Sunday, 30 March 2008
Rock and Roll
So the conference ended yesterday, which means that I've delivered myself into Aviva's hands for the rest of my break in Mexico. There are a ton of things I love about Aviva, but one of the things I especially love is that we skip dull moments and get right to the good part, and she does that better than just about anyone I know. Yesterday, we spontaneously decided to go see the National (who were AWESOME) and Broken Social Scene (who were PRETTY GOOD), and since we didn't get back until 3am, I woke up in Aviva's bed and had to totter back to the Centro Historico with vertical hair to check out of my hotel. We met up again in the afternoon to talk about Israel, gay gentrification, and eugenics over a vegetarian lunch at an Indian place in Polanco, then went out tonight to a barbecue in Santa Fe. (I had a burger, but I also grilled a banana and that was delicious.) The house we were at had an amazing view of Mexico City, and I sort of kicked myself for not having a camera, but only sort of because it was dark and it would have just been a blurry mess. Instead, we just sat back and watched the fireworks that someone was setting off across town, which were lovely. We weren't really sure why there were fireworks, but that made it even better.
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Sweet, Delicious Survival Mechanisms
In Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage (which I read in a sitting on the night that I woke up and vomited for a couple of hours, but I'm 99% sure that had nothing to do with the book), there's this part where he gets homesick and splurges on an expensive hotel that's supposed to make him feel like a rockstar. (Leonard Cohen has stayed there, I guess.) He ends up crying himself to sleep, but the point of the story is that I'm a big fan of splurges in those rare instances where it turns out that money can, in fact, buy happiness. (Maybe it's because Let's Go turned me into a die-hard budget traveler who's loathe to spend $5 on a meal, but it's true.)
Anyway, after walking across town, shopping at a labyrinthine market for two and a half hours, and spending an hour searching fruitlessly on 5 de Mayo for a copy of the weekend International Herald Tribune (thanks for nothing and I'll see you in hell for that tip, Rough Guide), I bought myself a good-job Java Chip Frappucino and I'm not going to apologize because it was delicious and magical and even though it cost more than the four-course comidas corridas that I've been having for lunch most days, it was entirely worth it. I'm either reinvigorated or jacked on caffeine, but either way, I'm intrigued by this consumerist self-medication thing.
Anyway, after walking across town, shopping at a labyrinthine market for two and a half hours, and spending an hour searching fruitlessly on 5 de Mayo for a copy of the weekend International Herald Tribune (thanks for nothing and I'll see you in hell for that tip, Rough Guide), I bought myself a good-job Java Chip Frappucino and I'm not going to apologize because it was delicious and magical and even though it cost more than the four-course comidas corridas that I've been having for lunch most days, it was entirely worth it. I'm either reinvigorated or jacked on caffeine, but either way, I'm intrigued by this consumerist self-medication thing.
Friday, 28 March 2008
¡Bad Choices!
I've had my heart set on this vegetarian restaurant that sounded like one of the awesomer parts of my neighborhood in Mexico City, and since I spent yesterday checking out the Palacio Nacional, the Catedral Metropolitana, and the Templo Mayor - where I lived vicariously through Gloria Anzaldua AND got one of the only free admissions I've ever gotten from my ISIC, ever, which still doesn't quite justify spending twenty dollars on it - this was the morning it was going to happen. At least, it was, until I spent the night vomiting in my bathroom. (I take no blame for this, because my dinner yesterday was a cup of mango and a piece of sweet bread from a bakery, and not anything racy or novel.) I woke up tangled in my sheets in a cold sweat with a wastebasket next to me, which didn't really bode well for my presentation this afternoon.
After a shower, I was starting to feel a little bit better, and as I walked to the bakery where I may or may not have gotten malaria from a piece of sweet bread, I was like, um, maybe my stomach doesn't want this. So instead, I went looking for an internet cafe, and accidentally ended up on the street with the vegetarian place. I figured it was probably good to put something in my stomach, and I wasn't going to get any dodgy meats at a vegetarian place, so I hiked upstairs. And being the responsible person I am, I drank black coffee and ordered oatmeal, but then the waiter told me that the oatmeal was kind of small and that I'd be better off with something else, so I got huevos rancheros. And it came with a muffin. And I ate three tortillas full of huevos rancheros. So far, I'm fine, which is good because I present a paper this afternoon. That said, there's a decent chance that I'll spend the night vomiting over my balcony.
After a shower, I was starting to feel a little bit better, and as I walked to the bakery where I may or may not have gotten malaria from a piece of sweet bread, I was like, um, maybe my stomach doesn't want this. So instead, I went looking for an internet cafe, and accidentally ended up on the street with the vegetarian place. I figured it was probably good to put something in my stomach, and I wasn't going to get any dodgy meats at a vegetarian place, so I hiked upstairs. And being the responsible person I am, I drank black coffee and ordered oatmeal, but then the waiter told me that the oatmeal was kind of small and that I'd be better off with something else, so I got huevos rancheros. And it came with a muffin. And I ate three tortillas full of huevos rancheros. So far, I'm fine, which is good because I present a paper this afternoon. That said, there's a decent chance that I'll spend the night vomiting over my balcony.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Things I Love About Mexico City
1. The ability to show up to things twenty minutes late and still be the first person there.
2. The fact that when I'm on my own, I can eat Mexican pastries for every meal and nobody will judge me.
I like other things about Mexico, too, but I'm going to have to say that my laziness and gluttony pretty much eclipse everything else.
2. The fact that when I'm on my own, I can eat Mexican pastries for every meal and nobody will judge me.
I like other things about Mexico, too, but I'm going to have to say that my laziness and gluttony pretty much eclipse everything else.
I'm in Mexico!
Historically, my MO for travel has been to show up in a place and blunder my way through it artlessly, while picking up awesome stories because of my own incompetence. I didn't have to do that in Peru and Morocco and Israel, and I remember thinking on all of those trips that they would have been much different if I had been left to my own devices.
Cut to me, in Mexico, being left to my own devices, and recall why I probably shouldn't travel this way. I picked a hotel solely because it was close to the conference site and cost $22 per night, and while it's fine, it's about what you'd expect from a room that costs $22. (Like, light fixtures, flexible mattresses and pillows, and a functioning television cost extra.) I managed to get a full night's sleep, figure out my shower, and make it to a cafe, which were each accomplishments in themselves. Still, since my Spanish is terrible, I accidentally ordered cake for breakfast AGAIN, although it was layered cake in Peru and this time it was cheesecake. (I ate it both times, mostly because I was too embarrassed to do anything else.) I then proceeded to get lost on my way to the conference site, but I did find it, and it turns out that this is basically academic pornography for anyone interested in queer studies.
The highlight of my day was when I finished lunch and the waiter brought over a phone number from a girl who thought I was cute. I may not be competent, but it's nice to know that I've still got it. It's a decent consolation prize.
Cut to me, in Mexico, being left to my own devices, and recall why I probably shouldn't travel this way. I picked a hotel solely because it was close to the conference site and cost $22 per night, and while it's fine, it's about what you'd expect from a room that costs $22. (Like, light fixtures, flexible mattresses and pillows, and a functioning television cost extra.) I managed to get a full night's sleep, figure out my shower, and make it to a cafe, which were each accomplishments in themselves. Still, since my Spanish is terrible, I accidentally ordered cake for breakfast AGAIN, although it was layered cake in Peru and this time it was cheesecake. (I ate it both times, mostly because I was too embarrassed to do anything else.) I then proceeded to get lost on my way to the conference site, but I did find it, and it turns out that this is basically academic pornography for anyone interested in queer studies.
The highlight of my day was when I finished lunch and the waiter brought over a phone number from a girl who thought I was cute. I may not be competent, but it's nice to know that I've still got it. It's a decent consolation prize.
Monday, 24 March 2008
In the Heights
What would I do with roughly thirty-six hours in the United States between oddly timed vacations? I'm glad you asked!
I was basically dead after not sleeping during my last night in Tel Aviv and then spending all day on planes from Tel Aviv to Istanbul to New York, which put me there around the time that my body believed it was 1am and really wanted to go to bed. So instead, I took my body out for asian chicken salad in Washington Heights with Brady, Pennie, and Emma, which it received graciously before passing out. In the morning, Brady and I got coffee and muffins from Carrot Top, which apparently specializes in baked goods that somehow involve carrots. We had carrot muffins, but I'm pretty sure they left my coffee alone. We paired that with Top Chef and House of Wax, and when I found myself almost throwing up when someone's cheek was ripped off, I went downtown and Emma and Mischa and I spent the afternoon valiantly trying to finish the Saturday NYT crossword and valiantly not doing especially well. (I was mostly embarrassed that I couldn't get the clue about the MTV reality show, because contemporary pop culture is my greatest and/or only strength. I checked today and the answer was Date My Mom, and I felt shame.) We got Tasti-D-Lite, walked around Chelsea Pier and the West Village, checked out the street markets, and then I bowed out to meet Brady and a friend's parents for dinner at Cafeteria, which was AMAZING. (They just happened to be visiting from Fargo for the weekend, and I kid you not, this woman is probably the most fabulous woman I know.) Afterwards, we took them to Magnolia Bakery, and then Brady and I hightailed it to Marie's Crisis and sang showtunes with Mischa and Emma until about 2am. And then I slept for four hours.
On Sunday, I took an early bus to Boston, met up with my brother at the theater where they're putting on the New England premiere of Sarah Kane's Blasted (go see it if you're around Boston or feel like a roadtrip), picked up a sandwich at Darwin's and remembered why I love it so, met up with Marcel at his old apartment and went to the Biscuit for cupcakes, saw David's apartment and was duly impressed by its awesomeness (and found an excuse to drop off all of the gifts I picked up in Morocco and Israel, a very heavy book on techno-politics in Egypt, my iPod, and a half-eaten can of vanilla frosting so that I won't have to schlep them to Mexico), and then had dinner at this North African restaurant near Central Square because I've somehow not gotten sick of couscous over the past month and feel empty without it. And then I slept like the dead and hightailed it to the airport, flew to JFK, and finalized all of the stuff for Mexico City, where I'm going in approximately twenty minutes.
After all of that, I did kind of get depressed at Logan this morning, because it's hard to go on a whirlwind tour of your closest friends, family, and confidantes without being like, I wish I didn't have to fly across the Atlantic to see these people and could just take a bus or walk down the street or roll over in bed and have them there. But then I thought about it, and I also felt mini-bursts of nostalgia when I left Oxford this spring, and when I finished in Israel, and probably will when I say goodbye to Aviva in Mexico in about a week. I guess it's particularly strong when it's people who you get along smashingly with, but who also know you better than anyone else. I realized that there are possibly worse things than having too many people in too many places who you really enjoy seeing, and that was enough to kickstart my mood. We'll see if that survives a six hour flight.
I was basically dead after not sleeping during my last night in Tel Aviv and then spending all day on planes from Tel Aviv to Istanbul to New York, which put me there around the time that my body believed it was 1am and really wanted to go to bed. So instead, I took my body out for asian chicken salad in Washington Heights with Brady, Pennie, and Emma, which it received graciously before passing out. In the morning, Brady and I got coffee and muffins from Carrot Top, which apparently specializes in baked goods that somehow involve carrots. We had carrot muffins, but I'm pretty sure they left my coffee alone. We paired that with Top Chef and House of Wax, and when I found myself almost throwing up when someone's cheek was ripped off, I went downtown and Emma and Mischa and I spent the afternoon valiantly trying to finish the Saturday NYT crossword and valiantly not doing especially well. (I was mostly embarrassed that I couldn't get the clue about the MTV reality show, because contemporary pop culture is my greatest and/or only strength. I checked today and the answer was Date My Mom, and I felt shame.) We got Tasti-D-Lite, walked around Chelsea Pier and the West Village, checked out the street markets, and then I bowed out to meet Brady and a friend's parents for dinner at Cafeteria, which was AMAZING. (They just happened to be visiting from Fargo for the weekend, and I kid you not, this woman is probably the most fabulous woman I know.) Afterwards, we took them to Magnolia Bakery, and then Brady and I hightailed it to Marie's Crisis and sang showtunes with Mischa and Emma until about 2am. And then I slept for four hours.
On Sunday, I took an early bus to Boston, met up with my brother at the theater where they're putting on the New England premiere of Sarah Kane's Blasted (go see it if you're around Boston or feel like a roadtrip), picked up a sandwich at Darwin's and remembered why I love it so, met up with Marcel at his old apartment and went to the Biscuit for cupcakes, saw David's apartment and was duly impressed by its awesomeness (and found an excuse to drop off all of the gifts I picked up in Morocco and Israel, a very heavy book on techno-politics in Egypt, my iPod, and a half-eaten can of vanilla frosting so that I won't have to schlep them to Mexico), and then had dinner at this North African restaurant near Central Square because I've somehow not gotten sick of couscous over the past month and feel empty without it. And then I slept like the dead and hightailed it to the airport, flew to JFK, and finalized all of the stuff for Mexico City, where I'm going in approximately twenty minutes.
After all of that, I did kind of get depressed at Logan this morning, because it's hard to go on a whirlwind tour of your closest friends, family, and confidantes without being like, I wish I didn't have to fly across the Atlantic to see these people and could just take a bus or walk down the street or roll over in bed and have them there. But then I thought about it, and I also felt mini-bursts of nostalgia when I left Oxford this spring, and when I finished in Israel, and probably will when I say goodbye to Aviva in Mexico in about a week. I guess it's particularly strong when it's people who you get along smashingly with, but who also know you better than anyone else. I realized that there are possibly worse things than having too many people in too many places who you really enjoy seeing, and that was enough to kickstart my mood. We'll see if that survives a six hour flight.
Friday, 21 March 2008
The Grand Tour
After scouting the entirety of the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul and almost concluding that it just didn’t have electricity, I finally found an outlet where I can recharge my computer so I can wander around trying to pick up a wireless signal looking like a fool. Granted, I already look like a fool, as we decided to forego sleep yesterday to celebrate Purim as it was meant to be celebrated. My skim café au lait is the only thing keeping me alive, even if it is definitely not non-fat and kind of tastes like it was made with cream. I’m at the point of hangover and/or layover where I don’t really care.
For the first eight days, the fourteen of us on the trip were on a schedule that was grueling, but worth it. The program had us meet with diplomats, soldiers, activists, academics, NGOs, government officials, students, kibbutzniks, settlers, new immigrants, and religious leaders - but we also toured a huge swatch of the country, and in addition to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, we went to Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, the Mount of Beatitudes, the Golan Heights, down along the Jordan River, to Massada and the Dead Sea, out to Gush Etzion, to Yad Vashem, to Rehovot, to the border with Gaza, and to Sterot. We spent some quality time together on that bus. But afterwards, a couple of us wanted to check out the West Bank and get a better grasp on the humanitarian side of the conflict, so Genevieve (who’s a rockstar) set up Days 9 and 10 for those of us who wanted to stay behind. On Day 9, four of the fourteen students flew back to London, leaving us with ten students and a sister who joined up at the end of the trip. A couple of us took a cab out to Bethlehem, where we saw the Church of the Nativity and I had the falafel that I had put off for the entire trip because they fed us ridiculously well and I couldn’t justify skipping multicourse Yemeni and Moroccan dinners for a dollar’s worth of roadside falafel. (After trying the falafel, this is no longer the case.) And then we had a giant sleepover! One left for an a capella tour in the middle of the night, and another person and her sister left in the morning to spend another day in Bethlehem. And then there were seven.
The one of us who didn’t live in squalor met up with us that morning, and the eight of us spent Day 10 meeting with an Israeli NGO that works on human rights in the region, and then piling into a bus and touring Hebron and other areas of the West Bank that are being occupied by settlers or blocked off by the IDF. Afterwards, we picked up our stuff in Jerusalem and went to Ramallah, where we met with a negotiating team from the PLO. (We passed the compound where Arafat was under house arrest and it turns out that we all remember it vividly from watching CNN as children because some of us are dorks that way.) And afterwards, three people peeled off to go to Egypt for a week, and then there were five. So those five went out to a bar in Ramallah for dinner and drinks, and then went back to our barely affordable hotel where we narrowly avoided a crisis when they told us we couldn’t have a co-ed triple. (Luckily, the three of us are cousins, and the fact that a fourth person slept in our makeshift giant bed was wholly incidental. We figured that was safer than telling the desk that Genevieve was safely in the hands of two gay men.) Anyway, the highlight of my night was going to our friend’s friend’s birthday party, where I danced to a vaguely Arabic cover of “I Will Survive” and drank a $7 Corona and had an awesome time. I didn’t sleep a lot afterwards, because I kept waking up between two people to find that I was slipping into the crack between the two beds and halfway to the floor, and all I could think about every time was how it was an apt metaphor for borderlands and the Israel-Palestine conflict and then that made it worse.
The weirdest part of all was when I woke up to a text message from a friend in Brussels, saying that our mutual friend told him that I was in Ramallah, and that he was actually in Ramallah. And I was like, whoa, that’s crazy, but I’m leaving in two hours and will probably stay at our hotel for breakfast. And he was like, awesome, I’m downstairs, and so I padded down to the restaurant in my gym pants and socks and had breakfast with a professor I knew from Brussels who happened to be in my hotel. I think that qualifies as the craziest part of the trip, actually.
So then Genevieve and Zak left for Jordan, leaving three of us as Team Day 11 to fend for ourselves. We took a cab from Ramallah to Bethlehem, picked up luggage and falafel, took a cab to the Bethlehem checkpoint and went through very intense, kind of scary border control for Purim (not scary in the frightening sense, but in the disturbing, 1984 sense where you’re taking orders from a disembodied voice), then took a shuttle from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, a cab from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and I spent the next eight hours having screwdrivers on the beach, wine on the beachfront, tequila and margaritas at a surprisingly awesome Mexican place, and vodka and Red Bull at a pub downtown. (The latter was purely to stay awake, and I only drank it because I got really sleepy and woke up to a girl poking me and asking to take a picture with me because she thought it was cute that I kept nodding off. I was like, um, sure, and now I need a pick-me-up because this is mortifying.) Over the course of eight hours, though, it wasn’t too bad, and we still rolled out at 3:30am, picked up the luggage, and two of us left for New York while our last guy stayed behind in Tel Aviv. And that leaves one person from Team Day 12 in Israel. The bonding was kind of intense, and I'm going through withdrawals. The fact that I’m about to board a twelve hour flight to JFK doesn’t help, probably.
For the first eight days, the fourteen of us on the trip were on a schedule that was grueling, but worth it. The program had us meet with diplomats, soldiers, activists, academics, NGOs, government officials, students, kibbutzniks, settlers, new immigrants, and religious leaders - but we also toured a huge swatch of the country, and in addition to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, we went to Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, the Mount of Beatitudes, the Golan Heights, down along the Jordan River, to Massada and the Dead Sea, out to Gush Etzion, to Yad Vashem, to Rehovot, to the border with Gaza, and to Sterot. We spent some quality time together on that bus. But afterwards, a couple of us wanted to check out the West Bank and get a better grasp on the humanitarian side of the conflict, so Genevieve (who’s a rockstar) set up Days 9 and 10 for those of us who wanted to stay behind. On Day 9, four of the fourteen students flew back to London, leaving us with ten students and a sister who joined up at the end of the trip. A couple of us took a cab out to Bethlehem, where we saw the Church of the Nativity and I had the falafel that I had put off for the entire trip because they fed us ridiculously well and I couldn’t justify skipping multicourse Yemeni and Moroccan dinners for a dollar’s worth of roadside falafel. (After trying the falafel, this is no longer the case.) And then we had a giant sleepover! One left for an a capella tour in the middle of the night, and another person and her sister left in the morning to spend another day in Bethlehem. And then there were seven.
The one of us who didn’t live in squalor met up with us that morning, and the eight of us spent Day 10 meeting with an Israeli NGO that works on human rights in the region, and then piling into a bus and touring Hebron and other areas of the West Bank that are being occupied by settlers or blocked off by the IDF. Afterwards, we picked up our stuff in Jerusalem and went to Ramallah, where we met with a negotiating team from the PLO. (We passed the compound where Arafat was under house arrest and it turns out that we all remember it vividly from watching CNN as children because some of us are dorks that way.) And afterwards, three people peeled off to go to Egypt for a week, and then there were five. So those five went out to a bar in Ramallah for dinner and drinks, and then went back to our barely affordable hotel where we narrowly avoided a crisis when they told us we couldn’t have a co-ed triple. (Luckily, the three of us are cousins, and the fact that a fourth person slept in our makeshift giant bed was wholly incidental. We figured that was safer than telling the desk that Genevieve was safely in the hands of two gay men.) Anyway, the highlight of my night was going to our friend’s friend’s birthday party, where I danced to a vaguely Arabic cover of “I Will Survive” and drank a $7 Corona and had an awesome time. I didn’t sleep a lot afterwards, because I kept waking up between two people to find that I was slipping into the crack between the two beds and halfway to the floor, and all I could think about every time was how it was an apt metaphor for borderlands and the Israel-Palestine conflict and then that made it worse.
The weirdest part of all was when I woke up to a text message from a friend in Brussels, saying that our mutual friend told him that I was in Ramallah, and that he was actually in Ramallah. And I was like, whoa, that’s crazy, but I’m leaving in two hours and will probably stay at our hotel for breakfast. And he was like, awesome, I’m downstairs, and so I padded down to the restaurant in my gym pants and socks and had breakfast with a professor I knew from Brussels who happened to be in my hotel. I think that qualifies as the craziest part of the trip, actually.
So then Genevieve and Zak left for Jordan, leaving three of us as Team Day 11 to fend for ourselves. We took a cab from Ramallah to Bethlehem, picked up luggage and falafel, took a cab to the Bethlehem checkpoint and went through very intense, kind of scary border control for Purim (not scary in the frightening sense, but in the disturbing, 1984 sense where you’re taking orders from a disembodied voice), then took a shuttle from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, a cab from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and I spent the next eight hours having screwdrivers on the beach, wine on the beachfront, tequila and margaritas at a surprisingly awesome Mexican place, and vodka and Red Bull at a pub downtown. (The latter was purely to stay awake, and I only drank it because I got really sleepy and woke up to a girl poking me and asking to take a picture with me because she thought it was cute that I kept nodding off. I was like, um, sure, and now I need a pick-me-up because this is mortifying.) Over the course of eight hours, though, it wasn’t too bad, and we still rolled out at 3:30am, picked up the luggage, and two of us left for New York while our last guy stayed behind in Tel Aviv. And that leaves one person from Team Day 12 in Israel. The bonding was kind of intense, and I'm going through withdrawals. The fact that I’m about to board a twelve hour flight to JFK doesn’t help, probably.
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