1. restaurant servings are shockingly huge. literally shocking.
2. indoor places--like malls and airports--smell like sugar.
3. people say thank you a lot. thank you thank you thank you, no thank you.
4. strangers smile at each other when they pass on the sidewalk.
5. people often pretend that they understand what someone else is talking about, even when they don't (which i know isn't unique to the US, but i'd forgotten how often it goes on here).
6. this country is crazily segregated.
7. it's amazing how much toilet paper you can put in a toilet and it still won't clog.
8. so much goes to waste. ha. that's funny, considering number 7.
9. people are invested in reality television.
10. obama isn't such a big deal any more. kind of incredible, kind of sad.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
a smattering of pictures
i wanted to post these pictures as i took them, but alas, the internet in nepal was too slow for uploading photos. and then once i got to india, i was on vacation and didn't spend much time online. enjoy.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
somewhere between newark and boston:
I'm giving myself a gentle welcome to the U.S.: Aaron Neville, Bob Marley, and Bob Dylan--old, beloved friends, guys my dad loves, too, words I know by heart.
To me, the Newark airport smelled like sugar. Everywhere, everywhere, things to buy. I rode the moving walkway and stared like a voyeur at all the stores, the restaurants, the bars, at all the clean, richly dressed people going into and out of them. Sometimes when I get home, Americans disgust me a little; today, I felt in awe of them, separate and lesser.
So it's old men's voices for me, ear buds pushed in deep to create a seal. I won't be here just yet. On power-cut nights in Kathmandu, with road strikes and taxi-fires outside, I reach for obscure indie rock--of-the-moment-music to make me feel like I'm still part of the things that people my age and nationality are doing. But today, on this sun-lit, too-bright airplane, on the way to meet my parents after five months in Asia, I just want to be comforted.
"This morning" (it was almost forty eight hours ago, now) I was at a five star hotel restaurant, eating Goan pao bhaji in a mini skirt. Just a morning before that, I was cross legged on a Tibetan carpet, eating tsampa under a slowly rotating fan, watching sun patterns on the bare, brown shoulder beside me. And a morning before it was Bagga, and a morning before Calamcute (all four of us sleeping on the floor in one room), and a morning before, Arambol; I woke up on the porch, looking at the ocean. Our toilet didn't have a seat and there was only a bare bulb for a light, but I was happy and didn't care much.
What's a week in Goa, anyway? What's a week of waking up in a different room, a little sandy, a little salt encrusted, still tired, already warming and ready to rise? What's fifteen hours on an airplane? What's crossing the entire globe in a single day? It's something and it's nothing. In a lot of simple and complicated ways, it's just my life: lie to Customs, ("tourism"), spend some time in the states, go back again. Fall in love again, or something like it.
On the plane, I thought a lot about a friend of mine who doesn't know his own birthday. He's twenty seven or twenty eight. He can tell you about your Tibetan astrological sign but he doesn't know his own. (I'm a water pig and my friend says it's going to be a good year).
To me, the Newark airport smelled like sugar. Everywhere, everywhere, things to buy. I rode the moving walkway and stared like a voyeur at all the stores, the restaurants, the bars, at all the clean, richly dressed people going into and out of them. Sometimes when I get home, Americans disgust me a little; today, I felt in awe of them, separate and lesser.
So it's old men's voices for me, ear buds pushed in deep to create a seal. I won't be here just yet. On power-cut nights in Kathmandu, with road strikes and taxi-fires outside, I reach for obscure indie rock--of-the-moment-music to make me feel like I'm still part of the things that people my age and nationality are doing. But today, on this sun-lit, too-bright airplane, on the way to meet my parents after five months in Asia, I just want to be comforted.
"This morning" (it was almost forty eight hours ago, now) I was at a five star hotel restaurant, eating Goan pao bhaji in a mini skirt. Just a morning before that, I was cross legged on a Tibetan carpet, eating tsampa under a slowly rotating fan, watching sun patterns on the bare, brown shoulder beside me. And a morning before it was Bagga, and a morning before Calamcute (all four of us sleeping on the floor in one room), and a morning before, Arambol; I woke up on the porch, looking at the ocean. Our toilet didn't have a seat and there was only a bare bulb for a light, but I was happy and didn't care much.
What's a week in Goa, anyway? What's a week of waking up in a different room, a little sandy, a little salt encrusted, still tired, already warming and ready to rise? What's fifteen hours on an airplane? What's crossing the entire globe in a single day? It's something and it's nothing. In a lot of simple and complicated ways, it's just my life: lie to Customs, ("tourism"), spend some time in the states, go back again. Fall in love again, or something like it.
On the plane, I thought a lot about a friend of mine who doesn't know his own birthday. He's twenty seven or twenty eight. He can tell you about your Tibetan astrological sign but he doesn't know his own. (I'm a water pig and my friend says it's going to be a good year).
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