Gulf Greetings

I haven't had much time to blog since we arrived in Doha last week on the 26th. Our former student, Hamad, and his family have kept us unbelievable occupied. We've been to the new Islamic Museum of Art in Doha, the desert dunes, the beach, the Qtel headquarters where Hamad arranged a meeting with his boss (who is also apparently a sheikh?) for us, and a wedding. And of course, tons of the high-end shopping malls that are popping up all over around here.

Now we're in Abu Dhabi with another student, leaving for Dubai for 3 nights tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have a moment for a more in-depth blog soon.

An education with cheese, please

I've been in Wisconsin for a couple weeks now. I came back to go to school at UW Madison. Strangely enough, they have an excellent program in Southeast Asian Studies, here in this arctic tundra where naught a coconut shall grow, ne'er rice field be cultivated.

At first, the idea of "coming home" for school seemed like a total defeat. I had envisioned going coastal for studying, or maybe Europe, or at least somewhere over an hour away from where I grew up. A place, perhaps, that didn't pride itself on Squeak Volume of its cheese curds. It was almost worse to know that I had other more far-away options, that I had spent hours on their applications, and that in the end they were simply unaffordable.

But lately I've been trying to see home as my next adventure, rather than a retreat. I actually don't know much about Madison. As a child, Madison was where I bought shoes. It was also the place with Indian restaurants, an ice cream shop with 29 flavors of ice cream, and a larger selection of movies than the four-screen shanty in Beaver Dam. Most of my friends left the state for college, and even now I only have approximately two friends who currently live there. The fact that I know so few people in Madison is alluring; it oddly makes me more comfortable with the move.

Not to mention, Madison is a really great school, and I was really fortunate to have been accepted. I've met so many people for whom a college education, much less graduate school, only exists as a hazy, unattainable dream. I won't take this for granted.

I went to Madison last week to meet with some professors. Mom and I drove down in the early afternoon to catch Professor Thongchai Winichakul, a renowned historian of Thailand, during his office hours. I'll be taking his graduate seminar, which goes by the seductive title of "Dangerous Histories." Apparently I'll be doing a lot of my own research on the nation or culture of my choosing; hopefully a head start on my masters thesis.

I also met with Professor Cullinane, who specializes in the history of the Phillipines. He had so much enthusiasm for the program, and was excited to explain my options. Overall, it was relieving to finally show up at "my school," to know that so many other people have interests similar to mine, to see massive books on hill tribes, Loatian politics, and Theravada Buddhism lining the shelves. Maybe leaving Boston to study Southeast Asia in sub-zero temperatures wasn't such a crack-pot idea.

I also can't deny that home in December is comforting. The heating is functional at my parents' house, and I even have an electric blanket. I am always shocked to open the fridge and see it full of delightful things for me to consume, and remember that we have a dishwasher that isn't constantly breaking and transforming our kitchen into a soapy wading pool. Perhaps I can now understand why so many Europeans live with their families until they're like, 40.

And now, a word about Wisconsin for the East Coasters who have never been.

Holy Crimony! The Glorious Benefits of Wisconsin: An exercise in positive thinking as an attempt to not miss my people in Boston so much.

1) Cheese and beer are indeed staples of our diet. There are at least six logs of cheese stored in the Disch freezer to serve as winter provisions, and my mom just bought another five-pounder of Monteray Jack this afternoon (holiday cheese sale!). A landmark on the highway to Madison is Schultz's Cheese Haus, one of many temples to dairy and German-style beef products in my area. My dad stows troughs of beer in the basement like a nuclear disaster is upon us.

And the "squeak factor" of a cheese curd is indeed a topic of discussion. My darling friend Cat asked me if it was because we keep live mice embedded in our cheese logs. This is fortunately not the case. The "squeak" is simply a combination of the texture and the actual sound that emanate from a curd once it is being ground between the back molars. It's not a good idea to by curds at a chain grocery store, because they will have probably lost their squeak, and hence their freshness, and hence will be no different from any other cheese.

2) People are just so nice. I've heard that students from the East Coast who go to Madison for undergrad tend to coagulate in their minority, one reason being that "the Wisconsin kids are too nice to hang out with." Well if pleasantness is a fault, consider us guilty! Darnnit.

3) You know you are in Wisconsin when the YMCA parking lot is full in the middle of a state-wide blizzard warning. No, not even the threat of sliding into a ditch or driving in zero-visibility can deter we Wisconsinites from working off those deep-fried cheese curds from lunch.

4) It's sort of invigorating to be somewhere where you have history. I can't step out of the house without running into someone I know: a high school teacher, a friend's mother, a guy I did community theatre with as a child, the popular girl, the bully. Seeing them is like getting knocked out by a time machine for a split second, only to be immediately flung forward again into the visceral present thinking, "I was intimidated by you? I had a crush on you? You picked me first for kickball when I was used to being chosen last? I spent two weeks studying for your exams?"

And then, you know, one must exercise polite conversation.

Flipped collars, Flamboyance, and the Success of Spandex.

A dear friend of mine from high school has recently started a fashion blog based in Chicago that specifically targets style for the working professional (http://theworkingwardrobe.com/). She just got her first independent style consulting gig today. What that means, exactly, I'm not sure, though judging by the fact that I wear moccasins to work four days out of five (and All-Stars on Fridays!), her services are probably targeted towards casually-frocked culprits like me. Anyway, in tribute to her, I would like to take a moment to pontificate on some of my experiences in fashion out East.

We of the Midwest have a particular vision of fashion on the East Coast, usually involving Pastel Polo Parades and flipped collars so starched they threaten to lop of an ear upon any sudden movement. Incidentally, this vision does indeed materialize, particularly around the freshman area of Harvard. Now I understand why my high school (Wayland Academy, a boarding school where my dad teaches physics) had a dress code--to be more "East Coast." Of course, I was oblivious at the time to the implication that "East Coast" meant "prestigious." No one seemed to mind that our women's ties and tweed blazers provided endless fodder for contempt from people at the public school.

Anyway, despite the stereotypes, over the past year in Boston I've noticed that the style spectrum extends beyond the boat shoes and walking advertisements for Brooks Brothers in Harvard Square.

I can say that one of the best places for the style sleuth has to be the Faneuil Hall area on a Friday night. Faneuil Hall, not my usual nighttime hangout, is located downtown, just a five minute walk from the harbor. It's an old area, so much of the sidewalk is actually cobblestone (tourists dig cobblestone). There is a large area around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall in which no cars are allowed, and the only way to migrate to the next bar is to tread over the treacherously uneven brick. Now combine cobblestone with 100s of swaggering drunk women in their 20-somethings teetering upon dangerously tall toothpick heels, clinging onto their sheepish boyfriends, who are trying their utmost to remain serious and manly about their slightly sloppy situations. While I've spotted some nice patent leather spikes in this area, my experiences as a spectator have made me want to refrain from sprucing up in stilettos.

Another demographic which seems to have found inspiration lately, particularly in the realm of "the headdress", is the homeless of Boston. See, there is a scruffy-looking fellow (presumably and sadly homeless, as he is usually carrying several loaded trash bags with him) who wanders around my work neighborhood in the ritzy Beacon Hill--Back Bay area. The special thing is that he wears some sort of feather headdress. I never want to stare too much, but it seems as though he has cut a strip of plastic to fit his head and adorned it with feathers of various fowl and size. The weird follow-up occurred a few days ago when I caught the 39 bus going south from Copley to Jamaica Plain. On the bus, I noticed that another woman, also homeless, was wearing a similar headdress, silently watching the stately brick apartments of the Back Bay whirl past. Are the homeless of Boston combining forces in the inauguration of a fashion "haus"? Is the mysterious headdress a mere coincidence? Am I missing some kind of subtle portent? Am I living in a David Lynch film? What?

Another fervor of fashion that has overtaken Boston (and much of the globe, unfortunately) is the "skinny jean." For those of you lucky few who aren't familiar, skinny jeans are simply very, very tight jeans (sometimes enhanced with spandex) that are so tapered they cut off the circulation in your calf muscles. The skinny jean is also God's way of saying that you have the figure of a double-scooped ice cream cone. Furthermore, how do these ladies get their feet through those narrow ankle-exits? I've tried on skinny jeans; I know how long it takes to get your feet through those unforgiving mouse holes. But then again, I have rather large feet.

And finally, and perhaps on a more personal note, I wish to touch on the resurgence of animal print spandex in my life. Recently, a dear and brilliant friend of mine has found it very necessary to sport this luxuriously tacky print not once but twice in the same week! What are the ramifications for a ruggedly handsome European fellow of donning a tight, midriff-baring cheetah print mock-neck at a downtown club on "Gay Saturday"? How do tipsy women at a housewarming party respond to tall Belgian men in sleeveless, curve-hugging, tiger-patterned evening gowns? The rest of the world may never know, but thanks to the past week, I now do.

Ana Ahub Jobna.

Today was a pretty slow day around school. We're low on students this month. I am guessing many families that could normally afford to send their kids to a pricey city just to study English can't these days. A couple students slept in this morning, so I had a lot of one-on-one time with a really interesting girl from China. She is the oldest of four, and started working in one of her parent's companies when she was just 15. At 21, she now owns one of the companies (often micromanaging over the phone between classes) and has 130 people working under her. She hopes to improve her English enough that she can get into Harvard Business School. She's pretty much the Wonder Woman of the Asian continent, as far as I'm concerned. However, she noted in a serious and slightly frustrated tone that in China, the oldest must take on the family business (profession, practice, etc.) even if he or she doesn't have a natural inclination or desire towards that field.

I often wonder if I'm doing a silly thing by going back to school, especially since I plan to study Southeast Asia, which on the whole isn't exactly an international financial hub. I wonder what I will do with the degree, as I'm no longer convinced that I am meant for the PhD Factory, and I wonder if by studying Southeast Asia, I am avoiding some other avenues that interest me. But I guess the important thing is that I made a choice, and now I am responsible for making that choice the "correct" one.

I'm also thinking about applying for the journalism program at Madison and doubling it up. When I lived in Asia, I was always very envious of the correspondents and freelancers that I met when I was on my holidays from teaching. I also seem to be a masochist by way of arduous graduate school applications (insert maniacal laughter!)!

Basically, anything I like will guarantee my perpetual state of poor-ness, recession or not. I thought about staying in Boston and applying for programs in International Relations, but the amount of catching up in mathematics and economics that I would have had to do was a daunting thought. And that isn't what I'm interested in anyway. I'm interested in language and culture and writing. Conversations with my students often remind me to be thankful for the preposterous amount of freedom I have to not just state my interests, but pursue them.


Random note: Half of my reading class was mysteriously absent this afternoon. The only two students who came were both from Arabic-speaking countries (the UAE and Saudi Arabia). We discussed the book for awhile (The Giver by Lois Lowry), and then I requested an impromptu Arabic lesson. You know...couldn't get too far ahead....what with half the class gone and all. I learned various forms of greetings and introductions, as well as some key phrases to know when traveling in the Middles East, including "Ana jua'na. Ana ahub jobna!" (I am hungry. I like cheese!). All in all, a productive class.

T-Time!

I probably should have bought a bicycle when I moved to Boston.

I use the T, Boston's subway system, to get pretty much everywhere (for the first month I was here I kept calling it the "El," a la Chicago). I usually forget to charge my mp3 player, hence I'm helplessly trapped listening to whatever tinny "mmpsh mmpsh mmpsh yeeeah" the teenageer next to me is plugged into. People listen to their devices at such a high volume; I often want to demand them to "Change the channel!" like when I was a kid and wanted to watch Sesame Street but Mom was watching Oprah or Antique Roadshow, or like now when certain friends of mine still want to watch Susan Boyle sing "I Dreamed a Dream" over and over...

It's just that I like walking so much, and I fear a bicycle would get stolen anyway, even though I think it looks cool when someone walks into a party with one pant leg rolled up, all red-faced and tote-bagged: "Augh, man, I totally just biked here from Jamaica Plain in the rain but I still stopped at the co-op to pick up some organic freekah grains and IPA!" Well, I'll buy a bike in Madison for sure. And I will be rolling up one pant leg.

I've struggled with how to use my time on the T. I make a minimum of one round-trip to and from work every day, and there are at least two occasions per week when I take the T to work (about six stops), take the T back home, and then retrace the stops later en route to Harvard or Porter Square. That's like at least two hours invested in transport. I try to read or write or do something "productive", but usually end up wondering where the lady across from me bought her shoes, eavesdropping on Spanish-speakers (for practice!), trying to decide whether or not that guy by the pole is slyly executing a creepy up-and-down look in my direction (I get very defensive of my womanhood on the T)... Sometimes drunk people try to befriend me, which is humorous if I'm with a companion but a little frightening if I'm alone. In response, I pretend I don't speak English, or I just nod and stare absently at the window just above my intoxicated acquaintance's head until he or she starts to feel the cold, sobering drops of self-consciousness pooling. Kind of cruel, I know.

I was looking through my journal the other day and came across some of the experiences I've shared with the Good, the Bad, and the Insane of Boston.

1. I like the guitarist at the Arlington Green Line stop. He plays originals, I think, or maybe they are Mexican folk songs that I've just never heard before (not that I've heard many). The chords take their time echoing off the rounded tunnel walls, slow tunes as we all scurry to above or below. The overall effect makes me feel like an actress in a low-budget "indie" film, the part where she has something really heavy on her mind and is probably wearing fishnet stockings and smudgy black eyeliner and a corduroy blazer, or something with elbow patches anyway. His speakers are cheap, the acoustics suck, but the hollowness of the sound makes me feel both lonely, and hopeful and young.

2. Today when the train doors opened at Downtown Crossing there was a laughing couple holding the shrunken head of a wig mannequin between them. I did a double take because I thought a small face had sprouted through their armpits. The man was fumbling a pack of cigarettes and one of them fell on a sweet little girl in a stroller. The mother grumbled, "She's too young to start" in front of the perpetrator, his girlfriend, and the grinning bodiless head. The child was making earnest and purposeful gestures towards my red purse and the mother said "She has no sense of boundaries" to which I replied, "It's ok. She shouldn't. She's a child."

3. Sometimes I wish it was more acceptable to speak to people on the T--we're all so smug and sad, shouting into phones, busily entering and searching data in blackberries like foraging insects.

4. (February 10, 2009) I get so distracted on the T. Today a swaggering, disheveled man boarded on at Stony Brook and immediately started spraying air freshener all over the car, holding a pint of brown-bagged mystery in the other hand. He tripped on a woman's backpack, who previously hadn't dared to bend over and pick it up for fear of attracting attention to herself. He looked with disgust at the offending strap and thrust it aside with his dirty leather boot.

And he stood there, adopting a wide-legged albeit unsteady stance, King of the Car, surveying us common, coarse commuters. Of course, the next logical thing to do as Ruler was remove the can of air freshener (with a flourish!) from his jacket. Within seconds the entire car wreaked of chemical-drenched potpourri. The wide-eyed woman and I simultaneously migrated to the opposite end of the car, ducking as though in military retreat. She remembered her backpack.

When I reached Downtown Crossing, I quickly exited the orange line, feeling a bit light-headed, and bolted for the red line that would take me to Cambridge. I could hear the train either approaching or leaving, and the doors closed dramatically when I was just a few steps away. When this happens, I usually feel like spitting on the door and stamping my foot, but I kept my tantrum to an irritated exhale. THEN, a normal-seeming middle-aged man approached me and said "I wouldn't have missed that train if I hadn't been staring at your boots."

Perhaps on any other day I would have assumed that "boots" was an entirely different plural noun, but today I was wearing my very special Lobster Rain Boots. They are black with red soles and and tiny lobsters printed all over them. Even I can't stop staring at their waterproof glory.

"Oh. They're cool, right?" I replied, nonchalently.

"Yes." He proceeded: "I like your hair."

I said, "Thanks man."

Then, eyes narrowed in a sudden display of skepticism, he asked "Are you Jewish?" to which I offered a completely blank star and answered, "No, no, not Jewish. Ummmm....sorry?"

He let out a slight sigh of relief and nodded, staring back, perhaps waiting for me to articulate my Roman Catholic roots and small-town Wisconsin upbringing. But I didn't. I stared him straight in the eye for a solid five seconds before relocating focus to the Greek crossword puzzle I had been working on before the two-faced compliment. I almost wished I had lied and claimed false ethnic heritage just to see what he would have said. But I didn't, and he moved on to the next young-ish woman who sat alone two benches down from mine.

Anti-Semitism and a failed attempt at womanizing. Is there no shame in Boston's underground?

Fishy Forays in the Aegean

So my "Greek blog" didn't bear fruit as I had planned. We traveled very quickly and with limited internet access, and I didn't much feel like sitting at a computer when there was always so much to see (and so much fried cheese to consume). Whatever aversion to dairy I had acquired in Thailand quickly evaporated with every fresh plate of sizzling saganaki.

There were also many hours to sleep. I slept an average of 10 solid hours per night in Greece, as opposed to the 5-6 I tend to get in Boston. This could be due to the heat and strong Mediterranean sun, or to walking all day with bags. I think also the removal of one's usual daily schedule can function as a sedative of sorts. Without the skeleton of working hours, social hours, work-out hours, etc, I sort of fall apart into a drowsy, gelatinous, jointless being. Schedules keep me coherent. I am American.

Not to mention the fact that sheer beauty is totally distracting for my REM. Every day I saw something stunning and unique; I have had 17 continuous days of stunning and unique in my life. I feel privilaged. In Athens I looked up in the middle of a small, empty road and there was the Parthenon, floating unassumingly above the city, donning a partial metal cast of scaffolding but glowing the breath of the ancients nonetheless. In Tinos we saw worn old men crawling up a tall hill on their knees to beg the Virgin Mary for forgiveness. I stood in an empty hallway, strung with white linens drying in the breeze, the sea beckoning from the window at the opposite end. We saw a quiet, blue and white artisanal village tucked away in the folds of the hills, and hitched a free ride to the vacant beach on the other side of the island. In Chios, I realized that I could see Turkey, and I couldn't stop staring at it. I jumped off a cliff into the ocean on the island where Leonard Cohen used to live. I drowned bread in olive oil. I frequently dragged Dio out to eat fresh spinach pies at breakfast.


A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that while in Greece I had eaten seafood for the first time in 12 years. Within minutes, childhood friends began calling and e-mailing to inquire about why I had decided to eat a creature with a spinal cord. I honestly hadn't been expecting a reaction, but people seemed shocked. After all, I was the kid who ordered environmental t-shirts bearing sentimental logos from thin catalogues printed on recycled paper (think: "love animals; don't eat them" or "fur is most beautiful on the animal to whom it belongs"). In middle school, I spent considerable time in the basement, rummaging through plastic bins of my parents' clothes from university, looking for holey bellbottoms and flannel shirts. While everyone else in 8th grade was listening to TLC and Green Day, I was fervently memorizing the lyrics to "Aquarius." In high school and part of college, I was a frequent visitor to PETA's website, and at one point was trying to convince the girls in my sorority (the sorority-bit lasted only a year) that beer was healthier than BGH-infused skim milk (quite a popular argument, actually).

However, lately I've been realizing how little I function on an easy-going hippy mentality. Some people allow most aspects of their lives to rely on limitations: a "good job" with clearly defined expectations and someone to answer to (and from who to obtain approval or disapproval, or crystal clear definitions of success and failure); a religion that defines morality and hence a life planned around rules; a restrictive diet that makes eating a less controversial or self-indulgent affair. I'm not saying that any of these things are wrong, or even always limiting. Jobs can lead to promotions. Many people benefit from practicing a religion. Some of the people I have looked up to the most in my life also have a strong faith and adhere to dogma. Maybe I mean more of a predictable framework.

I've been realizing that I build my personality and plans a lot around limits. I don't much like that, as I'd like to be a person who accepts change and all of the unclear, fluctuating and vivid challenges and opportunities that life can bring. Especially since, according to one of my dear co-teachers, we will only become more cemented in our "ways" as we get older.

One thing that righteously bugged me is that my vegetarian status had developed into a source of pride. In high school and college, I was "unique" (not many vegetarians in Wisconsin or central Illinois). In Chicago, it was fashionable and "healthy", similarly to Boston. In Thailand, a reaction that my roommate Jen and I often derived was one of admiration (well, after the initial confusion--"Not even fish sauce?"). A vegetarian diet is a sign of discipline in some Buddhist sects. Most people eat vegetarian food, for example, on certain holidays or if they go to a temple for meditation. Abstaining from meat is widely considered a sacrifice of the corporeal pleasures.

But pride isn't what initially made me want to go veg when I was 10 years old. Initially, it was a child's impulse to "not-want-to-hurt." In the years that followed, I began to read more about the environmental impact of coorporate farming, inhumane treatment of livestock, and the usual spiel of eco-friendly, healthy, ethical-type thinking. These are still points that I strongly believe in, and so I won't be eating meat in the States.

However, what about in a country like Greece, where a local butcher swiftly slaughters the goat in the backyard? Or where the evening's fish was caught that morning by a local fisherman whose whole livelihood depends on people eating his product? In many countries, there is no negative environmental impact resulting from public consumption of fish and meat, no life of misery in an over-crowded pen. And I do believe in a natural food chain--wolves eat lambs. Whales eat plankton. I know a guy who spontaneously ate a grasshopper out of pure frustration. We don't accuse them of murder. Pain is part of every animal's life.

Also, my own lack of consistency makes my diet difficult to justify. I own leather shoes, and according to my friend Eric of Proctor and Gamble, nearly all of my toiletries have been tested on animals in one way or another. Also, as a human-lover (as well as animal-lover), wouldn't I be wrong to protest local businesses? Not to mention that I still eat dairy products, and who says that the dairy industry doesn't operate similarly to the meat industry?

So with these thoughts swimming over an empty stomach and under the stars, I asked for a small, glistening sliver of the daily catch on the island of Hydra. Tired, I thought, sand still clinging to my clothes, as my hosts chatted back and forth, drinking Mythos beer, switching from Greek to English to Spanish. I am so tired of clinging to unexamined ideals that still govern my life. How can we know a principal, a value, a love, a friend, if we don't step out for a moment and realize how free we can be, if we choose? That being a human doesn't mean we have to define everything about ourselves, that sometimes our moral absolutes become relative? I can pull up the anchor and cast it out again. I can always go back.

Oh--and apologies to my carniverous friends, but I'll never be a mammal or bird-eater. I didn't even like the fish as much as a solid square of tasty teriyaki tofu. But I'm keeping an open mind.

Ela, ela, ela Ellatha.

Today is the end of my first day in Greece. This trip was a bit last-minute. Just a month ago, we sat down on a Friday night and went shopping for tickets. I cleared some dates with the director of my school, and here I am, a mile or two from the Acropolis, looking forward to another 16 days.

We got in this morning and proceeded to crash in Dionysi's grandmother's place for about five hours before heading out into the city. This is probably the first time I've gone somewhere without doing substantial preliminary reading. I don't really know how many eras there were in Greece, or their corresponding architectural styles. The philosophy and rhetoric courses I took in college are stored in some foggy recess of my brain, and haven't been dusted in awhile. Instead, I've been studying the language for a couple months whenever I have a spare moment--on the T, waiting to meet someone, waiting for a break in the Boston rain under some corner bus stop, cooking a solitary omelette. I have stopped reading novels and poetry for the time being. My spoken Greek is still pretty terrible, but I can sound out written words and sometimes understand what's happening around me. As expected, I hear a lot of "Ela, pethi mou!" (yes /what's up /come on my child). My guess is that Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" must have been big over here, given the popularity of the all-purpose "ela".

So I've done no research, but I'm going to read the signs and ask questions and eat more than the recommended amount of fried cheese that one should consume in a day. Dio told me that "finite" is the best single-word description of Greece. It doesn't have the tallest mountains, or the widest variety of fruits, the strongest economy, the largest temples. We climbed the Acropolis this afternoon, and could see where Athens ends, confined by three mountains and the foggy sea port. Greece has moments of perfection, he says, points of precision which can be experienced in anything from an ancient statue of Apollo to a glass of your Grandmother's fresh orange juice.