"Home"

 

I’m back in California after what could very well have been the most wonderful year of my life. Wonderful, yes, insane, chaotic, full of lessons, full of scrapes and bruises, full of loss and gain in an endless surging flow, sorrowful at times, surreal, unbelievable, euphoric, terrifying, also. There is so much I haven’t had the time or the attention span or even the words to tell you about. And now I’m back “home,” toying with that word like a question in my mouth.

Northern California is a beautiful place—we are lucky to grow up here, basking in the mild sunshine and the fresh redwood and ocean air. When I returned I was struck by the expansive sky, spread out above the low building tops, by the wideness of the smooth, black streets, the sidewalks. Everything is low and flat and spread out, bordered by green. Everything is square and new. The graffiti is painted over in stern squares. That image has a lot to do with how I feel, with a certain specific blankness, a lack of stories. I feel my bursting, booming, blooming year fading inside of me, as if eroding upon exposure to this sweet foreign air. Was it all a dream?

There are things that feel right about being here, like seeing my lover’s blue eyes up close, like getting behind the wheel of my dusty, leaf-cluttered car, like my brother’s skinny ten-year-old arms wrapped around me. I feel like I can sigh into California’s temperate embrace and sleep off a year long accumulated hangover. But I also feel something missing—a big gaping half of my heart. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t been overcome with the urge to cry at strange moments, like at a stoplight, or while buying cider at the grocery store.

In Spain time moved differently. Every moment felt full of possibility. Life seemed like some wild undefined adventure, something to be molded and tossed around, something to plunge into with open eyes and an open heart. Every strange, surreal dream felt possible. Back “home,” all those elaborate unconventional dreams seem impractical. I am being re-acclimatized to something called stability. Routine. Planning. Where before growth seemed spontaneous and personal, now progress seems like something to be charted out on some kind of dull trajectory of compromise. This is called the future. Suddenly all your living is supposed to be stored up for later—right now you must work to build options.

There is a Californian girl inside of me, and she knows how to navigate this kind of lifestyle—she’s done it for many years. But there’s another person, maybe new and raw and uncertain and incomplete but thirsty for life and strangely strong and all of this change is pressing against her all over, crushing her. Even on a purely geographical level, my options are suddenly limited. I’m compressed into a cage of stale social roles and a lack of travel possibilities. I feel like I left a certain kind of hole when I left, and now I’m supposed to come back and fill it, but I’m not the same shape anymore. I’m trying to find a place where I have room to move on, but also to acknowledge that so many amazing things have transpired in the past year, and to find a way to examine how these things have affected the trajectory of my life and who I am as a person.

Blog #100: Cádiz, Coming Home, and Cat Sedatives

Guess what!

This is my 100th blog. 

I was going to try and do or write something awesome, but life is just too crazy for me to be that creative, however the month is slowly taking shape and making a tiny bit of sense. Chaotic, stressful, transitional sense, but still, something like certainty is slowly creeping into July.

For starters, Gypsy may actually be coming home with me after all. My cat-loving aunt got wind of my pickle and has offered to help out, so now I've re-commenced the kind of slow, confusing, electronic communications process of talking to animal shipping people and figuring out how it's going down. It's simultaneously a huge relief, because I'm so happy to be bringing him home, but also a huge stress, because the process is confusing and the people aren't extremely helpful, and because it's changed all my semi-formulated, half-assed plans for my last little stretch of time here. Which is coming to a close, very, very fast.

The new plan is something like this: stay in Granada, in my house with Gyps and Borja until the 12th, then bum a ride with Borja and friends to Cádiz, where he's from, meet his fambam, see some stuff, hit up a little festival for a couple days, probably be a beach bum for a little, then try and get a rideshare on the 20th or so back to Granada, be a homeless cat person at Mauna's house for my last few days, and then rideshare or bus (potentially sedating my cat and sneaking him onto said bus...) to Madrid to catch my 11am flight from Madrid back to home sweet San Francisco, where my lover will be waiting with burritos in hand. And from there it looks like we may be headed to the woods, potentially escaping my reverse culture shock and despair by camping with mom, Uly, Casey and hopefully Kelsey for a couple days. I agreed to this without thinking about what to do with Gypsy, but I also recently bought him a harness and leash, so maybe he'll be chillin. So far he doesn't seem to give a fuck, even though Borja and Guille won't stop making fun of him and warning me that I'm going to give him a complex.

Look how many fucks I give about my cat harness.

Guys, I'm gonna be home in 19 puny days. This is incomprehensibly awesome and terrible. I don't wanna go home, but I can't wait to go home. Shit is strange. I've skipped a ton, but that's all for now. I have to go buy cat sedatives.

Stop the squirming.

 

Stop that squirming,

with your blackhole anxiety,

transition dreams and pockmarked skin,

there are certain people and then

there are others.

Displacement is not replacement,

personality is a fluctuating element, susceptible

to time and rejection.

Don’t forget to dig up love,

don’t forget that you can’t dance but you do,

don’t forget,

bald bird,

that you are just another indoor cat

before the open door.

Your secret hands are no secret,

self pity is no hot commodity and hot days

make you like this:

sticky, stuck, irritable.

And your lungs, too, may be cloudy

and thick,

but breathe through the gunk.

And your eyes may be cloudy

with distance,

but don’t blink the time away.

And your skin may be cloudy

and lonesome,

but it’s still translucent;

so the only choice is to be the muscles and the blood

the only choice is to be the bones and the sinew

the substance and the soul.

Let the Mayhem Begin

Alright, it's been a while since I've sat down and written something about what exactly I've been doing these days. Here's what's been going on:

My house is still wonderful, and it's more of a BroMansion than ever, since yet another dude has taken to inhabiting our basement, but he's also a mega chiller; David's long-haired juggling friend, Guillermo. He's older and cleaner than everyone else. A while back Matteo found a kitten in a trashcan (and when I say kitten I mean eyes-still closed, so small I thought it was a hamster, kitten) and we all become a like four-headed cat mama and fed him with a little squirty thing like a billions times a day, UNTIL: one fateful day we took him to the Huerto de Carlos V, because no one was home to take care of him, and I ran into Alberto, a jolly dreaded festival friend we made at the Dragón, whose housemate really wanted a teensy kitten. So we handed him off right there and then. Thank god he didn't end up as the fifth animal in our furry family; it's already impossible to cook without eating hair in this house. We plan on visiting him someday soon, though.

What else? A few weeks ago one of the biggest music festivals in Spain, el Viña Rock, took place in Villarrobledo, about a four hour drive North of Granada. The actual festival was quite expensive, but since Spaniards are awesome, they tend to set up the "anti" festival, or in other words, a free electronic rave fest, right outside...why don't we do this, California? Anyway, Leon, Adam, Carlos, Jarir and I rented a car and headed over. It rained ALL weekend, but we had an amazing time.

Picture: rain, mud, my polar bear hat (muddy), face paint, bodybuzzing speakers, thunder, lightening, short-lived, weather-defying nudity, vodka, muddy boots, muddy tent, muddy car, cereal out of the box and rain-soggy bread, one precious avocado (no knife), beer, star stickers (a gift from a fairy with a glowing wand!), strange coincidences and shared acquaintances, the thizzle dance, goosebumps, shit-smeared Port-o-Potties and bared asses in the field of stubby bushes, huge tarps billowing over the sweaty gape-faced masses, that collective stomp with the drop, bonfires, lakes of mud, giant pupils under sweeping colored lights, three hour sleep sessions cramped up in the front seat of the car, losing my third phone, losing Adam (who we recovered, unlike the phone), and then Monday morning deliriously scrubbing the seats of the car, vacuuming up the ashes, the roaches, gathering soggy brown articles of clothing, eating oranges and melting into couches, into bed. Twelve hours of recovery sleep. And then, in Carlos' case, fever.

Since then I've been in quite a mellow mode (understandably, right?) Recently had some couch surfers by- German and Finnish- and took them tapa-ing, strolled around the Albaicín, showed them the Huerto where I stopped briefly and had my face painted and befriended a gorgeous Australian Shepard and a hairy-chested shirtless old English hippy man. I also now know how to say "laughing sausage" in Finnish.

This is the last month of class, and I've quite honestly been a horrible slacker. It's become quite clear that all  my scholarly motivation is based on an actual interest in learning, something that is not really an option in this University system. Anyway, the slacking is at least half due to the holidays and strikes that have knocked out probably like 50% of the classes I would have had these past months. (For example,  I'm not at school right now because of striking...) But classes end soon and then I have June to "study" and exams at the end of June, beginning of July.

In other news I'm shitting bricks of anticipation and glee because my babygirl Kimmykins is coming to see me in 9 short days! Balls Almighty, it's gonna be a frolic and a half! I don't really have plans for June or July, but I want to go somewhere at some point... I'm kind of just waiting for the adventures to manifest themselves- they always do! Vin has mentioned planning some sort of roadtrip, to Poland, for example, and I also really want to go to Germany (there's apparently an amazing festival near Hamburg in June!), and Ireland is also high on my list... This world is so big and beautiful, I just don't have time to tackle it all, but I suppose this is really only the beginning.

May is gorgeous and sunny and I love it. I've started doing yoga on the terrace, and reading on the terrace, and generally living on the terrace. Three hurrays for sunscreen!

California, I do miss you, despite all the shameless fun I've been having. I can't believe I'll be back "home" in three short month! I hope you guys are all prepared to burrito binge with me, to Boardwalk our faces off, to embark on facepainted frolics, get our fresh produce on at Twin Palms Ranch, spazz out at the dog beach with my flufferbutt and my tan man, get some three am nacho fries at Saturn, be critters in the Meekerite woods, and I guess take a peek at some American bars for the first time in my life (unless you count the Jury Room in Santa Cruz...I don't.) I also hope y'all don't expect me to come back fashionable and cultured-- quite the contrary; Granada has cultivated the wild child in me more than ever!

Anyway, I take my leave to try and get some useful things done right quick before heading to Mauna's for breakfast-for-dinner tonight, hitting up a screening of También la Lluvia at some bar and maybe checking out a concert/party at a nearby squat on Friday, and who the hell knows what else! ¡Hasta pronto, bitches!

Amsterdam: Part Two

 

Each day is full of tasty, expensive food. We buy a fried maize pastry and a crispy pocket full of veggies at the Indonesian place beneath Vin’s apartment, where we later return for tempeh and vegetables with boiled eggs in spicy over a box of hot white rice. One lazy night we order pizzas and eat them with creamy garlic sauce. We stop at a Surinamese shop where Vin gets a sandwich and I buy a savory donut type thing. We eat them sitting beside a canal, watching the black ducks dive and resurface. Another evening Vin brings home tasty red curry with tofu and vegetables, and he takes me to an “American” bakery for red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and blueberry muffins. One morning he whips up what he calls a “poor Vietnamese meal,” with boiled eggs and rice and a tasty garlic sauce. We eat it with tangy kim chee. We have Malaysian tea in little metal mugs—it’s foamy and delicious, almost like Chai—and then eat fried rice heaped with chilli sauce.

We buy Asian pears and green apples to munch on with salt and chilli pepper. One night Vin invites a friend over and wraps up shrimp and tofu with noodles and zesty cilantro in translucent rice paper. We eat the summer rolls with a dark sweet and salty sauce and a little hot sauce, too. He takes me to get French fries with Amsterdam’s famous joppy sauce; a sweet, tangy, yellow sauce that reminds me of sweet mustard. On several occasions we stop into a shop for Turkish pizza—a thin pizza, with spinach and feta, in my case, wrapped up with lettuce and vegetables and condiments. It’s heavenly. We follow it with sticky baklava. Another night we buy packets of space cake from a coffeeshop and eat it covered in whipped cream. Once it kicks in, we munch on cold cream puffs and toffee walnut spiced cake. We drink cans of Heineken beer with a side of coke and chat with Vin’s friend Robin about childhood, drugs, moderation, parenting, the future, education systems. We talk about how we’d make new people, differently. It feels important.

On a particularly gray day we stroll to a flea market. It’s cold out and I look half-heartedly for a hat to buy, but nothing seems suitable. Instead I linger on ornate little tins, a beautiful tree tapestry, an adorable summer dress, knitted hand warmers… Across the street is a Hell’s Angels shop and a man and woman are filming it with a big camera on a tripod as a burly old man with long hair rides up. Vin says he’s a leader within the European Hell’s Angels, which in and of itself sounds contradictory and kind of hilarious to me.

I find Adam in the museum quarter, and we take him to New Times, and then visit the Anne Frank house, climbing up narrow stairs to peer at the mostly unfurnished rooms, the grainy portraits, the pages she’d written and corrected in her girlish hand. She’d pasted up photos and pages from magazines on the walls, collages to make the hideout more cheerful. I find her collages somehow haunting. I collage. Later we watch videos, Anne’s childhood friends with quaking German voices and loose skin and distant nightmarish memories. We see the bony bodies piled up. Outside, the moon is full and the black canals glimmer with orange and yellow lights. The windows in Amsterdam are always open. 

That night we stick little pieces of paper with tiny dancing bears on our tongues. The crooked room stretches out and in, shrinking on one side and sloping down the other. Adam paces, scribbling notes all across a to-do list. It’s all about perspective, he keeps saying. Maybe I’m just on drugs, he comments, but maybe in the morning I’ll wake up and be the next Kerouac. We watch polar bears running and sliding through the snow, shimmering white and majestic. We watch schools of fish flicker and dart through dark waters in big baffling choreographies. We laugh at each other’s gaping faces. As the sun rises, smoke gathers in a long beam of sunlight streaming through the window. It looks like a beautiful dragon against the blood red curtains. I peer out the windows and watch as the city shudders and stretches. The last prostitutes finally close their red curtains.

Amsterdam: Part One

Amsterdam is cold and sleepy—gray lays over it, thick like a comforter. The tall, old buildings curl in on each other, leaning close for warmth, folding into each other. Cyclists steam by like schools of metallic fish. In the huge parking lots they huddle together, slumberous silver and rusted turquoise or engine red, glossy black, chipped copper frames. Vin wraps himself up to his nose, saying his Asian blood is too hot for the damp cold that goes all through you. By the ferry, little ducks bob and peck in the damp green-gray water.

Sleepy Amsterdam is full of a million languages, and no one seems to really bother with Dutch. We spend the days strolling through the streets, along and over the glossy canals, crossing tram tracks and bike lanes haphazardly, ignoring the crosswalks with their beeping timer mechanisms. Amsterdam is adorable, quaint, reminiscent of the things that you think of in Portland, or maybe San Francisco. I linger outside the shop windows gawking at the novelty gifts, handmade soaps, woolen hats, quirky t-shirts, pastries, waffles, psychedelic truffles, marijuana lollypops, little glass bongs and grinders with the big triple x across the top. We find a shop entirely devoted to buttons; too cute for words.

At the market there are booths set up with little yellow wheels of cheese, with jars of pickles, with flat waffles and poffertjes—fat pancakes the size of silver dollars. We eat the poffertjes with butter and powdered sugar using little wooden forks as we meander through clothing booths full of colorful scarves and bizarre American flag leggings, Amsterdam caps with tassels and bright green Heineken sweatshirts. As the market begins to shut down, egrets appear and pick at the ice left behind by a seafood booth.

The coffeeshops are dimly lit and sweet-musty smelling, with little nugs labeled and displayed in their countertops, with laminated menus and pre-rolled joints stored in slim plastic tubes. In one shop, an electronic panel in the counter glows pleasantly, displaying the menu on one side, and as the shop keeper weighs and packages the weed in small plastic baggies, the other side displays the weight and price of each strain, tallying up a neat total. People sit at the tables in pairs, rolling spliffs and drinking tea. Vin and I frequent a shop called New Times, with a burnished purple counter and purple candles at each table. We smoke Vin’s long spliffs and sip on English tea, Earl Gray, Moroccan Mint or Rooibos. The third or fourth day we stop by, the man behind the counter hands back our money and bumps fists with Vin. One day, an older man behind the counter is weighing out clumps of hash. Vin asks what it is and the man tells him couscous, handing him a little clump with a friendly smile.

One evening we stop at a dark little smartshop full of glow in the dark posters and metal pipes. The man behind the counter has long hair and shows us a menu of truffles that are rated based on the intensity of the physical high, the energy, and the visuals that each type produces. We buy two little boxes of Cosmic Connection. Back at the house we open them up and contemplate the black clusters. They look like animal shit. We eat them with Nutella, cringing at the acrid after taste. Vin’s friend, a thin blond girl, stops by and sits on his Fatboy bean bag sipping a beer while we watch some show about some nut job living with lions. When she leaves I go to the bathroom and sit on Vin’s strangely high toilet seat; my legs dangle off. I realize my toes suddenly seem miles away and the rug is undulating softly. Back in his room, the deep red curtains are rippling, deep velvety burgundy, the golden shapes on them glowing faintly. We are feeling melty, listening to Gramatik with the TV on mute, watching shadows spill across the African plains in lazy half-fascination. Mostly, my mind fills up. I feel like I can see myself from a strange new angle. I look at my legs stretched out before me. I pull a blanket over my head and watch the white polka dots drift sleepily through the dark.

Fiesta de Primavera

 

The weekend begins with little boats of vegan curry, sweet grape juice and a couple of cold forties, hoards of young Spaniards armed with plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic bottles, the pervasive stench of piss and piles of trash. We down our first forties and then meander through the masses, looking for familiar faces, or new faces. I climb up on Leon’s shoulders and call out for his friend, who we never find. Down below, people applaud or raise their drinks up at me. Someone hurls a chunk of ice against my back. I keep drinking up there.

Eventually we have to pee. There’s a high cement wall, and on the other side are bushes, full of women, mostly, as the guys are resigned to just lean against any old wall and let loose. We climb up a skate ramp and a group of girls protest, yelling that we can’t pee up there, go fuck ourselves. They are delighted when I attempt to lower myself over the edge and eat shit. Sydney makes the leap much more gracefully. We wait outside a particularly promising bush that a cute girl in a floral skirt tells us is “occupied.” She quickly gathers that we are not from here, and gives us her contact info, hoping to meet up for tapas some day and practice her English.

 Once we’ve peed, we eye the wall suspiciously. Climbing back over does not seem to be an option, but further down, it’s much lower, so we run over and hop on. But we’re a long way, a tin rooftop, and a group of people away from our friends. Fuck it. We take off, hopping precariously along the wall, and people start to take notice. Three boys are blocking our way and protest, not wanting to hop down, but I just ask them to scoot over from each other, and then step behind each one. A few people cheer. When we reach the rooftop, Syd climbs up first. Now people are really watching. We must look crazy, maybe we are. We dash along the rooftop, not wanting to break it, and people really begin to cheer. Someone throws a chunk of ice, again—sonofabitch. But finally we reach Leon and he lowers us down.

He’s acquired people, and I run into Carlos, serious as ever, but drunk as fuck, complaining that he can’t pee. Andrew, a British kid, has a backpack full of warmish tinto de verano, and I chug some of it, and then Matteo calls, saying to come home, so I take off dashing through the crowd and up, up, up the hill. Later, of course, he texts me saying he’ll actually be a while, so I stop and buy vodka and potato chips.

Morocco: The End

 

We wake up to Yousef calling through the opening of our tent. I pull on my boots and am ready. Outside, the desert is grayish pink and the Berber men all have their faces hidden. We mount our dromedaries with two big lurches and set off as the sun begins to rise. We stop for pictures. This time we are nearly silent save for Mubarak’s occasional “Hold on!” When we arrive at the road again, we are sore, sleepy, and a little sad to say goodbye. We shake the hands that become like the foot of a camel, and they say, “Next time, next time,” beneath their scarves, eyes shining, faces full of unabashed kindness.

Back at the hotel we breakfast on crepes and tea, change our clothes and then hit the road.  I fall asleep with my face burrowed in my big jacket. We stop for lunch, more omelet, more Moroccan salad. Back in the car we all take turns dozing. Its dark when we reach Marrakech. We are sad to depart from the close knit group that has begun to feel like a kind of nomad family, and so make plans to meet up for dinner together after settling in to our respective hostels.

Mom and I are staying at Casa del Sol, a cute little hostel near the Square. We set down our bags and Mom befriends the man working the night shift, Mufasa, who speaks near perfect English. He’s playing an eclectic play list that includes songs from O’ Brother Where Art Thou. I take a quick shower, and, confronted by a lack of shampoo or other cleaning supplies, wash my hair with hand soap. We have tea with Mufasa, and then head into the market to meet with the group.

The Square at night is amazing, it’s own breed of chaos and smells and sights. The daytime orange juice carts are replaced with a maze of white numbered food stalls steaming into the cold night air. Vendors throw up blinking toys into the sky, sell lamps and candles and scarves. Men try and talk to us, asking, “French? English?” and making lewd gestures when they give up. Old women and children alike beg and sell packets of tissues. We decide to head to Stall 42, which Keith had visited on his first day.  On the way we stop for snails. Tomás buys a bowl and blinks as he tries them. “Spicy,” he comments. Mom tries one, too, says it tastes good but shudders, anyway.

The children persist all around her. She smiles and shakes her head at them with sad eyebrows and when she says, “No,” it sounds like an apology. We enter the maze of food stalls and are immediately accosted by dozens of eager shopkeepers, men, of course, spreading their arms wide and gesturing at their food. At Stall 42, a boy in a green robe tries to lure us in, not realizing we’d already decided on our destination. When an older man recognizes Keith, he dismisses the boy and attends to us himself. “Good friend,” he keeps saying. We chose a selection of food from the array displayed in a long row in front of the cooking area, and sit a long table covered in paper, where we are brought bread and dipping sauces.

The food comes continuously, like dim sum, a spicy spinach dish, rice with grilled peppers, fried eggplant, little fried potato patties, skewers of lamb and beef, small fish whose entire bodies have been battered and fried, their mouths agape, a strange cinnamon chicken dish that Tomás says “takes him on a journey.” It’s greasy and delicious, the table is covered in little plates and oil spots. We eat until we’re stuffed and warm.

Behind me I hear, “Sleeping,” and I turn around at the sound of English. The boy in green is laying on a bench with his hood over his face. He pulls it down and grins at me, then covers his face again. “Sleeping,” he repeats. How did peek-a-boo become so strangely charming? As we finish we’re brought mint tea in glasses. A boy with some sort of deformity that bends his legs inwards and a shoe shining kit keeps his gaze fixed on Mom. She can’t stop shaking her head sadly at him. Further down the road, a group of young boys weave and bob unsteadily, sniffing glue in an amoebic circle.

We divide up the bill and pay, and Mom gives into a shoeshine. The boy in green comes up and speaks to Tomás and I in Spanish. He says Argentinians are buena gente. He poses for a picture and then leans on my shoulder to look at it. The older man, who served us comes up and leans on my other side. “It’s good,” they approve. Another boy sees this, runs up to Mom and throw his arm around her for a photo, posing as all Moroccan boys seems to pose—extending one arm out wide, either open handed or with a thumbs up.

As the stalls are being taken down, the crowds disperse quickly. The guys offer to walk us back to our hostel, and we’re grateful as we become disoriented in the now deserted streets. We pass huddles figures sleeping under cardboard in the shadows. I stop to pet a sweet-faced kitty and she follows me for a while, and then spooks and darts away. We say our goodbyes, exchange hugs and promises of photos and Mufasa unlocks the hostel door for us. I fall asleep quickly to the strange, lingering sensation of the moving van in our hostel bunk bed.

Morocco: Desert Tour Day Two

 

We wake up early for a bleary eyed breakfast—oily crepes with butter and jam, bread, coffee, and tea. Then back to the van, back on the road. Keith is running behind so we pull the van away from him, pretending to take off, giggling. The hostel’s proprietor seems more concerned than he does.

Our first stop is along a tall cliff, to snap photos of the huge bulbous rocks that are supposed to resemble monkey thumbs. “I can see something, but it’s not a monkey’s thumb, “ Joe comments.  “Looks more like troll dick,” Mom adds helpfully. The rocks are incredibly phallic, it’s true.

We’re on the road for a good while, twisting and winding through the insane streets as the sun begins to creep up and send shadows along the roads. Our next stop is at the deep Dades Gorge. It’s freezing but beautiful, We keep running into the same groups of tourists and are unable to escape an American family with their horrible blond little girls that keep yelling, “Get me in the photo!” every time they see a camera. Moroccan children follow us with little woven grass trinkets, trying to stick them on our clothing, especially Mom. They tell Mohamed that they need money to buy a soccer ball, but he says they told him the same things last week. “Always the same story.”

I feel similarly when lunch rolls around and we encounter the same menus in French—Moroccan salad, omelets, tagines. I order a salad and a vegetable tagine. After lunch we stop at a fossil shop, where we are shown trilobites and squid captured in stone thousands of years ago when the desert was a sea. We watch them lifting, grinding, polishing huge slabs of rock, and still the workers stop and smile flirtatiously. Then we are taken into a big gallery with huge polished tabletops, necklaces, sinks, business card holders, all made of fossilized stones that can be shipped to our home countries.

Then it’s back to road, where I attempt to study half-heartedly. Our next stop is for water, then scarves. We drive through a gate to the scarf shop, and men come and greet us with leathery hand shakes and jagged smiles. The shop is beautiful, covered floor to ceiling with rugs, scarves and djellabas, the ankle length robes with pointed hoods that are so prevalent. The prices are good, and everyone digs through the big piles of cloth in every color imaginable. The shop keepers wrap Mom’s head in a lovely turquoise cloth and joke with her, “How many camels?” They wrap the men’s heads, too. We leave with three scarves. Everyone seems to have found something—Keith even scores a black djellaba. On our way out, a boy around my age smiles at us and rushes ahead of us and stops us in the doorway, saying, “Sorry, excuse me, look.” He points out a big sword hanging on the wall. His face is proud. He stands by the door, beneath a big goat skull, and waves as we drive away.  In the car we practice wrapping our heads as the men showed us. Tomás masters it quickly, and leaves his turban for the rest of the ride.

When we arrive at the dunes, we are given a few moments to leave our belongings in a hotel room, just taking with us our cameras, extra layers of clothing, and water. Across the street from the hotel, we can see the camels (dromedaries, to be exact—they only have one hump) lined up, lying down. As we approach an unexpected hum of nervousness build in my stomach at the prospect of riding these strange creatures.

There is an older Berber man, Omar, and another boy, my age, Mubarak, to help us onto the dromedaries and guide us. The camels are ornery and smelly and generally hilarious, tied tail to snout in a row. They protest and bellow as we mount them, one by one. Mine is named Baksheesh, the guide tells me. Tomás is riding Jimi Hendrix, who seems to be the grumpiest and keeps foaming at the mouth. They walk in big awkward strides across the dunes, led by Mubarak, who walks ahead of us in long straight-backed strides. Every now and then he glances back at us to make sure we’re alright or shouts out, “Hold on!” when the animals are on the verge of ascending or descending a particularly steep dune. The sun slinks down behind us and we stop to take photos as the dunes turn to a deep, burning red, and the sky ripples into a myriad of yellow, orange, green and finally a dusky blue. The rhythm of Baksheesh’s careful, long-legged steps is almost meditative, despite the ache that begins to set into my thighs and lower back. Slowly, crystal clear stars begin to appear overhead.  The desert is absolutely silent save for the plodding steps and our fragmented conversation. Three or four camels ahead burn a tiny orange ember, the scent of tobacco wafts through the air from Mubarak’s cigarette. About two hours later, in near complete darkness punctuated only by the sparkle of the persistent stars, we arrive at a clump of shadows that is to be our camp for the night. Mubarak coaxes the camels back onto their knees and they bellow and moan, again. He steadies us as they lurch down in two heaving motions. 

The camp is comprised of two or three rings of tents surrounding an empty fire pit, illuminated by one bare bulb that we later learn is powered by a little solar panel. We shake hands with the enthusiastic young Berber, Yousef, and Farrah, a woman from Mauritius who made the desert trek on her own. The men build a fire and we vacillate between multilingual conversation—French, Spanish, English, Berber—and contemplative silence. Eventually Mubarak reappears, announcing dinner, and we enter the dining tent, illuminated also with a bare bulb and a few candles. Farrah’s place has been set in a dark corner of the tent, and the boys tell her, “You Berber.” We insist she come and eat with us.

We start off with a tasty rice and tomato vegetable dish, something I hadn’t come across yet. Bread is plentiful, of course. Mubarak and Yousef take turns checking in on us. “Everything good?” they ask. Joe tries to tell Mubarak that it’s the best meal he’s had in Morocco but his English isn’t up to the challenge and he stares at Joe with dark, confused eyes. Joe finally makes that universal smacking gesture for delicious and he gets it. Next they bring us two tagines, one only with vegetables, one with chicken. It’s sizzling hot. We follow it up with big juicy oranges. After our plates have been cleared away we gather back around the fire and the boys bring out drums and play for us, pounding out fast rhythms and calling out in playful broken voices, encouraging us to clap. Yousef pulls our chairs away from the fire and dances, pulling at the edges of his robe in a goofy bent over camel dance. “Baila! Baila!” he calls to us. They yell out, “Aiy, aiyaiyeee!” Yousef keeps telling me, “Estás durmida!” Mubarak hands his drum over to Tomás, and Mom plays for a while, too.

Conversation and song blend together in an easygoing flow of sound and gesture. Yousef tells us riddles—“What is born with two horns, lives with none and dies with two horns?” He asks us twice, English and Spanish, and when we can’t figure it out he says, “Es algo natural,” and makes a gesture with his hands. “La luna?” I guess. Yes. We ask him, “Why is six afraid of seven?” He loves it.

It’s getting later, and Keith has already slipped off to bed, not feeling well. Mirjam and Florian follow shortly after. The boys tell us the moon is coming up and that the fire will obscure our view, so they lead us away from the tents. We climb a steep dune in the absolute dark and shiver and stare as the moon creeps up, a big luminous half-orb, outshining the clusters of stars smeared all across the black sky. I want to lay on my back, but the sand is freezing. Mubarak sees me shivering and offers to wrap my head in a turban with my scarf. He brushs my hair away and winds it carefully around, covering my mouth. It’s much warmer. When we descend he offers me a hand he later comments, “Becomes like the foot of a camel,” rough and calloused as a hoof. We return to huddle around the first, but this time Mom and Farrah drop off to sleep. The fire is dying down, and the men scoop up coals and toss them between their bare hands to keep warm. Even Joe and Tomás catch them for a moment. Omar tells us of cold desert nights when they’d spread our the remaining coals and place their mattresses over them for heat. We share heavy woolen blankets that smell faintly of the dromedaries. We stay up for hours that way, exchanging broken sentences around the warm ashes.

Another Nightmare

Dreamy girl, self sufficient around the jaw, says she works here with that carefree kind of smirk, and fishes a couple bills out of some unsuspecting pocket. Oh, so she works here. Suddenly, she is pressed against me, kissing, and then an instant, I realize it’s happening and I am afraid to look at her; who is this person? When I pull away, there is this sagging, rotting corpse looking lecherously back at me. Her black tongue drops out of her head, I’m gagging, and I realize that it’s not real, but somehow, also, inescapable. The key is to remember where I’ve left my body, and I can feel it now, far away, but it’s so dark that I can’t remember exactly where. I think about my old bedroom, that big feather blanket, gray and purple, I think of my old bedroom, the stripped quilt, the bed low down on the floor, I think of my cold bedroom, my little twin bed, the flat pillow. I’m in none of these places. I’m in Leah’s bed, I realize, in the darkness. There is a sensation like waking, I’m lying on my stomach and a little figure appears beside me—it’s blurry, a boy, a man, I don’t know, a person, the size of a little water bottle, the size of a book or a thick candle, he appears there, blurry, and I wonder if is going to tell me something, but I’m lying there, in the dark, and I realize that I can see myself, as if in a reflection, I can see myself, shadowy, watching this blurry figure with a yellow T-shirt. As I watch, the eyes in the reflection self turn dark, inky black spreads all through them, she, or I, leans forward with a growl, and takes the little figure into a blackened mouth, into her jagged teeth, she eats him, and I realize, again, I’m not awake, this isn’t real, and I’m rocking back and forth, trying to make a sound so that Leah will turn around, so that she’ll say something, or wake me up, I’m touching my face with the hands that do not belong to my body and I feel my cheeks, my lips, but it all feels numb and distant. I’m suffocating in this vacuum, straining to breathe in some breath of reality, and yet I am trapped inside myself, writhing.

How did I finally wake up?

Casey, Cordoba and Curry

It's pretty daunting to try and come back and write after what seems like an eternity.

Casey is still here, but since I start school again tomorrow I decided to sit down and try and work on some homework and let him go skate for a bit. The homework thing is slow going, due to being absolutely non-academic for however long and forgetting what exactly my assignments were, and also due to the procrastination bug that I've contracted since I've gotten here. I should probably get my ass in gear, though, because I have less than a month until the semester is over and finals begin, and I have a few nagging projects that I should be taking care of like...now.

Having Casey here has been amazing and amazing and amazing. We've had a ton of fun and I've tried to be good about taking him to see things that are good to see. We've done a good deal of city wandering, trotted up to San Miguel Alto for the view of a lifetime (a few times), walked down the hill and meandered between the caves, and hiked up to the Alhambra and had a picnic lunch up in the gardens with a tubby black cat that enjoyed our potato chips.

He made me a Thanksgiving dinner, brought Torfurkey for me and everything and we cooked up stuffing and mashed potatoes and it was heavenly and lasted us three meals. He also brought chocolate chips and syrup and we made potatoes and have had a million tasty Casey-breakfasts with different varieties of his delicious potatoes and scrambles and omelets and fried eggs and toast with the honey peach jam my Karen sent me from Twin Palms Ranch and made tasty veggie burgers and homemade french fries and had Casey's tasty curry at a little dinner with some California friends.

We went to the sweet little cafe I fell in love with when I first came here, Bohemia, and stopped by El Piano for some of their tasty little boats of vegetarian, gluten free deliciousness; we went to the science museum and gawked at the T-Rex exhibit and the MC Escher exhibit and the human body exhibit and went up on the tower and looked at the mountains with binoculars. We had beer and tapas with Sydney, went to el Tango and la Marisma, and another veggie place I'd never been to and we went to FrescCo, which is exactly like Fresh Choice, except it's Spain so they don't have salad dressing.

We woke up painfully early one morning and took a bus to Cordoba, had greasy churros at the bus station, walked through the pretty green park and picked oranges and befriended ducks and found a stretch of pretty old fountains, wandered to the Mezquita with it's weird juxtaposition of intricate Muslim decorum and gaudy Catholic gold and statues, ate sandwiches and stumbled upon a calligraphy exhibition in a place called la Casa Arabe, where we found an unlocked conference room and pretended to lecture into the little microphones and then got kicked out, found the big Plaza de las Tendillas and searched in vain for a skate park, had patatas bravas and pizza for lunch and drank a pitcher of sweet rummy sangria, walked some more and had a coffee, and went back to the park where two kids on bicycles came swerving at us out of nowhere and one kid hit the curb and fell off his bike, and then smacked Casey in the face, claiming he'd been thrown off of it, and we just walked away because he was so tiny and it was so ridiculous, and then took the evening bus home.

We took Gypsy to the vet (thrills!) and Casey has been winning over the  kitties with his belly scratches, and they've both been sleeping on our faces and being ridiculous. We woke up early another morning and took the bus to the Sierra Nevada, since Case has never been to the snow, but we discovered that the snow was mostly blocked off for skiers or other paying customers, so we just wandered around and rode this silly little sled ride and broke the ice on a frozen over pond and pet a pony and had pasta lunch and befriended a sweet boxer dog and drank hot chocolate. We went to el Camborio and wooed each other with our equally horrible dancing, and slept in almost everyday, which is a real feat for Casey.

We celebrated our third year anniversary by getting fancied up and trying to go to a vegetarian restaurant called Paprika, which turned out to be closed for "technical reasons," and then walked down Calle Elvira until we stumbled upon an absolutely delicious Indian restaurant where I had the best food I've had since I've been here (maybe excluding our breakfasts): potato cauliflower curry and creamy spinach with paneer, rice and cheesy nan followed by a strange mango ice cream that was kind of...grainy. Then we rolled ourselves up the hill and watched two mediocre romantic comedies.

Now it's Sunday, and school starts back up tomorrow and Casey leaves in four days, which is kind of bleak. Having him here is worrisome in that it makes me preemptively miss him more than ever, but on the bright side my mom has finally gotten her tickets to come see me in February; exactly one month and one day away. I'm excited because she'll be here for two full weeks, and even though I really miss my step dad and brother, I know we'll have a ton of fun hanging out just the two of us. So, as per usual, life is good.

Moving and Merriment

I'm finally very, very pleased to announce that I have moved! Friday Karim saved my life by driving over to my old apartment and helping me load all my stuff up and then unload it into the new house. When we carried all my things in, he paused and read one of the many walls that are covered with multicolored cut out letters and told me, "This is a hippy house," with a playful teasing voice. I just laughed, because only a week or so ago he also told me he is slowly realizing I am quite the hippy myself. (This was in conjunction with a conversation about why we Americans insist on using our nerdy reusable water bottles.)

Anyway, the first day I got all unpacked and rearranged the furniture and Gypsy hid in the closet and sniffed around the corners of the room. That night I discovered that despite wearing a thick pair of leggings, a pair of sweat pants, a T-shirt, a sweater and a sweatshirt, I still kept waking up shivering under my flannel sheets and comforter. So Saturday Sravani and I went to Carrefour Planet, this huge Walmart type place that made me feel weird and claustrophobic-- it's been ages since I've been in such a huge supermarket!-- and I bought another comforter (with feathers!) and a little heater. I'm still wearing a billion layers to bed, but it's much better now. Check out my new room! It's much bigger.

My house consists of two Spanish guys and a woman from Hong Kong, an orange cat named Gato and a little corgi-type dog whose name I can't quite figure out, but whom I've decided to call Cristo. His real name sounds a lot like that. There's also a stripey cat that comes over to hang out with Gato a lot. I think s/he needs a name, so let me know if you have any ideas.

Gato and neighbor cat having a wild rumpus.

So far Gypsy has gotten pretty used to our room, but is not so sure about his new animal companions. Him and Gato have been hissing at each other and making weird cat growls, but mostly have just stared each other down a lot. Gypsy also hissed at Cristo at first but as we speak, the pup is sleeping in our room and Gypsy has fallen asleep trying to look vigilant.

On Saturday, my housemate David had his girlfriend's sister and her family over to have dinner and watch the futbol game (Barca vs. Madrid). They had these two absolutely adorable little girls, and I ended up hanging out with them for a while. Everyone was so nice and the seven year old girl was really eager to show off her English to me (knees! eyes! may I please go to the bathroom!). They were also absolutely obsessed with the animals. I kept Gypsy up in my room to avoid child-trauma but I let them come say hi to him briefly. They even fed my face which was super nice and super delicious. Later I crept into the kitchen and tried to quietly wash dishes but David still came and yelled at me. Things have changed, things have definitely changed.

Miriam and Gato. BFFL.

Yesterday, Sydney and Michelle came over and we had our first dinner in the new house! This proved a little tricky because although my kitchen is awesome and spacious, it is lacking in the actual dish arena. Like... we literally don't have bowls. Or mugs. But dinner turned out great and we shared with Borja, my housemate, and all hung out and bonded and it was jolly.

 A reenactment of the knife-wielding hug that Syd and I shared when I discovered that she's going to be around for the holidays (and therefore for my birthday!)

 

We had rice with eggplant, red and green pepper, green beans, zucchini, onions and garlic slathered with sriracha and chilli sauce, with a side of roasted garlic potatoes. We kinda also almost killed Borja with spiciness (Spaniards don't really do spicy) but he powered through thanks to wine, water and crackers.

This morning I ate rice and veggie leftovers with fried eggs and it turned out to be absolutely gorgeous so I went up to the terrace to eat.

Check out this gorgeous view!

And I made tea....

Yeah. We have a serious mug/glass/cup of any sort shortage. Hopefully today I will find the time to buy some real cups but other than that I'm stooooked! I'll try and put up a photo of my basement sometime soon, it's literally the ultimate chill spot: little wooden bar area, bar stools and a tall table, cushy chair and couch. Can't wait to get my fiesta on here!!

Portugal: Porto

Our first night in Porto we were rather sleepy and it was a Sunday, so there wasn't much incentive to be active. We were mostly just hungry, and this Malaysian girl had given us some ramen packets that didn't fit in her bag so we decided to be desperate and cheap and ghetto and make what was left of our spaghetti noodles and kinda mix them into the ramen, but this proved to be easier said then done because EVERYONE was having kitchen disasters/cooking at the same time and causing a ruckus and making it impossible to get burner space or pots. Someone attempted to cook meat by putting it in the oven straight on the rack, someone tried deep frying chicken, almost caused an oil fire, burnt the crap out of the chicken and then ran out of oil and someone else broke a plate. It was a fiasco. But we did it. And it was, well, pretty alright. Then we spent a good long time having shadow puppet shows on the walls and creating a ridiculous story about an overweight seeing-eye dog.

 "We laughed, we cried, we cringed."

Cape Dude vs. Claw Man

The next day we met two sisters that were triplets and also turned out to be basically the nicest humans alive. But I'll get to that. They'd been robbed in Lisbon and one of them, Jill, had her entire bag stolen but was still cheery and energetic. We decided to do our sight seeing with them and wandered around beautiful Porto together. We looked at some...old buildings (you should know by now I fail at remembering the "important" historic stuff) and walked through a market that was supposed to be fairly well known but was coming to a close. I bought something that I thought was a chocolate pastry and it turned out to be more egg-cream, dusted with cinnamon. But it was tasty and the guy was funny and popped into my photo very eagerly.

We walked through a historic old part of town by the river where the buildings were (extra) crumbling and picturesque and rustic and everything good and European and photogenic. But my favorite part about the city was the actual river with it's cute little boats and the view of all the sweet little buildings stacked up from across the river, in Gaia.

Gaia is where all the Port houses are, so we went across and found a free wine tasting tour, which turned out to be way more interesting than I anticipated. Plus we got a free taste afterwards and it was really nice. Courtney really wanted to buy a little wine bottle gift set to bring back but we'd flown into Porto with RyanAir and they're really intense about the size of your carry on (even your purse has to fit in your bag!) But (and this is where the girls' extreme niceness comes in!) since Jill had been robbed she offered to take some of Leah and Courtney's stuff so they wouldn't get stuck paying extra for a check on! (Leah had bought two pairs of boots and Court bought a bunch of stuff at the flea market.) They were flying out the next morning suuuper early (the same flight as us but a day earlier) and they were staying in Madrid, but she offered to meet up with us after our flight on Wednesday and bring their stuff. We were flabbergasted by the offer! Needless to say, Courtney got her souvenirs.

After wine we all went back to the first restaurant where we had tried our first francesinhas on day one and all indulged in the saucy treat. Mmm. I miss those already... Mmm.

Fun fact: the original title for the Portugal blog was going to be Putting on the Pounds in Portugal, but since I broke it up so much, I decided to be more practical and boring about it.

That night, after our free shots (yeah, the hostel gives out a free shot at 11 every night!) we asked the guy at our hostel for going-out advice and he directed us to this area where the bars were having a 2-for-1 night of almost all of their ENORMOUS drinks. We ended up finding this huge flock of like 18-year-old Portuguese medicine students that were REALLY wasted and REALLY enthused about us and about their weird misconceptions about the United States. At one point one of them told me, "I'm going to be a doctor! I will cut open your heart and change it for the heart of a black woman! I'm not racist." And another kept making sexual propositions and commented, "I'm a virgin, you could do me a favor!"

We ended staying out pretty fucking late and missing breakfast the next day, but we had to check out by noon, which was a little rough. Luckily Yes! Porto (the hostel) is awesome and let us leave all our crap in their closet and make sandwiches and stuff. We decided to wander about some more, and we'd seen these air tram gondola type things the day before and thought maybe it'd be cool to go on one. We found what we thought was the entrance for it and were shocked that tickets were only a little over one euro, so we waited in excited anticipation and then boarded. The glass compartment began to lift, up, up and we could see the river, and the bridge, and then, suddenly... we entered a tunnel...and came to a stop. We laughed so hard I cried; apparently we'd gotten onto some strange form of public transportation. It was basically a glorified elevator; a way of getting from one part of the city on the bottom of the hill to a higher up part... We are geniuses.

What we thought we were riding...

After that hilarious fiasco we just gave up and decided to go to wine tasting again at a different place: Taylor's. This time they gave us tastes before the tour, and gave us two types to try, a tawny and a ruby, and also had some really nice olive oil for us to to taste! This time we also took the tour in English and the woman seemed really stoked off everything. I definitely learned a lot! For example, I didn't know that in order to make ruby into tawny port you had to store it in smaller barrels, to maximize contact with the wood, but that new wood reacts with the strong alcohol content to create really strong vanilla flavors (which is often how vanilla extract is actually made!) and so they have to use barrels that have already been used to make regular wine before. Hella yeah, free knowledge AND free booze. Taylor's: 2 UC System: 0. Ouch.

Their ceiling also happened to be one of the coolest things ever.

After having another taste of wine and perusing the giftshop items, we did some souvenir and postcard shopping and some more meadnering and then Courtney met up with one of our new Portuguese pals and Leah and I got some food and went to relax at the hostel. After sleeping around five hours, we were pretty beat. The hostel, as I mentioned, was super fucking chill, so they said we could hang out until the wee hours when we had to catch our flight. I ended up falling asleep on the couch for a pretty hearty nap, and eventually Courtney came back with some of the Portuguese kids and one of them played a little guitar and we ended up talking to a ton of different batches of people. As it got later, people dropped off one by one and Court fell asleep and Leah attempted to, so I ended up chatting for a good while with the night shift front desk guy, who was actually super interesting and nice. He was a film student and told me about how one of his teachers wanted all the students to get naked together as a part of the creative process, the idea being that directing a film requires baring your whole self and being okay with your whole self, as you are, so physical nudity is a kind of metaphor/jump-start for the process.

At three thirty in the morning, we gobbled down some noodles and packed the last our stuff to a soundtrack of Russian dubstep. Russians, apparently, are insane... There was a group of them, largely wearing SHORTS in the freezing December weather, pounding down shots at three am and goading the hostel worker dude to drink with them while blasting weird tunes, talking about how they'd swam in the ocean earlier in the days and cheering because their futbol team had beat a Portuguese one.

At four am we caught a night bus to the airport and headed back for Spain. We took the metro to the bus station and Jill showed up bright and early with Courtney and Leah's stuff and she had even stopped at the store and bought us fresh bread, some crunchy cheese puff type things and some apple juice. How did that even happen? We couldn't believe our luck. She said after getting robbed she guessed she needed some karma points but, damn, we're impressed.

In closing:

Look how cute this patient pup is, waiting for her human to finish buying groceries.