St Barthélemy

I'm on vacation, which you may notice is the time when I kick back, post too much on Facebook, and write long missives after hard days soaking in the sun/culture/what-have-you. I am spoiled. And currently suffering the accompanying sunburn--serves me right.

The first family vacation with Hannah Phoebe (my lovely niece of 15 months) is under way! She has charmed much of the island of St Barthélemy, the language barrier being a non-issue for the pre-linguistic little darling.

For those who are not familiar, the island is French, Caribbean, mountainous, and filled with the extremely wealthy, the extremely beautiful, and the extremely reclusive. It has been remarked that the construction workers may have part time modeling gigs.

While most of the family vacation has been spent zipping about in our rented cars from beach to beach, hitting up French bakeries, and figuring out which days the butcher roasts chickens, the good stuff to report is always when things go awry. Here's a snippet.

Typical tourist behavior

Quick cast of characters, for those who don't know the family:

Mom: my mother
Dad: my father
Uncle Tony: my parents' dearest friend; part of the family since Peace Corps days
Larry: my brother
Debby: my sister-in-law
Hannah: my aforementioned nièce, who is also known as Banana, The Banana, T. Banana, and, of late, Banane

It's after the first hard day at the beach. Mom and Dad and Uncle Tony have been sent to pick up groceries at the Marché U, get some bread from the bakery, and see if the butcher is roasting chickens. Debby, Larry, Hannah, and I go home to rinse the sea out of our hair and feed the Banana before her fast approaching bedtime. We had, earlier in the day, been lounging on the deck, reading, sunning, trying to remember how to relax (except the Banana, who is very good at relaxing, and at making sure those in her immediate surroundings cannot--but in the most endearing of ways!) when suddenly my brother felt something brush against his leg, and, realizing that his daughter was in plain view, and therefore not brushing against his leg, let out an obscene yelp that brought the whole family to attention. Fearing the worst (and the worst when there's a baby on deck is pretty terrifying), we leapt from our reading materials to investigate, but Hannah had been calmly eating a pretzel and banging her favorite rock on the deck, which activities ceased when we all realized that the brushing-up-against had been done by none other than a watermelon-sized turtle who had joined us without our noticing. Hannah, for whom the turtle was neither more or less exciting than, say, the sliding screen door (also a novelty, if you're 1 going on 2), noticed that all attention was fixed on it, and that she was being pulled away from it. This was fine with her, until the turtle started eating her abandoned pretzel, at which point she burst into tears at the injustice.

Âllo oui?

All this back story in order to introduce an important 8th character to the cast. Snapper (not named by us--in fact I don't care for this name. I am going to call him Turtle) is a frequent visitor to 'La Petrel,' the house we are renting. He was in fact mentioned in the house instructions. Namely that checking behind car tires before leaving the driveway is important to his continued existence.

So we're coming back from the beach, excited about the prospect of poulet rôti and whatever accoutrements Uncle Tony will be whipping up for dinner. Larry and I hit the showers while Debby attends to Hannah. After a few minutes, Larry and I come streaking out of our respective showers, soaking and soapy and prematurely wrapped in towels for some semblance of modesty, because we have each realized that neither of the shower drains is functioning, and as a result there are two puddles, one from each bathroom, that are joining forces to flood our two bedrooms and part of the living room. Orders fly fast and furious, and Debby, who has been diapering the baby, now begins frantically herding all our belongings above the flood line while Hannah sits her dry diaper down in the growing puddle. We lay towels down like sandbags as Larry searches for a mop or other useful flood-deterring implement, then Debby looks out the window and, with intense calm that is evidence of experience with crisis counseling, speaks. 

"I think the turtle is dead and the cats are eating it." 

Larry, still in a towel, comes running, brandishing a squeegy. Turtle has indeed seen better days. He is outside the window, on his back, cocked awkwardly to one side, and there are two wiry cats with feathered collars circling around and nipping at him. There is cat feces nearby, which is ominous, besides being disgusting. Turtle waves his stubby little legs. Not dead. Hannah puts her hands up against the screen door and gurgles. A screen door! Larry yells at the cats, who scamper away in that reproachful, feline way, then he sets Turtle upright. Turtle blinks, perhaps to clear his head, and walks off into the underbrush as we all watch. 

"Did I save him, or is that just part of being a turtle?" muses Larry. 

Wetness creeping against our feet is a reminder that there is still a flood watch in effect, and we scurry about unclogging drains and squeegying the waters out the various screen doors as Hannah runs around us. We manage to shower and tidy up, and by the time the parents arrive at La Petrel, we are a scene of perfect tranquility, sipping dark-and-stormies while Hannah eats a pretzel and bangs her favorite rock onto the deck.

"You might want to check the drain in your shower," I say to my parents, waving my drink in the direction of the house.

"Yes," says Dad, who has stayed at this house before, "You have to take the drains apart or the showers flood."

FIN

 

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.