The Christmas I Finally Became An Adult

So I arrive in DC sleep deprived (bad child) and immediately realize that I need to snap out of it, because my dad and grandma have gotten a horrible stomach bug that has left my 92 year old grandma looking completely exhausted and my dad running to the bathroom with alarming frequency. My sister-in-law has been so preoccupied with her own baby baby that she hasn't had time to go shopping for the teenage mother she 'adopted' for the holidays.

Task 1:

Hey bloggy! You work with urban youth, can you find a collection of wintry items, not too expensive, that a 19 year old mommy might like?

Done. I know just the thing, and Dad’s coming along for a run to Best Buy. Piece of cake. Excepting the epic lines at Old Navy, and the DC traffic jam. Do the grocery shopping while we’re out? No problem! C'mon people, challenge me!

Task 2:

Christmas Eve: all things.

Ok, I've been challenged. Christmas Eve, it may come as no surprise, is rife with traditional food that my parents typically handle. I know how to do a fair number of the dishes, but the lihamirakkapiraas (sp?) is something I've never attempted. Since I’ve barred my dad from the kitchen for obvious reasons, and the bro and sis-in-law are busy with the baby, and my mom is so worried about my grandma as to render her more or less useless, I make the damn liha. It's an elaborate affair involving three kinds of meat enveloped in a sourdough crust with interlocking lattice on top. 

I also whip up lunch for everyone and wrap all the presents for Santa's bag (that's a whole 'nother goddamn Scandinavian tradition to be addressed later...), and make the chocolate raspberry torte for Christmas Day.

Successful completion brought on the terrifying feeling that I might, finally, be an adult.

I drew the line at playing Santa, though I would have done it if my brother had procrastinated for ten seconds longer. You see, every year on Christmas Eve when my brother and I were small, my parents carried out an old Finnish tradition, in which Joulupukki comes to call leaving gifts for all the (overgrown in our case) well-behaved children. Joulupukki is Finnish Santa, though the original tradition involved a goat ramming his head on the door and demanding gifts. I always wondered why we had a goat at the top of our Christmas tree instead of a star or an angel like other people.

In any case, when we were kids, Dad dressed up as Santa Claus and delivered one present to each family member on Christmas Eve. Now that we’re bigger, Dad’s duties have been transferred to whomever Mom picks, or to the person who drinks too much and thinks it might be fun. We knew my Jewish sister-in-law was a trooper when she agreed to be Santa one year, but now she, like the rest of us, tries to rest on her laurels unless called upon. Anyway, for the photo op, my brother plays Santa, and holds his one-month old baby, who doesn’t even flinch at his exuberant ringing of sleigh bells. 

Task 3:

Christmas day. Make the boula (here again I've made up the spelling. Feel free to correct me) before xmas breakfast. It’s a delicious yeasted cardamom bread that is my favorite tradition, which is why I get up at 7 to knead and rise, knead and rise, braid and rise. Then I relinquish the Christmasy reigns, which is a lovely break, except that when it comes time to make Christmas dinner, my brother is wrapped up in photoshooting the baby for the billionth time with his new camera lens, and he burns the shit out of the first element of dinner. I tell him to concentrate on the baby.

Task 4:

Leave DC in the midst of an Eastern Seaboard disaster of a Christmas storm. None of us proved capable of this.

Welcome! I'm a bloggy bloggy blogster!

I decided today to organize my travel emails so that this blog I started might serve a useful purpose, namely to help me remember what the heck I've been doing for the past few years. So if you feel like rooting around in my memory bank, feel free.

Also, if anyone has the first travel email I ever wrote, circa July 2002--the one about getting stuck on the toilet in Japan--please please send it my way. This will never be complete without it.

Italy: Ahem

I mumble.

I have always been vaguely annoyed when people don´t understand me when I´m mumbling, but I would like to take this opportunity to bow before everyone who has ever been subjected to my mumbling and beg forgiveness. For Kate, when she is tired, when she is hot--and we spend most of our time hot and tired--mumbles. And it is sublimely annoying (this is not something I remember about her. Either my memory is going, or my hearing is).

Luckily I, too, am annoying.

My most annoying quality on this trip, or at least what I hope is my most annoying quality, comes each evening when the sun lowers its fierce head and people begin to greet each other with ´buonasera´ instead of the daytime ´buongiorno´. Shortly after being forced to say ´buonasera´for the first time, this  Louis Prima song pops into my head, and no matter how resolved I am to keep my mouth shut, it always leaks out when I´m not paying attention. Now, this might be kind of funny and even charming the first time. But we were in Italy for 13 days. I doesn´t help that I only know about 10 words that I sing over and over. Over and over. Poor Kate.

Fortunately, as well as rediscovering each other´s irritating qualities, Kate and I are remembering how hard we can laugh together, especially when the going gets rough.

Speaking of which.

Kate and I left our Gentleman´s Farm. We decided, incidentally, that WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms, the organization that led us to the farm) should in many cases be renamed Willing Workers for the Landed Gentry. Especially because I would much prefer saying I was WWFTLGing than WWOOFing (arf). We spent many of our Organic work hours varnishing Claudio´s doors and window frames and getting loopy on the fumes. So much time that we have converted ´varnish´ into a curse word. But hey, Claudio was a helluva cook, so that made it worth it. Also we got to harvest a lot of lavender, which was sickeningly picturesque.

Anyway, we returned to Rome and immediately went on a quest for gelato and pizza, following new recommendations from Claudio and Michelle. By just after midnight we were well sated and ready to take on the Notte di Caravaggio tour of churches. In honor of the 400th anniversary of the lamentable death of Caravaggio, (not his real name) Roma was having a great celebration wherein all the churches housing his work were kept open all night and there were historians around to explain the brilliance of the various masterpieces and a free bus was provided between the churches. This is further evidence of sane people choosing to be nocturnal when possible in Rome in July. The line for the first church was crushingly long,...

...and when we finally got in we couldn´t focus long enough to try to understand the Italian historians. Thoroughly exhausted, we threw in the towel and got a cab (such decadence!) back to our lodging.

Now there were three layers of security in the apartment building where we were staying. The first layer was not so secure, since the lock wasn´t latched and we just pushed through the door. The second layer was the one that stymied us. At 1 AM time does strange things for those of us who prefer going to sleep at 10. We fought that lock for what seemed like days. First Kate, then me, then Kate, then me. The marble steps were cool and inviting, and we were all but resolved to sleep there for the night, when we decided to make one last ditch effort. Having lost most ability for verbal communication, I took up the key, shoved it back in the lock for the 2000th time, and turned. As usual, it made an encouraging sound that seemed to communicate that the bolt had moved. But the door, as usual, remained unfazed. "Push and pull," I instructed Kate, and with a wild look in her eye, Kate complied. She threw herself at the doorknob, then drew it back with all her farmer might. Again and again she did this, and we started laughing maniacally. All the while I put pressure on the key, first one way, then the other, till finally, and this was truly a miraculous moment because both of us had lost hope at this point, the key turned! A moment of epiphany! Caravaggio´s light touched us!

 (This is what the light was like at that tender moment when the key turned.)

And Kate, still carrying the momentum of push-and-pull, fell into the apartment. The key I was still holding dragged me behind her, and we tumbled in, landing in a heap in the entryway. Helpless giggles ensued. Push and Pull. Put your back into it. It´s good advice.

Italy: Forgive me...

...for I am in Italy and I am going to tell you about a meal.

We arrived in Rome without a guidebook, but with a list as long as your arm of recommendations from friends who have explored Rome enough to find the hidden treasures every food-and-culture obsessed traveler seeks. Go to La Lucia and eat the coniglio caccitora (thank you Stephanie). Stay in a monastery, they're cheap, clean, and oh the nuns! (thank you Evan). Pizzarium, west of the Vatican, has the best pizza in the world (thank you Max's mom). The problem with our tome of juicy insider knowledge was that we tried to do everything on each person's list,eat every dish at each food establishment, and all under the brutal Roman sun when any sensible being with any say in the matter must have been curled up in a siesta from 11 AM to 5 PM. What I mean to say is that we over-Romed. And now, from a hillside just outside of Rome, I have a moment to share with you. It is from Stephanie's carefully crafted list of delights, and it involved inhumane amounts of hearty Roman peasant food.

The Romana who served us did not beat about the bush. Smoker's voice and teeth to match, stringy hair and sparkling eyes, she smacked both palms on our plastic sidewalk table--had their been a sidewalk--and leaned forward, offering us our only choice of the evening: "Bianco o rosso?!" I am not being coy in withholding the name of the restaurant; we just couldn't find any marker that announced it. It is pressed into the side of a hill in Trastevere, at the foot of the Janiculum stairs, at the end of Vicolo del Cedro. That is enough if you ever want to find it.

We chose rosso, and soon the table wine and pitcher of good Roman tap water plunked down onto the green-and-white plastic table cloth. Almost immediately the first wave of food was upon us--bruschetta with thick chunks of tomatoes, languid, savory beans dissolving into their savory sauce, spicy mashed potatoes that were a startling fiery orange. We were still smiling when the pasta bowl arrived--simple parmigiano and pepper. But when the next two bowls of pasta arrived, panic nestled into my stomach somewhere between the bread and the pasta and the potatoes. The only solution was more rosso.

 Pasta Anguish

 More Rosso

When the segundi presented themselves, one squid one chicken, we were practically lashing ourselves in penitence. We could not eat it all. The squid was nothing to write home about (ahaha), but the chicken tasted so much like chicken it was almost indecent. With the arrival of dessert came the arrival of even more diners. More tables drawn onto the street, more family, friends, regulars. It felt very much like we were crashing a neighborhood party. With the anise biscuits, limoncello, and grappa, and months of catching up to do, Kate and I barely made it back to the convent by curfew.

Limoncello. Grappa. Anise Biscuits.

Meh. Squid

I could go on like this. I could describe every topping on the finest pizza I've ever had (so far). I could tell you about watching the fruit crates roll into the gelateria and the gelato and sorbetto roll out (fragoline di bosco! how you torture me!), but it is already feeling a bit too nostalgic. We have moved on, relocated to a 'farm' outside the city, which is really the vegetable patch of an old gentleman called Claudio who was the director of a local TV channel until Berlusconi bought it up. He is 72 and works in the garden with his pacemaker despite the protestations of his fluttery American wife. We work alongside Filip and Anna, the sweetest Swedish couple you can ever imagine. We call Claudio 'Cloudy,' which with his shock of white hair and limited range of hearing, is the perfectest term of endearment. It is hot. The meals are long, and the siesta is longer. Life is good.

The DR: Adios, Dominicana

Amigas, amigos. The last installment from La Dominicana. I have been traveling a bit, to the mountains and to the beach. I’ve finally gotten the requisite sunburn. Silvana (amiga mía preciosa—¡voy a extrañar verte en tu natural habitat aquí!) has been driving me around the Capital, too.  

Through my travels I have come to appreciate the Dominican usage of the horn. We Americans have an extremely limited sense of what the beep of a car horn can communicate. For us it means ‘Danger!’ or ‘Hurry up.’ Here in the DR it is like ‘Aloha’ in Hawaiian. It means ‘Hello,’ it means ‘Goodbye,’ it means ‘Watch out I’m about to crush you like a bug,’ and it means ‘I’m here, please don’t crush me like a bug!’ It means ‘I’m passing you on this dangerous road.’ Beep beep. It means ‘I’m coming around this blind curve on the wrong side of the road.’ Beeeeeep. It means ‘I am a guagua [bus], need a ride?’ It means, ‘Hey cutie’ and it means ‘Move it or lose it.’ Very communicative. Beep beep.

Since I came here to learn to speak like a Dominican, I suppose I’ll end with a little taste of what I’ve learned in the streets:

La Lengua Callejera Dominicana

[Dominican Street Talk]

Amigo: ¡Hola rubia!

Friend: [Hi white girl!]

Yo: ¡Hola moreno!

Me: [Hi brown guy!]

Amigo: Dime a ve' ¿que lo que?

[somewhere between ‘what’s up’ and ‘how’s it hanging’]

Yo: Cogiendo lucha, mi hermano

[grinning Life’s a struggle, bro.]

Amigo: ¿Ya comiste?

[Did you eat yet?]

Yo: ¡Tu ‘ta mofle! Ya son la 10

[You’re way behind! Literally, ‘You’re a muffler!’ It’s already 10]

Amigo: ¡Coño, pero tengo hambre!

[Damn, but I’m hungry!]

Yo: Bueno, vamo a comel, amigo.

[ok, let’s go eat, buddy]

Scene.

I am going to miss it here. I am going to miss the bachata and merengue, and the fried food, and the open hearts.

The DR: On dancing, Adolescence, and Breasts

¡Hola otra vez!

 

*On dancing

Dominicans are completely confused when you tell them that a lot of Americans don’t dance. ”Especially the men,” I explained once. “But what do they do?” was the bemused response. “What do they do at night? What do they do at parties?” Dancing here is like walking; if you can’t do it, you must have a sprained ankle. And music is everywhere. Even when we went out to the countryside, the riverside bungalow was equipped with a dance floor and a set of giant vocinas. Speakers. We blasted merengue and bachata out over the river. Loida and her boyfriend danced.

Daniel is teaching me bachata and merengue. I like dancing with him because I don’t have to worry about what it means. When we’re dancing together it means we’re dancing together, na’ma’ (which is Dominican for ‘nada más’ which is Spanish for ‘nothing more’). When I’m dancing with Dominicans, dancing too close seems to have sketchy significance, keeping distance is stiff and uptight, blah blah blah. Anyway, even a rhythmically challenged white girl can manage these dance steps. I can’t do anything fancy, and I certainly don’t look native, but I can get by. Still, poor Dan. His girlfriend works most nights at a pharmacy and he’s stuck on the dance floor with an amateur.

*On Lisbeth y Santa

I am getting to be friends with Lisbeth and Santa. They are both 12, but on opposite ends of the growth spectrum. Santica is tiny, Lisbeth looks like she’s 15. Santa moves like a cat and is learning the fine art of butt shaking; Lisbeth doesn’t quite know what to do with her limbs yet. They are both in the house day in and day out. Sometimes they do chores, but mostly they just chill.

It’s strange to think they could be my students. I can hardly imagine hanging out so much with my students without going crazy, but of course, I am not their teacher. In fact they are the ones doing the teaching most of the time. How to cook, how to do laundry, how to pronounce things in Spanish…. Today Lisbeth brought out Santa’s diary and read me one of the stories. Díos mio. It was about a girl named Camila whose father let her go on a cruise for her 15^th birthday, her quinseañera. On the cruise she met a very cute boy named Raúl. He gave her cards and flowers and their romance developed until the last night of the cruise, when she gave him the most important thing in her life: her virginity. The next day, he gave her one last gift before they parted: a box and a card that said, “Do not open until you get home.” She obeyed. When she got home she opened the box and inside was a black flower and a note that said, “Welcome to the world of AIDS.”

Interpret at will, my friends.

*On boobs

I have never seen breasts like I´ve seen in this country. This is not necessarily because they have not been around, but because they have not been quite so…well displayed. Lovely wobbly breasts are absolutely everywhere. I find them very funny for some reason. In a country full of low cut shirts, there have been a few women whose shirts have been so exposing that I’ve been convinced the boobs would pop out at any moment. Bubble right out of their nests. One such woman was rather large. She was apparently not as concerned as I was that her boobies might get loose, so she danced a wiggly sort of dance, and I think I was not the only one wondering if they might just…might just…oops. They didn’t. But her show offered some real competition to the main attraction, which was the woman at the other end of the room who was channeling an African spirit named Ogún Balañó.

But that is a whole different story.

The DR: On Men, Food, and Beauty

Preamble: It is a great irony to lose one´s voice when one is trying to learn a language. At the same time it’s a bit of a reprieve—a sanctioned break from struggling through mutilated sentences. It’s a break for those who have to listen to me, too! I’m drinking lots of tea with honey and lime. All will be better soon.

And now on to what you've all be waiting for.

*On men

Darío! Ha! For the record, Darío is no tiguere. In Ecuador they were called ‘tiburones’—sharks. Here they are called ‘tigueres’—tigers. They are guys who hang out on corners and say enticing things like, ‘Hey girlfriend!’ or ‘Hey [insert person’s color]’ or, for my benefit, and this is one of my personal favorites, ‘American people! I love you baby!’ No, Darío is not a tiguere, he’s a guy who works with Loida in politics, managing a team of people who…and that’s where I stopped understanding what he was saying when he explained what he does.

It was an awkward situation to begin with. The two of us were swimming with mucha gente. Me, Darío, the people who had brought us together, and half the rest of the DR. We were in the mountains, escaping the heat of the city. 

 This was taken when the crowd had subsided considerably

The funny thing is, no one here has any tolerance for cold, so even though I thought the water was lovely (and we all know how wimpy I am), Darío, who is a great hunk of man, was shivering visibly. I asked if he wanted to go back to the table, gesturing toward the terrace above where other people from our party were hanging out with the our bags. He thought I had asked him to “dar una vuelta” which I guess in this case is go for a walk around the swimming hole. Whatever. I said yes to the question he thought I had posed. Vamo. So we’re chatting, me practically naked in my bikini, him fully clothed, having gone swimming in his shorts and T shirt. What do we do for a living? How do we know Loida? Nothing intimate whatsoever. Then the inevitable. He asks if I have a boyfriend. I pause, then say, “Vamos a decir que sí” Let’s say I do. Of course I immediately wished I’d just said, “Si” and left it at that, but his response? Not ‘What do you mean by that?’ or ‘How long have you been together?’ or anything like that. He says, “I like that you’re honest about it. It’s probably just as well. You’re only here for a month and I’m very sensitive. I get attached to people.” He took my blank stare of utter bewilderment to be a linguistic problem, and repeated what he'd said slowly and more clearly. It was all I could do to keep it together. I smiled and nodded and led the way back to our group. Awkward silence plagued us from that moment forth.

*On food

Ayayay the fried food.  It is a test of a person’s metabolism.

 Breakfast with Luz: eggs with yucca, or mangu, or tostones whatever strikes her fancy. 

Dinner with Maria: Empanadas

 Vacation food I: Coconut on Playa Rincón

 Vacation food II: Fish, Rice, and Beans on Playa Rincón

Playa Rincón

*On beauty

Obesity and beauty are most definitely not mutually exclusive categories here. There are plenty of flacos and flaquitas, but big boned boys and girls get down and dirty on the dance floor, too. And I mean dirty. And everyone and their mother gets…appreciated…by any audience. There always seem to be people watching. On the street, in the discotecas, in the park. They notice, they comment, the feedback is always good. I wonder why people devote so much time to preening, when they’re just as likely to get attention walking around with rollers in their hair as when they’re all made up, with straight and smooth and shiny locks. I love seeing people in rollers, incidentally. Cracks me up.

 

La Santica in Rollers

And that´s quite enough for now.