Strange Fruit, 1

A barman at his station in Cadiz

After two and a half years living in a foreign country, the idea of what is "normal" has redefined itself many times over. The strange quirks that jumped out at me so dramatically when I first arrived now seem obvious. It's easy to forget that I ever didn't know that a long weekend is called a "puente"--or bridge-- because it often connects a legitimate holiday with the weekend, taking innocent days with it. And it comes as second nature that I have to think about what time I take out the trash because if a policeman saw me bring it out before 8 PM I could get fined. Although it takes some effort to return to that everything-is-new state of mind, I've been meaning to post some observations for awhile, so I'll do my best.

Thus, I present to you: 4 Strange Things Spaniards Do (That You Probably Didn't Know About.)  And if you enjoy these, I'll post four more next week, as well!

1) They say goodbye instead of hello
I've written about this before in a different form, so it makes a good place to start. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Palencia two years ago was my neighbors' insistence on saying "Buenos dias (good morning)/"Buenas tardes (good afternoon)" and "hasta luego" (see you later) during our brief interactions in the elevator. It struck me as very odd, since American elevator etiquette relieves the rider from interacting with his/her riding companions at all. Why, I thought, waste the energy to greet someone, only to have to say goodbye to them 15 seconds later? (Plus, I found the Spanish way of saying "Hasta luego", which seems to elide multiple syllables into the linguistic ether, endlessly mysterious.) I was told, however, that not acknowledging one's companions in elevator travel would be a serious insult. Greetings are of tantamount importance here.
The strangeness only grew over the years: during walks in the evening paseo, I heard neighbors greeting each other, and once in awhile instead of hello's I heard instead "Hasta luego!" It seemed very strange that a person would start an interaction with someone by saying "See you later!", but after my previous assumptions I kept this thought to myself-- until I started to hear it more and more after I arrived in Talavera. Finally, I brought the topic up with my roommate. She looked at me like I was crazy. "Why would you open up a conversation with someone if you had neither the time nor intention of talking with them?" she asked me. "This way, we're saying 'Yes, I've seen you, but I don't have time to stop. We'll talk later, another time.'" I admit that this is a much more sensible explanation than I was expecting.

2) They tell strangers 'bon appetit'
Spaniards eager to improve their English often ask me what Americans say to each other before they eat. I am forced then to explain the awkward fact that we don't have any special phrase-- that, in fact, we stole the French phrase 'bon appetit' for the purpose (and that, actually, we stole a lot from the French... and the Germans and the Greeks and so on). 
 This is often confusing to them because the phrase "buen provecho" is an important part of Spanish etiquette, and it's hard for them to imagine a language that doesn't have its own version. Here, one says "buen provecho" before eating with friends or coworkers (usually in more formal settings), the same way one might use "bon appetit" in the US. But the big difference is that some people also say it to anyone they see eating, even strangers. They see it as a breach of etiquette not to do so. 
How seriously do they take this etiquette, you ask? Let's take Saturday a few weeks ago as an example. Hannah came to visit me from Jaen, and I took her to the monthly medieval-style market that takes place along the ancient walls here. (Did I mention that Talavera has 800-year-old Moorish walls? Cool, right?) We bought hunks of empanada, pastry stuffed with meat and veggies, and took them down to the river to eat by the Roman bridge (which is actually a Moorish copy of an earlier Roman bridge. Double cool!), while watching the water birds fly by. As we were tucking in, a bicycle came whizzing down the path in front of us. We barely had time to register his blur zooming past us before he was gone, with merely the call of "Buen provecho!" to let us know we hadn't imagined him.
So: really seriously.

The "Roman" bridge, Talavera

3) They continually use napkins that don't actually work
 Spanish bars are a nationwide gem: of this there is no doubt. On any corner in any Spanish city or town you can find one: a little counter, tucked in a corner, shabby but clean; a polished espresso machine, buzzing and whirring; a beer or cider tap flowing at all hours of the morning and evening; and a small TV playing a talk show, bullfight, or soccer game in the corner. There's always an old guy in a great hat having a beer (even at 11 AM); there's usually a leg of ham, half decimated, by the cold tapas display. Depending on the region, the walls are full of Basque slogans, hung with Real Madrid posters, or decorated with elaborately-painted tiles. And there are always, always napkins in polished chrome holders-- napkins which sully the good name of Spanish bars; napkins that defy logic and even, it seems occasionally, the laws of physics.
For the truth is that these napkins seem specially formulated not to actually do anything. Pulling one out of the dispenser, they always seem unobtrusive enough. They usually say something like "Thank you for your visit" on them; they're of normal size and close-to-normal texture. AND YET. Try to do something napkin-like with them, such as wipe off your hands after a gooey chicken wing or sop up a puddle of spilled beer... and you will somehow find yourself somehow messier than before, the napkin seemingly untouched. They are the scourge of the Spanish bar because of their low level of evil: they are just unobtrusive enough that after this particular instance you will forget all about your hatred of them... until, yet again, you find yourself helpless against an olive oil spot on your sleeve. They are everywhere, in literally every bar in this country, which means that people persist in buying and using them. I am baffled. BAFFLED, I tell you.

4) They throw napkins on the floor of perfectly respectable bars and restaurants
Oh, and another thing about napkins. A traveler walking into a Spanish bar (as described above) might be confused and disgusted to find the floor littered with crumpled paper. Fear not, however: actually, this is a good sign. Traditionally, throwing one's napkin on the floor of a bar has been a compliment, a way to show one's approval of the food. In fact, when I went to a famous Madrid tapas bar last year to write a story for GoMadrid (which you can find here), the owner told me that during the restaurant's golden age they used to employ people whose sole job was to sweep crumpled napkins and shrimp tails off the floor every 20 minutes. That means that, at least in theory, the more napkins on the floor of a bar, the better you can expect the food to be. Or, you know... maybe it's just a really dirty bar.
 (If I'm honest, the feeling of finishing up a tapa-- a nice piece of cheese and bread or some grilled pork in rich, savory sauce-- and throwing my napkin on the ground is thrilling in some small way. Plus, it's a chance to put those damned napkins in their place.)

Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jig

Well, I've been home now almost a week and things are starting to fall into place again.

It wasn't a fun journey home-- due to a snafu in Los Angeles, I was in transit a full 42 hours. I did manage an aisle seat for the 14 hour jaunt from Hong Kong to LA, which was lovely (well, lovelier than the middle seat would have been), but once I got to LA I was informed by my father, who was, extremely luckily, in town on business, that our plane had been cancelled, and we had been rebooked on a flight 12 hours later. He still had his hotel and rental car though, so the trip ended up fairly painless. After collapsing in the hotel room for 4 hours, we went to nearby Hermosa Beach, a little beach town right outside LA proper. (Or is it still LA proper? I've never understood) and had excellent Mexican food, people watched, and walked out onto the pier to watch the sunset. Then we got on a red eye, but not to Boston, no that would have been too simple-- to Washington DC.

Funny story, though, and by "funny" I mean "wahhhh." We sat for 45 minutes on the runway until the pilot came on, all "Sorry folks, we're having a weight distribution problem, we'll get that resolved and be on our way soon." Apparently what "get that resolved" means is "take some people's bags off the plane, including Alissa's." Needless to say, we had to run to catch our connection to Boston because we came in so late (luckily our flight was just one concourse over, if it had been in another terminal we never would have caught it) and when we finally got to Logan around 10 AM, my bag was nowhere to be found. The United people promised it would be at our house by 4 PM. Then they promised it would be there by 6 PM. Midnight. 8 AM.

My bag finally arrived at our house at noon. The next day. Argh.

After which we drove ourselves up to Maine, and the rest of the week was devoted to relaxing, rereading Harry Potter (I'm almost finished with the third book), catching up with friends, and starting to try and wrap my head around the fact that I'm Back. So far, things seem to be alright. I'm settling in, getting used to the soft beds, the constant barrage of English, revelling in amazing summer fruit and incredible cleanliness of public bathrooms. I think it helps how starkly different my lives are in China and here. It just feels like a different person did all those things in a different world, a different universe. Hopefully sometime soon I'll start coming out of the clouds and understanding that this is more than just a dream of home.

Going Banna-nas

Take that, China's internet censoring system, I have triumphed again? Little buggers think they can up and block blogspot on me (well, the truth is they can and now Emily's, Janie's, Dan's, Annalisas's, and Cedric's blogs are inaccessible to me.) However, after some extended finagling I found a loophole in the system that allowed me to write in my blog. Score.

So, we left off at my adventure in Lunan, which seems silly to write about now since I'm in Xishuangbanna at the moment and, despite an unfortunately timed gan mao (catching of a cold) I am pretty psyched.

So, Lunan in brief so that we can get to the good stuff. At least, the beginning of the good stuff because the good stuff is also right now and I should probably get back to letting it happen.

So, the whole program went to the Stone Forest last weekend. I'd been before with my parents but this was still as amazing as I remembered. The Stone Forest (Shilin in Chinese) is this unique geological phenomenon that happened because Yunnan used to be an enormous sea. This tall rock formations, some of them hundreds of feet tall, were under that sea, but when the basin the sea was in rose during a time of a lot of earth quakes the sea disappeared but the rock formations stayed. It's truly something that you need to see to understand. I can't post pictures because blogspot is a loser, but I urge you to google it yourself.

Anyway, I read about a cool market town 10 km away from Shilin and so John, me, Mike, Tania, Diana and some other Duke kids took the early bus down, which was an adventure in itself (Chinese bus stations = pure chaos). I had a wonderful moment on the bus looking down from a mountain into a valley below and seeing two horses galloping playfully on a village path-- I wrote my next Argus column about it, and I'll post that when I'm back in Kunming. From the bus station we took a minibus (shockabsorberless box on wheels) a terrifying 8 km into the Chinese dustbowl, then wandered around town garnering stares until we reached the Sunday market, one of the most foreign feeling places I've ever been. Minority peoples from the whole area come there to do their shopping, the place was teeming with brightly dressed people in silver jewelry, bright headdresses, the works. We took a LOT of pictures.

There's more, but really, let's get to the good stuff. Our 5-day Yunnan Exploration Project is in full effect, and Lee and I caught the overnight sleeper bus to Jinghong, approximately 10 hours south of Kunming, last night at 8 PM. I'm not sure what we were expecting (My tripmate Sophie described her idea of a sleeper bus as "very Harry Potter") but that was not what we got. It was more cattle car than boy wizard. Picture a regular-sized tour bus-- now picture it with three columns of 4-foot by 2.5-foot berths and two aisles, a moving set of bunkbeds gone horribly wrong. There was a whole to-do because they thought I was too wide to be in the top birth (hearing everyone say 'ta ne me pang, ta ne me pang' ("she's too fat") didn't feel so great) but in the end I got a better berth so it wasn't a huge deal. Lee, on the other hand, seemed like he was going to have a coronary. His berth was even smaller than mine, and he's a pretty tall guy. In the end we both got comfortable enough to sleep at least a little bit. I also watched a really terrible horror movie that they showed, with hilarious English subtitles. The bus didn't have a bathroom, but we made a few stops during the night to stumble out and pee. I didn't drink much water.

We got into Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture, at about 7:30 AM, just as the sun was coming up. Exhausted, I caught a motorcycle taxi to the road where I thought I might find a hostel I saw in the guidebook, but once I got there no one knew what I was talking about. I started walking again, feeling more tired by the minute, and incredibly conspicuous with my big suitcase and complete lack of Asian ethnicity. Just when I realized that I was looking at the wrong part of the guide book, it started to rain (wah wahhhhh.) I pulled out the poncho I brought along and started walking again, finally giving up and getting a taxi whose driver promptly cheated me out of money driving me for about 2 minutes and demanding an exorbitant Y5. I didn't care, though, I found the hostel and, with some trouble, opened the gate, found my room (it's supposed to be a dormitory but there's no one else staying there at the moment), and collapsed for 4 hours.

The hostel seems pretty wonderful. The rooms are in Dai-style bungalows, all bamboo and wood, with banana trees in the courtyard and a solar heated communal shower (I didn't bring a towel though... that might be a problem.) I'm moving on to Ganlanba tomorrow, but I'll probably come back here to stay one more night during my travels around Banna, as the locals call it.

I've done some exploring today, as well. I made friends with two kids about my age at a backpacker cafe, when I realized I hadn't eaten in 18 hours. Over an omelette and coffee (I'll try Dai food tonight) they told me about the various things to do in the area. I ended up giving them an overview of American history while showing them some American change, and gave them both English names, which they were very excited about. Aixin became Alex, Zhuang became Zoe. I'm supposed to come back and hang out with them tonight at 9.

After returning to the hostel to get my poncho (it started raining again, natch) I did some wandering in the neighborhoods around Manting Lu, a very traditional Dai village. It was enchanting. At one point I wandered into a monastery, completely on accident. The monks all bowed to me (there's a better name for that that I'm forgetting) and I got some wonderful pictures. Now: back to exploring. Hopefully this loophole will keep up, and I'll update you all soon.

Dropped Off

So. Back to the elephant, eh?

I suppose I should give some context. The Day Of The Elephant was also the day of our Drop Off, an SIT tradition. During this activity, which lasts most of the day, the group is divided into small clumps and given some money and a piece of paper with mysterious Chinese on it. Each group must use all the skills and resources available to them to find out what the Chinese is, go to that place (it's usually a place), and learn all about it. Then everyone comes back at a preset time and reports on their experiences.

My group consisted of Ashley, Monty, and I. Ashley, I think I mentioned, is this very loud, incredibly gregarious girl who is writing her Master's Thesis on matrilineality in China and so has spent several months studying in Zhongdian, which is on the Tibetan border. She is going to do her Independent Study in Lake Lugu, which is really cool because I just read a book about the Moso people who live there. I'm going to try and visit her. Monty is a very tall, handsome black guy, and so he gets a lot of attention (probably unwanted) in China, but he's very patient about it. I was a little upset at first about being with Ashley for the drop off since she's already so adept at being in China, but it turned out to really be wonderful.

The place we were assigned was called "mingzu cun" or "Ethnic Minority Village," which I later found out was a conscious choice on Lu Laoshi's part because all of us are interested in minority culture. We took a taxi there and spent the whole day exploring. The set up was a park with little mini-villages devoted to all 25 of Yunnan's ethnic minorities. A little schlocky if you don't go too in-depth, but Ashley made sure we didn't. The first place we went was the Dai village, which was supposed to be in Xishuangbanna, an area of Yunnan very far to the south where I would love to go. They were selling whole coconuts for coconut milk (coconut + machete + 3 straws = delicious.) That's also where I got lifted up by the elephant. There was a painted elephant there with its handler and none of us had ever been really close up to an elephant before. Then we realized that for Y10 (about $1.25) we could take a picture with the elephant. We thought we would ride on it, but Monty went first and before we realized what was happening he was up in the air, cradled in the elephant's trunk. We started to draw a crowd, understandably-- a bunch of Westerners riding an elephant must be a strange sight to the locals. I was pretty nervous but decided it was a priceless opportunity. It was pretty scary being so far up in the air, and occasionally feeling unsteady like I might fall off, but in the end it was amazing. The handler let me pet the elephant, too. Of the crowd we drew, we met a couple that Ashley (being her gregarious self) started talking to. Turns out they were from Kunming, too, and very interested in us. The gave Ashley their phone number.

We went to the Zhuang village next, and when we went in to explore one of the houses we discovered some of the Zhuang workers sitting down for lunch. They insisted that we come eat with them, although I had to decline because I was still worried about my stomach. We drank tea with them and talked. One of them, a handsome guy about our age, was flirting with Ashley a lot, and they ended up exchanging phone numbers (as Ashley does with pretty much everyone she meets.) All the Zhuang girls wanted to take pictures with Monty, too.

After that came the Hani village, where we went on some enormous swings and I mistakenly told a Hani girl I liked her cat (mao) instead of her hat (maozi.) Oops. She did have a really pretty hat, though. Ashley was telling the Hani girls about her "shuai ge" (handsome fellow) and one of them asked if she had pictures. We showed her, and she said, "That's my boyfriend!" (in Chinese, of course.) Much drama ensued, through texting. The Zhuang guy told Ashley he hadn't gotten married yet and loved her more. She said that was wrong. He asked why. Etc. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our Chinese lives.

Before lunch we stopped at the Wa village, where 5 or 6 o the most beautiful girls I've ever seen offered us lunch (we declined, as home-cooked food can be dangerous to fragile American stomachs). We promised to come back for a 2 o'clock dance performance. Then came the Tibetan village, where Ashley really came alive. She was talking in Tibetan dialect with all the workers, and got yak butter tea (which was less awful than I was expecting) for Monty and I before running off to do a couple of traditional Tibetan dances with one guy from Lhasa. I got it all on video.

After lunch we went back to the Wa village, where the girls were performing traditional Wa dancing, involving much flipping of their (very long) hair and a lot of crazy drumming. They all smiled widely when they saw we had kept our word and come back, and they pulled us up on the stage in front of the rest of the Chinese tourists to do one last circle dance with them. I felt a little foolish, but it was still very cool. Post-dance they sat us on low woven stools and gave us homemade fermented rice whiskey to drink. It was sweet and pungent and oddly carbonated. We talked to them a little about themselves and about America and exchanged phone numbers. They each have one day off a week, and they were all so sweet to us that I hope we can see them again.

At that point it was almost time for us to leave, but the Kunming couple from the Dai village had texted Ashley to offer us a ride back to Kunming, an extremely generous act. We had some difficulty meeting them, but ultimately got to their car and had a lovely ride back, chatting. They were both retired policemen who met on the job, and they invited Ashley to live with them for the homestay portion of Kunming, invited all of us to their house for dinner, and told us that we should think of them as parents and to come to them with problems since we were so far away. So incredibly sweet! I've been completely shocked at the welcoming friendliness of Chinese people so far.

This weekend has only been occasionally eventful, as I've been fighting a nesting instinct that tells me to stay in Tania's and my room organizing and getting ready for classes, which start tomorrow. We did laundry for the first time, went grocery shopping (I found peanut butter! Miraculous!), bought some school supplies. Diana also introduced me to Kevin, a Thai student whose English hints at the fact that he lived in Oregon for awhile. He introduced me to both a group of expat friends from America, Switzerland, and Columbia, and an expat hangout called Salvadore's that services omelettes, quesadillas, and ice cream. We spent Friday night eating ice cream and playing cards there, and I can tell it will be useful when the cultural difference becomes too much.

The other remarkable thing about this weekend was the Tibetan dinner/dance I went to last night. The woman Ashley stayed with in Tibet, whom Ashley calls her Tibetan nainai (grandmother) and with whom Ashley is extremely close, came down from Zhongdian to visit Ashley and her son, who lives in Kunming. The son performs at a cultural center and so a huge group of us went to see the performance, eat the food, and generally learn about Tibet. We ate Yak, brocolli soup, mountain carrots-- very interesting. Afterwards, there was a lot of circle dancing, which was confusing but fun. Ashley and her nainai's relationship touched me a lot-- she told me in the cab that her nainai is her best friend and that her only request for graduation was for a plane ticket so her nainai can come visit her in the U.S. If I can get even a fraction of that in my Independent Study Period, I'll be thrilled. I made a step forward, though-- I made a Tibetan friend, one of the waitresses! She kept giving me curious looks and then started a conversation with me. I pulled a leaf out of Ashley's book and asked for her cell phone number. I hope that we can have dinner together later this week or next weekend. Her name is Dlma.

The night took a turn for the worse then, though. The bai jiu the Tibetans (and Koreans and Chinese at the other tables) had been toasting us with was much stronger than other bai jiu the group had drunk. Things got scary very quickly, and one of my trip mates became alternately violent and unconscious. We ultimately had to send him to the hospital, which was a hard decision. Luckily, today he's okay. The whole thing is a tough situation, since drinking here means enduring pressure to have more and more alcohol from both Chinese (whom you don't want to offend) and Americans (whom you don't want to disappoint.) That makes for a pretty intense situation. I think everyone learned their lesson last night, though, and I was glad that I was around and enough of us were sober to be able to deal with everyone who was having trouble. Culture shock can't be all sunshine and daisies, after all.

Gan Bei! (Bound feet and bai jiu)

Okay, so I can't really even begin to describe the first 4 days of China. I have done such mindblowing things already, I don't even think I can do them justice.

Our time here didn't really start until Day 2 because by the time we got to Kunming we had all been travelling for over 35 hours and we were ready to drop. We will be staying, at least until we move into our two-week homestay, in an international student hostel/dorm on the Yunnan Normal University campus. It just so happens that students from the Duke/Wesleyan/WashU Chinese program are also staying there, which means that not only are the lovely Diana Shum and I staying on the same campus in the same building, but we are living on the same floor! Very exciting. The hostel is modest by American standards, but it has two beds (which feel like sleeping on tables, the Chinese style), a bathroom with a Western toilet (such luxury!), and a TV, so we're doing very well for China, even some of the places we've been since. My roommate is named Tania-- she goes to Hampshire and we seem to have a lot in common, but she actually arrived a day late due to airline snafus.

We began Day 2 (the fullest day of my life, I think) with a Chinese breakfast, which is an odd mix of sweet (muffins, rolls) and salty (meat soup, chicken, etc.) Then we got into our group van and drove down to Tonghai, a small city about 3 hours south of Kunming. The SIT program has special connections in Tonghai, but it is very much not a tourist destination. We stayed in Tonghai 3 days and I did not see a single Westerner. When we walked in the streets we were stared at, and an old woman pointed at me, smiling toothlessly and crowing "lao wai!" which is a not-so-nice word for foreigner. Tonghai was not the "countryside" I was expecting but it was a priceless chance to get to see Chinese life as it really is, mostly unmarred by the evils of the tourism industry.

We had some free time in Tonghai, and I bought myself a used cellphone, charger, extra battery, and all the minutes I will ever need for Y300, about $35. I'm dorkily excited about answering my phone "Wei?" which is the Chinese way. Ashley, a tripmate who is almost fluent and has spent a great deal of time working on her thesis in Tibet and Xinjiang (two remote areas) helped me to get a great deal and made friends with the saleswoman in the process. I can't believe how much my Chinese speaking and listening has improved already. Only 4 days. Listening to Ashley bargain and negotiate was very much an educational experience.

Before our dinner we drove to a small village outside Tonghai, where a group of women with bound feet still live. Tonghai is so remote that the Revolution didn't arrive there until much later than in most parts of China, and so the practice of binding feet (considered to be a great trait in females) wasn't abolished until later either. This means there are still some women alive in Tonghai whose feet have been bound. We went to their village and saw them dance, with slow movements akin to pool gymnastics, and then they asked us to dance with them, which was pretty incredible. And it says something about our group that, although we were laughing (and so was the crowd that came to watch us), none of us felt the need to pretend to be "too cool for this." Watching these women, with their twisted, tiny feet, was incredibly powerful. I didn't think I would ever see something like that.

But the day went on, adding to "things I thought I would never see/do." Next on the list was the dinner with Chinese officials. It is custom for Chinese officials to toast their guests with "bai jiu" or rice wine, an incredibly strong liquor. They stand up and yell "Gan bei!" (like "cheers!") and you have to drink with them. You can say "I don't want it!" or "I'm allergic" but they won't listen, and they consider it an insult for you to flat out refuse. Ashley had 14 full shots of Bai Jiu the first night, and was taking shots over the officials' shoulders (sort of a "group hug" drinking position) before the night was out. It was a big bonding experience for all of us, though, since we were watching the officials and our tripmates become sillier and sillier. Even one of our teachers, Chen Laoshi, was drunk. The officials started singing Chinese drinking songs and the night just got crazier from there...

The second floor of our hotel played host to "KTV" which is what Chinese people call karaoke. We decided it would be fun to try some after the officials left.In KTV you get your own room and it's like a private karaoke party. A lot of us were in the room drinking Chinese beer and singing bad American pop (Michael Jackson, Backstreet Boys) when Chris, a southern deadhead from South Carolina, came back with a Chinese friend he made in the bathroom. After awhile, the friend when and got more friends, and all of a sudden the room was a dance party, complete with a strobe light and sterio. I never knew how party rooms could end up trashed until now... those Chinese kids were crazy, dancing on the tables, breaking glasses. We were all overtired and jetlagged and basically in shock. We couldn't believe it was actually happening.

It's pretty late and Kailey, one of my tripmates, wants to go back to campus because we're still jetlagged. But coming in my next entry: my trip to see 800-year old Buddhist temples on mountains, my 15 minutes playing the er hu (Chinese violin), Tania and I draw a crowd, the group performs for Mongolian minorities.

Gan bei!

The Right Way to Drink a Guinness

Lesson #1 of my Ireland trip: If you ever go to Ireland, be aware-- the Irish are watching how you drink your Guinness, and they are judging you for it.

Day 1 of my Irish Extravaganza was one of the longest days of my life, both literally (it kind of stretched on for 48 hours) and figuratively. My mother put me in the security line at Logan Airport around 3:00 PM EST on Friday and my histamines promptly revved to life, for no reason I could understand. Benadryl didn't seem to help, and I spent all of the flight to New York and much of the flight to Dublin sneezing uncontrollably. After a couple of hours my nose was raw and red, and even after I stopped sneezing it continued to run, so I had the good fortune of entering Ireland continually wiping my red, raw nose and looking much like a cocaine addict. Other than allergies, my flight went swimmingly. Waiting to board in JFK I chatted with an Irish woman waiting to go home and see family, my first encounter with the famous Irish friendliness. The over-sea flight was nowhere near full, so I had my own two-seat row and was able to stretch out a little and get a few hours of sleep.

I'm not sure why, but I had somehow expected that it would be at least a little bit light when we arrived in Dublin. However, we arrived around 6:30 AM GMT (half an hour early after leaving 45 minutes late...huh?) and it was finally beginning to get light as I emerged from customs an hour and a half later. There I encountered my first bout of culture shock. I had agreed to call Emily to let her know I would be catching the train to the Trinity gates, but I had no idea how many of the digits from the number I dialed in the states would apply in country. It took me a full four tries staring down the public phone before she sleepily answered, and then I set out to find the AirCoach, another confusing feat.

I met Emily in front of the Trinity University gates, and we walked the fifteen minutes to her flat, which is in the famous area of Merrion Square. It's quite remarkable that Emily's program placed her in this area, which is all Georgian townhouses, very posh (pictures will follow once I am stateside.) We ate some (homemade!) banana bread and got me coffee and then set out into the Dublin morning, wandering around the city for what turned out to be almost 4 hours. I barely noticed-- I was too busy the accents, the mix of more modern and older architecture, local and internatioanl flavors, just all the difference around me. We walked around Trinity, down Grafton Street (a pedestrian shopping district,) and up to Dublin Castle, then stopped for a brunch-like meal at The Queen of Tarts, a positively adorable coffee shop across from the castle where everything was red. At one point I was telling Emily about the bevy of drug issues that seem to crop up in Belmont and the chatter in the cafe got quiet as I uttered the words "underage prostitution and cocaine ring." The couple sitting next to us and who had been shooting us curious looks dissolved into laughter. It was awkwardly hilarious.

At about this time my body gave out for the first time (it had been 36 hours since I got any decent sleep), and so we went back to the house until Emmalee came into the city from Dublin City University, where she and Katrina are studying, about 4 km away. We got a lunch/dinner type meal and went on a quest to Tesco, a grocery store, where many Brits and Janie had gone before me. Although I had just intended to get snacks and breakfast food, we ended up doing a full investigative mission, as I've always heard you can learn a lot about a place from its grocery stores. What we found was: the Busty Cake (picture forthcoming). Yes, a cake shaped like breasts. I'm not sure what this product's availabity in family supermarkets says about modern Irish society.

We met up with Emily and Katrina and spent our night in the city-- first at a lovely Italian restaurant, then Stag's Head Pub, where there happened to be live traditional Irish music. The Pub was everything you could ever want a pub to be. Dimly lit with shiny wood finishing and a map from before the USSR broke up. Busy, bustling, crowded. Getting to the bar required a great deal of physical force and elbows, but we managed to get drinks and, after a bit of good luck, a table right next to the performers. The live music was just wonderful and rollicking, featuring an Irish flute, a strange drum whose name unfortunately escapes me, and Irish guitar. The group performed covers (Bob Dylan, Paul Simon) and more traditional pieces, a Mummer's dance and a lot of old folk songs that involved drinking, lost women, and love for Old Eire. As time went on, and the crowd got drunker and drunker, the bar started to fill with people singing along. Once we past the 11:30 mark, some started to dance, too-- traditional step dancing, which was wonderful to watch and looks like a lot of fun.

Spirits were especially high because of a very important rugby match between Ireland and France that was to go on the next day. An especially vocal bunch of drunk Frenchmen in French colors took a liking to Emmalee, insisting that she dance with them and asking her to sit on their laps. While we looked on, amused, an Irish woman who looked like she couldn't have been much older than us, maybe 26, introduced herself. We talked to her, her boyfriend, and his friends for the rest of the night. It was she who taught me the Guinness lesson. When a particularly intoxicated girl was starting to act disorderly, we were speculating as to her nationality, and Allison claimed that she could not be Irish because Irish people don't let Guinness "go stale"-- when it loses its head and instead gets sort of soap bubble foam on the top. Lesson# 1: completed.

We stayed at the Stag's Head for more than three hours, but I, for one, was completely content. Surrounded by the sweet music, happily singing drunks, and free flowing talk (an Irish man found out Emily was from Maryland and couldn't stop talking about Chesapeake Bay), we learned the choruses to knee-slapping songs, nursed our drinks (I am partial to Bulmer's hard cider, I have discovered) and soaked in the strength of pub camraderie. I felt completely high on all the difference. That's really the only way to describe the soaring feeling in my chest, just purely thrilled at being allowed to experience this slice of life. I couldn't help thinking as I looked around at the packed pub-- why would I want to spend money on anything but this feeling? This is why I travel.