Yes, London. At least, that’s where I am for now; in four days I’ll be in Paris – and yesterday I was not, as one might expect, in Seattle, but instead visiting family in Minneapolis. Thus begins my next adventure – an international melange of destinations that, when accompanied by the plane trips on either end, will end with me having circumnavigated the world.

To explain: Originally, there were to be two separate three-week trips – one to Europe, and one to India. The Europe trip was, until the end of 2009, a sort of floating exploration of the thing us Americans call “Euroland” or “the land of skinny jeans” – no specific destination was set, just a discussion about how I might be able to meet up in France with my friend -

Steven. Let me introduce Steven: many years ago, when I was still institutionalized in the school system at a small private school by the name of “Seattle Country Day School”, I met Steven. I don’t remember what our first class together was, nor what our first conversation was about – but what struck me first was that this boy was brilliant. At the time, that manifested itself as a predilection towards solving challenging math problems before they were halfway out of your mouth; but even now I stand firmly by that assessment as I have seen his talent spread towards writing, history, and (my personal favorite) board games. Now, I’m not talking about Monopoly, or Life, or Sorry!; I’m talking about board games not that you simply play, but that you seriously dedicated a few hours and a lot of pulled hair towards. They’re fun – but they’re hard.

The board games served as strong application of social glue; whereas during the course of my high school experience I fell out of touch with the majority of my SCDS friends, after the first invitation to play a game at his house (it was “Pandemic” – still one of my favorites) we started trying to make “game night” a little more regular. We even tried to expand it, once, but being the week before finals we had a small turnout (Alex, who, incidentally, got himself a copy of “Pandemic” afterwards); you would think that college students wouldn’t agree to any distractions before studying (in fact plenty of them rescheduled) so it’s worth mentioning that Alex’s last final was actually that day – and I should tell you now (or two paragraph ago) that Steven, much like myself, is taking a gap year.

Yes, in fact that does directly translate into “travel buddy.”

So as I’m getting ready to leave for, I believe, Frankfurt when we got on the topic of my travels, and the proposal to “plan something in Europe for a bit” was made. Time went by, and as I toured Frankfurt-Salzburg-Vienna-Prague (FSVP) (entries will be completed upon my return), Steven put together the “three-week budget dream trip itinerary” – and I cannot begin to thank him enough for doing all that work (not just the itinerary, but all the train and hotel bookings as well). How it shapes up is:

London: January 26th – 30th;; Paris: January 30th – February 5th;; Venice: February 5th – February 8th;; Florence: February 8th – February 11th;; Rome: February 11th – February 18th

It sounds amazing, and looks even better on paper – we have so many fun things planned, and I have my camera to capture every second. However, I have an eensy-weensy logistical error that could pose an issue, which has been the consternation of my mother and myself, as well as the reason behind those above-mentioned dates being a week earlier than originally planned:

India. My fourth and supposedly final trip this year is to India, with my mother, and I was planning on leaving for that trip somewhere around March 1st, and returning towards the end of March, or even April. We had those tentative dates at least set aside, but while I was on my FSVP trip my mother did some more research into my benefits, and we got a little concerned. Expect a side entry on how my benefits work, but the short explanation is that my benefits have two expiration dates – my 19th birthday (March 15th, 2010), if I’m enrolled full-time in college, or my 23rd birthday (March 15th, do the math), no matter what. We knew about this potential snag years ago, but we were hoping that with a physical letter of enrollment from my school, I would be permitted to continue using the benefits.

Well, 1) we don’t yet have our hands on a letter of enrollment from Willamette, 2) even if we did, processing could take a long while, 3) my benefits may be denied anyway until I actually physically begin attending classes in the fall, and 4) I’m not going to have any money left to travel with by the time India is over anyway. Since Steven’s schedule had been finalized, and I really liked it, we decided to move it up one week, and tack the India trip onto the end. Now, I’m beginning on a six-week London-Paris-Venice-Florence-Amsterdam-India-Nepal trip.

Please note, Amsterdam is a 22-hour layover where I simply meet up with my mother before heading on to Mumbai. Sorry to disappoint, but there will be no crazy Amsterdam stories – at least not of the variety that I’m guessing 90% of you readers are hoping for. But yes, India and Nepal have been added to my itinerary. I’ll go more into detail as those trips near, but in the meantime I have plenty more current events to discuss. The point is, I am coming home, and “staying home for a bit” (prepare to disregard that last statement when I figure out how to put myself on the next plane out of SeaTac) after my benefits expire on March 15th.

——————-

If there’s one thing I like to do on a regular basis, it’s make people think. Well, not “make” – maybe, “encourage”? It’s a little hard to describe, what word or phrase would you recommend I use?

Yes, that was a cheap shot. Sorry. However, where this comes into play is that I have procured a set of mind-bending “Killer Sudokus,” a Sudoku variation that I recommend to people at every opportunity – you can check them out online. Another cheap shot – not so sorry this time. The point is that the man sitting on my right (we’ll call him Mr. 19C – can you guess where I was sitting?) began doing an evil Sudoku the moment he sat down. Naturally I invoked the above-mentioned rule of “Don’t Shut Up About Killer Sudokus”, which then spiraled off into a discussion about Sudoku (didn’t see that coming), plane travel, complex systems analysis, enzyme reproduction, technology, and business models. All before take-off. Better than the man sitting on my left – who we’ll call Comatose Carl. You can guess who was the pinata at our fiesta.

Actually, I joined the Legion of the Seriously Unconscious as Sergeant Pass-Out-on-Takeoff, a rank I proudly held until landing… in Minneapolis. Yes, Minneapolis, MN is a typical layover for trips to Europe, since it is a relatively major international hub – but I didn’t just have any layover, I had The Layover: Family Edition. Being located in the area where the rest of my Dad’s family lives, this special edition comes packed with genuinely fun extras like getting picked up at the airport by your aunt, visiting your grandmother, doing your grandmother’s exercises (my legs feel ten times stronger), and then getting the best gourmet pizza in recent memory at a place called “Black Sheep” – meatball, feta, and garlic, with an extra helping of incredibly delicious. And then, with two leftover pieces in hand, you get dropped back off at the airport for your flight later that evening.

Long story made semi-short, I got on my flight with no worries, and proceeded to fly to London. Upon my arrival, I grabbed my bag and decided to take the Tube to the hotel, the Royal Lancaster @ the “Lancaster Gate” station on the Central Line; I navigated this route with bravery and precision, arriving only a solid two hours after Steven and I agreed to meet (my plane was, in fact, delayed taking off) at the hotel.

The reunion having eventually been made, we promptly rested our weary feet in our wonderfully comfortable beds – I managed to completely pass out, while Steven rested for a bit and looked through guide book. By the time I woke up an hour later, he had some good suggestions for how we could spend the rest of our afternoon. The first idea, that we had discussed earlier, was to explore Hyde Park, a moderately-sized (relative to the rest of the parks of London) park across the street from the hotel; following this we would traipse to the Docklands, a new, vibrant social and business center by the Thames/ Tower Bridge.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well here’s how that actually happened: It’s just past dark (at five o’clock) when Steven and I cross the road and wander over to the giant map of the park. While perusing said map, I happened to mention how it looks like a beautiful park and I would like to walk around the lake (Serpentine, it’s called) – however, this is apparently the exact cue for some hitherto unknown source to send forth a car-mounted loudspeaker announcing that “the park is now closing” and to “leave immediately through the nearest gate.”

Next time, I’m going to say how much I hate the park, and maybe then it will stay open all night. Or we’ll just be accidentally locked in. Maybe I just won’t say anything, to be safe. So with Hyde Park having taken a good 99% less time than we were expecting, we headed to the Docklands, through a variety of subway stops to come out on Bank Street. For those that know London, you appreciate that, in fact, the Bank Street subway stop is nowhere near the Docklands. Map in hand, we weaved our way to the waterfront, in the dark, armed with cameras and giant flashing signs that say “tourists” – and, apparently, signs that said, “cars hit here,” London traffic being London traffic. As it was, we wound our down a back alley, up the same back alley, and across Tower Bridge. (good views!); hung a left at some crazy office building (it was either a tribute to, or in defiance of, Euclidean geometry; or both) and headed down the “Queen’s Walk.”

Keep in mind, the planning that was involved in this route was, “Hey, this looks good. Up here. Oh, how about there? Oops. Lets turn here. Oh hey, what’s this waterfront thing? The Queen’s Walk? Cool. Let’s do that.” We never did make it to the Docklands; but that doesn’t matter, because we found good food.

Remember, folks, I am a stomach on legs. The place was “Cote Brasserie”; the crime was a delicious mussel dish followed by a equally delicious set of salmon cakes. The mussels themselves came in a delicious red sauce, which was completely misleading since I can guarantee that it was more white wine than anything; but they were incredible. All fifteen of them. The salmon cakes were, as I mentioned before, also delicious; as expected, they were half potato (after all, they were huge), but extraordinarily flavorful, on a bed of heavily sauteed spinach, turning the whole thing into a sort of salad (except tastier). The piece de resistance, though, was the chocolate pot. When Steven ordered it, I think we were both expecting it to be, well, particularly larger than a ping pong ball. We were wrong; and initial disappointment was replaced by nothing other than relief when we had each tried our first bite, and realized that if it was any larger we would both be experiencing diabetic comas. Let me make sure you understand just how rich this little pot of joy was: two teenage boys, splitting it 50-50, could just barely finish it. I think the table partly buckled when the waiter set it down.

After that, however, and probably because of that, coupled with jet lag, we decided to head back; and now as Steven gets ready for bed I sit here detailing London Day Zero. Let the adventure begin.

Things you don’t hear every morning: “Good luck at the graveyard!”

While some mornings, much like yesterday, I feel as though indeed there is nothing but a metaphorical graveyard waiting for me if I leave the tender embrace of my covers, this morning there is an actual, real graveyard that I’m heading to today (as a visitor). I’m going to save the long story for a rainy day (today it’s just snowing), but I should tell you that my genealogy is well established on my father’s side of the family, and for my mother’s dad – but on my mother’s mother’s side it gets murky, and my goal today is to achieve one more step towards clarification; namely, locating my great-grandparents’ graves.

Here is what I know: My great-grandfather’s name was George Felix Bume, changed from Baum for obvious reasons during the holocaust and WWI; he passed in 1936. His first wife’s name was Grete Katarina Bume; his second wife was also Grete Bume, and she passed in either 1963 or 64. A little confusing with the two Grete Bumes, but otherwise fairly straightforward.

Here’s the only clue I have to finding their graves: “Both of your grandparents are buried somewhere in Vienna.”

Let me make something clear: Vienna, as a city, is gigantic. 1.7 million in the city, with 2.3 million in the overall metropolitan area, which makes it the tenth largest city in the EU. Seattle, by comparison, has a little over 600,000 in the city, with, yes, 3.3 million in the metro area (go us, being 15th largest in the U.S. based on population). In terms of land area though, the city of Seattle is 83.87 square miles; Vienna, 152.7. In that space there are not one, not two, but twelve different and well-spaced cemeteries on the map have; in reality there are fifty distinct cemeteries in Vienna.

And I’m looking for two graves. Maybe. If, in the course of your studies, you are required to define or give an example of “a fool’s errand”, please, feel free to cite this one.

Where to begin? Zentralfriedhof, or “Central Cemetery”, located absolutely nowhere near the center of anything. Here’s how you reach it: Take the orange (U4) line to the very last station (Simmering); get off, climb up the stairs, and walk for two kilometers through the city.

For those of you that haven’t already brought up the Wikipedia article on “Zentralfriedhof”, let me give you the juicy parts:

-the cemetery spans over 2.4 square kilometers, with over 3.3 million interred here. That makes it the second largest cemetery in Europe, and more creepily, it holds the entire population of the Seattle metro area dead and buried.

-the musician Wolfgang Ambros wrote a song called “Long Live the Zentralfriedhof”… Just think about that for a moment.

-there are two Jewish sections in the cemetery (which is where I’m searching, in case you couldn’t guess by the “Baum”), one of which was mostly destroyed by the Nazis during Kristallnacht.

Right now my plan consists of going to the cemetery, and running around the Jewish sections until my hands freeze. Never, ever, put me in charge of search and rescue unless you don’t want to get found.

—————–

Sitting at breakfast, doing my eating thing. I’m sitting at a table with three other lovely ladies; two of them are talking to each other, and the third is just sitting quietly on the other side of the table with her breakfast. I don’t know any of them, nor am I planning on striking up a conversation – instead, during the lunchroom game this morning, I asked myself how I wanted to start the day, and decided I would rather at least be sitting at a table with people than at a table by myself. And these ladies look friendly enough. Let’s eat.

During the course of my breakfast (which was almost identical to yesterday’s, save for two kiwis), Andrew and Rachel showed up. I hadn’t factored them into my lunchroom game before because it was already 8:30 when I got there (breakfast ends at 9 o’clock sharp) and I thought I had missed them; needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when they showed up.

——————

Honestly, it’s probably the coldest I’ve ever experienced, which might make me sound like a wuss, but I fully welcome you to bask in the glorious bone-shattering chill. I’m wearing my heavy pants, a sweater over my shirt, and my heavier jacket, and I am quite cold – and I’m less bundled than most of the natives we’re seeing.

Andrew, Rachel and I are trekking to Media Markt (no “e”). Andrew and I are on a mission: He needs to buy a new cord for his netbook (it short-circuited courtesy of Venetian floods) and I need a new flash drive (I already have 4-gig and 16-gig sticks, but I have maxed them out with all my music, pictures and videos). What I really need is a 1.5 terabyte drive – of my 14 gigs of pictures and recordings, I took 12 gigs of that since December 17th (that converts to just under 6 gigs a week) and I am picky about deleting (of the pictures I take each week, I’ll delete maybe 5%, not counting the pictures that I put in multiple albums). Granted, at that rate it would take me a while to fill up a terabyte and a half, but that doesn’t include my music collection, my videos, or my design work. So Santa, I’m getting a head start on my list this year.

Anyway, we’re in Media Markt, which is a risky proposition for me – I tend to be an impulsive shopper. Fortunately, I have two tricks at my disposal as I peruse the 32-gig flash drives or the even more awesome 32-gig Extreme (TM) San Disk camera cards (did I mention it sounds amazing?): one, I multiply every price by 1.5, which is only a little higher than the current exchange rate (ouch) and two, I’m only carrying roughly 25 Euro on me.

Fifteen minutes later, now, and we’re just leaving – me with an 8-gig drive and some more batteries (they keep on freezing), and Andrew with the knowledge that he could technically run the computer with cord, without the battery, since the cord is actually not broken (he tested it).

Now to test a hypothesis: I have no more cash on me. There is ATM outside the Media Markt. I am going to Prague tomorrow (surprise!) so I don’t need that much more to survive – let’s say 50 Euro for whatever may happen. Remember the “Theory of Moody ATMs” posited in my previous entry? Yeah, it’s been proven. One bill, a 50, ejected from the slot. Oh well.

———————-

Rachel, Andrew, and I parted ways at Karlsplatz, where they left to go to a cafe and find the opera house; I continued on the U3 line to the transfer point to the U4 at Landestrasse, went to Simmering, and took the aforementioned trek down to my current location, the Zentralfriedhof.

It’s big.

From my location in the corner (my point of entry, closest to the Jewish area) I am staring down fairly wide roads, and am unable to see the far walls – its just a forest of tombstones and other instances of funereal remembrance. More than creepy it is elegant; the quiet I am now enfolded in is not that of death, per se, but of regality; I am a visitor at millions of palaces, each with their lone regent beneath the frozen ground.

A moment of silence for those who have passed.

Now it’s time to begin the search. I am purposely not looking at a map yet so not to get discouraged (yet). I’m doing a loop around the outside of the first group of tombstones I see – ten squares of tombstones, laid twenty by twenty. Round, around, then in and out, across and back – always stepping right behind the head of the tombstones in the previous row so as to carefully and respectfully avoid trespassing on someone’s throne. Back, forth, up down, back forth, across, again.

Two thousand tombstones later, I am starting to get discouraged, and more than that I am beginning to chill. My messenger bag is frozen, as is my map and my enthusiasm for this task. I still manage to push on, muttering something to myself about how this is family, and how I shouldn’t give up; a thousand tombstones ago it wasn’t a mutter, but a fresh reprimand for even thinking about stopping – but most things are dead in a cemetery, and my resolve was quickly joining their ranks.

Finally, I look at the map of the Jewish section – in terms of my foolish enthusiasm, this is the death blow. Those ten squares comprised roughly one-fifth of “Area 6.” There are, according to the map, twelve areas remaining, some larger than this. By rough approximation, I have one-hundred-and-eighteen thousand tombstones left. In this cemetery

No.

—————-

I was absolutely freezing while my resolve lay on its death bed; a such, we held the funeral in the heated church at the front entrance to the entire Zentralfriedhof. The body was carried down the long road for twenty minutes, from the side wall to the main entrance; laid to rest in the main church; and then buried in my memory. I was the only one in attendance.

—————-

Best idea ever? Catching the tram back to the Simmering subway station rather than walking another two and a half kilometers. next best idea? Food. Broke that 50 like a glass bowling ball, and received two excellent melts from one of the bakeries inside the station. Caught the subway back to Landestrasse; then on to Hutteldorf. Got a bottle of water on the way back to the hostel.

Now I’m packing for my inadvertent foray to Prague. I had initially taken over all my allotted space (I do that well) so getting all of my animals back in their respective cages is a difficult task. I’ve already pulled out the singular outfit that I’m wearing tonight and tomorrow, and have set aside my shower gear and other toiletries; the rest of my mess is being systematically removed from my bed, the platform at the head of my bed, the platform at the foot of my bed, the bed underneath mine, the floor, the communal table, two of the communal chairs, and my closet. I came, I saw, I conquered, and now I’m retreating, making a clean international getaway.

———————

To put the rest of my day in the style of one of my favorite alternative periodicals: nothing really happened today, except that Andrew and I grabbed various packages of tortellinis and dumplings from the nearby Spar for dinner, used a microwave (for what purpose, I’m not sure), and settled down with Rachel in the lounge to eat our cold dinner and discuss the details of the next leg of our now-aligned journeys: Prague.

Today was just simply great. It was simple; it was great. I’ve been trying to find some way of adjudicating my day using big words and long-winded sentences, but really, that defeats the entire purpose.

This morning started off with a bang. And a crash, a few scrapes, and one or two “thuds.” One of my roommates is not exactly quiet when it comes to rifling through his stuff at seven in the morning, and by “rifling” I mean “throwing his backpack against the floor, table, walls, window, and most likely the ceiling”. Needless to say, I was solidly awake by the time he finished, and ready to greet the brand new day with a smile on my face!

If you know me, you know exactly what kind of animal dropped that last steaming pile of words.

Let’s try this again:

It’s 6:10 and my watch is going off; oh joy. I had some trouble sleeping last night (does laying in bed wide awake for three hour sound fun?) so with the 6:10 alarm I’ve gotten exactly four hours and fifty minutes of sleep. My rule in these situations is that [(if hours unconscious < 6) then (the world = not worth it right now)]. This applies to the fact that I was planning on exercising this morning, which is the exact reason why I was in bed at ten o'clock – so I could up at 6:10, work out, and have my day.

Well that's not happening folks, sorry.

It's 7:00 and the civil war between my roommate, Jason, and his luggage has begun; from the sounds of it, both sides are taking heavy losses. My other roommate, Taylor, is gone, probably to forage some food from whatever the breakfast situation is downstairs. I roll over to try and block out the sound of battle, but my precious sleep has already been claimed as a casualty of war.

It's now 7:20 and the war has just been won by Jason; to celebrate, he threw a parade, out the door, with his laptop and a new outfit claimed from the enemy. I'm celebrating by turning on the little lamp over my bed to try and motivate myself into waking up. Baby steps, people.

It's 7:35 and I am crawling out of bed; after changing clothes and drinking some precious water, I continue working until Taylor comes back from the hunt and announces that breakfast consists of “yogurt, bread, jam, and some other stuff but no ham and no cheese.”

———————–

An interlude: In the short time I've been over here, I've had some sort of bread (be it a roll, croissant, or some other lump of baked dough) with cheese (generally swiss) and sliced meat (generally ham) **every** single morning, and I'm really starting to like that habit. It's tasty, generally cheap, and has carbs, dairy and protein.

———————-

With the idea of food having been established in my mind, I head downstairs to find that there is a smörgåsbord of urprisingly decent food considering this is a cheap hostel – to begin with I see that there are both plates and bowls, which means that there are at least two types of food. Further down the line I see gigantic punch bowls (for lack of a better descriptor) full of yogurt, strawberry jam, packets of butter, packets of liver spread (some people are into that), curds, and finally, orange slices; around the corner on the tables facing me are coffee, tea, and hot chocolate jugs, and across the gap are baskets and baskets of bread. As an added bonus, behind the bread table are containers of cornflakes and milk.

Let's do this. I begin by stocking up with every tool they have to offer – tray, plate, bowl, knife, spoon – and begin with the yogurt. I love yogurt. One of my favorite tv characters loves yogurt (Michael Westin from Burn Notice). Everybody should love yogurt. ANYWAY, this being some weird-looking yogurt that I have never tried before, naturally I filled up the entire bowl. Now, I should quickly describe these bowls – when I say “bowl” you're probably thinkin something along the lines of “something mostly round that-” but let me stop you right there. Height-wise, the rim of the bowl is maybe an inch and a half above the bottom; seriously, this piece of glass is only a bowl by nature of the fact that it would mke an even worse plate. So when I say that I filled up my bowl with yogurt, I mean I took maybe a spoonful and a half. Moving on from there, in anticipation of the bread to come I grabbed a few packets of butter, with an experimental liver spread packet just for kicks, got a mug with hot water and a mint teabag, and metaphorically dove into the bread baskets. One basket was full of white bread, while the ther one had pumpkin, multi-grain, and basic brown bread; there was a tray of some sort of weird pastry thing; and again, natrally I took one.

And this is when I was hit with the lunchroom dilemma. You know that little game that you play when you walk into a cafeteria and you try and decide where to sit, who to sit by, who looks friendly, who looks like they're going to eat you, etc etc etc? Well that game gets even more interesting when have the hostelling equivalent of the UN to choose from, in a strange country with strange people; not knowing who spoke what language, or who used what customs, I divebombed the last empty table and began to eat my yogurt.

Now I'm sitting here eating this yogurt (which is excellent, by the way) and watching the comings and goings of the arbitrary UN Council on Cafeteria Dynamics, when I see this American couple that I sort-of maybe had half a conversation with.

———-

Definition: “Sort-of maybe half a conversation”
A period of time where dialogue exists between two parties, but nothing important gets said. Generally takes place before introductions are made.

e.g., I'm standing at the check-in counter yesterday, waiting for the luggage room key, when Mr. American (a moderately tall, black-haired bespectacled boy probably about the same age as myself) approached the counter to check in and also asked if they could break a fifty-euro bill. The clerk said, “No, sorry, I don't have any change” which is a whole lot nicer than “Well I did have enough, but that jerk standing next to you waiting for the luggage room key payed with a hundred-euro bill and cleaned me out.” For the record, you can tell when an ATM is on it's period because it only spits out the largest bills it can find – you would think it would be consistant, but so far I have gotten my money out in only tens, only twentys, and a few mixtures of things, but this last one just spit out a solid hundred-Euro note. This wouldn't be so bad if I was buying something pricey, but I'm on a student budget – my biggest expense besides lodging is the 5 Euro that I'll spend on my next meal, and who wouldn't feel like a jerk in that situation?

Anyway, so he obviously needed some change so I enacted the half-dialogue:

“Hey, you need change?” Restatement of the obvious in a feeble attempt to break the ice.
“…Yeah” Recognition that indeed, you did just state the obvious; but wait, who the heck are you anyway and why do you want to know?
“I can do that actually; it's sort of my fault since I'm the guy that just took all her change.”
Insert feeble smile from the clerk.
“Oh great, thanks!”
Insert me smiling awkwardly at Ms. American standing behind me.

Yup. That was exciting.

—————————-

So I see this couple getting their food, and as they finish up I sort of half-wave (I don't think we need to define what that means) to try and get tehir attention. You know, nothing major, since I don't want to seem to desperate; but I'm not always so great at subtlty, and for some reason they didn't what really turned out to just be me looking like I was partially epileptic.

I love body language. Time to break out the bg guns – eye contact. So now in the midst of the UN Council of Food Consumption theres this American boy with his eyes locked on this couple and his eyebrows doing what can only be described as the funky chicken dance. Don't pretend you've never done that either. Eventually they saw that my table had lots of empty seats with one of them filled by someone who wouldn't eat them (see above note on the lunchroom game) and one simultaneous “Wouldyouliketositcanwejoinyouhere?” later, they sat down to eat.

At this point it would be typical to do introductions, but me being me I had to get cornflakes. Seriously. So I ran to go get another “bowl” and on my to get some milk I notice that in the refrigerated shelf where they're advertising soda and orange juice, they also had plates of salami and cheese for sale; not only was that exactly wht I was looking for, but 1,40 for six pieces of salami and five pieces of cheese isn't bad at all. So I dropped off my mound of corn flakes, ran upstairs to get a 2-Euro piece, ran back, bought the plate, and settled down to properly meet my compatriots.

Of course I was a little nervous about this – not because I don't feel comfortable meeting new people, I truly love it – but because they could turn out to be “my group” for the duration of my stay here, and hence my sanity is invested in this.

However, sometimes the ice breaks itself in these situations; for example, there's nothing quite like coming back to the table and hearing “I swear, Harry Potter **was** in our room last night” to really just set your mind at ease.

I'm going to enjoy these people's company, even if only for breakfast.

So there I am, standing with a quizzical look on my face, when Mr. American turns to me and just says, “Well he was!”

To which, of course, the only proper reply is, “Well it sounds like magic was happening.”

Yes, the delegates from America are just that awesome.

——–

Over the course of breakfast, I learned that the Americans have names (Andrew and Rachel) and that they, too, are on a gap year – but unlike me they are using this year to study Spanish at a university in Granada. More specifically, Andrew is on a complete gap year, and has been already accepted and confirmed at Tufts; and Rachel is going to use the credit from her studies to transfer in as a Sophomore at the always popular TBD University (I was considering going there for most of my junior year). Both are originally from Chicago; both love music. Ironic because the last time I was in Chicago was for an orchestra competition, but it's always great to meet other musicians. Andrew plays the piano (pretty well, from what I gather) and Rachel sings (although she has tried her hand at various instruments, including the bassoon). This whole conversation came up from the question, “What are your plans for the day?” to which they responded, “We were going to see the Mozart House and then the Music Museum. What are yours?” to which I in turn responded to with a quizzical look (I'm good at that) and a “Oh, you must like music” (I'm also excellent at stating the obvious as well, in case that was not already…..obvious……damn it).

My plans for the day, as they stand now, are to see Schonbrunn Palace, a supposedly very beautiful sight that is the top of the tourist to-do list in Vienna. I invited them to come with me, but you know how musicians can be. Anyway, we discussed our individual plans for the rest of the week (and just so my mother knows, I have planned out what I am doing each day, when I am leaving, the subway route, my walking path, and the operating hours and admission at each venue I plan on visiting); but it turns out that these two are heading to Prague on Wednesday and now I am very tempted to scrap the aforementioned plan that took most of last night….more on that later.

I did discuss my plans for the reat of the week anyway though, and when gesturing wildly in the air (the always-handy and questionably-effecvtive 'air map') failed we went upstairs to find a real map twenty minutes, lots of storytelling, some planning, and a few pieces of Mozartkugeln later (you can't visit the Mozart House until you have Mozartkugeln), we parted ways – Andrew & Rachel to the Mozart House and myself to my room to gather my things, and then on to Scloss Schonbrunn.

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Now I'm walking through the park trying to find the palace. “What park?” I hear you asking; and I can assure you that I'm asking myself the exact same question. Guess who left their map in their room; come on, one guess. Is it the guy who meticulously planned out each little detail of his day trips? Hm? Yep. He forgot to grab the map on the way out. Now I'm walking through a large, somewhat barren park – Schloss Schonbrunn is, according to the map, over one kilometer in ech direction and has a large park, and so logically I headed for the first large park I saw at the “Schonbrunn” subway stop. Something that large should be hard to miss; and yet, this is not the correct park. Go me.

It looks like there is a large somewhat ornate building up around the corner, maybe that's it.

Nope, that says…Technical Museum? Okay, where the heck am I now?? Wait I remember that the Technial Museum was a bit above the palace….so if I turn around and head south I should see it eventually. Let's try that.

Or I could just actually turn around, since the palace is now staring at me from across the river. I'm not usually this bad with orientation, I swear.

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I'm just inside the palace now. I walked through a rather large courtyard, into a little side door, and was greeted by a massive line for tickets extending from the ticket booths at one end of the room all the way to the ticketing kiosks at the other. Yeah. So I bought my ticket, walked around the gigantic queue, and entered the museum no problem – and then got my audio guide and proceeded to waltz up the stairs, literally (because in Vienna, waltzes are the background music for everything).

But speaking of stairs, these were cool. Aptly named the “blue stairs” they were adorned with a royal blue carpet running down the middle of the marble steps that turned up to the second floor, Above us were tall windows with ornate framework (only one was restored to it's original gold covering) and above that there stretched a beautifully painted ceiling of some obscure reference to Austria's power (seriously, it was not described). The audio guide did say, however, that the palace was originally a hunting lodge that was later converted to a live-in palace; but even as a palace it was much less ornate until Maria Theresa and Queen Elizabeth of Austria (called Sissi) had it redecorated and maintained in a rococo style.

I'm not going to write a history paper here, so don't hold your breath, but I am going to go into detail so if you want to skip to the next part, scroll down until you see the dashes.

We worked our way through the Guard room, where four mannequins were on display in various military garb – this was the room where the guards protected the emperor's chambers, and it was where anyone who wanted an audience with the the emperor (Franz Joseph I) had to pass through. Next was the reception room, where, as named, people waited for the emperor; it had a rather large pool table to entertain the guards. attached to this, but closed save but for viewing, was the aides-de-camp room, where the emperor's aides would wait to help the emperor for whatever he might need; and then there was the emperor's study itself, a beautiful room made of what must have been chestnut, with bookshelves, a simple yet regal desk, and a series of beautiful gold candlesticks “scattered” about. Apparently Franz Joseph I gave audience to over 100 people almost every single morning, and had an excellent enough memory to not forget any details. I was impressed.

The next three rooms were unfortunately under constructions, with the walls covered and the furniture removed; apparently they were the bedchamber of Franz Joseph (where he died), his latrine, and one other thing that I'm not too sure about. Past that were a series of three rooms that belonged to Sissi, the emperor's cousin and wife, beginning with a “closet” (that's what they call smaller rooms in the palace, but the rooms themselves are still rather large) that had a door to a deck on the right, and a doorway to the “Staircase Room” on the left (going forward was not an option since this served as a corner of the palace). The Staircase Room was Sissi's study, but named for the large spiral staircase that went through the floor into the empress's private bedchamber – however, this staircase was removed after the deposition of the last emperor. An interesting fact that we learned at this point in the tour was that Sissi was considered to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe at this time – and took great pains to keep it that way. She would pursue physical activites that kept her in shape (which was a little unusual at the time), she would more often than not completely skip dinner with her family so that she wouldn't eat, and she spent hours each day maintaining her ankle-length hair; and in the next room, her makeup room, I saw some impressive combs to match that statement. Past there was the family dining room, a beautiful white room with a large central table, fully set as if for an impending meal using the silver pieces from the silver museum collection.

After that, we saw so many rooms that the order now escapes me; but they were all beautiful, especially the ones built with Chinese art (there were two beautiful blue and white Chinese rooms, and one room with black lacquer panels with Chinese art on them). There was also one room in the palace dedicated as the “Napolean Room” where he stayed during his two occupations – but more than Napolean, his son Flancy was the subject of that room. There was a large portrait of him in the garden, and a bust of him on his deathbed at the age of 21 (taken by lung disease) – but what I've never seen in a museum before is that they stuffed and mounted his pet bird on a desk in the center. It was interesting, but unusual.

Overall, the art in Schonbrunn palace was fantastic, with many gigantic paintings renowned for their detail and accuracy, mostly depicting large ceremonies (i.e. weddings) in its history. Additionally there was quite a lot of history attached to each room (as opposed to the palace as a whole); for example, the Napolean room; the recital hall, where the six-year-old Mozart performed for what I beliee was the first time, then ran over to the queen, jumped on her lap, threw his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. One of the China rooms that I mentioned earlier was used as a secret meeting room for the queen and some of subordinates for certain political matters. There was simply a lot of character throughout the palace, and I would recommend seeing it if you get the chance.

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Now I'm out front the palace again, and I need to figure out how to get to the back; there are supposed to be some impressive grounds, although the maze & labyrinth are both closed (that's what they call it, but I'm not quite sure of the difference between the two).

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Impressive, despite being a reltively strong word in the English language, is not half as descriptive as necessary to define the grounds of Schloss Schonbrunn. There is a cafe called Gloriette; on the map it is in the middle of the grounds, but in reality it is fifteen minute walk from the palace, and then up a six-story hill, overlooking the entire city, and every single step of the way is a beautiful aspect of landscape and architecture. Seriously, look at the hundreds of pictures I took when I post them. Just the lighting was a sort of religious experience, solely illuminating the palace when I reached Gloriette. I could go on and on, there are seriously not the right words to describe this event.

And on that glorious note, a happy ending to my day, I traipsed back over to the subway station, back to the Hutteldorf station, grabbed my token Durum for lunch (more on that later) and got to the hostel to shower and relax.

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A note about the showers at the hostel – you press the knob and have ten seconds of water. For a five minute shower, this translates to pressing the knob 30 times, at least; or at least that's what they want you to do. My way is a little nicer – take two shower curtain clips, link them together, snap one around the pipe that connects the front lateral pipe to the joint, and snap the other one around the handle, and take a nice 25 minute shower.

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Post shower, which is the point I'm at now, is going well – I'm chilling in the lounge off the lobby of the hostel, a raher funky room with orange and red cushioned chairs, well-designed lamps, and a rather cheery paint job – and I've been working, and will continue working until much later tonight.

Hope you enjoyed this entry, I know I did. There will be more, both about my time spent in Frankfurt, and the rest of my travels throughout the year. I promise you this, as well as lots of pictures.

Happy New Years!s

Let’s backtrack a bit. In fact, let’s go back an entire year and a half.

It’s two weeks before the end of our junior year in high school, and I’m saying a surprisingly emotional farewell to a good friend of mine I met approximately 37 weeks ago. In our short time together, he worked a lot with mystudent club, became a major contributor to the tech crew at Garfield, and even made an appearance or two on stage; and he worked his way into absolutely everybody’s hearts (some a particular bit more than others – you know who you are, ladies). He first experienced the joys of darkroom photography at Garfield; he became known for his graphic design work, doing posters and branding for multiple clubs and activities; and he had a unique sense of style that got him known as one of the best-dressed people on campus; he was a friendly, caring, outgoing person whose personality should have been writ as a model for the younger generation; and he had one of those laughs, the kind that you don’t forget easily, the one thing that would echo in my ears when I was reminded of him – he always laughed.

His name was Philipp Burckhardt, and we were losing him to Germany.

Now fast-forward a year and half: his exchange program took him back home from his year abroad; our mutual friends and I progressed another year, making th majority of us seniors and focused on our own escape; the club that he, I, and my friend Carol had worked so hard on had disbanded. He lived his life and we lived ours, with an occasional phone call or e-mail bridging that gap.

And then I began making my plans to travel for my year off, and the possibility of me visiting Phil became more and more solid. Eventually, we set a day (December 11th) and tentative plans (travelling around Switzerland and Austria) – and after changing the date three times, I left for the airport at 4:15 the morning of December 16th.

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I just got to the gate, and found a crowd of people apprehensively waiting around the counter. I think that this flight has a lot of stand-by passengers, which isn’t unusual, Seattle to JFK is a popular flight; I’m not worried about getting on, though, because I’m at the top of the stand-by list – and as it goes, if there are any empty seats on the flight, I would be the first to board. This is unless there are what’s called “weight and balance” issues – where the aircraft is over the allowable weight. This might happen if there is particularly stormy weather, or if the plane’s commercial cargo (yes, private airliners sell cargo space to companies for shipping purposes) means that some passengers can’t be allowed on. If you’ve ever had the gate agent annuce that you have a completely full flight, but when you take off there are a few empty seats, thats because they’re carrying particularly large commercial cargo.

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I was wrong; these people aren’t stand-bys. They’re volunteers, one of the banes of stand-by everywhere – there is now a next-to-zero chance of me getting on this flight. “Volunteers” are the people who, when the flight gets oversold, offer to give up their seat; technically most flights get oversold, so I’m sure you’ll run into this at some point. This isn’t a glitch in the system – the airlines want to cram as many people onboard as possible, so they calculate the percentage of people not likely to actually show up and they’re mostly right when they do that, but, as is the case with averages, sometimes the numbers change and suddenly they have more paying passengers than seats. Because the passengers are all paying, they can’t be kicked off; at this point the airline starts to offer deals for people to stay behind – and usually they’re good deals (average $400 credit per seat on the airline in addition to being put on the next flight, with a nice hotel coupon or two thrown in). If you have this opportunity, definitely take it if you don’t absolutely have to be at your destination at the allotted time – but wait first, as sometmes they sweeten the deal the longer they have the problem.

And speaking of problems, remember when I said that this only happens when they have more paying passengers than they have seats? And when I said I only get on empty seats? This is why volunteers are not good for me. At this point the only thing I can do is (wait and) hope that they take too many volunteers – maybe a 10% chance of that happening, not even.

The only chance I have now is to take a later flight to New York – this flight is supposed to land at 2:15, and my flight to Frankfurt leaves approximately five hours later; if I could get on any flight to New York landing before 6:30 I could still make it to my connection.

This really doesn’t bode well…shoot. I hope they have another flight leaving soon.

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Well, I’m on the flight.

Yeah, the one I was waiting for before; no, I’m not sure exactly what happened. I know the gate agent made a mistake; he told the volunteers (five of them) that he didn’t need them, and then proceeded to give them all first-class upgrades for just offering their seat. This created a really interesting scene: one of the volunteers, a larger black woman, got so excited that she started telling the gate agent that she wanted to kiss him; and after he gave in to her demands, to the cheers of the gatehouse audience, she gayly pranced aboard the aircraft behind the rest of the volunteers.

I, however, stayed behind, with the company a few more stand-bys to, y’know, party at the gate. After a few tense minutes, the agent called my name, and that of one other standby and said, “You two come with me” – words from above – and we traipsed down the jetway.

And now I’m on the plane, looking at seat 4B. A nice aisle seat, next to Ms. Wiegand. Oh, come on, you know who Ms. Wiegand is. Don’t pretend you don’t know. What’s that? You mean you didn’t guess that she was the friendly black woman?

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We just landed and I’m absolutley starving. Food first, talk second.

So as you’ve noticed, there have been no updates about Ghana since day six. I’m sorry to say that those entries (of which there are still nine and a half to write) will be written at a later date. Don’t worry, I took copious, er, bullet points about the rest of my time there so hopefully much detail won’t be lost.

In the interim between trips, I enjoyed working for YouthCare, a youth homeless shelter; hanging with friends; and preparing for an early Christmas-cum-grandfather’s-90th-birthday. A lot of fun was had by all.

Now, however, I’m in Frankfurt with a school friend of mine, and despite my best efforts to post everyday I’ve quite honestly been having way too much fun

To remedy this, I’m going to post Frankfurt Day Zero: Teaser which covers my adventure up to the point when I touched down in New York.

Enjoy, and more is definitely on the way! Happy Holidays too.

Sincerely, Matthew

Right now I’m up, tired, and very, very excited – a group of us are leaving at 1:00 for Cape Coast, to spend the rest of Friday and most of Saturday sightseeing. I know nothing about our plans – I’m just along for the adventure. Of course, the downside to not knowing how much down time one has is that one tends to overpack, hence the rebirth of my 200-lb backpack for the duration of the trip.

Before leaving, and after showering (yes, I have running water, and yes, showering feels amazing after sleeping in a sauna) I met up with Laura and we headed to Koala market for breakfast; there’s a cafe above the store that Laura said had a good reputation, and so we went up the stairs in the back, but not before running into Eloise. A Projects volunteer from Australia, she is in Ghana for a total of five months (I think) and she’s already served three; most of that time was in Cape Coast so she was coordinating with Lauren (who is organizing said trip) the things to do and see while over there. We met her two days ago at Sharpnet; just thought that I’d introduce her.

Koala Cafe – not sure if that is its real name, but if it isn’t then my second guess is “Santaland.” The market itself is full of garland and gigantic, silver stars hanging from the ceiling – fairly festive, if you ask me – but its nothing compared o the cafe. First of all, there’s the six-foot-tall Christmas tree in the back corner; then, all the plates, napkins, mugs (not cups), and tablecloths are Christmas-themed; but the thing you notice the most are the chair coverings – like somebody skinned 32 miniature Santa Claus’ and mounted them on the chairs. It’s funny and sad at the same time; but the Christmas overload is just scary.

The food itself was interesting (as always, shenanigans, shenanigans) – I ordered the beef sandwich, and Laura ordered the chicken (she really likes chicken if you haven’t noticed) and I ended up with a bologna sandwich, and Laura with what I believe was tofurkey. I also ordered a meat pie, which was good, but I’m not even going to conjecture about what sort of meat it was; apparently I ordered the last one, because Laura ordered one and they were all out – this sparked an interesting conversation about overconsumption in America and Europe. Laura quoted one fact that I really want to check up on, that all McDonalds “start fresh” once an hour, which means that they throw out whatever is on the conveyor belt at that time. For humanity’s sake I hope she is wrong, but I doubt it.

From here, we grabbed our stuff from the bag check area downstairs and went (via taxi) to meet the others at the tro stop, specifically the tro stop down the street from Joker’s Bar (near Laura’s house – I’ll make a map at some point). The plan was to take the tro to a stop called “Kaneshie” and then transfer to a tro headed for Cape Coast; we piled on, all eight of us, and after a few stops the driver just decided to take us to Cape Coast himself (we sort of filled up the van anyway).

And by eight of us I mean, in no particular order: Henrietta, Laura, Demetri, Lauren, Floriane, Jasmin, Chris and myself. And in no particular order, each of them put in earbuds within five minutes of each other (except for me, without an MP3 player); and approximately forty minutes after that, in no particular order they all fell asleep. I stayed awake to watch the drive (and because it was too hard me to sleep scrunched up like that), and here is what I learned:

One – the Ghanaian countryside is truly beautiful. I’ve seen African countryside firsthand once before, when my parents and I spent the two weeks surrounding New Year’s in South Africa, in a game preserve one week and near Cape Town the next. But that was South Africa, and this is Ghana; and what I can tell you is that at least along the coast, Ghana is subject to a kind of verdant fertility that reminds me of back home – except that this abundant greenery is painted on a much flatter canvas, allowing you to see “the bigger picture” from the coastal road. Sometimes, in contrast to the green on my right, I could see a larger expanse of blue on my left; and as we drove, we passed through towns literally made of red and brown peppering the landscape, with people dressed in all the remaining colors tucked betwixt. It was, as I said before, beautiful.

Two – things get hot. For a reason none of us could really place in the beginning, this tro was extremely hot; first, chalking it up to the midday sun, we opened a window and managed some surprisingly paltry relief; but when the front cab in the van (underneath which was the engine) started billowing steamy protestations, it made a lot more sense. None of us obronis know for sure what happened (probably just basic overheating, since we managed to get to our destination without serious incident) but it stopped the van a good five times; and a good five times I thought, “Okay, is it going to explode yet?” Yep, I’m ever the optimist.

Three – I learned how to ride a jackhammer. Reread that if you need to; I want you to have the full visual. This fantastic van, in which I was over the the rear left wheel, was missing one (1) shock absorber – and guess which wheel was the lucky one? So take one part uncomfortably fast driver, add one missing shock absorber (the entire van was sinking towards that side, I should have known), and throw it in a very cramped, eight-person bowl. Add speed bumps *very liberally*; let sit for three hours. Makes: way too many servings of ka-CHUNK-CHUNK-CHUNK-ouch-CHUNK-CHUNK-ouch-ouch-CHUNK-ouch-ouch-ouch-CHUNK-CHUNK-ouch.

Four – honk. I still don’t get exactly why our driver honked so much; it seems like a normal cultural thing to just randomly honk to say that you’re in a hurry, but he also honked nonstop when there were no other cars near us, when we passed through towns, and when we weren’t actually going that fast. I think repeated honking must also mean “Look at me I have obronis.”

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Cape Coast, Day One

The tro dropped us off in the middle of town, after much finagling. Apparently, the driver hadn’t known where the hotel exactly was when he said he would take us, and after driving into town and asking some random bystanders, he wanted to charge us a whole handful of cedis more to take us to the hotel. We declined that generous offer and instead got out, got our bearings, and made our way to a “bar.” A pleasant, tented sitting area, where this “bar” differs from normal bars is that normal bars have drinks, and this one apparently didn’t. We asked for coke, fanta, diet coke, sprite, orange juice, pineapple juice, and every other kind of juice imaginable – “so sorry, we don’t have it.” Granted, three different people, apparently not paying attention, each went through that list, which was somewhat amusing; but the point is that this went on until Henrietta ordered water, was told they didn’t have any, and promptly stood up and informed our waitress that she could see numerous bottles of water behind the counter. I still don’t know what the issue was, but in the end half of us got water and half of us got Smirnoff Ice – and then Demetri hunted down some pineapple and a loaf of bead from the street vendors, and that was lunch.

After our refreshments we grabbed two taxis – there were now nine of us, as Lauren’s friend (whose name I cannot spell) had joined us at the bar – which made the taxi ride nice and cozy. For the duration of the ride (which was actually surprisingly long), Demetri, Laura and I continued a game that had begun this morning, before leaving for the coast, but had gotten started again with renewed vigor at the bar; there is no official name for this game, so I just term it “Gamed Word.”

Take a compound word, or a noun comprised of two words, and pretty much switch the order and add an “-ed.” Really simple and immature, and really, really fun. I think it started off with Demetri mentioning something about “creamed ice” and things took off from there (“meloned water” “clouded rain” etc). Quality entertainment, for which I’m sure the taxi driver wanted to shoot us.

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I’ve stayed in a hotel before; Ive slept in tents, teepees, yurts, dorms, cottages, B&Bs, airports and on roofs (neither of those last two are comfortable, by the way) – but never before have I stayed in a botel. Yes, I’m sure it’s just a misspelling, or cultural insensitivity on my part, but the fact is that’s what was carved onto the plaque out front the main gate: Hans Cottage Botel.

This is a misnomer on all three counts: in the course of our stay, I didn’t meet anybody named Hans (or see any Germans for that matter); there were no cottages; and I didn’t see any botels (whatever they are).

That is unless “botel” is a synonym for “crocodile sanctuary” – because, as it turns out, the lake underneath the dining area isn’t for swimming, unless you like being eaten. But don’t worry, for those of you who like to be on the water and have only slightly less of a death wish, you can rent paddle boats – or as I call them, mobile bait buckets. This seems like a horrible idea for setting up a returning customer base.

I’ll try and add some pictures to the blog, but if you’re going to be checking my shutterfly site (once I’ve uploaded the photos) you’ll notice the interesting design of the dining area. I’ll do my best to describe it: there is a lake full of crocodiles. Two, maybe three feet above this lake is a series of walkways leading to the gift shop, the main dining room, and the side dining room. The walkways themselves are made out of concrete, with similarly concrete, waist-high walls; the design flaw comes at the gift shop and the side dining room, where both are surrounded by knee-high fences of the |=====|=====| variety. I think of them as “ladder fences” because they’re so easy to climb on. So, a knee-high fence that is easy to climb, a few feet above what we later proved to be some very hungry crocodiles. Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? No? Just me?

And yes, I almost fell in, so I’m a little biased.

But anyway, dinner. We began by making our way to the main dining room, a large two-story thatched hut full of empty tables and only a few guests, all obronis; more noticeable was the dancing in the center of the open area. Supported by four talented drummers was a group of maybe ten dancers, the oldest among them (drummers included) being not more than sixteen at the most – the youngest being six. I’m not sure what you would call their style of dance, but it was the happy marriage of the Casper Slide and the hokey pokey, and I mean that as a compliment – it looked really fun, and was entertaining to watch.

But we didn’t get to see the rest of the dancing, because rather than seat us among the Land of Empty Tables we were lead across the Lake of Certain Death (see above note on crocodiles) to the Isolated Food Chamber (side dining room); named such not because that’s where we got food, but because being above the crocodiles, beneath the bats (yup) and surrounded by mosquitoes makes you all-too-aware of how many things in the world would like to eat you.

And so, conscious of our humanity, we ordered a variety of sandwiches and spaghettis; I was famished at this point, and ordered a soup, salad, and spaghetti bolognaise, one of my typical tourist fares. I can out-pig most Americans, I’m just not proud of that fact (well, to be perfectly honest, I am a little bit – it’s a guy thing). We ordered, and then we waited; and waited; and waited. I had made a joke at the beginning of the meal, that with Ghana time factored in our food wouldn’t come for two hours; apparently, I wasn’t kidding. Everyone’s meal overall was good, though, despite my questionable tomato-and-cucumber-shavings salad; the mistake was going for dessert. Two orders of cake resulted in eight pieces of dried bread that had been baked with a little bit of sugar; the closest comparison I can make is that it was like eating caramelized Styrofoam (or at least what I imagine the taste & texture would be).

After the meal wrapped up, but before they cleared the plates, we noticed that we were being watched from below – an unnerving feeling – by a crocodile (also unnerving). It’s head was the only exposed part, so I don’t know big this guy was in total; but with a two-and-a-half-foot long snout and foot-wide head, we weren’t keen to find out. Instead, we all took pictures, and pictures, and picturesd – and then someone threw the leftover chicken off of Jasmin’s plate. If you’ve never seen a crocodile feed, it’s like a force of nature: before the chicken even hit the water our visitor had snatched it and dragged it under, and then swam off. At least, we thought it had swam off, but we were wrong; and being wrong about the whereabouts of a large, hungry crocodile is something I would not recommend to anyone or anything made of meat.

It’s not like we were attacked or anything; but the crocodile made itself known by thrusting it’s open mouth out of the water as we were sitting down. I don’t care if it’s behind a foot of plexiglass, staring down at a five-foot-long toothy mouth attached to a pair of eyes staring right back up at you is not, in either my or the esteemed Mr. Darwin’s opinion, beneficial to one’s survival or general relaxation.

After the hungry welcome mat made it’s way back to the deep, half the group headed for bed, since we were leaving at 5:30 the next morning for a canopy walk; the other half, comprised of Laura, Demetri, Chris and myself, stayed behind and I taught them how to play Set (of course I brought my Set cards). This may have been a mistake in retrospect, seeing as both Demetri and Laura became instantly obsessed – we played four games (I just dealt, didn’t play) until we realized it was just past midnight, and literally ran to bed.

Ghana: Day Five

Up, again. Not that I was worried I wouldn’t wake up this morning, but I just thought I’d share that fact. I consider waking up as “starting the day on a good note” and always much better than the alternative.

I’ll be meeting Laura soon and we’ll be going to the internet cafe – facebook also counts as starting the day off on a good note. Or feeding my addiction. Either way, I’m happy.

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The internet cafe, although entertaining for me, is pretty much, for you, reader, an oatmeal topic – bland and mushy (I don’t know exactly how “mushy” fits into the metaphor, but it’s an entertaining visual); as such, I’ll skim over that part of my day unless something spicy comes up. Spicy oatmeal is worth talking about.

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Laura and I wanted to try something new for breakfast today, not because Celsbridge or ChurCheese were bad options, but we were thinking about going to a restaurant that maybe didn’t begin with the letter “C” – so we traipsed down the alphabet, via Laura’s guidebook, to “F is for Frankie’s.” Despite having been warned against it for reasons hitherto unrevealed, the guidebook said that is was a popular place with good food. For those of you that don’t know me, the fact that it’s a popular place is just a bonus on top of my only requirement: good food. We made our way down the street – Frankie’s is about a three-block walk down Oxford Street from Sharpnet. Keep in mind, however, that each block is already quite large; and there are three conditions that make each block into a caricature of a normal downtown stroll. Imagine walking down the street in the busy city center of your choice; for me, that is Seattle, where there are large and clearly defined sidewalks, and the walk is pleasant and possibly even calm. Take the idea of that walk, and add the first and most permeating condition – cars. There are cars everywhere – pulling in, pulling out, turning around, passing each other on the two-lane road, turning left, turning right, etc; and these cars don’t care much for pedestrians. For the majority of any walk down Oxford Street, one walks between the parking spots and the road, also known as “in between the cars and where the cars want to be.”

The next thing you’ll notice about the street is, as I said before, the street vendors; they fill in the gaps where there are no parking spots, and unlike the cars around them, they are quite interested in pedestrians. Selling everything you would ever never need, in a variety of aggressive sales techniques I have never seen before, they do absolutely nothing to either help you get to your destination or have enough money once you arrive.

With addition of the street vendors, total walking space is reduced to a neat corridor – cozy but manageable despite the fact that the walls are constantly shifting. Where things get tricky is with the addition of the Pit of Slow and Painful Death, which adequately sums up Accra’s open air sewer system – a series of open troughs (foot-and-a-half wide, and two to three feet deep) occasionally covered by dubious (at best) grates or slabs of concrete; add in the most putrid black amalgamation of rubbish, human excrement, and disease and you have a death trap. Fortunately, the gutters on Oxford Street are better than most of the rest of the city – but I’m still not planning on falling in any time soon. One of the Projects volunteers did, and the cuts on her leg seeped for days (I still don’t know if they’ve fully healed, but I saw the leg two days after the fall and it was nasty).

So add these conditions together and you get the idea; suddenly a three-block walk becomes a mile-long waltz with the culture. That’s not to say it’s incredibly dangerous – just know what to watch for, and keep in time with the music.

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So, Frankie’s. According to the Bradt travel guide: “Also on Oxford Street, Frankie’s has long been known for its high-quality pastries, cakes and ice cream, while the more recently opened first-floor restaurant and coffee shop serve an excellent variety of salad and grills in the US$3.50-5 range, as well as superb burgers (the best she had ever had outside the States, according to one reader).” (124)

To put that description to the test (after braving the aforementioned gambit) we sat ourselves down in the middle of a restaurant so nondescript on the inside I may well have been back home. As many tourists as natives, MTV music videos on the flatscreen, and prices on par with American restaurants, this was the full tourist experience; and in that spirit we both ordered burgers (although they had the largest menu of any restaurant we’ve yet seen, we were both craving burgers) for roughly 12 cedis apiece (roughly 9 USD at the time of writing). I’ll admit that the burgers were decent (the steak fries were great), but the amount of meat on these things has me on the lookout for anorexic cows. At least the bun was filling. Wait, did we just have burgers for breakfast? Yes. Yes we did. Go us.

After the meal we were supposed to meet up with Jasmin and head to Sunshine-to-Go, a diner popular among the volunteers; but not before my first showdown with a street vendor. This was not a particularly noteworthy experience in and of itself: I needed sunglasses, he was selling sunglasses (on a side note, the sunglasses vendors are a sight to see, carrying large, flat yellow styrofoam blocks through the street on their heads, probably 5′ by 5′ by 1′ tall, with easily 200 pairs of shades crammed on top) – and the vendors can smell “need” almost as fast as they can put a price on it. “For you, my friend, these are nice; haha no way; these then; what do you think, Laura?; yeah, they’re nice; okay, for you, 15 cedis; he’ll pay 8 cedis; I will?; no, no, 12 cedis, very good price; I’ll pay 10 cedis; okay; okay; okay – thank you.” Like I said, the process itself was uneventful; but it marked my transition into the system of the Ghana street vendors. It’s a fascinating system, actually, and I’ll go into more detail about it at a later date; what’s important is that this was another milestone for me personally, a metric with which I gauge my immersion into local culture.

At the tail end of these proceedings, Jasmin showed up; and as planned (I love actually being able to say that) we moseyed, waltzed & dodged our way to Sunshine-to-Go. Demetri, Henrietta, Alex and Chris were already there, having ordered already, and we just joined them. Laura and I got milkshakes (what breakfast is complete without one – and I use the term breakfast loosely here); or at least, Laura and I ordered milkshakes – Laura got hers, while I was stuck bereft of that pleasure. I thought maybe it was just taking a while, as most things in Ghana do; but towards the end of the meal when I asked for it again, I got an actual earful from our waitress about how she had to warm up the machine again. Sorry, ma’am, but that’s not my fault – you read my order back to me. Eventually, though, I got my milkshake, which I’m pretty sure at this point was just two parts chocolate milk and one part cold shoulder (and three parts delicious).

I don’t remember what Jasmin got, but I’m sure that both she and I would agree that it doesn’t matter; what does matter, however, is that it was at this meal that I learned about Demetri’s obsession with pop culture, courtesy of MTV playing on the television. And obsession is the best word for it; celebrity gossip, chart-toppers from whatever year, who acted in what movie, every song ever sung by so-and-so, etc – he knows it all (also, chances are that if they’re a celebrity, he knows them, especially if they’re Lady Gaga). Random tidbit.

Lunch went on past 3 o’clock, but Laura, Jasmin and I left around that time to withdraw some money and then head on to the orphanage. This was my good for me, because I learned where the nearest ATM is, as well as the place to change money on Oxford Street (yay survival points); but it turns out that rather than a routine withdrawal, this was an emergency transfer for Jasmin. With a little over two weeks left, she had run out of money, and without a debit card she couldn’t withdraw more; so her parents had transferred a sufficient amount of funds into Laura’s account (Laura and Jasmin grew up together, just FYI) to then be withdrawn by Laura and given to Jasmin. This went off without a hitch, except that Laura hadn’t told her bank that she was in Ghana, and this was a maximum withdrawal – and yes, after that transaction her account immediately froze. Fortunately, there is a second account that Laura has been using for a couple of days since.

The other “mini-event” that happened is that on to the way to the ATM, we passed a street vendor who knew Laura’s name and specialized in making bracelets with people’s names on them – he happened to have one with “Laura” on it that he had been trying to sell her for over a week. This is normal, and us obronis get used to being remembered by every street vendor; what I’m not used to, and will never e okay with, is when we’re walking down the street and a vendor grabs one of my friend’s arms using a significantly-more-than-sufficient amount of force, and tries to pull them into the shop obviously against my friend’s will; this does not sit well with me, especially when it’s not typical (that was the only time in two weeks that any of us were treated like that by a vendor, an the only incident that I’ve heard of like that). I think to say that I am uncomfortable with that makes sense; and to please ask the vendor to let go (both Laura and I asked multiple times) is a reasonable recourse; but when he only pulled harder, with no signs of letting go, I stepped in and forcibly removed his hands from her arms. I appreciate that that is a dangerous move, to get physical with even just one street vendor, but as I outlined above he was not responding to reasonable requests – unfortunately, as I was peeling him off of her, he started shouting something about being attacked and to “shoot this man, shoot the obroni.” However, that was the end of that: nobody go shot, nobody got dragged, and nobody bought a bracelet. It unsettled me though, and I’ve been on my guard every visit to Oxford Street hence.

On a surprisingly lighter note, the orphanage. Today was the beginning of a variety of new themes, each equally deserving of your attention, reader; up first is the discovery of Leon’s dancing, an act so interesting and horrifying that it can only be described by the act itself. As such, expect a link to the first video soon. You have been warned.

Second theme is that of education vs intelligence, broken into two sub-parts, and I would much appreciate you, reader, taking this seriously and reading this all the way through before making a judgment.

I’ve never been solid on my view about “nature vs nurture” – I rather enjoy playing devil’s advocate, but that does nothing to further my own personal views; or at least, it does nothing to help me realize what my views (and judgments) already are. I’m not going to sugarcoat this to save face:

I thought that the kids at the orphanage would not be intellectually on par with kids of a similar age back home, simply by the fact that they are being raised in an educationally inferior system. I say “inferior system” only after asking other volunteers their opinion, helping kids with their homework, and continually hearing stories about the beatings in school. Granted, there is a variety – everything from kids that are trying their hardest to kids that are what the aunties call “clowns” – but this a similar gradient to what I grew up with in the Seattle Public School system, and I should have realized that coming over. In both systems, some kids want to succeed, and some kids don’t; the difference is that here, it’s much harder, but there are equally intelligent kids – they just don’t have any semblance of the support system that we do.

The first part, the catalyst that got me thinking about this, was Spongebob Kid – Atsu – who was going through a battery of tests in school at this point. These tests are the same relative difficulty as anything you would find in the states (I’ve seen them, and compared them to the homework); and like a dedicated student from anywhere in the world, Atsu asked me to help him study for his math exam the next day – he told me his previous test scores, and how he wanted to make them much higher (they weren’t bad – B’s – but he wanted to improve) and when we sat down to do the recommended homework, he did all of it and then a bunch of extra problems; and then he got up and studied on his own from one until three in the morning. That day he was the first to finish his math test, with the highest score in the class. He did similar on his science test; and he got a perfect score on his English test the next day – decide for yourself, is he an inferior student?

The second part was the beginning of chess wars with Moses. This started out as Sudoku wars – unbeknownst to me my new phone had one game on it, and that game was Sudoku (which made me really, really happy); Moses tried one, on easy, and eventually got it, and then challenged me to beat his time. I did, but that only strengthened his resolve – and before I knew it he had pulled out a chessboard and we were getting ready to play. Now, I love chess, not just because it’s a fun game but because it can tell you a lot about the way a person thinks. Today, we played four games – I won three, but two of those were using a particularly nasty opening. Moses beat me one. I’m not a strong chess player by any means – I used to be on chess team, but I haven’t seriously played in well over three years (sad, I know, and I hope that changes in college), but I’m not so horrible either. My strength is usually that I have a strong, central opening; and that during the midgame and endgame I can coordinate aggressive attacks from across the board. However, I have a horrible time predicting my opponents next few moves, and after my strong opening I peter out to a strategically lackluster midgame where I make mistakes – not necessarily huge mistakes, but mistakes. The point is, Moses, who I can guarantee was never in chess club, and doesn’t know those terms, has a very strong midgame; but more than that, he adapted to my playing style much quicker and more effectively than a plenitude of my old opponents back in the day. Taken in conjunction with the fact that he’s a good, confident student, and a good actor, it’s my personal opinion that you could drop him in at least the Spectrum program (top 5% of the public school students) if not the Advanced Placement program (top 1%) and he would thrive.

The point that I’m trying to make here is one that I’m sure you’ve heard a thousand times, but now I can as a firsthand observer say, “Invest in these children’s futures.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The third overall theme, not having anything to do with education or intelligence, or logic for that matter, is the curious case of Leon and Jasmin. This is when Jasmine’s troubles started. For the past two days, Jasmine has been coming to hang out at the orphanage after her volunteer placement – and as we found out yesterday, Leon was instantly smitten; as I found out today, he’s serious (or at least pretending to be). This first played out in the form of monopolization – for the entire time the volunteers were at the orphanage, he monopolized Jasmine’s time, aggressively; and then, after he had found out that a group of us were going to get together tonight I had to convince him not to show up (which was harder than it should have been). I told him that I would put in a good word for him, though, if I saw her, which sort of satiated him.

However, I didn’t see her that night, nor Laura; they both stayed in, being tired and in Jasmin’s case, sick as well. The general plan, among a large group of volunteers, was to go to a pub called Ryan’s (which they do every Thursday) – but because neither Laura nor Jasmin were going, I texted the only other person whose number I had, Georgina. She said to just come on by any time, and gave me basic directions – these turned into much more explicit directions after the taxi, not knowing where Ryan’s was, decided to drop me off in front of Frankie’s. Oxford Street at night (it was around 10 PM when I got out at Frankie’s) is not the most reassuring place to be – a lot of people, loud music, crazy drivers; all in the dark, where obrunis are the only things that don’t blend in with the shadows – you feel a bit conspicuous to say the least. Needless to say, I started booking it (calm, fast-walk style), and in conjunction with Georgina’s directions I made it not to Ryan’s, but to a nearby bar called Duplex, owned by Bob the Big Friendly Lebanese Bartender (not his real name, just FYI). When I showed up, I ran into Georgina and two new volunteers, Emma and Jess, both from England; and they were “applying for a job” at Duplex by making shots for the house. Both Georgina and Jess, having worked in bars before, “applied” with what Bob declared unusual shots – but he said they both passed.

On that note of success we all headed down the street to Ryan’s, a surprisingly large, gated bar that was absolutely packed – with mostly guys in their late 20′s to early 30′s. I just made my way to where the rest of the group was (unnoticed because I entered with three ladies) and spent a few hours talking with Georgina, Lauren, and Floriane before heading home for some shut-eye. Needless to say, I was locked out of my room, again, and had to break in, again. I’m getting really too good at this.

Tired and sore. The floor did not turn out to be as effective as I had thought, so now I need to continue to search for a more ideal sleeping situation. My mouth and throat do feel better though, possibly from the intense saline-and-biohazard treatment at the beach yesterday. Part of this whole thing could be the fact that I’ve only been eating one meal a day, with one or two mini Cliff bars; hence my excitement at hunting down the wild ChurCheese this morning. Shortly, I will don my furs and paint, grab my finest hunting spear, and pray to the gods for a silent foot and swift strike. Auuga auuga auuga rah rah shishkomba.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The gods work in mysterious ways; instead of going to ChurCheese, Laura took me to Oxford Street, a sort of main avenue with an interesting dichotomy – rows of larger, official businesses and restaurants behind similar rows of street vendors, a sort of model of corporate evolution radiating outward from the street. This will be a new fixture of my day, once I feel comfortable enough taking the tro; this is where both the grocery store and the internet café are, as well as a slew of restaurants.

First things first: my phone. Laura showed me where to get a cheap, reliable phone, at a place called MTN. It’s a moderately-sized bright yellow building, and as I found out MTN is actually a provider, such as Sprint or Verizon. I got a surprisingly nice phone for 40 cedis, or about 28 USD. I checked the rates, and it’s really cheap to call back to the U.S, 10 cents a minute with 3 cents for every international text message. If you get a call from 0112330543017989, it’s me, just FYI.

From there we crossed the street to some sort of smoothie shop for breakfast; Laura got a “Valentine Something-or-other” with pineapple in it, by far my least favorite fruit; and I got an orange smoothie. You would think that with a recipe like, “take one cup of bananas, one cup of oranges, one cup of strawberries and throw in a blender with some more orange juice” it would be hard to mess up – but you would be horribly, horribly wrong. In the same spirit as having to tell them to peel the fruit and plug in the blender, they obviously skipped the step that said “Don’t add shreds of plastic to the smoothie.” That, or they grabbed one of the fake oranges from the display; either way, I ended pulling out at least ten fingernail-shaped (thats what I thought they were at first) pieces out of the drink (via my mouth) – starting when I was already halfway done. Not my finest meal.

From there we journeyed to Koala Market (the thing previously referred to as “The Market”), where I got a nutritious breakfast of raisin buns, Fanta, and water. This market will, eventually, become an integral part of my financial instability, as it offers tons of delicious snack food (e.g. chocolate) – for a moderate price. Laura introduced me to a new kind of “biscuit” (cookie) that I’m now in love with – Fox’s, two pieces of shortbread with chocolate in-between. On a completely unrelated note, I was asked to check my backpack (which I was carrying my laptop in, so I could transfer the blog at the internet cafe) – as I was raised in Seattle, where this is a common practice in a lot of stores to deter thieves, Laura had never seen that happen before; we got into a lovely little chat about that that carried us all the way to the aforementioned snack food; at which I just stood in awe at all the wonderful sugary choices. I do love carrying on pleasant conversation, as long as there isn’t any food around to distract me.

And finally, from there we took a short walk down a vendor-laden side street to Sharpnet, the internet cafe – a large, bright pink building that is impossible to look directly at in the sun unless you enjoy beholding the Burning Bush in the semblance of concrete cotton candy. Inside, however, it looks normal, except for the employees in equally pink shirts: there is a rough horseshoe configuration of computers with one or two outlying tables, and by the open end of the horseshoe are two desks. The first, smaller desk is where you get an individual user account and put money onto said account – this was very different from my internet cafe experiences in, say, Europe in that the user account you set up stays with you. For example, if I put five hours on my account (about 10 cedis, a little over 7 USD – very cheap) and only used two in one sitting, it would remember my log off time and have the remaining three hours ready for me whenever I next showed up. The computers themselves are half-nice – the monitors are absolutely great, as are the graphics. The internet, however, is relatively slow, although it does fluctuate. I seem to have uniquely bad luck with them, so far freezing whatever computer I’m using multiple times in one sitting – probably because I always have a bunch of process-heavy windows open.

The next, larger desk (lest I keep wandering off on tangents) is a sort of FedEx/Kinkos operation, specializing in printing and some binding. It was at this desk that I bought a small USB to transfer my blog files (the one I brought with me doesn’t seem to be compatible with my netbook). To complete the picture, there is a washroom in the middle of the back wall, and by the front entrance there are stairs leading up towards what are apparently [disgusting] private rooms with webcams. I haven’t seen them and I don’t need to.

Since this was my first visit to the internet cafe since my arrival, and hence my first time being plugged into the internet since I started blogging, I uploaded all the content that you, reader, have so far been perusing (I changed the posted dates accordingly, just fyi). Similarly, I got another chance to feed my facebook/e-mail/twitter addiction, so that was nice; and even better, while sitting there organizing my blog and stealing glimpses at 90210 on Laura’s computer, I called my parents. Granted they didn’t pick up the first time, or the second time (it was five in the morning back home), I finally got through to my dad (the only who is up at that horrible time of day) and I think succeeded in truly catching him off guard:

*ring-click*

“Hello?”

“Hi Dad!”

[Silence – but you can actually hear my dad thinking]

[...]

“Matt!”

For the record, I had not discussed with them the idea of getting a cell phone here in Ghana, so that opening conversation was what I was expecting; but it was really, really nice to hear how excited they (mom woke up) were at hearing my voice (if you’re reading this, I love you guys!) (let me clarify: I love you guys even if you’re not reading this; you know what I mean).

After this, when Laura finally managed to drag me kicking and screaming away from my addiction, I returned to the orphanage and Laura went back to rest for a bit. I dropped off my stuff in my room (as I mentioned before, I had taken my netbook in my backpack) and beelined for the library; where I was met with an unusual sight. Andy, Auntie Stephanie, Leon, Daniel, Roger, and one or two of the other older boys were there just chilling, while a handful of the smaller boys were coloring on the floor (some of them coloring, literally, on the floor). What makes this scene unusual for me at least is that I’ve only ever seen one or two of the older boys in the library, and never have I seen Leon in there; and frankly, I hope he stays out of the library from here on out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leon is the type of person who takes control, sets the tone, and gets things done his way; using every tool in the spectrum – everything from intimidation and actual violence to puppy-dog eyes and what I believe to be serial, almost compulsive, lying. Although he’s never hit a volunteer so far that I’ve heard about, I feel that he is too unpredictable and self-interested to be comfortable around – every adult I’ve talked to says to just generally watch out for him, and of all the stories he’s told the volunteers, they change and occasionally don’t match up on some key parts.

Here’s what stays the same each time, and as best I can understand it (after comparing notes with the other volunteers) this is “his story” as he wants it understood: He is just a little older than the other boys, but like them he doesn’t really have parents – he does, but they live in Burkina Faso. He got separated from them when a volunteer funded him to go travel to Accra for some reason (the details here get really shaky) but his paperwork got stolen so he can’t return home. He showed me pictures of his dad, his mom, and his two sisters, and told me there names were something-or-other. Finally, he told me that he sleeps on the street near the orphanage because they won’t let him sleep at the orphanage; he used to have a job but he quit for some reason.

Here’s what I know: In the pictures that he showed me, he isn’t in any of them. For all I know they could have been picked up off the street – and they are surprisingly old and worn, the sort of thing you would find in your parent’s old photo albums from their childhood. He does live on the street, but he spends every waking moment at the orphanage, which begs the question why doesn’t he have a job if he needs the money so bad (he always wants us to buy him things, and complains that he doesn’t have any money). You might think that it would be because he’s young, but one volunteer (who I will keep anonymous) saw his immunization records (which he carries with him) and they state his year of birth as 1981 – making him 28 years old. Leon asked this volunteer to keep it a secret, but the implications are either that those are somebody else’s papers or that Leon is, in fact, a 28-year-old man who spends all day wasting time at the orphanage (I admit I’m a horrible judge of age); either way, the general consensus is that he cannot be trusted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The reason why I hope Leon stays out of the library is he because he and small children do not mix; in the course of the older boy’s shenanigans, Leon got ticked that the younger boys were coming over to Andy and I. To remedy this, he started hitting them on the head, hard, and shouting at them until they all ran out of the library, just so he could continue his little comedy routine uninterrupted. After this we had an all-around arm wrestling tournament, which both Andy and I lost horribly, but I did go up against Leon, and I can tell you that he is built like a tank.

After the tournament, everyone including Auntie Stephanie left the library, leaving me to hold down th fort until Laura showed up to help, and then Frank showed up to close the library. When I left the floor was an artistic masterpiece, and books were strewn everywhere (we cleaned those up) – but all the kids were alive, no thanks to Abraham Lincoln (who I had to forcibly restrain, again, so that he wouldn’t actually try to kill this other kid). Laura and I meandered over to the large open area near where they play soccer (I’ll upload photos so you can see what I’m talking about) where Andy was talking with a large group of boys (Let me make it clear, besides Dela I’ve maybe seen a grand total of five girls outside of the far-removed girls house; they don’t really come to hang out) and Jasmine, a new volunteer from England, same town as Laura, who actually has a totally different placement but hangs out at the orphanage in the afternoon. Jasmine is Indian; and interestingly enough the color of her skin garners her as much, if not more, attention than us obronis – white people.

That night Laura and Jasmine took me to meet the other volunteers at this restaurant surprisingly near the orphanage (remember, I thought those places mentioned to me were all that there was – not necessarily realistic but at the time I was struggling to absorb everything I was being told) called “Melting Moments”; Andy’s family was serving Red Red, one of his favorite dishes, so he said he would join us afterwards. This restaurant was a small place that when lit up stuck out of the surrounding darkness like a sore thumb – but in a cozy, kitschy way. We got inside and I was taken aback by, as horrible as this is to say, how many white people there were. This is whee I met the entirety of the Projects Abroad volunteers I would end up spending the rest of my time with, short of maybe one or two (there are more projects volunteer here but I don’t think that I’ll be crossing paths with them before I leave. I was sitting between Alexandra (not to be called Alex) and Laura, and across from Lauren; Jasmine was between Alexandra and Lauren; and Demetri was next to Lauren and across from Laura. This would end up being the core group I hung out with over the next few days – but there were also, next to Laura, Henrietta, Florienne, and Georgina; and at the end of the table was what was called “the trio” – Jesse, Anna and Alex – who spent the entire time at dinner talking amongst themselves (except for Jesse, who rather rudely asked who I was when I first showed up). I haven’t seen them enough to warrant them a spot in the dramatis personae entry, so I’ll give them some airtime here: I know nothing about Alex; Anna was Laura’s roommate, and left the room a total mess (moldy bread and all); and Jesse is from Atlanta. Apparently she blogs unpleasant things about the rest of the group on occasion.

Enough about them, the point is that these were all the people who I met that night; and I witnessed, and for a small time was part of, a conversation between Demetri and Alexandra concerning history, good books, and Greek history. It was awesome. After dinner (I ordered spaghetti bolognaise – hooray for comfort food) the majority of the group caught taxis to this party on the beach called Reggae Night – you can guess the theme – but I said my goodbyes and walked home to get some much-needed rest.

So, the good news is that I’ve been incredibly busy hanging with the volunteers & the kids, and having an all-around great time; the flip side of that is that I’ve had zero time to blog. I’ve taken down notes on every day so I won’t forget anything, but I unfortunately won’t be able to throw together coherent sentences before the next promised update on Friday. Please check back then!

Sorry for the delay; but thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely, Matthew

I’m sticking this blurb in here to let you know that I most likely won’t be updating absolutely everyday. Instead, I’m going to try and have a decent amount of new content up every, let’s say, three to four days, or in the immediate future, lets say Monday and next Friday.

Thanks again for all your support!