I felt that same weight, as well as another pull, one of time. It's hard to believe that four years have elapsed since the beginning of my 2009 trip. And thinking about President Obama and his new beginning has me considering everything I've 'inaugurated' in the last four years: new friendships, new jobs, new apartments, new languages. These four years have taken me to more than 30 countries (just typing that feels momentous.) They've brought me incredible adventures (snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, dancing with Aztecs at the equinox, and visiting Stonehenge just to name a few.) I've produced radio segments that aired on more than 20 radio stations in the USA. I've had articles optioned for translation and international publication. I've grown comfortable speaking another language on a daily basis. Who knows when I'll have another four years likes these?

Even further, who knows where I'll be for the next inauguration? Will I have to be reminded of the news in some other radio broadcast in a language I'm still learning? Will I wake to find the new important face on some strange newspaper's front page? What new adventures will I have faced? What new challenges will I be navigating? What new friends will I have made? It's easy to forget that, really, every day is an inauguration.

The importance of Expat Thanksgiving

I'll admit that even by lax Andalucian standards (with the strange exception of the bus schedule, I've found the southern Spanish stereotype regarding tardiness to be fairly accurate), this entry comes a bit late. It's even later than it might have been, because once we passed the New Year I had serious misgivings about posting at all. But who knows where I might be or what I might be thinking about Thanksgiving next year? I'd like to take a "better late than never, better properly written than slapdash" philosophy to this blog. So: onward!

I've spent a few holidays abroad in my time-- July 4th in China (2007), Greece (2009), or Spain (2012). Christmas in Spain (2009, 2010), England (2011), and Ireland (2012.) My birthday in Italy (2009 and 2012) and Spain/Germany (2011.) Thanksgiving in France (2009) and Spain (2011)-- and again this year. Each celebration abroad mixes the familiar and the new in an exciting way, and I've deeply enjoyed sharing elements of my favorite traditions (whether they be Independence Day s'mores or latkes on Hannukah) with new friends that have already taught me a great deal.

French Thanksgiving in 2009 was a magical affair: it took place in a borrowed apartment in Normandy stocked full of couchsurfers from Cherbourg and stuffed to the gills with instant mashed potatoes, chicken from the village rotisserie, and homemade Norman apple pie (more like a tart by American standards.) Last year's Palentino Thanksgiving was equally full of newness and excitement, as well as a dear friend who came to visit. She brought with her canned cranberry sauce, stuffing mix, and more instant mashed potatoes-- as well as a contagious love for the holiday that added spark to the proceedings.

Then, in what seemed like a blink, November came around again, bringing with it my third Thanksgiving outside US borders. For 2012, I arranged an elaborate meal with Hannah, a new American friend in Linares. We invited several Spanish (and two Polish) friends, who in turn invited their friends, and in the end we had a total of 12 people sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner! It was a little bit of an overwhelming prospect, but with determination and a dollop of team work we were able to produce a menu that included: an apple pie, two pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, stuffing, graving, salad, and cranberry sauce (my pride and joy, concocted using reconstituted dried cranberries and--incredibly deliciously--an entire pomegranate.)

The results of a great deal of hard work! (Mostly Hannah's)

The day itself was full of happy, crowded chaos, exactly as a Thanksgiving should be. The invited throng trickled in starting around 3 PM--for once Spanish dining times coincided with American traditions-- just as Hannah and I were putting the finishing touches on the menu. The pies, which we had baked the previous night, were set to cool on the porch; the chickens were just coming out of the oven. We enlisted the cheerfully-complaining help of Maria and Jose to carve them and Polish Zeb to put some elbow grease into the mashed potatoes. Drinks were poured, places were set, the menu was translated among three languages, and we all sat down to a lip-smacking, multilingual, multicultural feast. (Of course, beforehand, Hannah and I insisted on following the time-honored tradition of saying something you're thankful for.)

The assembled Thanksgiving crew, before the meal

A complete Thanksgiving plate--even with cranberry sauce!

The meal was a total success. The conversation was peppered with compliments on the food (most of which our friends had never tried before) and a butchered/simplified version of the Thanksgiving story; the pumpkin pie, gravy, and cranberry sauce were particular hits. After a solid afternoon of eating and cleaning up, I even had a chance to take the customary post-Thanksgiving nap (here again Spanish and American traditions intersected.) I drowsed happily, thinking of people at home doing the same.

And here's the thing: it wasn't just people at home. In the coming days I saw pictures of expat friends all over the world celebrating. One in Beijing posted photos of a complicated Western-style spread; an acquaintance working for an NGO in Sudan took to his blog to describe in detail the effort of procuring a scrawny African chicken, getting it butchered, and preparing it for his feast. The next day, another NGO-worker, this one on the island of East Timor, posted pictures on Facebook of herself sharing a cooked, honeyed squash with a neighbor. There were no turkeys to be found, she said-- this was the closest she could approximate. Other friends throughout Spain sent anecdotes about the best way to make cranberry sauce (that's where I got the tip about using dried cranberries) or adventures adapting to Basque palates. It seemed like every expat I knew was going to extraordinary lengths to celebrate Thanksgiving, and it got me thinking--why are we so compelled to bring these American customs abroad, and what so is so specifically powerful about Thanksgiving?

I believe our expat Thanksgiving celebrations reflect our experiences living abroad as a whole. We spend most of the year immersed in otherness, a constant newness I personally find exciting and fresh,  exotic and educational. Over time, we adopt some of that newness as our own. Before my experience living in Spain, I couldn't imagine eating dinner outside of my family's customary 6:15-7:30 window. Now the thought of life without a mid-day siesta, eating dinner before 9 (or, God forbid, the senior citizen early bird special), forgoing tapas or tortilla (Spanish omelette) is horrifying; the idea of being able to go grocery shopping or do other normal errands on a Sunday seems absurd. I don't know how long it will take me to stop saying "hasta luego" at the end of every conversation or "perdona" when I bump into someone in the street. All of these very Spanish things have become an important part of me, Alissa-in-2013.

I think Thanksgiving maintains its power even over slowly-adapting expat lives because of its near universality within the US. American Indians apart, every family has a Thanksgiving ritual (even if, as in some cases, it's a lack of ritual). The holiday follows the powerful narrative of "becoming American"-- anyone can take part, regardless of religion, creed, or race; whether there's quinoa in the stuffing, curry on the turkey, or no turkey at all. Our memories of these days each year-whether they include elaborate cooking or family squabbles or beer and football or long drives or quiet time on the couch-- are something we can use as a marker, to remind us of who we were before we became our expat selves. And that makes Thanksgiving something that we can share back with the people who make our new lives abroad so rich. Thanksgiving means that we can say, if only for one day-- here, you've taught me so much about new music, new traditions, new tastes. Let me show you a little about where I'm from. Let me remind myself.


The glorious pies, against their very Spanish tiled "azulejo" background: maybe the epitome of what Expat Thanksgiving can mean





Evidence of a successful day

Southern Crossing: Atlanta-Charleston

Atlanta marked the apex of our swing through the south, and so when we left John's house early in the morning we were driving north for the first time in more than a week. We set off northwest toward the South Carolina border, stopping mid-day in Athens, Georgia, a still-waking-from-winter tourist town that featured a lovely walking path along the river. We stripped off our sweatshirts, relishing the warm air, and enjoyed the flowers and trees along the walk-- two northeastern girls ecstatic to have driven into spring.

An old train bridge in Athens, Georgia

Spring flowers

Awesome

South Carolina is a big state, so although we crossed the border shortly after Athens it took us all of the afternoon and some of the evening to arrive in Charleston. I could tell that the sunset was going to be incredible, and we decided we wanted to go out to the tip of the city, an area called the Battery where the river and the ocean meet, to watch. But in my hurry to get us there, I got turned around with the map and we ended accidentally going in the opposite direction. We watched the orange ball flicker from behind buildings as we raced the sunset and lost, but it didn't matter. Even without the sun, that night's sunset was one of the best of my life. We jumped out of the car and ran across the manicured lawns of the Battery to the river. There was a light breeze, warm and moist as bath water, and we watched pelicans swoop over the water in the blue air as the horizon turned deep pink and orange.

As if all that weren't magical enough, as we watched the horizon transform we heard a strange squeaking. For a sudden period of ten minutes only a swarms of insect appeared, and a cloud of bats followed, making strange, gravity-defying turns in the air to feed. As quickly as they came, they were gone (and the insects with them.) We were left to marvel at the water, the sunset growing more vivid by the minute on one side, and a full, white moon hanging 180 degrees behind, over the rooftops of the city.

Stunning.

Possibly the best sunset of my life thus far: Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

We walked back to the car, enjoying the Charleston night, dropped our things at our (fantastic) hostel and went looking for dinner.

Light on a colonial house, on the walk back to the hostel

We found ourselves in one of Charleston's main arteries, choosing a casual restaurant where we could dine outside and enjoy our tank-topped-at-night freedom. Our server, Isaac, was very friendly and made small talk as we ate our meal and enjoyed the mix of spring air and margaritas. Originally from Mexico, he was now a geology student at the nearby College of Charleston, and he offered to be our guide to the city the next day. We gratefully accepted. The rest of the night was spent on our hostel's front porch, drinking Yuengling and talking about the world--just the way nights at hostels always seem to go.

The next day was especially full because we weren't sure when we would be leaving Charleston. We spent the morning exploring a few of the old neighborhoods, ending up in the tourist hub of the city on a carriage ride. Normally, we would not have entertained the possibility of this kind of activity. But because I was still recovering from my broken ankle it actually made a lot of sense, as we could cover a large area without exacerbating my injury. Besides, the carriages were quite charming.

Images from Charleston's Civil War-era neighborhoods:

(Note the intense fence, for guarding against slave revolts)

The triple porch is very typically Charleston



The tour was quite interesting. We learned a lot about Charleston history, about the high life now (for example: Many of the nicest houses use gas lamps instead of electricity because it's more expensive and thus shows their wealth. Also, many Charleston houses are very long and skinny because house owners were taxed based on their street-front property, rather than the overall area of their houses.) I think my favorite thing we learned was about the little old Charleston ladies who still refer to the Civil War as "The Recent Unpleasantness."

The tour ended back where it began, in the midst of an enormous, tourist-soaked craft market. We embraced the commercialism for a moment, getting lost in the sea of people and art. I took the lesson I learned in China about controlling your tourist experience and put it to good use: I ended up buying a woven basket from one of the many women dotting the market, who stood out because of their ebony skin and what seemed like acres of woven baskets surrounding them. These women were part of the Gullah culture, an ex-slave community that grew up in the barrier islands of the Carolinas during and after the Civil War. The baskets are traditional crafts of Gullah people, and I took it upon myself to talk to the women who made my basket, something I didn't see too many other people bothering to do. She told me about learning to weave from her mother; about how her whole family is part of the process; about how her elderly father still goes out every week on Sundays into the marshes to collect the reeds to dry and make baskets. Emma laughed and told me I was "such an anthropologist." Maybe it's true, but for me that made the experience, and the basket, all the richer. Why buy something if you don't know the story behind it? Really, for me, the story is the most valuable part. The basket is really only a reminder of that story.

Woven Gullah baskets at the market

That afternoon we explored the city further, walking through the lovely multi-colored neighborhoods to one of the oldest synagogues in the United States, Temple Kahal Kadosh, which dates back to the Civil War. I was not expecting to get in touch with my Jewish heritage during a trip to the American south, but this temple was beautiful and story of the Charleston Jews quite interesting. This was the place that the Reform movement took hold in the US, and there was some interesting lore about tensions between Reform and Orthodox before the split. The building was beautiful; we were given a short tour, and both of us bought "Shalom Y'all" t-shirts in the gift shop.

The fourth-oldest temple in the United States

The caption above the bimah (platform) says "Know Before Whom Thou Standest"

It was about this time that Emma and I called Isaac, our waiter from the night before. He met us in the Battery and led us around the city to some of his favorite neighborhoods. We had a delicious picnic from a restaurant called Five Loaves, heard a little about South Carolina's geological history, and walked along a promenade by the beautiful harbor, where the river meets the sea. The three of us plus Susan, one of Isaac's college friends, spent what became another spectacular sunset at Isaac's favorite rooftop bar, where I had a mint julep in honor of where we were.

Sunset at the rooftop bar

As dusk fell, we were faced with an important decision. Our hostel was full for the night, and we had originally planned on moving on to the north part of the state that evening. Having decided we were too in love with the city to leave quite yet, we had thought we might spend the night on the beach, but the weather was a bit chilly for that kind of adventure. Luckily, Isaac was kind enough to offer to let us stay in his apartment for the night. Without realizing it, we had discovered couchsurfing.

The evening that followed was wonderful, surreal, hilarious. Isaac took Emma and me back to his house, then invited over a friend of his, John, who was on furlough from the Army. John was a tall, lanky blond soldier with an aristocratic southern accent (a la Rhett Butler). As we later discovered, he also had a photographic memory, but that didn't become evident until he rattled off a list of the past 15 presidents and their vice presidents, in order and with dates of office, during a lightly alcoholic game of Trivial Pursuit.

The evening got continually weirder as we ventured to, of all things, a Red Sox bar in downtown Charleston, then home again after enjoying some pool and the rowdy atmosphere. John lost his social skills as he drank, but that made him more interesting to be around. In fits and starts, he told us the story of a nerdy, intensely smart boy in rural South Carolina who knew early on that something about how his brain worked was different. Frustrated that the teachers at his school could not give him the education his overactive mind needed and unable to come up with the funds to escape to college, he had finally joined the military, eschewing higher education. The violence and psychological stresses of his life and his sheer intellectual capability had come together to create a formidable, but slightly off-kilter, intellect.

John had a fabulous sense of humor but little concept of social mores. He told jokes and stories entertainingly but had no sense of physical boundaries. One minute he leaned in too close, telling us about his anti-piracy missions in India and boasting about the number of pirates he'd killed (19); the next he flopped across the couch, detailing an intricate, light-hearted system for rating women on the street and an in-depth theory about Woody Allen films. In short, he was the sort of character you only meet on a road trip and the kind that every road trip needs.

Needless to say, an evening with him and Isaac provided plenty of entertainment and food for thought. We went to bed at 3:30 and were up at 6 to drive to the Isle of Palms for sunrise on the beach.

Southern Crossing: Asheville-Knoxville

Asheville, North Carolina marks the beginning of the Great Smoky Mountains, which means that the terrain changes enormously in a small area, a landscape filled with the unexpected. Similarly unexpected: Asheville is a bastion of hippy liberalism in the Appalachians which (until this election!) tended to be thoroughly in the conservative camp. Asheville is a very walkable, pleasant city filled to the brim with art-deco architecture, touches of environmentalism, and lots of art and culture. And yet, right outside the city limits are the foothills of the Great Smokies and all of the Appalachian charm (and poverty) a person could ever want to see.

That Sunday Emma and I got up and left Bon Paul and Sharky's, heading to an adorable breakfast restaurant down the street, where they made their own granola and the coffee was strong and sweet. We then undertook a walking tour of downtown Asheville.

Art deco architecture in the heart of Appalachia

I was keeping count of Priuses (Priuii?) during the trip, and never did I see so many in one place as in Asheville. In the picture below, I didn't even mean to shoot the Prius. It just happened to be driving by.



You've got to be pretty liberal to fund a zero-emissions vehicle program for your city police force

We spent the morning and early afternoon exploring. There were art galleries to see, vintage shops to browse through. We were tempted by an upscale southern food restaurant (the first we'd seen) but saved our money. Instead, we opted to spend some time in a fantastic craft center where we learned about traditional Appalachian crafts like basket weaving. Then we made our way to Sandy Bottom, a tiny town about 20 minutes outside Asheville in the Great Smoky Foothills. We had seen a brochure for horseback rides and decided that this idea, while a bit out of our price range, was just too good to pass up.

The drive out to Sandy Bottom was almost worth the money we spent on the horseback ride. The road wound through green hills, cows grazing, ramshackle cottages and disintegrating barns picturesque against the blue sky. We were the only visitors on the 4 PM ride.

Horses graze in Sandy Bottom

We went out, just the two of us with a grizzled old farmhand who had lived in Sandy Bottom all his life-- in fact when we reached a particularly high ridge he pointed out the small white house in which he had grown up. Throughout our 45 minute ride we rode up and down steep cliffs and rolling hills with fantastic views of the Smokies, and he kept up a friendly patter in his fantastic West North Carlonian accent. He told us about the strangest rides he had guided, about growing up near Asheville and his love for horses. He explained the presence of old school buses on the farm's extensive property (the awesome answer: the owner buys them and puts them out so that the goats have somewhere to go when it rains.) He asked about our lives, teased me because my stirrups were too long and kept coming loose, teased Emma for not talking much. And yet when we left we realized we had never asked his name.

The beautiful view from a Sandy Bottom ridge



We arrived back at the barn sore and for some reason--the authentic, comfortable feel of the ride, the refreshing warm air, or the scenery-- wonderfully fulfilled. And so the next question presented itself: what to do for dinner? And, more importantly, what about St. Patricks' Day?

We had forgotten during the reide that the holiday had arrived. Some of the guests at Bon Paul and Sharky's had mentioned that an Irish Pub downtown called The Green Man would be hosting a party with live traditional Irish music, an event that sounded right up our alley. So after dinner at a tasty, reasonable restaurant with an amphibious name (I can't seem to remember it now... something like The Dancing Frog?) we moved the night to The Green Man. It was an ideal setting for St. Patrick's Day festivities (besides, say, Dublin). The crowd was raucous and excited, the beer (brewed in several varieties in the pub basement) flowed freely, and music was fantastic. A few enthusiastic souls got up to do some approximation of Irish step dance. Emma and I struck up a conversation with the group of twenty-somethings next to us: they were incredibly friendly and toward the end of the evening were laughing and joking with us as if we had known them a long time. And I tried my hand at a game of darts, stopping to show our new friends the route I took during my brief trip to Ireland in 2007.

Enjoying the music at the Green Man


We couldn't stay out too late, as the next day was to be a long and spectacular one. We hoped to get all the way from Asheville to Nashville (Tennessee) the next day, stopping along the way in Great Smokey Mountains National Park and Knoxville, TN. So we got up quite early to make the initial trek, planning to hit the park just as dawn broke. As we did, we drove through the only remaining Cherokee reservation in North Carolina after the trail of tears. Cherokee, NC is a little blip of a town. We stopped at Tribal Grounds coffee house (har har) for morning fuel, and I took the opportunity to pick up a set of promotional postcards for a local art show featuring portraits of local Cherokee people. I still have a few of them up in my room. Those are the kinds of interesting tidbits I like to serve as souvenirs.


We hit the Park just about exactly at sunrise, which made for stunning views as we wound through the thick woods, full of towering rhododendron bushes. For now they were prickly with green buds-- in a few weeks the woods would be in full, astonishing bloom.



The most lovely thing about driving through the Smokies at dawn was that we experienced sunrise several times over. We would crest a peak and see the sun coming mellow over the horizon, then dip down again and descend into twilight, and over and over, until we came to an overlook over the whole park. There, Emma set off to do a little hiking while I (with my lame ankle) enjoyed the view.

Smoky Mountain Scenery





After a few hours we drove out of the park, through several low-season tourist towns like Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, TN. Given enough time I would have loved to explore these towns: they are basically all road-side attractions, filled with wacky museums and off-kilter monuments. Unfortunately we only had time to stop at a delicious pancake house in Sevierville. We felt that if we didn't we would be missing out on some sort of essential cultural experience: we counted more than 15 pancake houses in one small downtown area!

Sated, we set off. Destination: Nashville.

One of the oddest monuments in the US: the Sunsphere, built for a world's fair in Knoxville. There's not much else to see in the city, although it was nice enough when we drove through.

Southern Crossing Part 1: Charlottesville-Asheville

So, I've made a decision. I've been attached for a long time to the idea of this blog having a strict chronology. That means that nothing gets posted out of order, and two trips aren't recounted at the same time in alternate posts. I suppose I wasn't even that strict about chronology in the past (there are some interesting loops that happened when I commented about my current adventures in China, discussed things that had happened weeks or months earlier, and then didn't get back to those current adventures until several weeks or months after that.)

I've been putting off blogging about the road trip I took in March through the American southeast, and because of that I haven't written at all about my preparations for the Around-the-World trip on which I will embark in January. So I'm making an executive decision (that's easy to do, since I am the one and only contributor to this blog.) I will intersperse discussion of the road trip with preparations and hopefully my readers will be smart enough to follow along.

Which brings me to: the road trip. March 2008, spring of my senior year of college. I was in the throes of writing my senior thesis (using research completed during the time I spent in China, see February-July 2007 in this blog.) It hadn't yet started to soak up all of my free time like some deranged academic sponge, but I certainly needed a break. I enlisted a close friend, Emma, to go on a trip. Any trip, an adventure.

For months we had planning phone calls which got us nowhere. There were so many options for adventure. Where could we go? Germany? Costa Rica? Hungary? The limiting factors were time and physicality. I had a whopping 21 days off for spring break but needed to use the first 10 for thesis work. Emma had taken the year off from college and was working--planning ahead allowed her to get all 11 days of our trip off. However, I had fallen and severely injured my ankle in December, and although the fracture was healed the multiple sprains were still a big problem and I generally walked using a big black boot reminiscent of Darth Vader's foot. We reluctantly axed Europe, where I would be unable to walk the 7-8 hours necessary to truly explore a city. When we thought about it, neither of us had spent much time (for me, not counting Florida, none) south of the Mason-Dixon line. Additionally, I had friends in Tennessee and Georgia and Emma had them in Virginia and North Carolina. After much discussion we traced a challenging but doable route that would take us south from Philadelphia through Virginia, western North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and eastern North Carolina.

So: after 10 grueling days of thesis work, I took a train south from Hartford to Philadelphia, where Emma met me with her trusty Honda Accord. It was a beautiful early spring day, and we were both excited to get to even warmer weather as we headed south. That day was comprised mostly of driving, and driving, and then driving some more (That day, including the train ride from Connecticut I spent time in 7 states.) We stopped briefly in Frederick, Maryland, whose bricked streets were reminiscent of Philadelphia, for lunch at a cute cafe. We traversed countless pastures, acres of cropland, skirted the outside of industrial cities, before finally arriving in Charlottesville, VA. We had a bit of trouble locating our hostel, which was described on the traveling website HostelWorld as "a yellow clapboard house." We unnecessary trespassed in the yards of several wrong yellow houses before finally realizing our mistake: in Virginia, there can be two or more roads with the same name but with a different suffix-- Brick Lane, Brick Road, Brick Avenue, etc. We found this to be extremely confusing.

Although we initially had ambitions to go out to a bar or restaurant, we ultimately opted to stay in and conserve energy for the long day the next day. And long it was, but equally wonderful. After a snack at an adorable old-fashioned donut shop, we spent the morning exploring Charlottesville, which is a college town that hugs UVA tightly. A free shuttle bus loops around the downtown, and we took advantage of it in order to explore an adorable (if scarily gentrified) line of cafes, bookstores, toy stores, and boutiques, followed by the UVA campus and its surroundings.

Classic Southern architecture at University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville


The free shuttle

The restaurants and stores around UVA were brashly pro-University life but had their own charm. Emma bought a "UVA Cheerleading" shirt for fun and I tried hot fried apples, which were buttery and strange but delicious. We bought sandwiches to each outside in the sunshine outside of this coffeeshop, with an amusing sign:

(If you can't read, it says "Is Caffeine a Nootropic drug? You tell me. While you're at it, please tell me what a nootropic drug is.")

We left Charlottesville to drive part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which wends its way across the top of the Appalachian mountains from Charlottesville to Asheville, North Carolina (our next stop.) Emma didn't want to drive the whole way on the Parkway, as the speed limit was low and the road were winding. But we did spend a good chunk of time on the Parkway, stopping regularly to admire the beautiful views.

Wouldn't you stop, too?



About halfway down the Shenandoah Valley, we got hungry. It was raining lightly as we drove down the switchbacks that led us into Vesuvius, Virginia, a tiny town with all the ramshackle, half-broke-down Appalachian charm I (the elite northeastern girl) was expecting. We ate at Gertie's General Store, which had basic essentials (flour, bread, extra ammo, cigarettes) on one side and also sold fantastic pulled pork. Really. I made an effort to eat barbecue in each state we visited, and this was some of the best. The walls were signed with the names of people from all the world who came through the town while walking the Appalachian Trail.

Signs at Gertie's. I guess we're really in the south now.

About 3/4 of the way down the Parkway, we exited to visit one of the most exalted places in all of Roadside America: Foamhenge. This ten-ish year old roadside attraction was developed by an artist and left to slowly degrade, which it has-- much like the real Stonehenge! Foamhenge is in a tiny town called Natural Bridge, Virginia, which supposedly also houses a rock formation to rival the Grand Canyon, although we couldn't find it. Instead, we walked up the hill in light rain to Foamhenge, which was utterly empty, the red clay soil sticking in amazing amounts to our shoes.

Foamhenge, in all its glory


Just outside of Foamhenge, FoaMerlin casts a spell. There was quite a bit of FoaMerlin silliness to be had.

On the way back to the highway, we also found our way to this roadside attraction, a house shaped like a coffee pot. Complete with a handle and everything! I had seen it on a website which lists roadside attractions by state and had compiled a list, which we attempted to complete as we drove from state to state.


After driving briefly through Tennessee, we reached Asheville, which sits in far west North Carolina, very late at night. We settled into our hostel Bon Paul and Sharkey's (as quirky as its name) and got ready for a great couple of days in North Carolina.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

Well, it's official. I'm leaving on a jet plane, and yeah, I don't know when I'll be back again. But I know it'll be sometime, I love Yunnan too much not to come back. And so, in lieu of my continued adventures in China, I present to you: Things I'm Going to Miss and Things I'm Really Not Going To Miss about China/America. (Note: I will continue recounting my various antics when I reach the other side of the Pacific. Continue checking back for continuation of our Xinjiang trip, my two weeks in Kunming, my Nujiang research, and my three days as a Pumi peasant.)

Things I'm Going to Miss About China

-Outdoor markets
-Bargaining for anything and everything
-How incredibly cheap everything is. Seriously. Even when it's expensive-- it's cheap.
-Being able to look forward to have a new experience every day-- whether it be as small as a new word learned or as big as a new place travelled
-Seeing people wearing traditional, non-Western clothing
-Being able to meet people whose way of life is so different from mine
-Feeling badass for speaking Chinese so well
-Salvadore's American breakfast and amazing ice cream (I'm eating some as I type)
-Chopsticks
-The general laidback atmosphere of Kunming
-Feeling like a celebrity, like something worth getting excited over, just because of where I'm from and how I look
-The incredibly generous, giving, warm people who let me into their lives and their homes in the last 5 months
-Chinglish
-Text messaging in Chinese
-Old people doing exercises in the park
-Old people playing majiang and smoking pipes
-Old people crinkling up their eyes and smiling toothlessly at me because I'm a foreigner
-Chinese children ages 0-8 and their ridiculous adorableness.
-Chinese babies with their butts hanging out
-People who use abaci in shops
-DVDs at Y5 a pop
-Saying "Wei?" when I answer my cell phone

Things I'm Really Not Going To Miss

-The beds, which feel like sleeping on a board (sometimes, you actually are)
-Fearing for my life every time I cross a street
-Fearing for my life every time I get in a car
-Having to worry about where I might be sick next
-Feeling like a curiousity/freak because of the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes
-Squat toilets
-Having to carry my own toilet paper with me everywhere and sometimes forgetting
-Bathrooms where you get fined if you poop
-Censored internet
-The rainy season
-Accidentally eating hot peppers in supposedly un-spicy food
-Malaria
-People commenting on my weight (cultural norm or not)
-The way important things (like banks and hospitals) are only open during the week, as if people don't need things on the weekends
-Wearing the same shirt 8 times and the same pants 12 times before laundry day
-Having to handwash my socks and underwear
-Freezing cold showers in the morning
-Bus drivers who don't stop for bathroom breaks until everyone is jumping up and down and crossing their legs
-Eight hour bus rides over moon landscapes masquerading as roads
-The pollution-- air, water, and so very much trash
-Horrid Chinese sugar pop music
-Exhausting myself speaking Chinese every day

Things I'm Looking Forward To About the US

-Sandwiches! (I was watching an episode of "Scrubs" the other day on my computer, and they were eating sandwiches. And I thought, "Wow! I totally forgot about sandwiches! Awesome!")
-Hot water! Whenever I want it!
-Fresh fruit without having to worry or take a million years to peel it!
-Drinking tap water! From the tap!
-Driving
-Listening to English-language radio
-Summertime crap TV (everything I missed in the spring)
-Reuniting with friends, of course
-Spaghetti
-Forks and knives
-Rereading the entire Harry Potter series, and then Harry Potter 7
-Well-paved roads
-Cars equipped with actual shock absorbers
-Being able to read all my friends' blogs again

*Note that these lists are subject to change and will likely be added to once I get home and can see more clearly the things I am enjoying and those that I am missing. Then I will re-post this entry.