Never Ever Say No: The Gap Year Blog

In Summation

2009-10-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

So it’s finally over. Well it’s been over for almost 5 months now (my bad), but putting this blog posting online seems like the final step in closing the book on the gap year that was, September 27th 2008- May 18th 2009. Sorry for taking so long to finally put this online- summer and college got in the way of my writing plans.

But before I reflect and introspect, allow me to recap the bare bones of my trip first.

Russia- I spent 7 weeks volunteering in a small city 5 hours northeast of Moscow, named Yaroslavl with a program called Cross-Cultural Solutions (CCS). I took a weekend trip to St. Petersburg and two trips to Moscow.

South Africa- I spent a couple days in New York with my sister where my parents surprised me, before going to Cape Town for almost 6 weeks and again volunteering with CCS. I also took a weekend trip to Johannesburg, and spent five days in the Eastern Cape hiking along the Transkei’s Wild Coast.

Australia- I came home for about a month around New Year’s, before going off to Australia. I spent a month hanging out at the houses of two family friends in Sydney and Melbourne, and went organic farming for a week on the French Island.

New Zealand- I met college kids on their semester abroad in Auckland and we rented a camper van that we took around the North Island for a week.

India- I toured the country for a month with Rustic Pathways, including a week home-stay with a Tibetan family in Dharmsala, a hike in the foothills of the Himalayas, and tours of Delhi, Kochi, Jaipur and Agra.

China- I finished up my trip with a 6 week stint in Shanghai where I interned at a bilingual lifestyle magazine through Projects-Abroad. My family came to visit and took me to Beijing, and I also went traveling alone for 10 days in the southwest of China after my internship wrapped up.

The First Half

Russia was amazing in the strangest way. I look back and I think of walking the gloomy streets of Yaro after a stretch of a couple of days of not seeing the sun, listening to Lil’ Wayne’s most depressing song off of The Carter III, “Shoot Me Down.” And that may sound like anything but amazing, but I’ve talked it over with Jaime and we agree that it was just a special time in our lives.

At any other point in the trip being in a small, foreign city for almost 2 months with little to no nightlife and only a handful of other volunteers might have been crushingly boring. But maybe because it was our first stop, it wasn’t at all. We read a lot, talked late into the night, woke up early to do our pushups, I studied Russian, we played chess. And it felt completely fulfilling.

Also, by being in the Motherland I was living the dream. I had been a closet Russian history geek since I did a book report on the history of the Soviet Union in 5th grade. During my volunteering with CCS, I got to talk to former proud card-carrying members of the Communist Party. I sat with them after they listened to a lecture on pensioner’s shrinking medical benefits and heard them feebly reminisce about the good ol’ days. Volunteering at a senior center, we had q&a time, where another volunteer and I sat at the front of the room and faced a firing squad of Russian retirees. And with the help of a translator I got to shoot questions back at them. It was an incredible opportunity.

Next up, South Africa stood in bright contrast to Russia. While Russia was all gray, gloomy and centuries of history, South Africa was bright, colorful and dynamic with an eye firmly set on a promising future. Russia was glorious gilded churches and colorful onion domes that looked like they came straight from Disneyland. Zed A (South Africa’s internet country code) was almost entirely focused on the great outdoors; amazing picturesque beaches, Table Mountain and Lion’s Head, and a plethora of outdoor activities like rappelling down a mountain, hang gliding or shark cage diving.

Still, 15 years after the end of apartheid, the black and coloured (mixed-race) townships are one of the first things you see on the drive out of Cape Town International, while some luxurious white communities sit nestled above the City Bowl with amazing views of the Atlantic. Every cab ride became a new discourse on race, with drivers ranging from enlightening and thought provoking to downright racist. But while South Africa’s progress in race relations can be debated, its natural beauty simply cannot be which is one of the reasons, along with Cape Town’s amazing nightlife, that it tops the list of gap year countries I’d like to return to.

Going it Alone

Then there was the call I got from Jaime during our break at home, when he informed me he wouldn’t be coming to Australia or New Zealand. I felt a mix of terror, anxiety and excitement, with a lot of emphasis on the former two. There was even a brief conversation about my possibly staying home, but I never really considered that as a real possibility.

However I also felt liberated, not because traveling with Jaime tied me down in any way, but because going it completely alone for a spell put the onus entirely on me. Despite my anxiety, I tried to go for a little dose of spin control at the time in this space, calling it the “new and improved” second half, when in fact I was all nerves.

The Second Half

Even though I had a really great time in both Australia and New Zealand, I just found them both pretty culturally uninteresting. Sure they both had their natives that they worked hard to oppress, but otherwise I found very little else to hold my attention.

India on the other hand, was a whole different world. The first image that comes to mind is dirt streets with traffic jams consisting of oxen, camels, pedestrians and brightly hand painted cars and trucks, with nobody paying the traffic lights any mind. I remember ubiquitous masala chai, and Indian food every meal for a month straight. I was so used to Indian food being a once a month take-out dinner that we picked up from my family’s favorite place down Ventura, that I could never get my mind around the fact that there’s a place (duh, India) where it’s perfectly normal to not only have it every meal, but on planes and trains too. (Seriously though. When I think plane food, I think of Continental Airlines and some lukewarm vegetables with some indeterminate piece of meat smothered in gravy. But in India, they give you Indian food on planes!)

I’ll also remember India for its unflappably polite culture, terrifying drivers and amazing temples. And I left India with one of my favorite memories from the entire trip.

It was the first night of our trek in the Himalayan foothills and I was sharing a tent with our American guide and my friend Michael from Florida. We didn’t feel like going to bed so we wandered around rice paddies outside following the sound of drums in the distance. We eventually made our way to some sort of celebration for one of the local villager’s first-born sons. There was a full brass section in addition to the drums, and old drunk Indian men were dancing near a fire along to the rhythm. They immediately stopped when we arrived and without a word offered us three chairs closest to the fire.

As we warmed up, and the celebrants warmed up to our unexpected arrival, the music and dancing resumed again, and we decided to make fools of ourselves and join in. Soon a rainbow of saris assembled on the far porch with curious eyes burning out of dark faces at the three white intruders. We stayed long enough to see the completion of some sort of ceremonial grain pyramid, find an English-speaking friend who tried to explain some of what was going on, see a dinner of daal (lentils) and rice served on massive fig leafs to young and old alike who all made certain to eat with their right hands (the left was unclean). And we left only after the grand finale, the sacrificing of a braying, all-too-prescient goat.

I’ll remember China, the country that brought you the “one country, two systems” policy, as showing many different cultural faces. There was the local market outside my apartment where you could see your dinner slaughtered in front of you, be it turtle, fish, eel, or even brain if you were feeling frisky. The street market and the park in front of my flat, which I’ve already written extensively about, both felt distinctly Chinese.

But just a stone’s throw away, on the same walk home from my metro stop were massage parlors with Chinese girls beckoning from the windows. And if these weren’t as sketchy as they seemed, they could just as well stand in for some of the other places that I heard about, representing the seedy, sexually repressed, and more generally black-market, bootleg culture that China tries so hard to hide from the world. Finally, there was the nightlife scene, which consisted of certain posh bars that were so whitewashed that by the end of the night you forgot you were in Asia. The bars and clubs, some expat hangouts, others more local, seemed to come from a whole different world than the life of the everyday Chinese who dried their laundry out on the street and who went to lunch locales that provided a full businessman’s meal for a tenth of the price of my gin and tonic.

College

While home I got lots of questions about college- if I feel I’ll be a step behind in the classroom after a year off, if it’ll be weird to be in a grade with people a year younger than I am, among other things, if it’ll be hard to get reacquainted with the daily grind of school.

First, I’ll give you my political answer that I wrote over the summer. I think if anything, the gap year has made me more prepared for college life. By interacting with people who could never imagine the tremendous opportunity that an American university education really is, I feel more prepared to take advantage of it. And in meeting people over and over again this past year, I feel much more confident heading into college. Also, it’ll be nice to make friends who will be around for more than a couple weeks.

The truth is it has been a little bit hard to get back into the groove of the academic side of things. And whether it’s my own procrastinator tendencies, or the social skills I refined while traveling, I find myself able to put off work for hours in pursuit of mindless conversation with hallmates. But ever the eternal optimist, I think soon enough I’ll hit my stride and get back into the swing of things.

And I owe it to more than me to do my absolute best, too. During the gap year, I got to meet, work and live with people who could never dream of what a tremendous opportunity an American college education is. It would be a tremendous waste, and a dishonor to them, to not work up to my potential.

The gap year also prepared me wonderfully for college dorm life. After living in some pretty squalid conditions at some points last year, I realized how little my physical living conditions have to do with my overall well-being. That realization helps me shrug off the occasional cockroach and mouse that much easier.

Challenges

The most challenging and rewarding part of my trip was probably my time in New Zealand and the southwest of China. I came to both Auckland and Chengdu in the Sichuan province with nothing more than a hostel reservation for two nights and a flight out.

I went from a month in Australia and the comfort, safety and warmth of staying in the homes of two friends to landing in Auckland, where I was hit with the pretty lonely and scary realization that I didn’t know a soul in the entire country. Wandering around for just the first few hours felt oppressively lonely. Luckily, I met fun people in my hostel that night to go out to a bar with, and the Wash U study abroad kids the next day and I was off seeing the North Island shortly thereafter.

Likewise, I left my own apartment in Shanghai and a large social circle and landed in a Chinese province without knowing a single friendly face. I spent my first day moping in the hostel under the guise of using their free Internet, but I was mainly scared about how I was going to find anything to do or anyone to hang with for 10 days. I told the first person I met, a freakishly intense Dutch guy, that I’d accompany him on a 3 day mountain trek because of a lack of other options. Thankfully, while at the panda reserve the next morning I was able to convince two less intense Dutch girls, Cindy and Malou, to rescue me from their fearsome countryman.

While it definitely wasn’t easy, I think what I’m proudest of during the gap year, was my ability, through a lot of luck and a little gumption, to make something out of nothing these two instances.

Growth

It’s hard to detail exactly what I gained over the course of the gap year. While I already considered myself a relatively self-confident person, I gained even more confidence in myself, and my ability to meet people. Simultaneously, in getting to know completely foreign people and places, I gained an appreciation for my own smallness in the general scheme of life. I became both more independent and more experienced. There’s also clearly a lot I still have to learn, as evidenced by the fact that I got tube after tube of toothpaste, (four in all), confiscated by airport security from my carry-ons during the second half.

I believe I gained a lot in both independence and experience. Even though I can't specifically qualify or explain what I mean by that, I hope that I continue to grow through my memories and lessons of my travels.

Highs and Lows

There were the good times like the Goldfish concert in Cape Town at a venue overlooking the beach, dripping sweat in a screaming crowd chanting for an encore, packed so tight I couldn’t move, where the only thought flitting through my head was “I have no idea what led me to choose the path that got me to this moment, but thank God I did.”

There were the bad times like my first night on the French Island, where I mistakenly let a whole fleet of moths into my room, and had to go to sleep with them crawling all over my body, that left me thinking, “what the hell am I getting myself into?”

And there were the times I’m not going to talk about like when I fell into the eastern toilet at KFC in China.

At it’s hardest, the gap year shook me in completely unexpected ways. In setting off for the trip, I wanted to be challenged. I was leaving in order to broaden my worldview, culture myself, see the sites, meet the people and everything else fit for the travel brochures.

But the gap year had other plans for me. It rocked me in the places I had previously felt most secure. At times, (possibly due to a contractual dispute- asking for too much time in the spotlight) it felt like I had been written out of the TV show that had previously been my life.

All my friends started building new lives in colleges scattered across the country, and the people I left at home adjusted to life in LA without me. I felt like I was on an 8 month trek of transience constantly meeting and meeting people and experiencing things but not living anything with any real degree of permanence.

But as good ol’ Nietzsche once so famously wrote, “what does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

My heart’s still beating, Friedrich, so I must be stronger. And I feel it. I weathered a fair few storms. And out of that is born a new resiliency, a new confidence to know that because I made it through some of my toughest trials to date, I’ll triumph over whatever comes next.

Last but not least

Now before I go, let me leave you with a few snapshots from the trip.

Quite literally stumbling accidentally into ladies’ night at a club in the basement of Yaroslavl’s circus with Jaime, which was fun and normal until the 14 year old stripper took the stage and Jaime and I decided to leave…
The hike on the Wild Coast of South Africa, when we watched a few black kids playing a game of catch with a little white boy- over a fence, while the latter’s parents stood guard...
Getting preached to by either one of the craziest or smartest man I’ve ever met, probably both, while watering his pumpkin patch on a farm on the French Island, Australia…
Trying to joke to mask my fear before my bungee jump in New Zealand, until finally the operators told me that I had 5 seconds to jump- or they would push me…
Being woken up by my Tibetan home-stay mother saying “hello, hello breakfast” in McLeod Ganj, India with a steaming mug of sweet, spiced masala chai, and japahtti with mango jam…
Strolling through the massive park outside my flat in Shanghai filled like it was Labor Day with old people doing tai chi, fathers and sons flying kites, and couples picnicking in tents on a random weekday April morning…

Finally, a great many thanks is in order. To Jaime, I owe you so much for everything this past year. It took us a few weeks to get in the hang of it but it meant the world to have you as a best friend first and a travel partner second. I laughed harder with you than I have at any other point in my life. Thank you for always being by my side, both figuratively and literally, like the stretch in Russia where we pretty much were never further than 10 feet away 24/7 for 7 weeks straight. And I never got sick of you! At the risk of getting too sappy, our friendship really approached something more like a brotherhood by the end and I can’t tell you how thankful I am for that.

To two schools I also owe thanks, first Harvard-Westlake for being such a strong proponent of the gap year and introducing the idea to me in the first place. Secondly, the College of William & Mary for allowing me to defer my admission and have this experience with the safety and security of having my spot in college assured the following fall.

To my family, my parents for funding what was once a pipe dream with some major financial and emotional capital. I first broached the idea of a gap year almost two years before my flight to Russia. Still it’s amazing to consider that my mom, the same person who couldn’t get a proper night’s sleep until I texted her that I was home safe and sound while in LA, let me go off in the world and be completely and totally out of touch for days at a time. And my father for helping to ground me whenever traveling got me a little topsy-turvy. To my sisters,my grandparents and to all my other family and friends- thanks for being so understanding when I was hard to get in touch with, or went too long without getting in touch with any of you.

And finally, to all my faithful readers thanks for taking the trip with me. While it was nice to record my memories for posterity’s sake, it was even more rewarding when I got a new comment on a post or saw an uptick in the hits. This was one of the most important years of my life and I'm fortunate I could share it with all of you.

Sincerely,
DA

The Sichuan Shakedown

2009-09-29T00:28:00.001-07:00

I chilled out my first day at the hostel in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, just taking advantage of the first free internet in China since I had left Metrozine. The next day I went to the famed panda reserve in Chengdu and took over 100 pictures of pandas in various poses. The best pictures I got were of a few giant pandas lying back and lazily chomping on bamboo stick after bamboo stick, reaching into piles at their side for more, completely unbothered by the pieces that fell on their chests.

I met the two Dutch girls, Cindy and Malou (who I called Moola) during the panda tour and by the time we were back at the hostel it was decided that I’d travel with them for a couple of days. We explored Chengdu for the rest of the day, seeing the famed Mao statue before ducking into a Starbucks to get out of the rain.

The next day we took a bus for 3 hours to go to Leshan, home to “dafo” or big Buddha. Really, really big Buddha. 230 foot tall Buddha carved into a mountain, making it the biggest Buddha in the world.

After seeing the Buddha and the surrounding temples and gardens, we found an internet café to settle a bet. Having heard the old All Day I Dream About Sports/ Soccer tale, I was sure Adidas had American origins. Cindy said it was founded by a German guy named Adi Dassler. Oops. I lost and had to put in 5 yuan (75 cents) for her dinner. As Westerners, we attracted a lot of attention when we entered the internet café. A few minutes after we sat down, a Chinese guy sat down next to me and attempted to converse with me through Google Translator. He was too shy to tell me to look at his screen when he had something to say to me, so I only caught what he was writing when I looked over out of curiosity. A few times I caught him deleting and rewriting a sentence, and at the end after asking for my e-mail he gave me this gem, courtesy once again of Google Translator

Subject- A nickname of your Chinese friends tell Lai Chi

Body- This is a first E-MAIL to confirm E-MAIL address is correct! A small test, hope you reply!

To wish you happy playing in China!
Do not know What's your name then! ~ It has been too intrusive! ~

Something I had to leave! ~ Am glad to see you, wish you happy playing! ~
See you soon!

Strange, overly friendly- pretty typically Chinese.

The next day we took a six hour bus to Chongqing, the biggest city in Sichuan. The municipality has over 30 million people. (Pretty weird to think that there’s a city of 30 million people somewhere in the world that I had never previously heard of). We were in Chongqing to try to book a cruise down the Yangtze River through the Three Gorges.

Once off the bus we whipped out the Lonely Planet to try to find our way to a hotel or hostel. A curious Chinese woman came up to us and in pretty good English asked if we needed help. We gratefully accepted her help when she pointed us in the direction of the bus we needed to take to get to the city center.

A couple hours later, after dropping our bags off at one hotel option in search of a cheaper one, we had the Lonely Planet out again. This time a man came up to us with his girlfriend and asked us if we needed help. We asked him where a particular hotel was and he pointed us in the direction. Malou or Cindy asked for clarification and doomed us for the night. Our Chinese friend took one look at his girlfriend who made a feeble protest to continue in the (opposite) direction they were originally heading- towards home, dinner or whatever the night was supposed to consist of, and turned to lead us towards the hotel.

He immediately appointed himself our travel agent/ caretaker for the night. He negotiated with the first hotel which was far too pricey. We headed to another one and tried to get him to leave. But he couldn’t take a hint. I tried over and over again to thank him and send him on his way with his girlfriend. But he refused.

I tried to tell him more explicitly that we could handle it ourselves. He laughed at that and said he was my Chinese big brother, or "ge ge." He asked me what Chinese I knew, and I replied with “Wo jiao David.” I tried again when I saw his puzzled look, and he replied “Oh your accent is so so bad.” I just barely resisted the urge to pettily insult his English skills.

Undeterred I tried to say something else again later and was met with the equally encouraging; “your pronunciation is awful.” (However let the record show that when I tried to confirm a price in Chinese with his girlfriend, she had no trouble understanding me).

Right as we arrived at the front desk of the Homey Hotel, where we would spend the next two nights our Chinese Savior turned to me and said, “It must be so strange to you. You must think the Chinese are so good-hearted. Why is he doing this? He must have a secret reason. But no, I have no reason!”

(I beg to differ. I personally think he was looking for someone to help him fulfill his hero complex for the night.)

Our Chinese Savior also tried to help us find dinner. Once again we insisted, not out of politeness but annoyance, that we would find a place ourselves. But he just kept making recommendation after recommendation, and if we didn’t have to get our bags from another hotel I’m sure he would’ve insisted on situating us at a dinner table himself.

We finally lost him and ended up at Pizza Hut, a lot classier in China and India than I bet it is back home. And after dinner I introduced the Dutch girls to a Coke float.

We interrupt this post to present a special exposé: Holland- the most racist country you’ve never heard of?

Cindy and Malou told me the story of Sinter Klaas, which they said America stole, commercialized and turned into the more well-known Santa Claus. Sinter Klaas shows up in Holland on December 5th in a steamboat from Spain. A more realistic story than sleighs and reindeer? Maybe. More fun? Definitely not.

My favorite part of the story is Sinter Klaas’ helpers aka the Black Peters. Instead of elves the Dutch dress up all Christmas-y and add a bunch of blackface, the effects of soot having its way coming down the chimney.

A few days later I found out that the Dutch word for people with Down Syndrome is….. Mongolian. My Dutch friends insisted this wasn’t offensive and explained that the little term of endearment originated in similarities in the eyes of the two groups.

And finally there’s a Dutch happy birthday song that goes “Hanky panky Shanghai” accompanied of course by a slanty-eyed face.

Maybe (probably) I’ve grown up in a country that’s just hypersensitive to race. I mean there are still debates that spring up every couple years about the appropriateness of flying the Confederate flag and it’s been almost 150 years since the Civil War. But because of that hypersensitivity I feel like in matters of race the Dutch may be a tad inconsiderate at times.

The Yangtze River Cruise or Ur in(e) for it now!

We spent an extra day in Chongqing trying to plan our river cruise, and stocking up on supplies. Whenever we stopped moving on the pedestrian avenue near our hotel we were approached by another curious Chinese asking for a picture. Late on our second day we headed to the booking day to take a 3 hour bus to Wanzhou where our 2 night, 3 day cruise departed from.

So, how was the cruise? Piss. Urine. Pee pee. Whizz.
How were the sights off the boat? I’m not really sure. I was too relieved to have fresh air to breathe to notice anything else.
How was the food? I stocked up with peanut butter, jelly and a loaf of bread. But all I tasted was the waves of urine I smelled whenever I moved to a different part of the room.

Besides the stench, the rest of the accommodation was nothing I’d recommend to my worst enemy. The bunk beds were hard wood with a barely-there inch think mattress. And the carpet on our floor covered warped metal plates that made a irritating, loud popping noise whenever you stepped in the wrong place. Bad Chinese karaoke from the top deck sounded at random hours. And we had to pay a one-time fee of 40 yuan to reach that top deck because we paid for a second class room.
But we laughed it all off because it was pretty amusing for only a couple of days. And it was the most authentically Chinese way to cruise. Unless you count the Swedish Chinese, my friend Khan and his posse who moved to a Swedish resort town 30 years ago and opened up a Chinese restaurant there, there were only six Westerners onboard out of one to two hundred people.

On my first night I came down from the top deck and heard in German-accented English, “Look! There’s another foreigner.” I was then mobbed by three 14 year-old Chinese kids, with textbook English knowledge and a burning desire to try it out on the first foreigners they had ever seen.

The cruise stopped late on our first night so we could see a Buddhist temple at night, tackily lit with red lights. We also stopped for a 4 hour small boat tour of the little three gorges, which was really picturesque. For our second to last stop we got on a super long motored canoe painted to look like a dragon and had "dragon boat" races, to our next destination... the opera. All of the cruise's guests still in lifejackets, sat in a floating auditorium to watch costumed Chinese dancers lip sync to opera music. All-around pretty absurd. We then went exploring a mountainside, past a sign for the unfortunately named Wintian Crack into the worse Wangou Hole

The cruise finished with a tour of the massive Three Gorges Dam Project near Yichang on Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately the tour was in Chinese so I just wandered around with my iPod. Yichang is also significantly closer to Shanghai than it is to Chengdu. But with my Friday morning flight from Chengdu to Shanghai, I had no choice but to head back to Chengdu. Pretty maddeningly inefficient, but it’s one of the pitfalls of only partially planning a trip.

What followed might count as the craziest half hour of my trip. The Dutch girls had already left, so I was in my room alone working on this blog post. The sole (barely) English-speaking employee of the cruise knocked on my door to tell me we’d be stopping to let me off in two hours. An hour later I felt the boat stop for a little while and thought nothing of it, as my friend had just told me I had more time. I was watching the clock, so when it came close to two hours, I packed up my stuff and got ready to head out.

After not feeling the boat stop for a half hour after I was supposed to get off, I went into the hallway, only to find it completely deserted. All the other guest rooms were open and there was no one left on the ship. Panicking, I ran down to the main floor. There was one employee still sweeping the deck. I whipped out my Lonely Planet phrase book to try to ask when we'd be stopping to let me off, and she shook me off and told me to sit down. I kept pacing and flipping through my book to try to find the right words to put together, when another employee came up to me and told me something in Chinese. The only word I caught was Ba, which as I understood it could either mean 8 or money or luck. So it could either be "We'll drop you off in 8 minutes/ hours/ days" or "Give me this amount of money for a bribe" or "Good luck getting off this boat. Fat chance."

My mind was still racing when another employee approached me and told me to follow her. Our boat pulled up and stopped next to another boat, and we crossed onto that one. I was handed off to another boat employee I recognized from the night the Dutch girls had broken the door to our bathroom, and one repairman overstayed his welcome trying to learn English. I followed said friendly repairman through an empty scrapyard to a very nice sports car. He popped the trunk and gestured for me to throw my bags down there... right on top of his gun. Still clueless as to what was going on, and now a tad more scared for my life, I jumped in the backseat. The repairman and his friend ignored me while blasting Chinese techno and speeding through some small nameless Chinese town. A few minutes later, we pulled up next to the bus I was meant to be on had I gotten off the boat at the right time. I got out of the car, grabbed my bags and went on the bus and tried to shout a "dui bu qi" (I'm sorry) to all the geriatric Chinese laughing at me.

IIIIIIIncredible India

2009-05-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

The massive photo album follows the story, in the order of our travels

India

“Thank you Jaipur! What? Yeah, I mean Agra. Thank you Agra. We love you!”

That’s what my month in India with Rustic Pathways felt like- a rock band on tour. At one point my luggage was split between four different cities. Most of the time I couldn’t remember what day of the week or date of the month it was, and I couldn’t come up with any date to help me figure it out. 95% of my meals, including strangely for me, breakfast and meals aboard trains and planes, were Indian food, varying only slightly by region.

Rustic Pathways planned practically every hour of the trip in advance, which meant there was little left for me to do besides show up and take pictures. On the one hand it was nice to have a break from the months of planning, stressing and Lonely Planet binging. But on the other hand, it left me feeling a little bit dazed, confused as to where I was and why I was there. So I finished the month with tons of good memories, a little bit more knowledge about India, and hundreds of pictures of temples, churches and the like that mean little to me.

One of the cool parts of my month in India with Rustic Pathways was that it was the first time over the course of my gap year that I was only with other gappers on the same exact schedule as me. There was Michael from Sarasota, Florida headed off to Vanderbilt next year. Sophia from Boston wasn’t sure yet where she was going. Mo from Miami is going to Fordham, and Felicia from Providence, Rhode Island is going to the New School in NY. Our American guide was a 28 year-old Georgetown grad named Jessemin, and we had a handful of local guides throughout the month.

We started off in Delhi. On our first full day we whetted our religious appetite with a Hindu temple, a Sikh temple and the biggest mosque in all of India. We also walked around Old Delhi, a chaotic, bustling place stuck in some sort of time warp. We traveled by tour bus, auto and cycle rickshaw along the city, getting our first taste of India.

The streets of Delhi are something else. It’s as if they put down the lane markings and traffic lights as a formality, to fulfill some rudimentary requirement of being called a world city in the 21st century. But then once you zoom in and get up close, it more resembles the chaos and pandemonium of a schoolyard lunchroom on pizza day with all the kids rushing the table trying to grab the last slice of pepperoni.

But instead of the geeky kid with the glasses, the chubby one with too many freckles and the beanstalk who hit puberty about three years too early, there’s the three-wheeled auto rickshaws (aka tuk tuks), cycle rickshaws, cows and oxen, men pushing carts, motorcycles and smaller cars. They weave and cut in front of each other not even noticing the lane dividers, many even chancing a suicide dash through the oncoming traffic to make it to the front of the line. And any and every maneuver is excused by the symphony of horns that sound every few seconds. I could be entertained by the streets of Delhi all day.

You come to expect bumper-to-bumper during rush hour on the 405. You expect others to follow the right-of-way rules. And there’s a comforting order in that every time you get behind the wheel. In Delhi, where I see only chaos, an Indian driver must also find his sense of order in it. But it all so completely alien, foreign, terrifying and comical that had you thrown cars, lanes and lights on a (semi) paved road and told me to do it any way I wanted, I wouldn’t have been able to dream this up.

After a couple days in Delhi we took a 12 hour bus ride up north to McLeod Ganj. We spent over a week there, as I detailed in my Seven Days Near Tibet post. We left from McLeod Ganj early one morning for our 6 day, 5 night 31 mile hike in the (foothills of the) Himalayas. I had no clue what to expect, so I imagined trekking through knee-deep snow in an Arctic chill, (and packed accordingly), but it was nothing like that. We hiked through Indian farmland and camped luxury style. We only had to carry our daypacks on our back, while mules carried the rest of our luggage and our tents. We stopped frequently to have a bag of Lays, sip some lychee juice or just catch our breath.

Our lunch break lasted for over an hour, and after having the soup of the day with cheese sandwich and the main course of various Indian vegetables and chicken, we’d relax and nap or read. By the time we got to camp in the late afternoon, our tents were already set up for us. We also had two toilet tents, which consisted of a toilet seat on a little kickstand with a large hole dug underneath it. We had a dinner tent as well that was randomly, inexplicably decorated with Mardi Gras decorations. And we were woken up every morning with a mug of tea or Cadbury’s hot drinking chocolate.

After setting up camp for us, our guides would play their daily game of cricket. They’d yell, laugh, and trash talk in Hindi for a few hours before cooking our dinner. Not that I’ll be signing up any time soon, but considering their job has them working in some of the most picturesque campsites in India, and they got to mess around like little kids, it seemed like quite the charmed life. It struck me that we were the Americans, the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth, but these Indian trek guides probably wouldn’t trade their lives for mine. And although I only I got to see a small part of their day-to-day lives, I can understand why.

Our trek finished at a place called Triund, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet. Going the short way, Triund was only a day hike away from McLeod Ganj, so after a few days of near solitude we passed lots of hikers. We also picked up a pack of dogs from McLeod who hung out with us for the entire time. My favorite was an orange-ish dog who McLeod locals called Charlie. By the time we got up to Triund, Mo, Michael, Felicia and Sophia had all gotten sick. I was the only one well enough to enjoy it. So Charlie and I sprinted the last few minutes up to the peak. And it was absolutely stunning.

We were face to face with these daunting, massive snowcapped Himalayan peaks. And we got to camp out there two nights. While the others tried to sleep off their respective illnesses, I hiked down with Charlie to where the locals were chopping up the night’s firewood. They let me use the axe for a little and carry one load of wood up back to camp. I relaxed after that and clambered up one of the big boulders next to our tents and just sat with a book and my iPod in front of the mountains.

The next day everybody was still feeling sick, so I went alone with our guide Sanjay and my trusty companion Charlie to the end of the hike, Snow Line. There was a fair amount of snow and a little log shack where we stopped for some spiced masala milk tea. (Masala chai was everywhere in India. I was woken up with it in McLeod Ganj, and had a cup of it with most meals throughout the country. By the end of the month it was practically coursing through my veins).

After one final night up at Triund, we hiked back to McLeod Ganj, took a nice hot shower and got ready for some more traveling.

We next toured for a couple of days in Jaipur, in the state of Rajasthan. Rajasthan was ruled for many years by its own royalty, called the maharaja. It took a couple years after India became independent in 1947 for Rajasthan to give up its sovereignty and join the new country. We met up there with another local guide named Sudarshan. We went to a fort outside Jaipur where we rode painted elephants.

One of my favorite temples in all of India was located in Jaipur; the temple of the Sun god. On the way up to the temple we passed through a cool looking community devoted to following exclusively one of the Hindu gods. All throughout the community were vicious monkeys. We bought newspaper bags of peanuts to feed them with and they ripped them out of our hands. At the top of the temple there was a view of all of Jaipur. The woman working at the temple gave us all red and yellow bracelets, and I bought a painted, wooden Ganesh (the god of luck and second chances, with an elephant head and human body) statue from her.

We then went to the southern state of Kerala for a few days. We spent a couple nights in the city of Kochi in a mosquito-ridden, hot and humid “hotel” with the showers strangely located on raised tile in the corner of the room. When we weren’t sweating buckets in the room, we explored the city.

Kerala is nicknamed “God’s Country” because even though, like the rest of India, the majority of the population is Hindu, Kerala has sizable Christian and Muslim minorities. We saw some beautifully painted churches, a Dutch graveyard and the first resting place of the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama, before his remains were shipped back to Europe. My favorite part of Kochi was definitely the small tourist quarter centered around the Pardesi synagogue, fittingly named Jew Town, even though there’s only nine Jews left.

I spent one afternoon there while the others shopped, sitting and talking with a young Kashmiri who lured me into his uncle’s store by asking me about American music. I kept expecting him at any moment to launch into a sales speech, but he was just genuinely interested in talking to an American peer, and he asked me to come back the next day to talk some more. I may have ended up with less souvenirs, but it was a nice break from constantly being yelled at “to come into my shop, no buy, only look,” and the old routine of haggling. I couldn’t come back however, because we were on the move again.

We spent one day cruising on a houseboat, which literally looked like a big house dumped on a boat. We jumped off and went for a swim in the warm river, and wasted away the day solving riddles we found on Mo’s Blackberry. We spent another day on a safari in search of tigers, only ending up with elephants. Our last days in Kerala were spent at our priciest accommodation, a resort directly across from the beach. We hung out there, tossed around a Frisbee and swam in the Indian Ocean.

We wrapped up our month in India with a trip to one of the new seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal. We came fully decked out in different traditional Indian clothing we had accumulated. I wore a simple white shirt, burnt orange Aladdin/ MC Hammer parachute pants, black and gold blister-inducing maharaja shoes, and a tie-dye turban I had bought for under five bucks. We took all the obligatory touristy pictures, but then we had a little something extra planned. Earlier in the month Michael had download the dance music video to “Jai Ho,” the song that plays at the end of Slumdog Millionaire. We choreographed our own abridged version and performed and filmed with the Taj as our backdrop. We were ran off by guards once or twice, but I think we were able to get one good cut. And then it was back to a real, more independent world, where I was responsible again for knowing the day and date and planning my own trips. But luckily for me, I got one last meal of Indian food on my flight to Shanghai.

Old pictures! Australia, New Zealand and the French Island

2009-05-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

Australia

New Zealand

French Island

The Legend of Fido and David and the brown bunny rabbit

2009-05-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

The Legend of Fido

A few weeks back I was invited by my coworkers at Metrozine for one of their Saturday basketball games, and decided to bring Jaime along. The game itself went like it was supposed to. Jaime was on fire, throwing up and hitting absolutely ridiculous jumpers and I was doing what I do best; rebounding, setting unnecessary screens and trying my hardest not to have to shoot. And Jaime’s and my team won most of our games.

After the game ended Jaime and I decided to play a few games of pool before heading back to our flat. All the participants of the game walked past us, said their goodbyes and headed off. One tall lanky guy who was pretty good at basketball but seemed to be afraid to shoot (with less cause than me) stopped by our pool table to watch. After about 15 minutes of him sitting there watching us, we struck up a conversation with him. He turned out to be a really nice 23 year old guy native to Shanghai with great English skills. He told us his English name was Lucas Cohen, but his friends called him Fido because of his resemblance to the cartoon character of the same name from the 7 UP commercials.

After Fido joined in our pool game and we talked some more, Jaime asked him where the best place to grab a bite in Shanghai was. Fido immediately responded with “home-cooking.” He waited a beat before inviting us over to his family’s apartment for dinner that night. Jaime and I looked at each other, each thinking “why not?” and told Fido yes.

Once in the cab heading to his apartment, Fido explained it was his grandfather’s 85th birthday that night and his whole family would be over to celebrate. Only then did we realize that we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

After telling his Mom something in Chinese that must’ve been something like, “Hey Mom, I know it’s grandpa’s birthday tonight, but I met these two random Americans playing basketball today and I know they’re still sweaty and they smell terrible, but I invited them over for dinner,” we were welcomed in to the apartment.

We headed to Fido’s room so the amateur DJ could show us some of his music. I sat on his bed poring over a Chinese book on the history of hip-hop, while Jaime took notes on his recommendations. Fido also enlightened us on how he picked his English name, Lucas Cohen. Lucas came from a character on One Tree Hill, and even though he knew it was a Jewish name, Fido picked Cohen from The O.C.

(That method of choosing takes a close second place in the best way a Chinese person came up with their English name. First prize goes to Eacar, pronounced ee-car. Eacar was the translator for my dad’s business meeting on his last day in Beijing. Over dinner she explained that her first English name, Summer, felt too childish. So she decided to combine her two favorite English words, easy, as in “don’t stress so much Eacar, take it easy” and courage to form an entirely new and non-sensical made-up name. How grown-up and courageous of you Eacar).

One of us commented on all the cool clothes Fido seemed to have. He then took out the dozens of basketball jerseys he had, some of them looking relatively authentic. Jaime complimented him on one particular one and Fido nearly insisted that Jaime have it. We then caught sight of a completely over the top faux fur coat and asked if he ever wore it out. Fido replied that he only wore it once or twice because it got dirty too easily.

He then excitedly explained that he had a couple other ones and that we should try them on. Then for added effect he took out a couple doo rags and New Era hats and suggested we put them on too. He snapped a few pictures of us, and then when we suggested he get in one as well, he called his mom in and had her take pictures of her son, and the two still-unwashed Americans modeling full-length fur coats, doo rags and New Era hats. To her credit, she didn’t even flinch and I now have a new favorite for most ridiculous Facebook picture.

Pretty soon after our photo shoot it was time for dinner. On the traditional menu for the birthday dinner was the usual bok choy dish, some whole shrimps, slices of ham and…. duck tongue. Dark red with little antenna-like appendages coming off the main meat, the duck tongue was just as unappealing as it sounds. I was able to swallow one whole grimacing as it scratched its way down. Since I keep relatively kosher, Jaime discreetly ate the slices of ham off my plate even though he doesn’t care for them either. Then like some twisted Chinese version of the old Starburst commercial where they unwrap a piece of candy with their tongues, Fido demonstrated how to de-shell a piece of shrimp in your mouth.

Fido’s aunt and late-arriving government official uncle soon joined his parents and grandparents at the table completing the birthday party. It was an intimate dinner, and it felt very much like we were intruding on their night with the amount of hospitable attention they showered on us. After practicing with Fido a few times, Jaime and I wished his grandpa a happy birthday in Mandarin, and tried to find a cue to leave.

Before we could go though, Fido said he wanted to “show us some magic.” After a couple weeks of bad English slang, the most common example being “this is really suck,” I assumed Fido meant he wanted to show us something cool. Wrong. Instead he put on a video of a French Japanese magician doing the most random magic tricks. Jaime and I sat there trying to muster up the appropriate amount of shock and awe.

We left soon after that, laughing the whole cab ride back to our flat about our overall most random Chinese experience.

********************************************************************************

David and the brown bunny rabbit

The most dramatic moment of my time in China happened outside an amusement park one quiet Sunday afternoon. Having never really had a pet before, I had been joking with Jaime that I was going to buy one of the animals they sold on the streets of Shanghai and keep it in our flat. A large group of us from Projects-Abroad was leaving one of the lamer theme parks I’ve ever been to when we spotted one of the streetside vendors hawking the usual mixture of baby chicks, turtles, birds and rabbits in cages that are so small they probably stunt the animals’ growth. Vicky, the German flatmate, spotted a brown rabbit that she found cute. I sensed an opportunity and asked the seller how much he wanted for it. He asked for 65 yuan, a little less than $10. I countered with 20 yuan, he asked for 45, I held at 20 and very quickly he gave in. Suddenly he was holding out the cage to me and asking for his money.

Everybody started shouting. Half of our group was yelling at me to take the rabbit. The other half was trying to reason with me, shouting about how I needed a cage, how I didn’t know what to feed it, how it was probably diseased. The latter, and angrier half, yelled at me to think about what would happen to it when I left. I argued my case back. I’d figure out all the essentials. I wanted my first pet. When I left, I’d pass it on to another flat. It’d become the Projects-Abroad rabbit, and it’d build camaraderie.

It felt like a cartoon with the angel and devil on either shoulder trying to one-up each other.

The first group kept yelling, “Take it!”
“Do it! C’mon!!!”

The second group, louder:
“What are you thinking?”
“Don’t be stupid.”

Meanwhile the seller was still holding out the cage to me, asking for his money.

And finally Jaime yelled at me that buying the rabbit would be murder, and if I did we wouldn’t be friends anymore.

That was enough for me. I turned to the seller, told him “bu yao” (I don’t want) and walked away.

Chowing down in Chengdu

2009-05-05T21:51:00.001-07:00

My internship at Metrozine wrapped up last week and I was pretty relieved. It wasn't Metrozine's fault, I just wasn't all that motivated and used my time there more for free internet. I did write a few articles, a restaurant review and another on India, (along with a review of the new Britney Spears cd that I didn't get to listen to). Oh well, they do it different in China.

Jaime left last Friday for LA so he could attend all the family events he has in May. :(. I stayed in the flat for a few more days and left yesterday for Chengdu in the Sichuan province, site of the massive earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people almost exactly a year ago. I'm not really sure why I headed to Sichuan. I asked people for tips on what to do during my free two weeks in China and a lot of them recommended Sichuan for its spicy cuisine and natural beauty. So I booked a round-trip Chengdu-Shanghai flight and two nights in a hostel and decided to see what would happen.

Yesterday was the first day of my ten day trip, and I met a Dutch guy who was trying to put together a trip to Tibet. I was interested in going to Tibet after having heard so much about it when I was in McLeod Ganj, India, but it turned out it wouldn't work because of visa restrictions. He next suggested trekking to Mount Emei, something I was pretty interested in so I signed on, but reluctantly because he seemed overly pushy and I wasn't exactly looking forward to spending three days with him on a mountain.

So I kept my ears and options open and met two other Dutch girls today closer to my age and I think I'll be heading off with them tomorrow to Leshan, home to the world's largest Buddha. It's only worth a day's visit, so from there we'll probably head to Chongqing, the biggest city in Sichuan, and start a cruise down the Yangtze River. That will probably all take a few days. They'll be heading to Beijing to catch a flight back to Holland, and so I'll split up and see who else I meet and what other plans I join in on.

I can't believe the gap year is coming to a close. I'll be back in the City of Angels in 12 days. I have lots more pictures, stories and a conclusion to write for this blog before then, so hopefully I get it all done. I'll have one last weekend in Shanghai to hang out with all my friends there before I head back Stateside.Hope everybody's well!

My Shanghai

2009-04-20T04:29:00.000-07:00

So since you finally know I'm alive and I shared a little about India, I should let you know what I'm up to now in China. I'll write soon about the rest of my time in India, my trip to Beijing with my family and share some of the hundreds of pictures I've taken.

My program in Shanghai is called Projects-Abroad. The program sets its volunteers up with an internship and an apartment, gives a monthly allowance and then leaves them be. Jaime’s and my flat is much better and bigger than I expected. We have three other flatmates- Vicky from Leipzig, Germany, Christine from Phoenix and Ali from Irvine. Ali is of Iranian descent and so we’ve had some interesting conversations about his trips to Iran and his view on President Ahmadinejad.

Projects-Abroad currently has about 20-something volunteers in six flats spread throughout the city. Projects-Abroad is based in London, so the majority of volunteers are European (Brits, Scots, Swiss, etc.), but there are a few other Americans beside Jaime and me. There’s more socializing and camaraderie within the program than I figured there would be which is cool. We go out to bars, clubs and karaoke (KTV here) a few times a week.

My internship is with a bilingual lifestyle magazine called Metrozine. I haven’t been working too hard, only one article for the travel section on India so far, and generally just use my time at Metrozine for the free internet. I also took over a week off to be with my family and go to Beijing.

I love city skylines. I get trigger happy with my camera when I get a good view of a city’s skyscrapers and come to identify that city with its skyline. Like Cape Town with Table Mountain and the City Bowl, Auckland with the Sky Tower, Sydney with the Harbor Bridge and Opera House and Yaroslavl with um, well… there’s that one statue of Yaroslavl the Wise?

But I think Shanghai blows the others out of the water. After the communist Chinese government spent the prior few decades breaking Shanghai down and holding it back, the government reversed course in the mid-90s and decided it wanted to build Shanghai back up and have it reclaim the title of Asia’s main financial center from Tokyo. To that end they built up Pudong (or the land dong/ east of the Huang Pu River) into an impressive land of towering skyscrapers. In 1995 up went Oriental Pearl TV Tower, with its two pearl balls that most locals consider a trying-too-hard-to-be-futuristic eyesore. My favorite is the Shanghai World Financial Center with its slanting bottle opener top.

From Shanghai

Shanghai is a city on two wheels. In the city, you’ll find most of the Chinese riding around on bikes, scooters or some strange combination of the two. And that includes businessmen in suits going to work, old women selling vegetables and somehow inexplicably taxi drivers. Jaime actually had to resort to a motorcycle cab ride one morning when he was running extra late for work and couldn’t find a more traditional cab.

There’s a massive park right in front of my flat with one of the few large green spaces in the city. And on any day of the week you can find old couples waltzing, an old man or two eyes closed, content to solo and reminisce about a partner from decades lost. Go a little further and you see a small crowd circled around a middle aged man using a big water brush to write Chinese poetry in calligraphy. There’s bumper cars and bumper boats with squirt guns, and bigger boats for young couples to take around the river that runs through the park. Octogenarians meet in the mornings to do tai chi, and old men slip away to run through some sort of martial art in slow motion. Old women walk through the park doing something that either is an arthritic hand exercise, or the most complicated way I’ve ever been flipped off.

And this is all just along the paths through the park. When you reach the green spaces, it all slows down even more. There are young people everywhere. You wonder what they’re doing here in the middle of an afternoon on a weekday in mid-April, but they don’t seem to care, so why should you. Some play Frisbee. Others fly kites. Still more kick around a badminton birdie like a hacky-sack. There’s a few tents scattered around and couples lie down in the grass and rest together. Not to step on the band Chicago’s toes, but it does really feel like every day here could be the 4th of July, and everyone’s just waiting for it to get dark so the fireworks can get started. But the park closes at night, so those who want to stick around a little longer migrate to the front, and perform or watch some outdoor karaoke.

I guess this is the peace of mind you get when you don’t have to fuss about elections and multiple political parties. Communism seems fun.

You hear another crazy story about rapid Chinese expansion and development. And then you stop and take another look around Zhongshan Park, and it all feels so very far away. And it makes you want to tread very carefully, so as not to pop the magical bubble they’re living in. This is the part of China I want to remember.

Seven days near Tibet (with pictures)

2009-04-20T04:17:00.000-07:00

Tibetan Uprising Day Bday

The short girl with the Tibetan flag painted on her face (and small black tears too if you looked close enough) shouted “China, China, China!” Then came the resounding reply from her fellow protest marchers, “Out! Out! Out!”

Then Facepaint Girl again- When? When? When?
The protesters- Now, Now, Now!

And that is how I celebrated my birthday, chanting and marching for a few hours, a few miles downhill amid a sea of Tibetan flags.

The festivities for David’s 19th- fine, it was also the 50th anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day, were kicked off with a speech from His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. Unfortunately, it was in Tibetan, but English translations were passed around for the many tourists. But we’ll get back to my birthday soon enough. First let’s catch up on how we got to be hanging with His Holiness.

After a quick two days in Delhi (or Deh-LEE if you were to pronounce it like an Indian), my Indian gap year program Rustic Pathways, headed north to McLeod Ganj, home to Dalai Lama and seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

McLeod Ganj, or Mickey G’s as I like to call it, is a strange place. Not quite Tibetan but definitely not Indian, it is a small town filled with Tibetan émigrés, the Westerners, tourists and aging hippies who support the Tibetan cause, and the Indians who moved there to make money off the former.

The streets, all three of them, are narrow and winding up and downhill. The soundtrack to the city is the constant honking of cars as they play Marco Polo around the blind corners. The streets are barely wide enough for one car, so you can imagine how the pedestrians are sent scrambling into the streetside vendors hawking veggie Tibetan dumplings called momos, Tibetan flags and other nationalist paraphernalia whenever a car comes through.

And when two cars play their game of Marco, Polo sounding each other out with their horns around a no-look bend, the people of McLeod Ganj may be forced to seek refuge in the Italian restaurant, or the Mexican place, or the one on the corner boasting everything from Indian food to Israeli.

In McLeod Ganj the four other gappers traveling with Rustic India and I stayed with Tibetan families as part of a homestay. I collapsed onto one of the three beds in the small two room apartment almost as soon as arriving on the 12 hour bus from Delhi. I awoke, bleary-eyed a few hours later startled to find a picture of Pierce Brosnan arm-in-arm with my homestay Bala (Tibetan for father) looking down at me. Later in the day, I found a similar picture of Richard Gere with the owner of a café. So what were James Bond and Mr. Pretty Woman doing in a small town in the north of India? They were two of the many celebrity pilgrims, like Jet Li, who came to see the Dalai Lama.
There are literally dozens of Internet cafes, some with Hebrew letters added to the keyboard. And alongside one of the many coffee ships is a poster advertising cooking lessons “recommended by Lonely Planet.” McLeod Ganj is clearly a small village for more than just the stray Tibetan and entrepreneurial Indian.

My Bala was part of the Ministry of Information and Foreign Affairs which would’ve been fascinating if we could’ve conversed enough for me to find out what the job entailed. Our main translator was my 9 year-old homestay sister, Chezuh. She was much better than her 11 year old brother, named something that sounded like Jimmy. The two of them would sit and watch Cartoon Network after dinner, first Spiderman in Hindi and then a show called Krishna featuring a pint-sized god.

When it came time for bed, generally around 8:30-9, I’d retire to my bed with Pierce Brosnan keeping vigil over me. Bala and Jimmy would sleep in the bed perpendicular to mine and my Amala (Tibetan for mother) and Chezuh slept in the bed together in the kitchen/ dining room. Even after the kids left for boarding school, my homestay parents still slept in different beds. I’m not sure if this was for my benefit, or just the Tibetan way.

When it came time for sleep, the picture of the Dalai Lama surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights went from being an amusing curiosity to an annoyance as flashing Vegas-style lights invaded and interrupted my dreams.

I got a crash course in the Tibetan issue over my first few days in McLeod Ganj. We watched a documentary one day and then met with one of the stars, Ama Ahde, the next day, a Tibetan woman who had been imprisoned for nearly 30 years by the Chinese after being arrested at a protest. Another day we met the flashy organizer of the annual Miss Tibet beauty pageant and the 2008 Tibetan Olympics, who explained his work and his professional view that the evolution of Tibetan culture can organically absorb Western influences without being consumed by them.

We also met with a fiery old man, the most fascinating of all the speakers- a militant extremist. He believed the best (and only) way to free Tibet was to send in an uncoordinated army of Tibetans into mainland China to disrupt communications and infrastructure. He likened it to trapping Arnold Schwarzenegger in a small room with a hive full of pissed off bees, thereby rendering all his muscles useless. His ideas seemed pretty half-baked, but he was a really convincing, charismatic speaker and it was real interesting to hear somebody stray from the Dalai Lama’s pacifistic line.

We spent most of our time when not listening to speakers doing service. Through a community service center, we were each set up with conversation partners at the beginning of week, someone interested in bettering their English speaking skills. I was set up with a Buddhist monk named Palden.

On our first day we talked about Bill Gates, Buddhichita and beating back lust and desire. We had a riveting discussion about the little value in doing good for the wrong reasons, and later the extent to which a devout Buddhist is supposed to be selfless.

For example a Buddhist is never supposed to raise a hand in violence, even in self-defense. But if a Buddhist has a chance to stop someone from doing evil, say a terrorist, then the Buddhist is expected to stop the evildoer by any means necessary, even potentially killing said terrorist. The Buddhist’s actions, taking another’s life even if that saves millions of others, as I understand the Buddhist orthodoxy, still is considered damning. And why is the Buddhist required to do this? So that he can sacrifice himself in place of the terrorist, to stop the terrorist from condemning himself, more importantly than saving the innocents’ lives.

I was pretty excited after that first day with Palden to learn more. I had been interested in Buddhism since reading Hermann Hesse’s classic Siddhartha. But the conversations sort of went downhill from there, and we found ourselves spending some of the time sitting in silence, sipping tea as I checked out the amazing snowcapped Himalayan peaks facing us, and the colorful Buddhist prayer flags strung from building to building.

And then there was the day-to-day life in McLeod.

Showering was bad. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I had the whole conception of showering wrong. See the things is, when I thought shower, I thought “nice, warm, cleansing, therapeutic and just generally not painful.”

None of which applied to my bucket shower in the small, dark stall. My Amala filled up a massive bucket with boiling water and led me to the shower stall, nearly identical to the pit toilet stall my homestay family shared with the neighboring apartment. (Think of an open air horse stable, but much, much smaller with an uncomfortable view of one of the main streets).

The big bucket of hot water came paired with a smaller bucket, which I used to scoop and pour. Cue 15 seconds of beautiful warmth, followed by 3 minutes of shivering and cursing myself. Rub some soap on some small fraction of my body, rinse, repeat. How this is was supposed to get me clean I have no idea. I did know that one bucket shower was one bucket shower too many and that I was done for the week.

At least my Amala made good food. She woke me up every morning by walking in and saying “hello, breakfast, hello.” She then presented me with japatti, sort of like nan or pita and mango jam with a hot steaming thermos of spiced masala milk tea. Dinner was generally potatoes, peppers and some sort of mutton or noodle combo.

On Tibetan National Uprising Day we marched for two hours down through the bigger city of Dharamsala. I chanted loudly, even taking my turn to start one chant of “Release! Release!” answered by the crowd with a chorus of “the Panchen Lama!”

But I didn’t really feel this one like the other protesters. I was more bemused by the whole spectacle of it all, rather than angry at the Chinese or scared for Tibet like my fellow marchers. I was there for the experience and to answer as loud as I could when Facepaint Girl shouted “People of the world!”

“Support us!”

My Kiwi Experience

2009-02-28T23:13:00.001-08:00

It could’ve gone either way. I could’ve kept listening to my iPod and continued wandering around the harbor looking for my sushi lunch. And in that reality I would’ve found myself at what sounded like a pretty cool vineyard for the next few days. But instead I decided to ask the group of kids with their American accents where they were from, and after about five minutes of conversation they decided to invite me on the camper van tour of the North Island that they had just decided to take.

We crammed 11 into a six person van, eight of the others from Wash U. in St. Louis, another from Miami of Ohio and a tenth from Arcadia in Pennsylvania. All of them were juniors studying abroad at the University of Auckland for the semester. Three of the Wash. U kids were from LA, including one who went to Harvard-Westlake’s rival school Loyola, and another who not only was in the same graduating class at Milken Community High School as my sister Karin, but had actually hung out at my house in middle school. Small world indeed.

Within a few hours of landing in Auckland, I got lonely. New Zealand was one of Jaime’s countries, and not only did I miss having one of my best friends with me, but it also hit me that I didn’t know a single friendly face in the entire country. If you think about that long enough, it can get you pretty down.

But I found another Nando’s, the amazing Portuguese chicken restaurant from South Africa, had a filling lunch, spent some time talking to some Uruguayans and kept on my way. I checked out Mt. Eden, the dormant volcano which lends it name to the little, very Asian suburb my hostel was in.

I made it back in time to my hostel for the meet-and-greet BBQ, and wandered around talking to people- two British girls there, a few Germans here, and more Germans there. (Germans are absolutely everywhere in Australia and New Zealand). Eventually I met a few people who wanted to go out, so four Germans, an Israeli girl and I walked to a bar playing live American hits ranging from the 50s and 60s to the latest from Kings of Leon. Two fights, or more shoving contests than full-fledged fights, broke out at the bar, the first between girls, the second guys. A little bit after the second, jetlag got the best of me and I headed back to the hostel.

Then my second day in New Zealand I met the group of Wash. U kids. I bummed around their dorms, sleeping on a different person’s couch for the couple nights before we left for our trip.

First we headed off to Waitomo, a small town that probably wouldn’t exist if not for its tourist trap, the glowworm caves. We were told that without a tent, we wouldn’t all be allowed to sleep in the campsite with all the other RVs and camper vans, so we split up. Half of our group slept in a luxurious hostel, while the other half got the van. A few of us in the van group decided to really enjoy the great outdoors and sleep next to the van. We had just stopped talking, preparing to go to sleep when a shooting star streaked across the sky. I think it was the first I had ever seen, and it had us city kids talking for a little bit longer about the stars and the Milky Way. I lasted til about 3 in the morning before the cold conquered my $15 camouflage sleeping bag, purchased earlier that day, which struggled to reach my sternum. I spent the rest of the night equally uncomfortably, if not a little less cold, in the camper van and decided it’d be hostels for me for the rest of the trip.

We chose the longest cave adventure called the Black Abyss, which started off with a long abseil/ rappel into the caves, followed by a zipline, some underground tea and cookies and then finally led us into the water for some blackwater rafting. Blackwater rafting sounds a lot more intense than it is. After finishing our tea, we jumped about 10 feet into the water, clutching black inner tubes to our backs so we wouldn’t have to experience more of the frigid water than was absolutely necessary. We then coasted through the caves on our inner tubes, admiring the glowworm larvae splattered on the wall like lime green snot and singing Don’t Stop Believin’.

Feeling adventurous we decided to choose the waterfall exit out of the caves. I found this to be the most exciting part of the excursion, because we had to scramble up through the cave and over the waterfalls without any sort of safety harness. Granted our guides were yelling through the noise of the waterfall and pointing to exactly which rocks to step on, but it still felt appreciably more dangerous than any other part of the afternoon.

Our next stop was Lake Taupo, probably my favorite city in New Zealand. I’ve heard of other cities in New Zealand on the South Island claiming to be the extreme sports capital of the world, but I can’t imagine any city squeezing more action into each square mile than Taupo did. There were a solid four different skydiving companies vying for your thrill-seeking dollars, a place to bungee jump and water sports galore.

Nine of our crew decided to go for the skydive. I thought about it, but since I had already done it last June and didn’t love it, I thought I’d give bungee jumping a try. Ben, the one who went to high school with Karin, wasn’t so big on heights, so he came to watch me bungee.

I freaked out a little right before the jump, but I ended up taking and loving the 47 meter (130ish feet) plunge. I jumped into water, maybe Lake Taupo, and asked to be dipped only head deep, but I jumped too far out and only got my hands in.

Ben and I then headed to the water sports center, grabbed a quick lunch and then decided to try our hand at sailing. After the shortest tutorial known to man, Ben and I were given the boat for an hour. We had quite the rocky start with lots of shrieking and laughing, and a few close calls. After we made it back safely ashore, we found out that in the early going, my letting go of the steering rod to help Ben on the sails, was analogous to letting go of the steering wheel on a car. But we eventually found a better (and safer) groove with Ben steering and me on the sails.

Just to put it in perspective, when I went skydiving I had to leave around 8 in the morning, drive two hours away south to Lake Elsinore, and then wait for a few hours, before heading back, getting caught in typical LA freeway traffic and finally getting back home around 6 at night. In Taupo, you could skydive, bungee and windsurf all before lunch.

Our next stop was Whangamata (pronounced fahn-gah-ma-TAH). We watched Sideways in our hostel, and went to check out the beach the next morning. Everybody else messed around in the water, but I wasn’t feeling the cold so I went running on the beach instead. After lunch, we kept on north to go back to Auckland and return the van.

I had a really fun couple of days, and am really glad I got out of Auckland and got to explore the country a little. In my few months of traveling I haven’t heard of a single city as roundly criticized as Auckland. Sure, people from St. Petes trashed Moscow and you heard the fair share of Jo’burg horror stories that made you want to scurry indoors the second the Sun set, but at least the residents of the two cities spoke fondly of them. Most people I talked to in Auckland complained about how boring it was, and encouraged me to leave and see the rest of the country.

We got back to Auckland for the end of orientation week, just in time for a pub crawl at the other international students dorm. Three of us decided to take the half hour walk there together, and on a whim we popped into a random house party. We walked straight up to the barbecue and a girl in her late 20s asked us if we were the barbecue technicians from next door. And why not? The ruse was up quickly enough, but not before we thoroughly and completely burned the shish kebabs for the dentist hygienists party that we were supposedly so expert at cooking.

We finally made it to the student dorms in Parnell village. I was sick of relaying the whole extended gap year story, so I just started to tell people that I was living in the other dorms (partially true, at least for the week) and that I was a sophomore at William & Mary (completely false). I had to disappoint a few people by admitting that I didn’t know a senior named David on the gymnastics team.

“But everybody knows David!”
“Well I mean it is a pretty big school.”

Right as I was explaining how I didn’t know everybody at William & Mary, a girl I vaguely recognized came up to the group I was talking with. She listened and then exclaimed excitedly, “I know you! You’re not in college yet.”

I had met this girl on my second day before the Wash. U group took me in, and talked to her for a little while at Dunkin Donuts while I ate a bagel and egg sandwich. She was studying abroad in Auckland and I related the whole gap year story to her, before we went our separate ways. Another one of the random conversations with a stranger never to be seen again, except this time she decided to have another cameo with some perfect timing. Nobody was any worse for my little lie, and I really enjoyed the small taste I got of what the study abroad experience might be like.

Well, my 12 hour layover in Hong Kong International Airport is thankfully wrapping up. Now it’s time for India. Fingers crossed that when I inevitably get sick from the food, it passes quickly and easily! Hope everybody has a great March. I have no idea what my computer access situation will be, but I’ll be sure to write in a notebook and throw it online at a later date if I have to.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy! Oy! Oy!

2009-02-28T21:08:00.000-08:00

Melbourne

We can call the rest of my time in Australia my YPO vacation. Young Presidents Organization is an organization of company presidents and CEOs with chapters around the world. My dad, president of the third generation family business Alpert & Alpert Iron and Metal, has been a member of YPO for about a decade. In Melbourne, before and after my week at the French Island, I stayed with a YPO member my dad and my sister Karin had met on a YPO trip to Cambodia.

A hilarious, divorced father of four, he seemed to cherish his newfound bachelordom. His favorite among his series of one-liners seemed to be “a bachelor is a man who never makes the same mistake once.” His two older kids are in boarding school so I only got to meet them once, but his two elementary-aged girls were there for my last few days.

And then there was his housekeeper Joan. Within minutes of meeting her, during the car ride from the airport, the 68 year-old grandmother spilled to me (completely unsolicited on my part) almost all the secrets of her employer’s divorce and every off-color comment she could remember him making, interspersed of course with bits about Melbourne. She also seemed to be practically deaf and could drone on forever on any topic from the intimate details of the personal lives of every member in her large family to the wildfires in the 1890s. But talking to her made for some good entertainment, and she was very warm, even going so far as to give me a tour of the 19^th century house she was staying in and personally renovating.

I wasn’t very productive during my few weeks in Melbourne. I slept in, took the tram (Melbourne has an extensive network of trams like San Fran’s trolleys), and just wandered around the city. I did make it to the Shrine of Remembrance commemorating Australia’s war dead in World War I, which was pretty moving.

My social life in Melbourne was also buoyed by YPO. I spent one night at the gargantuan Crown Casino for a YPO event with 2005 World Series of Poker winner Joe Hachem. I spent another night on a yacht for a dinner cruise of the Yarra River with kids of YPOers, and spent a weekend with another YPO family down the Great Ocean Road (the Aussie equivalent of PCH) in a small beach town named Fair Haven. I also hung out with the Australian sisters from my Russia program a few times.

Melbourne was hot, hot, hot during my two weeks there with temperatures reaching a scorching 47 degrees Celsius (around 116 Fahrenheit). I was there during the terrible Victorian brushfires (little taste of home), but was in no way affected. I was surprised to learn about how severe the effects of an 8 year drought were on Melbourne. Melbournians were supposed to limit themselves to 155 liters of water per day, meaning showers of three minutes or less and washing encouraged during non-peak hours.

Traveling alone was not nearly as hard as I anticipated it being. Before I left I dreamed up worst case scenarios where I’d feel so bone-crushingly lonely and starved for meaningful human interaction that I’d ambush the stranger sitting next to me on the tram with a big bear hug. Not only did it never get that bad, I actually felt happy and content almost all the time.

I chatted up strangers because I wanted to, not because I felt like I had to. And it led to a pretty strange existence. The most interesting parts of my days generally were the little five minute snippets of conversations with strangers that I would never see again.

There was Curtis who stood behind me in line while I was buying my favorite breath enhancer, mint Mentos. He was wearing a red Washington Nationals hat, so I asked him if he was from DC. He told me that he was actually from NYC and that he had been playing basketball as one of the two imports for one of Melbourne’s teams for the last 8 years. We talked basketball, the NBA and the Lakers until he was finished buying and then we went our separate ways.

There was the German girl who sat across from me on the tram with a fresh bouquet of flowers. I asked her if she was giving or getting them, and she raved about her abroad experience studying tourism at one of the universities until I got off the tram.

Sydney

A week of Melbourne before and after the French Island seemed to be enough, so I headed north. I got to Sydney right in time for some more bad weather, this time five straight days of rain. In Sydney, I spent a week with a friend named Lachlan I had met a few summers back on a YPO trip for teens in Switzerland. I lazed around, sleeping until noon most days and then getting up and watching TV. Lachlan’s also taking a gap year and will be spending five months living and working in Europe with friends this fall. I went out to the major nightlife district in Sydney, King’s Cross, with a few of his friends. We also went snorkeling on a beach when the weather got better on my last day.

Earlier in the week, I went up to Lachlan’s family’s farm about an hour away with him and his girlfriend. It was a ton nicer than the McLeod Eco Farm at the French Island. And I quickly found out that I may not be cut out for country living. Lachlan and I were with the horses, feeding them and petting them, when I got too close to the new baby foal. Its mother apparently felt threatened, and I was too slow to react when I saw it wheel around. Before I could think to move out of the way, it landed a decent blow to my upper left thigh.

I followed up getting kicked by a horse by crashing an ATV. I didn’t give it enough gas going up a big hill, and suddenly was rolling down a hill. I bailed out safely, and the ATV was stopped by a barbed wire fence. We decided it’d be best to have Lachlan take it up the hill after that.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We tried our hand at fishing in one of the lakes, I successfully hit a can of Fanta on my first try with an air rifle, and we collected crickets by flashlight for bait. And in the morning I tried an old Aussie favorite, spaghetti on toast. It was the canned variety of spaghetti, tasting a lot like Spaghetti-Os, and despite what the name might have you believe, it’s eaten with a fork and knife and not like a sandwich.

While in Sydney, I did a few more tourist-y things. I climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Well, to call it climbing would be a stretch. It was more walking up ramps and ladders as we made our way slowly up to the summit of the bridge at sunset. But I had a lot of fun and really appreciated that the rain that had been pouring down all day paused for the 3 hour climb.

And of course, I also made it to the Sydney Opera House. It was good to see that I wasn’t jaded by traveling. As the ferry pulled up in front of the Opera House, I was snapping away with my camera like any shameless tourist. I felt a wonderful mix of awe and excitement at being so close to such a global icon and was drawn to go back again and again. After I had taken enough pictures of the Opera House, I started watching the other tourists taking their pictures. And then I decided it’d be a cool series to have pictures of other people taking pictures. So I have a few pictures of random strangers taking pictures, some of them with the Opera House in them, others not. And the pictures are coming to the blog, I promise, as soon as I can figure out how to get my memory card in my computer.

Frenching (and quick NZ update)

2009-02-22T21:05:00.000-08:00

How was it to be a farmer on a remote, deserted island? Relaxing. The work was, in the words of one of my co-WWOOFers, “piss easy,” and since we only worked from 8:30-1:30, we had lots of free time. There wasn’t much to do in that down time, which may have made it go by even faster. I stayed from Monday to Saturday the first week of February, working in exchange for my room and board.

The French Island is right next to the Phillip Island, world-renowned for its penguins, and is about as well-known to Australians as it is to Americans. I got lots of puzzled looks when I told people in Melbourne where I was going. But the locals I met on the quick ferry ride over said that they like being overlooked, even after pop star Kylie Minogue bought a house there. There is also no running water and electricity, although with generators and water tanks you could hardly tell.

The work itself consisted of watering the plants, either the pumpkin patch or the bigger field with a myriad of crops, in the morning. After our half hour mid-morning break, we were usually sent to the garlic shed to cut and beautify garlic, shucking off the bruised and ugly layers to make them look, nice, clean and white.

Despite how easy the work was, within a half hour of my first morning working, it looked like I had been working (and sleeping) in the same clothes for weeks. Mud and water splashed all over my jeans and shirt, and a few days in the dried dirt had the desired effect of allowing my jeans to stand up a little all on their own.

And for the duration of my week-long stay my face was coated with a fine mix of sweat, dirt, sunscreen, bug spray and grime. We were allowed to shower with the cold water every other day, but that only served to help move the dirt around, not actually help us get clean. I also perfected the Aussie or Outback salute of batting away the flies in front of my face who actually seemed to relish the bug spray.

In our down time, we read, took long, leisurely afternoon naps and played games like Monopoly, poker and other card games. We watched the tv, which helped to really simplify the answer to “what’s on?” since it had only one working channel.

I read Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture (absolutely great) and made some headway into John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany (took a while to get into, but then gripping in its own slow way) and Frederick Nietzche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra (thought-provoking). We rode bikes and ATVs (known as quadbikes here), and the 11 year-old daughter of the farmer’s owner taught me how to drive a stick shift in a pick-up truck missing one functioning door, a radio and a sideview mirror.

The farm was used as a prison until the late 1970s and the WWOOFers dorms were converted former prison cells. While the room wasn’t bad, if not a little sparse, it also wasn’t that much of a step up from its prison days. It had just been spruced up with a better paint job, a better bed and carpeting, but the layout remained almost entirely the same as the one cell they kept unchanged for tour purposes.

My first night at the farm I made the mistake of leaving my light on and door open. I was attacked by moths all night long, and had trouble sleeping with the feeling of them crawling all over my legs. Turning my flashlight on to try to bat them away only made more flock to me. So after some morning pest removal, I returned to my room the next night to see a huntsman spider patrolling one corner of my ceiling. The huntsman to my untrained eye resembled a small tarantula, but was supposedly harmless. I joked that I would be freaked out if I woke up to find it was no longer in the same corner, but I didn’t have to wait that long. I came back to my room later that night to find it gone. My search proved futile, so I spent the rest of the week with my friend the huntsman lurking somewhere in my cell.

There were a handful of other WWOOFers there during my stay. There was one couple from Scotland, two friends from England, and Germans who left and came while I was there, all pretty much in their early to mid-twenties. The Scots were interesting people, sort of fantasy freaks. He had “stylish” tattooed in the Elf language (Elfish? Elvish? Elvis?) on his stomach, and she was part of a paranormal investigative unit with friends back home. Not the type of people I normally hang out with, but not bad either for a change of pace.

I was real friendly with the two Brits. The guy was from Liverpool, which I’ve decided narrowly beats out the Scottish variety for hardest native English-speaking accent to understand. When I was able to understand him we had a good time, including an epic ping pong marathon that started with me teaching him how to keep score and ended with a crushing, nailbiter loss.

All the other WWOOFers were long-term travelers, in Australia for at least a year, who were using the McLeod Eco Farm as a sort of free base camp and some work to fill their days while they had recruitment agencies look for paying work. When they found out I was staying in Australia for only a short month, they exhorted me to get back to civilization and enjoy the country. So I listened and shortened what was initially planned to be a two week stay to five days.

The proprietor of the farm was probably the most interesting part. Mark Cunningham is a self-described Jewish, Christian, Muslim with a Hindu, Buddhist, capitalist outlook. The others found him to be annoying, but I always enjoyed it when he broke up the monotony of the work by preaching his philosophy on life to us. I wrote down some of his more memorable pearls of wisdom.

He talked about “making love to the land” instead of raping it as others do, to try to learn its secrets. He was also big on what he called the parachute theory; the basic premise is that we all know absolutely nothing. Once you open up your mind, like a parachute, to all you don’t know, then you’ll finally start to learn. He called all religions, stories, which is probably how he rationalized calling himself a man of so many faiths. He just simply liked the different stories.

He also loved to tell us about his own story. He told us that he was using the farm to build the Garden of Eden economically, because “the only way you can save the world is through economics.”

I personally couldn’t really connect all the dots, but he planned to open a Japanese wagu beef burger restaurant. The restaurant would turn a huge profit because he’d put it right next to one that’s currently doing good business, but sell his burgers for almost half the price. He talked about copying the McDonalds formula too, but I don’t really know how that applies considering his burgers would cost significantly more, and would hopefully be of higher quality. But I guess the fact that he’s doing all this biodynamically (you got in trouble if you said organic, but don’t ask me to explain the difference) sort of fits with the whole Garden of Eden analogy and returning the land to its natural, chemical-free state.

Oh and as a postscript, I’d like to paint the picture of the Scots’ arrival to the farm as they told it to me. From the ferry, they were picked up in the broken down pick-up by a paid employee of the farm named Jamie. The car wouldn’t start so Jamie took a sledgehammer to the engine, to get it going. Then once they hit the road for the half hour ride, he took a few swigs from his bottle of Jim Beam, explaining that it was okay because there were no cops, and all the locals kept guns anyway.

Ladies and gents, the French Island!

***UPDATE****

I'm currently in Auckland, New Zealand. I've been here for three days now, staying in a hostel. I had planned to spend the rest of my week at the vineyard I referenced in one of my earlier posts, but yesterday I met a group of Americans studying abroad here from Wash . U in St. Louis and they invited me to come with them in a rented camper van for the week traveling around the North Island. It'll be a quick, fun week in New Zealand, by far the least amount of time I'm spending in any country, and then I'm off to India this Saturday!

Onwards to Oz and the new and improved second half

2009-01-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

Australia, here I come. After a great month at home, during which time I got to go to not one, but TWO Laker games, see the inauguration of #44 while still on American soil, and relax with family and friends, I’m off for the second half of the gap year. And there’s been a few changes. The first big change is there will be no Jaime sightings on this page until China. He’ll be staying back to spend some more time with his family for a little longer. So I’ll be traveling most of this second half alone.

And the second biggest change, I present to you the addition of a brand new country into the gap year, drumroll please……. India! With Jaime and I going our separate ways for a time, I decided to shuffle the schedule around. So without further ado, here is the schedule for the second half.

Australia January 25th- February 18th

I’m spending the first six days in Melbourne, staying with a friend my parents made when they were Down Under a few years ago. I’m going to try to check out the Australian Open and explore Melbourne for a few days.

Then since Australia’s supposed to be about organic farming through WWOOF (Worldwide Workers On Organic Farms), I’ll be heading to an island off the coast of Melbourne for 10 days.

The farm in Melbourne: McLeod Eco Farm

I quote from the WWOOF Aus book: “This ‘lost island’ (70% of which is National Park) offers rare & beautiful flora & fauna, including the world’s largest koala population, the Eastern Australian Potoroo, 230 bird species, 600 plant varieties, 100 native orchids, mangrove & wetlands. You can learn all about and help develop our natural, self-sufficient certified Bio-dynamic system during daily work on our 222 ha organic farm. Work includes; harvesting, weeding, mowing, H/H duties, plus other accommodation and farm related jobs. Afterwards you can cycle, play golf, swim in our lake or stroll along our secluded beach, accommodation for up to 10 in clean, private rooms. Work best suited to hard working and cheerful adventurers and those would like to help make a difference.”

What they don’t mention about the “lost island” also known as the French Island are two interesting tidbits I picked up from Wikipedia. One, the population of the French Island as of a 2006 census- 89 people. Number two, uh, Wikipedia why don’t you take it from here? “Most koala populations on the mainland of Australia are affected by the Chlamydia disease. French Island provides the world's most dense and disease free population of koalas, with regular transfer of excess koalas to repopulate diseased areas on the mainland.”

Forget the national park on French Island. New tourist marketing angle: "89 people! Chlamydia-free koalas! Could it get any better?"

After I leave the farm, I’ll have six days to get to and explore Sydney. I plan on either taking the 12 hour Greyhound bus, or the 3 day backpacker’s bus called the Oz Experience to get to Sydney. The Greyhound is about a fifth the price of the backpacker’s bus, but I figure I’ll meet more people and see more interesting things on the Oz Experience. In Sydney, I think I’ll be staying with a friend I met on a one week Switzerland program the summer after my junior year. Then from Sydney’ I’ll head off to…

New Zealand Feb 18th- Feb 28th

I was supposed to be spending five weeks in New Zealand. Now I’ll only be spending 10 days there. I put all that extra time into India. I plan to spend about a week at what sounds like a really cool vineyard. And I’ll spend the other two or three days, touring Auckland, either staying at a hostel or with a family friend.

The vineyard in Auckland: Te Marama Estates

I quote from the WWOOF NZ book. “Te Marama Estates are two small vineyards located 40 minutes south of Auckland in the beautiful Mangatawhiri Valley. Work offered is vine training, summer pruning, winter pruning, harvesting and occasional winemaking. Guaranteed NO WEEDING. We are 30 minutes from beaches on either coast, waterfalls and bushwalks. Accommodation is a separate guest wing, private and comfortable with great views over the vineyard. Fine food, including the best pizza in the world! Nine “hole” Frisbee golf course around the extensive gardens.”

I love Frisbee and think I might want to play Ultimate in college. And how can you go wrong with the “best pizza in the world?”

A little note about organic farming: I always looked at WWOOFing as a cheap way to travel, (free room and board in exchange for long hours of toiling in the field). Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been known to say in the past that I like the accomplished feeling after a day of mindless, manual labor, and I’m open to new experiences. But I don’t really have any real long-term interest beyond this gap year in farming, organic or otherwise.

If you say anything enough times, it’ll start to sound normal. And I’ve gotten so used to rattling off organic farming in the list with volunteering and journalism internship when talking about the gap year, I’ve forgotten how different and offbeat it really is. I’m reminded though (and amused) when people misunderstand my interest in farming and take it for more than it is.

After a quick 10 days in Auckland, I’ll head off to…

India March 1st- March 31st

I’ll be spending the entire month of March in India with the travel group Rustic Pathways. They have a full gap year of different modules and programs in different countries, and a gapper can sign up for anywhere from one module (a la India) to the full year. As of now, I’ll be with four other kids on gap years, traveling through India. We’ll have a one week home-stay in a village near Tibet where we’ll teach English. We’ll trek through the Himalayas for six days at an altitude of up to 10,000 feet and temperatures down in the 20s. We’ll spend some time at a more temperate coastal town, and head to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

And after spending my birthday in the land of Bollywood, I’ll be off to…

China April 1st- May 18th

In China, I’ll be reuniting with Jaime. We’ll be living in an apartment in Shanghai with other people from Projects-Abroad while working on our respective internships (journalism for me, business for Jaime). I decided to sign up for just a month, during which time my whole family will hopefully be coming to visit. The last 18 days after my program and internship wrap up and I’m kicked out of my apartment are still up in the air.

And that will conclude my gap year. I’ll head back to Encino for three months and get ready for William & Mary in August!

Pictures from the safari and Table Mountain hike

2008-12-23T04:09:00.000-08:00

Safari

The safari wasn't all that impressive in terms of animals, but it was still a nice day. We drove about 2 or 3 hours out of Cape Town to this reserve, and had tea before the safari and lunch after it. The safari itself was comparable to San Diego Wild Animal Park, but I had to see some of the traditional animals while in Africa. The album is a little bit boring, a ton of repetitive shots of animals that I didn't feel like weeding through. But enjoy anyway!

Table Mountain

Jaime and I went one afternoon to hike the easiest path up Table Mountain. We went with Angelique, an older volunteer from Detroit, and Katie, who has since hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. Jaime and I were pretty slow going up, stopping every ten minutes to admire the view and take pictures of the City Bowl. (Driving at night the view of the City Bowl reminds me of the view of the San Fernando Valley from Mulholland Drive or the 405 North on steroids). So there's a ton of repetitive scenery shots in this album, but I just couldn't resist taking out my camera. We finally made it to the top after about 2 hours. I rejuvenated myself with some water and a bag of pretzels and bought a Table Mountain beanie as a souvenir. And then we hiked back down it at dusk racing the Sun all the way.

Russian cultural excursions (old pictures)

2008-12-20T23:12:00.000-08:00

Here are some old pictures and quick descriptions of different cultural trips we took in Russia. Because in the past I've had trouble linking to every specific album, this time I'm just going to link to my Picasa page and I trust that you'll be able to find the corresponding album. http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david

As part of the cultural component of the three-pronged program (culture, volunteering and independent free time) CCS took us on weekly Wednesday trips. The village trips typically consisted of us driving an hour away, eating a nice home-cooked lunch at the home of some local and then touring whatever churches and museums were in the area.

Banya:

While the trip to the banya (Russian bathhouse) wasn’t technically a cultural excursion (we went on a Thursday night and we had to pay around $12), it was still with the CCS staff and fit enough that I thought I’d include it here. We drove somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, the roads were even less paved than usual and we were surrounded by forest and no city lights, and found our little banya cabin.

Unfortunately, the almost frozen pool outside of the banya was out of commission so instead, between trips into the steam room we dumped cold buckets of water on each other. It’s also customary to rub a mixture of honey and salt all over your skin to help exfoliate. Finally, there’s the strangest part of the banya- the thicket of leaves that you beat each other with. (Insert your own crude joke here).

One person lies down on the hot wood benches with a sheet or towel to protect themselves, and another takes the leaves that have been pre-soaked in water, sprinkles a little water on the victim’s back and proceeds to hit them all over with the leaves, first harder and then softer. Combined with the overwhelming heat, being beaten was one of the more intense feelings I’ve ever had. And it was so hot that standing up and moving around to assist in beating Jaime was too much for me.

Valentina Tereshkova Museum:

Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to enter space, completing her mission a full 20 years before (Westlake alum) Sally Ride left the earth’s atmosphere. Tereshkova is a Yaroslavl native so the museum dedicated to her and to Soviet cosmonautics in general, is located just a half hour outside of the city.

Gavrilov Yam:

This small village is located an hour outside of Yaroslavl. The name comes from Gavrila (Russian version of the name Gabriel) and Yam, meaning station. Gabriel’s Station sprang up as a convenient place to rest one’s horses on the ride between Yaroslavl and Moscow.

Felt boot factory and Museum of Music and Time:

These were our last two cultural excursions and our worst two by far. The felt boot (valinki in Russian) factory reeked so strongly of sheep and wool, it became hard to breathe. And there just wasn’t much to see there. It was a factory, and there were women operating assembly line machinery. And that was it. We left pretty quickly.

The Museum of Music and Time was at least amusing if not interesting. It was opened in 1993 by John Gregoryich and was one of the first private museums in Russia. The museum consisted of three rooms, one with all different kinds of clocks and old record players, another with collections of old Russian irons, bells and records, and the third which was part souvenir shop and part bell collection. We found out later from the translators that the main appeal of this museum is that it’s one of the first truly interactive museums. (If you so choose, you get to play the bells and strange hybrid piano/accordion). But there was just no coherent idea behind the museum.

We did get the honor of meeting egocentric Mr. John Gregoryich himself, and it was one of the more awkward conversations I’ve had in Russia. He told us about relatives that he had in the States and how he might move there because between them they have $2000. (Small chance something was lost in translation there). And then he urged us to go to his other two museums that he had in the complex and when we said we’d go later and tried to make our exit he presented us each with a gift; a $100 bill bookmark with his face replacing Ben Franklin’s. Altogether strange.

Rostov:

This was our first cultural excursion to the nearby Golden Ring city better known to Russians as Rostov the Great. Located on the shores of Lake Nero, the city was founded in the 9^th century and was once a lot bigger than its current population of 36,000. (For comparison, Yaroslavl, the unofficial capital of the Golden Ring, has over 600,000 residents.) Rostov is now most famous for its enamel- little vibrant glass paintings that are burned multiple times during the painting process to give it that eternal just-finished looked. We had a really fascinating conversation with our tour guide over lunch about the then upcoming presidential election and Russo-American relations in general. When I get around to writing my election post, I’ll fill you in on that.

Big Salt:

At Big Salt, so named because of the salty river it was built next to, we had a fascinating lunch with a family of artists. They had rooms full of art all made by one of the four family members. Lunch, among other tastier options, involved a pickled apple. I tried it out of a sort of morbid curiosity and never plan to again. Apples are meant to be sweet. If you want to preserve them, try making a sweet apple jam. Pickling them defeats the purpose of enjoying a nice, crunchy and sweet apple in the first place.

Pyotrpavelskaya (The Russian village I wrote “Village of sweetness” about):

This was our second Wednesday trip and it really touched me deeply as you can read about in my 3 part post in October called village of sweetness.

Summertime and the livin's easy

2008-12-19T22:56:00.001-08:00

With just over a week to go, I thought I’d write a little about the CCS Home Base and what living in Cape Town has been like.

Our house is located on a small side street named Hermitage Ave. (reminds me of the world famous museum in St. Petes, Russia) in a neighborhood called Rosebank, right by the University of Cape Town. And I’m not sure what CCS’ deal is about being near trains, but like the Russian Home Base, we can hear and see a train rumbling right on the other side of the fence in our backyard.

I sleep in the top bunk, above Jaime, due to my childhood reasoning of the top being the safer choice in the event the bunk bed collapsed. But I’m getting rather sick of having to climb up and down a staircase to get into bed, and not having a place to sit in the room when I’m not sleeping. We have two other roommates, who share another bunk set, but the room’s gotten a little crowded and messy of late, so Jaime and I are going to move to an empty room upstairs.

One of the house’s many bathrooms is right next door to our current room, and we’re also right across from the kitchen and dining room. I’m always running in and out of the dining room grabbing a snack- either a granny smith apple, a pb& j sandwich, or a bowl of corn flakes cereal with warm milk. (They have this long-lasting milk here that is left out of the fridge. Takes a little getting used to, but it works fine).

Our house is located a quick ten minute’s walk from a commercial district named Rondebosch that has lots of shops and restaurants. There’s my personal favorite, Nando’s the Portuguese chicken place, our gym, Zone Fitness which I frequent a few times a week, and a fast-food burger joint named Steer’s which has incredible Dairy Queen-esque chocolate or caramel-dipped ice cream cones.

We call CCS’ recommended cab company, Excite!, to get around anywhere. We’ve heard from some South Africans that their prices are a little steep, but we also know they’re safe. The rand, (South African unit of currency) is pretty weak against the dollar. The current exchange rate is about 10 rand to 1 dollar. A movie here costs around 30+ Rand ($3), an half chicken, drink and side order meal from Nando’s is only about 50 Rand, and a 15 minute cab ride won’t be more than 60 Rand.

And of course, living in Cape Town there’s the security issue to contend with. Our house has 24 hour unarmed security guards whose job is to intimidate would-be thieves and if that fails, call the police in an emergency. Our house is also surrounded by electric fencing. We have to sign in and out of the Home Base and we have a curfew that isn’t really observed by anyone.

Outside of the safety of the Home Base, I’ve heard a few shudder-worthy stories. When we got here, we were told that the nearest underpass on the walk to Rondebosch is not safe. We were later told that this was because two former female volunteers who used that underpass alone at night were once held up at gunpoint. But it’s not like the city of Cape Town isn’t trying to make itself more secure. Check out this sign from outside the underpass.

Clockwise from the top left: No automatic weapons, no axes, no knives and finally no bringing along the equally creative and lethal combo of spear and spoon. To me the sign is both really funny and scary. I wonder which city official approved it thinking it might do anything.

I’m a little unclear about the details, but a volunteer who just left and was Jaime’s and my roommate when we first got here was also apparently held up at gunpoint recently. But supposedly it was right after he had spent almost all he had on souvenirs, so he had no money on him. The muggers thankfully were not interested in Cape Town trinkets, so they let him go.

Jaime and I also had one pretty close call, although we didn’t find out about it until a few days later. We were in a near-by neighborhood named Obz, short for Observatory, and we had just finished shooting a couple games of pool at Stone’s, one of our favorite bars. We called a cab and were just milling about the well-lit, decently busy for a Sunday night area, when we saw another bar called Rooster or something like that. We peered inside but decided to stay outside and wait for our cab. Later that night there was apparently an armed robbery at the bar that left two people shot and one dead. Spooky stuff.

But don’t worry about me. Just one more week here, (so excited to come home!), and I plan on keeping safe. I’m working on typing up my log of our amazing five day trip to the Eastern Cape and our hike into the African wilderness, so I’ll try to get that up soon.

It should be a pretty fun last week. Tonight we plan on going to the gay pride parade, which is supposed to be one of Cape Town’s best parties. Tomorrow night we’re going to Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden for its weekly concert in the park, followed by dinner at an amazing set-menu, all-you-can-eat restaurant named Africa Café. No real plans yet for the week, except Jaime and I have two tickets for a comedy show called Three Wise Men (featuring Christian, Jewish and Muslim comedians). And for Christmas I think we’re cooking for ourselves like Thanksgiving. Jaime and I plan on the afternoon of Christmas Day on the beach, lounging around and throwing a Frisbee.

Bonus! How to speak South African

Considering South Africa’s British roots, South Africans generally speak the Queen’s English. You have your fair dose of “bloody,” “mate” and other British words and phrases. But South Africans have also developed their own uniquely South African phrases. Here’s a random sampling of stuff I’ve picked up:

Robot- Traffic stoplight (Nobody’s been able to tell me how this one got its name)
Howzit?- How are you? (Answering “how’s what?” makes you look like an idiot. Trust me).
Izit- Oh, really/ You don’t say
Okes- Blokes/ guys

That’s all for now!
DA

About to go to Jo'burg

2008-12-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

Cab should be coming any minute to take us to the airport. Should be a nice weekend. We're staying at a bed and breakfast owned by a fellow volunteer's friend's dad. It it supposed to rain so we'll make do.

Had a good week. Finished up my first volunteer placement at a school for the mentally disabled, which was really challenging. Spent Thursday and Friday at Jaime's placement messing around with little kids, which was a lot simpler and more fun. Next week, I'm going to start being a camp counselor with another 18 year old volunteer from San Fran.

Hope everybody has a great weekend!
DA

And I ran, I ran so far away

2008-12-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the 10k. Finished it in 299th place at 52:20. I had wanted to break 50 but it was really hilly so it's ok. There were a few runners who were barefoot for the 6 miles. And there was broken glass at more than one intersection.

The best part of the race was definitely the ending. There was a full brass band playing close to the finish line and they were cheering like crazy in addition to playing their music as I finished. And then we went to Nando's a healthy fast-food chicken restaurant, like CA Chicken Cafe but better, for a massive feast.

I will sleep very well tonight. And be extremely sore tomorrow. But it was fun to race, and we're going to look into more races while I'm here.

Much delayed final impressions from Russia

2008-12-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

I wrote this at around 3 in the morning on my last night in Yaroslavl and never got around to posting it. So better late than never, here are my final impressions of Russia.

In no particular order here are some of my final thoughts as I prepare to leave Russia, and some random tidbits that never found their way into other posts…

Russia seems to be a country torn in two different directions. On the one hand there is the illustrious history and culture and the accompanying desire to preserve and respect both, and on the other there is this frantic desire to catch up with the West. It’s been 17 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain and 20-odd years since Gorbachev instituted glasnost and perestroika, but I still sensed this pressing urge in Yaro to show the world that despite its near thousand year run, the city can be just as modern and hip as any of its European neighbors. Whether it was the Mario’s pizzeria or the posters for the weekend’s clubs and parties posted on a wall that separated the street from a cathedral that was a couple hundreds years old, I felt this strange dichotomy all the time here.

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Russian drivers are that scary. There are practically no lanes on any roads, and also no recognition by most drivers that they are powering a massive machine of metal, gas and rubber and us pedestrians are not. They weave through crosswalks and people as often as possible. Between us, Jaime and I had somewhere around 10 close calls. With that there comes this healthy dose of panic (“I don’t want to die in the middle of a street whose name I can’t pronounce in a small city in Russia nobody has ever heard of”) anytime you step off the sidewalk.

There are also two fun little variations on the traditional red, yellow, green stoplight. Green flashes before turning to yellow, giving drivers the heads-up they need to really floor it to make it through the intersection. And before red turns to green, there’s the intermediary warning of red and yellow, which most drivers seem to see as green regardless of whether you’re still in the sidewalk.

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For the largest country in terms of area, you might be surprised to find out that there’s only about 10 Russian names. Seriously.

For guys there’s Vladimir (Volva for short), Ivan (Vanya), Alexander (Sasha), Dmitry (Dima), Pavel (Pasha) and Nikolai (Kolya).

For ladies there’s even less options. There’s Ykaterina (Katya), Anya, Asya, Maria (Masha).

Honestly, 90% of the Russians I met were named one of those above 10 names.

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Russians always seem to be getting married. Whenever we went out to a museum in Moscow or St. Petes, or even out in Yaroslavl on the weekends we seemed to encounter at least one large, traveling marriage party of twenty people following around the happy couple. We’d go somewhere and there would be a man in a tux and his bride in a white wedding dress taking pictures on the steps of the Hermitage in St. Petes, or laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow. And this is in November! I can’t imagine what it’s like in the peak wedding months.
Another note on romance. Anytime I stepped on the escalator in a metro station in Moscow or St. Petes, I was able to find at least two lovebirds in what I nicknamed, the couple pose. The couple pose consists of the woman standing as one normally would on the escalator with the man on the step below, risking life and limb to face her and stare into the eyes of his beau and occasionally steal a kiss. I watched bemused as couples young and old stepped onto the escalator and automatically assumed the position. I worried about the ones who rode the escalator normally.

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We were told by Nadia that Russians spend something like 80% of their income on clothes and fashion accessories. And you can tell. Woman almost always go out for any errand in the city wearing high heels. And I was turned away from a casino in Moscow because I was wearing “sport shoes.”

Megan pointed out that there’s this big discrepancy between the quality of what people wear and the quality of their buildings and cars. At least once a week we saw a car that did not fit with the image of its owner break down in front of our hotel. And every apartment building in Yaroslavl had boarded up balconies and other signs of outward wear and tear.

In that vain, it seems like half the buildings in Yaroslavl are being renovated, reconstructed or repaired. There’s a long way to go, but should be interesting to see what this city looks like when they make some improvements.

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It’s really strange to know that I’ll be saying goodbye to Russia in less than 12 hours. When I thought about the gap year, I got excited for each and every stop, but it was hard to look past that initial two month stay in Yaroslavl, and accordingly most of my preparations seemed to be focused on it too.

And now, it’s over. I’m done with the first stop out of five, and almost a quarter of the gap year in terms of weeks abroad.

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So as promised, here’s what’s coming up next. At noon, Jaime and I will leave Moscow for New York. We’ll spend two days in New York. I’m staying with my sister Michelle who lives there and works as New York Teaching Fellow. Jaime’s mom and older sis are coming to town so he’ll stay with them in a hotel. I’ll probably be pretty jetlagged from the 10 hour flight, but I have the rather ambitious plans in my 49 hours in the Big Apple to go to dinner with Michelle and my cousin Brian, see friends at NYU and Columbia, visit Michelle’s 4th grade classroom at Public School #1, and unload all of my winter clothes on her for her to take back to LA during her Thanksgiving break.

Tuesday afternoon, Jaime and I are headed to Cape Town, South Africa for five weeks! We’ll be doing our second and final CCS volunteering program there. The program doesn’t start until Sunday so we’ll be staying with family friends of a South African friend (Daniel Ozen) until then.

Random side note about South Africa. Whenever I told my people I was going to Russia, the response I got almost unfailingly was somewhere in the neighborhood of “Wow. Interesting.”

Cape Town seemed to generally net the different response of “How fun!” I’m curious to see how close that expectation comes to reality. I had a ton of fun in Russia. I enjoyed my time here, met some great people and would love to come back. But I also am not the average Russian tourist.

I have been fascinated by Russia since I did a non-fiction book report on the history of the Soviet Union in 5th grade. And Russia was included in Jaime’s and my gap year largely due to my urging.

So it’ll be interesting to see how much fun South Africa is compared to Russia. I’m also curious to see how I’ll find the culture and history in the upcoming four countries compared to that of Russia, since I’ll have had no prior interest in them. Promise to keep you all updated.

Ok. Now it’s time for me to go to bed. Have to leave the hotel at 5 am for the five hour trip to Moscow.

Da Svidanya Rossiya!

Playing Catch-up from Cape Town

2008-12-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve gotten lazy. A ton has happened since I last checked in, I’m on a different continent in a brand new hemisphere and I’ve crossed the Atlantic twice just for starters, and maybe because of that I just haven’t had much of a desire to write lately. But it’s time to catch you all up, so I’ll do my best to keep this a manageable length….

New York

I was ecstatic to land at JFK in a way I can’t really describe. I didn’t really feel all that homesick in Russia, so it was a good, unexpected kind of happy when I touched down on American soil. I exchanged pleasantries with the not too pleasant customs agent and made small-talk with a woman waiting next to me at baggage claim. I really missed the ability to strike up a real conversation with a stranger, which I think is one of those big little reasons that Russia never felt like home. New York felt like home instantly.

I headed to my sister Michelle’s apartment and while she distracted me with my American cell phone, my parents burst through her door, my dad filming my reaction to their surprise just like he’s done for every other potentially meaningful moment (and countless trivial ones) since the day I was born.

My mom didn’t believe me that I was surprised, but I swear I was. I knew Jaime’s mom was meeting him in NY for the two day layover, but I personally thought it would be a little ridiculous for my parents to fly all the way across the country and back just to see me for two days. But they also missed me a ton (and I missed them right back) and made it a bigger trip, getting to see Michelle too and stopping to see my sister Karin in Michigan on the way back.

I was real busy over my two days in New York. I got to have some real ethnic food for the first time in almost two months, specifically Mexican (Chipotle!) and Indian food. I worked out in a gym, saw a close friend at NYU twice, and even observed Ms. Alpert’s (Michelle) 4th grade class at PS 1 in the Bronx.

She’s part of this amazing program called New York Teaching Fellows. It was surreal to watch these 10 year olds addressing my sister only four years older than me, only a few months out of college as one of the main authority figures in their lives. I’m so proud of her and her subway e-mails chronicling the highs and lows are a real source of inspiration for my writing.

Watching Michelle, excuse me, watching Ms. Alpert (we got in trouble if we called her Michelle in front of her class) also got me thinking about how fast life goes, how quickly sheltered (at least in my privileged case) student life ends and endless real-world responsibilities (jobs, bills, etc) begin. (Excuse all those parentheticals).

It was really hard to say good-bye to my parents and sister, and harder still to get myself excited for South Africa. But the ticket was booked, so I checked my baggage and my little boy homesickness and boarded the plane for my 17 hours of traveling.

Getting into Cape Town and the Barnett Family

Our CCS South Africa program wouldn’t begin until Saturday and we arrived Wednesday afternoon. So in the meantime Jaime and I stayed with the Barnett family.

After Jaime and I had signed up for the program we debated going back to LA for a few days, but both decided it’d be too short a period to be home for, and it’d be better to get a little used to Cape Town before our program. We were left with the problem of finding a place to stay. Luckily one day, the South African mother of our friend Daniel volunteered to help us out and connected us with the Barnetts. There’s a good few degrees of separation, but Mr. Barnett, the brother of our friend Daniel’s mother’s friend, was willing to host us and that was good enough for us.

Mr. Barnett picked us up from the airport, gave us an impromptu tour driving around the city and then back to his house. I really didn’t do my research before coming so I was surprised to find that Table Mountain is in the middle of the city. Mr. Barnett told us it was once three times its current size, but the winds slowly leveled it so it is now much smaller then it once was and its summit is now completely flat.

We got to the house and Jaime and I were shown to our rooms with our very own bathrooms, a luxury I hadn’t had since September!

The Barnetts were our South African Brady Brunch. The Mr. and Mrs. are two divorcees who met through their sons at school. Between their two previous marriages there was a dizzying array of sons and daughters, belonging to one or the other constantly coming in and out of the house. And the house itself was gorgeous. It was located in one of the more posh areas of Cape Town, Camp’s Bay, nestled between Table Mountain and Lion’s Head Mountain with picturesque views of both. (The latter is named because it slightly resembles a lion lying down. At the opposite end of the mountain is lion’s rump, aka Signal Hill, where right below a cannon called the Noon Gun is fired everyday at, yep, you guessed it, 12 noon).

We went out our first night with one of the many Barnett kids, only mere hours after landing. The only real note of interest from that first night out is our discovery that our impressive first-hand knowledge of the English language isn’t nearly as impressive in an English-speaking country as it was in Russia. So while we are no longer instant celebrities the second we open our mouths, we do now get to have real conversations.

We spent a ton of time during our stay with the Barnetts at a seaside mall called the V&A Waterfront, sometimes going there twice a day. We had lunch while watching the African dance performances, wandered around book stores and strolled (arm in arm) by the ocean.

One of the daughters also dragged us out of bed at 6:30 in the morning to go down to Clifton’s Fourth, one of Cape Town’s many amazing beaches. She was training for a triathlon and was scheduled to do an ocean swim. The beach was absolutely deserted, and the sand was really clean. The Atlantic was damn near freezing so she and I decided to pass, but Jaime ran in while we watched. Just watching him got me cold. But the weather on the whole is really nice. They talk about there being four seasons (rain, wind, sun, and way too hot) in a day, but even the occasional sudden shower beats the constant freezing of Russia.

CCS

Saturday afternoon we were dropped off at the Home-Base. First reaction, very intimidating and overwhelming. And it stayed that way for much of my first week. As irrational as it was, Jaime and I couldn’t help ourselves in imagining CCS South Africa to be CCS Russia in Cape Town complete with South African versions of the same volunteers and staff we got close to in Yaroslavl. And from everything from the weather to the house to the people, we quickly found out that Russia, this is not.

Between Sunday and Saturday I went from the Hotel Kotorosl in Yaroslavl, Russia to my sister’s apartment in New York, to a posh house in Cape Town, to a packed house in a not-nearly-as-nice neighborhood of Cape Town. And there are 17 volunteers here! 17! The most we ever had in Russia was seven and that was only for my first week.

Everybody’s pretty interesting, and it’s fun to find out everybody’s reasons for coming to Africa. We range in age from 18-41 with a bunch of us on the younger side. There’s one girl who also went to CCS Russia and another who plans on organic farming (WWOOFing) in Europe like Jaime and I after the new year. Among the three Canadians and 14 Americans, a bunch are college-aged and are either taking time off during school or just not ready to start.

So after recuperating from being in three continents in four days, and four different beds in six days and meeting everybody, there was a whole new city to explore! And we’ve been doing our best at it. Already in the two weeks since I’ve gotten to Cape Town, I’ve been to Robben Island, hiked up Table Mountain, went on a pseudo-safari, went to a holiday lights street festival and went to St. George’s Cathedral for World AIDS Day.

And Jaime and I are now busy planning a trip to Johannesburg (Jo’burg here) and a five day hiking trek along the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. Pictures and stories to come from all that sooner or later.

I think it’s now getting time for me to wrap up this first dispatch from the Rainbow Nation. Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to run in a 10 km race (around 6.2 miles) at night, so I need my rest. It does seem a little silly to say it, but everything here is very different from Russia. And different of course takes some getting used to, but I’m really enjoying myself. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving wherever you were! We made dinner here at the CCS Home-Base ourselves, and (with a ton of help from one of the cooks) my garlic mashed potatoes came out alright.

Fun with no sun (Yaroslavl 08)

2008-11-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

The Centr concert:

Megan had for some reason bought a cd of a rap group from Moscow named Centr earlier in her stay. We then found out they were coming to Yaroslavl and decided to go to the concert. Before the concert they were playing American rap music, so Jaime, Megan and I sang along loudly and drew stares from the Russians around us. We ended up hanging out with the opening act, a local group from Yaroslavl off-stage, and traded numbers with them at the end of the night, but never did end up hanging out with them.

But then on the train ride back from Moscow, Jaime turned around and shouted “No way!” We looked back and saw that it was one of the guys from the Yaro rap group, so we went over and said hey. He was riding third class like us so his group could clearly be doing better. He did have a different groupie on his arm than the one we saw at the show so apparently there are still some perks when you’re struggling to make it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/CentrConcert#

The Communist Rally:

After buying the tickets for the circus we left the building and noticed a small rally going on across the street. We went to check it out and it turned out to be a communist rally in honor of the October Revolution of 1917 (that actually took place on Nov. 7 ) that thrust the Bolsheviks into power. The rally was a little underwhelming in number, but more than made up for it in spirit. We got free flags, but Jaime was charged 3 rubles (12 cents) by a dirty capitalist for a communist newspaper.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/CommunistRally#

Nadia's goodbye:

Nadia was the in-country CCS director for 8 years. At the end of my first week she announced that she’d be leaving her post at the end of October to move to Atlanta with her fiancée. On her last Friday, we had a little goodbye party. Her replacement you’ll see in these pictures as well. Her name is Nathalia.

Soccer game:

We went to a soccer game between the Yaroslavl Sheeneek and the Kazan Rubeen one Saturday afternoon. It was freezing, as always, but still really fun. Sheeneek is similar to the word for tire in Russian, and since 1957 the team has been sponsored by the tire factory in Yaroslavl.

There's a picture in this album, the only picture of any of us volunteers, with a man we befriended named Nik. We were walking around the stadium to join the crazy Yaro fans when Nik stopped us after hearing our English. After a few weeks of people staring at us whenever we spoke English, we were able to anticipate when those stares were going to result in a conversation. So Nik approached us and in his own broken English he informed us that his daughter was studying English and asked us to talk to her on the phone.

He handed me the phone with his daughter on the other end and we talked briefly. She told me to ask her a question, and I asked her about the weather. She said it was fine. I disagreed and told her it was quite chilly. Clearly finding me disagreeable, she asked to talk to her dad again.

Megan then talked to her for a while later while Nik told us about his life. Turns out he was a member of the 109th Airborne Division with the Soviet army and served in Afghanistan from 1982-1985.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/TheSoccerGame#

Circus:

Last Saturday night, as a last hurrah for Liz and Virginia (a middle-aged British volunteer who came here for two weeks) we went to the circus. It was a ton of fun. I was disappointed to miss out on kangaroos and bears riding motorcycles which apparently were in the last circus.

The Halloween Party

The night before Halloween we were the special guests at an English language school’s Halloween party. It was fun, if a little strange, due to the fact it was more a cultural lesson on Halloween in America as opposed to an actual Halloween party. We mainly judged contests. The teacher also corrected her students on the pronunciation of “witches,” inexplicably telling them it was witch-ers instead of the right way they had been pronouncing it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/HalloweenPartyAtStudioYes#

Random pics:

Finally, here are other random pictures from my 7 weeks in Russia.

Second trip to Moscow

2008-11-09T06:45:00.001-08:00

Second Weekend in Moscow

Traveling alone was a rollercoaster- I had the biggest thrills and the lowest dips, usually one following the other. It first struck me on my Halloween train to Moscow that I was going to a foreign city in a foreign country with a foreign language where I could count the number of friends I had on no fingers. Granted I can read Russian, but the only times I can understand what I’m reading is when the words are English cognates, or when it miraculously fits with my toddler-level vocabulary. On the train I was more exhilarated than anything else by the prospect of flying completely solo for four days.

The first day did not disappoint. I set out with a destination (Cathedral of Christ the Savior) hazily in mind and encouraged myself to take any detour along the way that seemed even remotely interesting. Then after getting to the cathedral and touring the ground floor for a little while, I went to the underground museum. I sat there for over an hour and spent some time thinking about and jotting down my own thoughts on religion, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

I was completely and absolutely free like I have felt at no other time in my life. This gap year has already removed (at least temporarily) all the old burdens of school and work. But taking a break from my CCS program also ridded me of the responsibility to prepare for each volunteer placement, and even more importantly of any ties or accountability to any other human being. I was completely alone. And it felt in a strange way, totally liberating.

I woke up every morning and could do anything I wanted. Hell, I didn’t even have to wake up if I didn’t want to. (Now it’s starting to sound more like college). But the feeling of absolute freedom was a lot bigger than sleep. Each day was one hundred percent mine.

But then the sun went down on my first day and all the tourist attractions closed. And I didn’t know what do with myself, with all those heaps and heaps of freedom. I ended up back on Arbat Street where my hostel was, for all my Angelenos think of 3rd street promenade with the artists and performers from the Santa Monia Pier. I saw a large crowd gathered around one performer and went up to watch with them. It turned out to be a comedian. After a few jokes, he had the crowd laughing hysterically. The only words I had understood were “McDonalds” and “cheeseburger.” I walked away. I was completely alone. And it felt depressingly lonely.

But there was no use wallowing in it. I had dinner at Hard Rock Café, (worst burger I’ve had in a long time), and then went out to find the bar, Propaganda, I had gone to the week before with Jaime and Megan. On the way out of the metro, I stopped a group of girls for directions. Luckily some of them spoke English. Unluckily, they did not know how to get to Propaganda. So instead they said I could go with them. After trying a few different clubs we ended up at one called Sorry Babushka for the night.

Now some of you may have received some misinformation (from friends, family, possibly your very own ears) that I am one of the top 5 worst singers ever to walk this earth. But I’ll have you know that when the mic was shoved in my face after the mc caught me signing Foreigner- Cold as Ice with him, there were no bottles thrown at me. The main problem was that the rapper chose to give me the microphone right after the chorus ended, just in time for the second verse to start. And I did not know anything but the chorus. But I winged it fine (read the music was loud enough so that nobody had to hear me) and my time in the spotlight at Sorry Babushka ended without incident or applause.

We left the club around 2:30 and then headed to T.G.I. Friday’s, one of their favorite places to grab a late-night bite. I’m pretty sure it was my first time eating at a Friday’s. Pretty strange to go to such a quintessentially American restaurant for the first time and see Russian on the menu. Thankfully the menu was also in English, and the chicken tenders did not disappoint.

I met up with the girls and one of their boyfriends again on Monday afternoon. The boyfriend raps, and I got to listen to a few of his songs. The lyrics were good, but his English pronunciation was a little off mark. He told me that people thought his song “God of the stage” was instead “God of the sex,” which is different but I guess works too. It was pretty cool to talk American music with a Muscovite my age.

They showed me around the city, we stopped at a café for a late lunch and went ice skating. It was probably the second time I’ve ice skated in the last 10 years, but I made it out only falling once and didn’t embarrass myself.

I spent Tuesday, a national holiday for the Day of Union, at the Victory Park dedicated to the Great Patriotic War (WWII). And then I went back to Hard Rock to pick up my credit card, which might have been sort of, kind of misplaced for the weekend, and caught my train back to Yaroslavl. The rollercoaster of elation at my freedom, and depression at my loneliness continued throughout the weekend so I was very ready to get back to a more even-keeled Yaroslavl. Still a fun, successful trip.

First weekend in Moscow

2008-11-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

First Weekend in Moscow

My first weekend in Moscow also marked my first “real” hostel experience. (In St. Petes Jaime and I just shared a double that was pretty similar to our hotel room in Yaroslavl). My first weekend when I went with the three other volunteers (Megan, Liz and Jaime), we stayed at the biggest hostel in town, appropriately named Hostel Godzilla. There were multiple co-ed dorms of 8 on each floor, meaning that on some busier weekends 30-40 people share two bathrooms and one shower. Luckily, the hostel wasn’t too busy. We still were able to meet some interesting people.

In no particular order- we met a New Zealand couple in their 20s who had just finished traveling through Europe and were leaving on the long Trans-Siberian railway. Basically you sit on a train for six straight days and watch as barren Siberia passes outside the window. Then you get off for a break for a couple days and get back on to finish in any number of places such as Beijing or Vladivostok. (Russians say they don’t get the appeal of the trek. I agree with the Russians).

Staying in our dorm was a world traveler from Vancouver who frequently goes on long trips to a number of places for up to two years, living and working in different places. He named India as the toughest place to live in because of the dirty squalor and the profound cultural differences. He also mentioned that he hasn’t known any foreigner to stay longer than a month and escape without getting sick. Also in our dorm was a group of middle-aged Belarusians one of whom had an impressive collection of beer labels from around the world. Unfortunately one of the Belarusians both snored like a walrus and reeked like he ran into bed straight from an hour on the treadmill.

Finally there was the gay Cuban dancer who now makes his home in Moscow. I practiced some of my rusty Spanish with him, and he offered to get Jaime and I work visas, not twenty minutes after meeting us. I was intrigued but decided I better save any shady business deals for my second trip to Moscow.

We spent our first full day in Red Square and got to go see Lenin’s Mausoleum, where Vladimir Illyich Lenin’.s body has laid embalmed in state since his death in 1924. This is the case despite the explicitly expressed desire by Lenin before his death, and his widow afterwards, to be given a proper burial with his mother in St. Petersburg. (Pretty loud and clear example of the power of the state over the individual during the Soviet-era, especially when propaganda purposes could be served).

Before entering the mausoleum we had to first wait in a long line in order to get in another line to check cameras, purses, phones and bags. I decided to be productive while I was in line and give my mother a call. We were talking for a while when the line started moving, I talked distracted on the phone, people started pushing and shoving ahead of me and I found myself stuck on one side of the crowd control fence, with Liz, Megan and Jaime on the other. I pointed them out to the guard and tried to explain that they were my friends, he yelled “Nyet!” at me, I yelled back at him, and then with no hesitation he gave me a slight lovetap on my upper thigh with his flat nightstick. I was absolutely furious, but all I could do was stand and stew there until they let more people in.

As for the mausoleum itself, it was beyond impressive. First we walked past graves of men who contributed significantly to the Soviet cause, and then we were led into the actual mausoleum. It’s very well designed to impart upon the viewer the austerity and solemnity of it all. The interior of the building is all floor-to-ceiling black linoleum, sparsely lit with expressionless guards posted at every turn to point you (silently) in the right direction in case you have trouble following a slow, large crowd of people.

And then finally after quite a few turns as you progress slowly underground, there’s V. I. Lenin himself. He’s dressed in a smart suit, tucked into bed so only his torso and up is showing, all in a see-through glass case that the tour makes a lap around. My first reaction was the predictable feeling that “this can’t be real. He can’t be real.”

It was hard to fathom first that here lay the body of a man who once thought and breathed and lived as simply as any other person. And even more, this man was so important in the course of history, sparking a revolution and changing the fate of nations.

On the way out we passed by more guards whose job it is to just stand there. This might honestly be one of the most boring jobs in the world. At least the guards at Buckingham Palace get to stand out in daylight, and have people try to distract or entertain them, but these guys spend their shifts in dark corners underground and unacknowledged, serving a man and a cause that was swept from this country 17 years before. We then headed back outside and walked past the graves of Soviet heroes and former premiers including Andropov, Chernenko, Brezhnev and good ol’ mass-murdering Joe Stalin. (Nikita Khrushchev is buried in a less respected cemetery elsewhere in Moscow, because he was forced from office by a coup).

Other highlights from my first weekend in Moscow:
• In Red Square (Krasnaya Ploschad)
o Walked around the majestic St. Basil’s, practically every inch of which was painted in a dizzying array of colors which for some reason reminded me of Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory
o Walked through G.U.M., (pronounced goom and stands for State Dept Store) which has upscale stores like Louis Vutton, Dior, Zara and my favorite- a gigantic chocolate store.
• In the Kremlin Jaime and I walked around Cathedral Square and hustled through the Armoury museum, the treasure trove of the tsars.
• Went to Gorky Park and rode a roller coaster in the amusement park there
• Ate a delicious dinner at a Georgian restaurant
• Upon the recommendation of a Londoner staying at our hostel, went to a bar/club behind the old KGB headquarters appropriately named Propaganda. Taking his advice, we approached the bouncers speaking English. Here’s the actual transcript of our conversation.
Bouncer has just bounced the two guys in front of us. He says something to us in Russian somewhere along the lines of, “You can’t get in/ We’re full/ You’re underdressed/Leave.”
Me (in English): What?
Bouncer (also in English): Where are you from?
Me: Los Angeles.
Bouncer: USA Today?
Me: Los Angeles Times.
Bouncer: Go ahead.

• On Sunday we went to Ismalovsky Park which has an amazing swap meet, open air market. Spent the entirety of the morning, walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. I bought one fur hat.
• Jaime and I separated from Megan and Liz to check out VDNKh, the old Soviet propaganda mall, which is now just a boring old, regular mall.
• We also squeezed in a visit to the Museum of Contemporary History which might’ve been more enjoyable if there was more English. I still was fascinated by the little bits of propaganda that remain almost 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
o The one example that stuck with me was from the exhibit on World War II (the Great Patriotic War to Russians), that spoke about how the victory of the Red Army over the Nazis was due in part to Stalin, the bravery of the Red Army and the spirit of the Soviet worker back home.
• Finally before leaving, Jaime and I, after a mix-up, ended up with a whole rotisserie chicken wrapped for some reason in a tortilla and no utensils. So we did what any two sensible young men would do. We sat underneath the statue of Lenin at our train station and between chilling gusts of wind, ate the entire chicken with our hands.

Trips to Moscow and what I'm missing at home

2008-10-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

The ticket lady at the train station laughed so hard at me she started crying. I laughed with her too, which I guess means I was also laughing at myself. We were both a little overwhelmed by the massive language barrier, even though I had the foresight to write down the dates and type of ticket I wanted for the ride to and from Moscow. And eventually I did get the tickets, making it back in time to the hotel for the start of dinner.

So I’ll be headed back to Moscow (Mockba in Russian) this weekend for 4 days. Yes, I do mean back. I spent last weekend there with Jaime, Liz and Megan. This time though, I’m headed off alone. Tuesday, Election Day back in the States, is a national holiday here. Not entirely sure which holiday, but regardless I asked to take Monday off and am going to get a longer look at Moscow. We’ll see how traveling and living alone goes. I’m sure I’ll have a few stories to report.

To change gears, a couple things I’m missing from back home:

First of all, the Lakers. The Lakers won the season opener over the Portland Trail Blazers by 20, and my only knowledge of this comes from an ESPN.com recap. Not sure, if I would’ve gotten to see the game at William & Mary, but nevertheless it is one of the first openers that I haven’t watched from the comfort of my couch in quite a few years. Should be a fantastic season, and I’m going to do my best to keep up with it.

Next, of course is the election. As some of you may know, I can at times be quite the political junkie, so it’s hard to be watching such a historic election from such a distance. Although I do my best to keep up to date when I go online and read articles on slate.com and cnn voraciously. But still, I miss the media frenzy that is building up as we approach Election Day, and the media coverage of the issues that really matter to voters- like Joe the Plumber’s household income. I will be voting soon for the very first time. I’ll take some pictures of the big event, before I fax my ballot stateside.

Finally, Halloween. It’s not celebrated here, but we’ve been trying our best to do Halloween themed-crafts at the Hospital for Kids and we’re also headed to a Halloween party for 12-14 year olds at a local English language school tomorrow night. And Friday, Jaime and I are trying to throw a Halloween party at the Hospital for Kids. Halloween night, Friday, will be spent on a train and getting settled in my hostel in Moscow. Not perfect, but anything beats my last Halloween which I spent finishing up college apps.

And to wrap up this post here's a picture of one of the recent chess matches between Jaime and I on my brand new set that I got in St. Petes!

"If peeing in your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis'"

2008-10-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

Monday afternoon my volunteer placement was the shelter. Megan and I brought stuffed chickens made out of cloth with pipe cleaners for feet and googly eyes for the craft. But we were with very little kids, most under 7, so we ended up doing most of the work.

It was my first time at the shelter, and I was particularly fond of a little 3 year-old boy named Sasha. He ran away from me initially, screaming his little head off, but then he warmed up to me. Later on after we finished the craft, I was playing with him on the rug, tickling him while the young girls were playing with Barbie dolls, when I accidentally set my hand on a wet spot of the rug. It has been raining on and off in Yaroslavl for the past couple of weeks, so I really didn’t think anything of it.

A few minutes later though, still playing around with Sasha, he got closer to me and I caught a whiff of the unmistakable, putrid stench of urine. I alerted the translator with us, and she looked for the counselor who had apparently just left the room. One of the older girls asked the translator what was wrong and she admitted that Sasha needed a change of pants.

At this point Sasha, who I had left on the rug when I went to talk to the translator, stood up and started examining his pants, and I’m pretty sure it just dawned on him in that moment. He made a sad, pouty face and Megan started taunting me, saying that I made a poor, helpless toddler wet himself.

Sasha eventually got changed, came back in the room with his pants around his ankles. Not noticing the pants, I gave him a wave and shouted out “privyet Sasha” (hi) and he gave a happy wave back, flashing the room in the process. But Sasha was changed and all was good again.

Pictures!

2008-10-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if this will work out. I spent a ton of time tinkering and trying to figure out a way to get a Picasa web album to upload to Blogger, but I'll have to settle for providing you all with the link.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/Yaroslavl#

Hope you don't have to log into anything to view it. Just a small taste and if it works, I'll make more albums later.

Other highlights from the trip to St. Petersburg

2008-10-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

Outside of our frantic exit, the rest of our time in St. Petersburg last weekend was a blast. We stayed a block away from Nevsky Prospekt, the main boulevard in St. Petes that is often compared to Champs d’elysee in Paris. Our hostel, recommended to us by the Aussie sister volunteers, was nice and clean, although the entryway reeked like the volunteer placements.

We were also a block away from the world famous (and enormous) Hermitage museum which we visited on our first day. I was enchanted by all the old rooms in the Winter Palace, and loved hearing about all their former uses under the tsars. And it was amazing to see the Hall of 1812 commemorating the Russian victory in the second Napoleonic War. I got to see a massive painting of the Battle of Borodino which was a major focus in War and Peace, and scan the wall with portraits of generals for names I recognized from the novel. Elsewhere in the museum I found a new favorite artist, Hubert Robert, who painted scenes featuring Roman architecture.

After a pasta dinner at the hostel cooked by two recent college grads from Boulder, Jaime, Liz and I headed out to the Prostata museum, famous for supposedly housing Rashputin’s 30 cm member. Alongside the exhibit were doctors offices (gynecology, urology and proctology) which just added to the overall weirdness of the museum. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re ever in St. Petes. We left the museum in under 20 minutes looking for some St. Petersburg’s nightlife of the non-strip club variety.

We ended up at a bar called Belgrad (Russian for Belgrade), so named because it is a combination of the two proprietors’ last names. We hung out on the dance floor where the dj was playing all sorts of American hits including the great MC Hammer. The one casualty from the night was my camera, which I dropped on its lens trying to take a picture of the crowded floor where Jaime’s beanie was lost. But not to fear. The camera is currently in a repair shop in Yaro, and I should have it back sometime this week.

We got back to the hostel after 1 and headed back out shortly after with two German girls who wanted to see the bridges. St. Petersburg is famous for its low bridges which are drawn up and down at night, generally between 2 and 5 am, to allow ships to pass through. We didn’t catch any bridges in the act, but we did take a good number of jumping pictures, one or two them even successfully, with the open bridge in the background.

On Sunday we went to the Russian museum. It was nice, but I had a sore throat so I wasn’t in much of a mood to tour a museum. We also headed out to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg’s famous church built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was murdered by terrorists. It has some absolutely gorgeous onion domes, one, a smooth and solid gold, another with swirls of white, blue and green, and a third, speckled, pointy bits of white, blue, green and gold.

Then in a maze of souvenir stands behind the church I bargained a painted, Soviets vs. Americans chess set down from 4000 rubles to 1500 rubles ($60). I felt proud of myself for capturing a little bit of my dad’s haggling magic before talking it over with Jaime and realizing that it was probably worth only 15 or 20 bucks.

Sunday night we headed to a ballet at the Mariinsky Theater. It was ridiculously difficult to find, but we made it and it was pretty entertaining. I was feeling sick still and a little tired, so I might’ve taken a little nap here or there, but it was still a cool experience. And then afterwards we happened upon a Mexican restaurant only a few minutes after we had talked about how we were craving it. It was far from the best Mexican food I’ve had, Baja Fresh still takes the cake, but it was a great change from the Hotel Kotorosl food.

Monday we journeyed to the Peter and Paul fortress. We were feeling a little cheap so we didn’t go into any of the museums, but decided instead to wander the grounds. And then we got what might have been the personal highlight of the trip.

We were walking outside the fortress, between the stone walls and some body of water, when we noticed old men stripping down to speedos. I won’t deny them that the sun was out, but it couldn’t have been warmer than 40 degrees. One of the translators had warned me that it was an old pastime of Russians to tan standing up, because they believed it gave them a fuller tan. Still in near-freezing weather it’s something that must be seen to be believed. I approached two of the bold tanners and asked for a picture with them. Thankfully they were only joking when they insisted I strip down as well, but they waited an awkward beat before telling me they were kidding.

I really loved my time in St. Petersburg, and wished I could’ve stayed longer. It’d be a fun city to study abroad in, especially if I take Russian at William + Mary.

The St. Petes (Marathon) Sprint

2008-10-19T12:22:00.001-07:00

I stood at the counter waiting impatiently while the cashier purposefully (and slowly) tied up the to-go bags containing Jaime’s and my orders of chicken schwarma and rice. After a couple more good knots she handed the bag over and Jaime, Liz and I headed outside of the dive restaurant and back to the metro area to try to find our train station. We were heading back to CCS and Yaro after a fun and action-packed 3 day weekend in St. Petersburg.

We searched to get our bearings, but couldn’t find the train station that was supposed to be a block away from the subway stop. We had a half hour til the train left, plenty of time to sit and have a leisurely meal before boarding. But first we needed to find our train.

The first woman we stopped mentioned something about crossing a canal, so we thanked her and left to ask someone else. The next man said something along the lines of “which train station?” which probably should’ve set a couple alarm bells ringing, but we just decided instead to split up and ask 3 new strangers for directions.

The girl I found kept saying something about the metro even after I showed her my train ticket, so I took out the metro map a station employee had for some reason given me earlier in the day when I was asking her if the station we were at had a bathroom. The girl looked at the map and pointed to another metro stop. Two stops, and one line transfer away. And the girl said in a mixture of Russian and broken English that our train station was there. Damn.

Now’s as good a time as any to pause the story and give some background before I speed it up. So how did we end up at Sennaya Ploshad instead of Markoskaya? Earlier in the day on our to the Peter + Paul Fortress, I had commented that the metro stop we were at was the same one we needed to go to later to catch our 5:24 train. Jaime asked if I was sure, and I was pretty confident considering it had been only 50-something hours since we had arrived from Yaroslavl at the same station, so I told him yes.

Another thing to note: Before we had left the hostel to head to the train station, we had gotten into a little argument. Jaime and Liz wanted to leave early, and I said it was much too early and wanted to take advantage of the free internet at Hostel Zimmer Nice one last time. So they headed to the bakery across the street while I did the customary Gmail, Facebook and CNN check. (GObama!) So yes it was my fault that we were both at the wrong station, and that we hadn’t gotten there ten minutes earlier. But there was no time for fingerpointing or apologies. There was only time to run.

Liz checked her watch. 29 minutes til our train left. We dashed back into the metro station, hurriedly bought 3 tickets and ran down the escalator. We caught our breath on the first metro ride and reassured each other that we would make it, because with nowhere to sleep in St. Petes and CCS expecting us for volunteer placements at 9:30 the next morning, we really had no other choice.

Off the first train, some more running and we dealt seamlessly with the tricky leg of our journey back, the line transfer. We shouted the turns at each other as we finessed our way through the rush hour crowd, arriving to the right platform with only seconds to space before the doors on our subway closed and our last chance zoomed down the line. One prepubescent boy squeezed on after us and had to yank his backpack in after the doors closed on it.

Subway riders are used to people sprinting down the escalator to catch a train. They are not used to people sprinting up the escalator to get out of the station. But they made way when we came barreling up the never-ending escalator as we shouted “EEZ-VEE-NEE-TYEH” (excuse me) and “zhe-de”(train) in response to their startled stares.

We got up to the top of the station and in my haste to get out, I smashed my left knee on the bodybuilder-heavy glass door. Too much adrenaline pumping to feel any pain at the moment, but I’d feel it later. We sprinted now giving every last drop of speed and energy we had left. I stopped to ask a policeman for directions and between the panting and heaving I was just able to get out “gde zhede vakzal?” He pointed dead ahead and I wound up and shot off again down the packed street.

Now I love weaving through a dense crowd. During cross country races, the only thing that gave me a bigger thrill than quietly hunting down a fellow runner and blasting past him was successfully executing a difficult weave cutting in and out of the small, millisecond gaps.

But all my previous running and weaving experience had taken place in short running shorts. Never before had I run with a heavy backpack on my shoulders and a duffel bag weighing at least 10 pounds in my hand. (Jaime and Liz had packed smarter and lighter, limiting themselves to just a backpack).

I was able to move the duffel pretty easily, passing it from hand to hand and lifting it above the head of a waddling toddler girl as I whizzed by. No as much luck with the backpack. Forgetting it was on my back, I turned sideways to try to thread my profile through a miniscule gap. Slam! I hit a helpless woman with the side of the backpack. I continued running and shouted an apology (eez-vee-nee-tyeh or sorry) five strides later when I had fully processed what had happened.

And I continued shouting eezveentyeh as I booked it down the crowded street. One image that was indelibly seared into my memory is the snapshot of two women yelping and turning to clutch each other like something out of a cartoon as I ran past. I also thought for a moment about dropping some rubles into the hands of a paraplegic beggar, more for the good karma, I’m ashamed to admit, than out of any philanthropic urges, but I decided that I didn’t have time to stop.

Finally, I rounded a corner and saw the train station. I had completely lost sight of Jaime and Liz, so I stopped and shouted, “It’s here! It’s here!” into the crowd of Russians as my heart pounded overtime in my chest. I caught sight of Jaime and frantically waved him over, but he said Liz couldn’t run anymore and I noticed Liz trailing him, winded and beat.

They caught up and after some wild scampering around the station, Jaime found our train. We got on and collapsed on our shelf-sized beds that would be home for the next 12 hours. We had made it with about 5 minutes to spare. We started dripping sweat, our overworked and overheated bodies no longer cooled by the 40 degree weather outside. But we’d wash up later.

We fell to laughing and laughing and couldn’t stop. And then we started in on the delicious schwarma feast that Jaime had been running with the whole time. The knots that the cashier had tied in the bags luckily prevented the loss of any chicken, although all the food had been shoved to one side of the to-go containers. Still, it was the best schwarma I’ve had yet.

P.S. Sorry again to the woman I hit with my backpack!

At peace with War and Peace

2008-10-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

So that is that. 1386 pages later I am done with both an epoch and an epic. I brought my sister Linda’s copy of War and Peace everywhere with me with the intent of finishing it before setting off for Russia. It saw the beach, a trip to Mexico (much to the amusement of the friends I traveled with), a trip to Cooperstown, countless car rides and lazy intervals between naps on the green bean bag in the playroom at home. But I wasn’t able to finish it before leaving and had no space to pack it, so I had to sadly leave for the gap year without having absorbed the last few morsels of Count Leo Tolstoy’s wisdom.

Once in Yaro, Jaime came to the rescue by pointing out that the CCS collection of books left by prior volunteers included a copy of War and Peace, which for the uninitiated charts the lives of five families of the Russian aristocracy through the two Napoleonic wars of 1805 and 1812. I stole it into our hotel room and 3 weeks later, I’m finally done.

The coolest moments to be reading the book were when real life intersected with the epic novel; the Russian army at war with Georgia in 2008 as I read about the Russian army attempting to repulse the French invaders in 1812, Tolstoy describing the Rostov family fleeing a burning Moscow for Yaroslavl, seeing the hall of 1812 dedicated to the victory over Napoleon in the Hermitage museum, and two statues at a park of Generals Barclay de Tolly and commander-in-chief Kutuzov in St. Petersburg.

If not the most entertaining, it was by the far most important book I’ve ever read. (But it was also definitely very enjoyable). Tolstoy masterfully paints a panoramic portrait of Russian life at the time, switching seamlessly from discussion of the day-to-day life of his fictional characters to his philosophy on the historical presentation of Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I.

And it is the latter of the two focuses, Tolstoy’s philosophizing, that makes me say the book is so important to me. The last 40 pages of the book, part II of the epilogue, were as dense as any textbook. Using simple examples to illustrate his points, the author lays out his beliefs in turn on the greatness and indescribable power ascribed to mere men like Napoleon by the historians of his day, the constant tug-of-war between free will (conscience) and the laws of necessity (reason), and the forces (hint: not great men or ideas alone) that move nations.

I want to end with a few quotes/excerpts that struck me as good enough to write down.

From the epilogue part II: All knowledge is simply bringing the essence of life under the laws of reason.

On the supposed greatness of men like Napoleon: And it never enters anyone’s head that to admit a greatness, immeasurable by the rule of right and wrong, is but to accept one’s own nothingness and immeasurable littleness.

Count Pierre Bezuhov asking the bigger questions in life: “What is wrong? What is right? What should one love and what should one hate? What is life? What is death? What is the power that controls it all? he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions, except the one illogical reply that in no way answered them. This reply was: “One dies and it’s all over. One dies and either finds out about everything or ceases asking.”

Village of sweetness Part 3

2008-10-08T10:13:00.001-07:00

I’ve said since I was in the first grade that I would one day like to be the president of the United States. (And I’m fully aware that such a brazen admission of ambition on the internet could one day be used against me in a campaign). But I’ve also said more recently that I’d like to one day live in a town where everybody knows each other’s name. And I think back again to a piece in a 2005 copy of the New Yorker which is my only theft to date, by Ian Frazier called “Out of Ohio’” Frazier was looking back fondly on his childhood in the small town of Hudson, Ohio and between the names, stories and anecdotes he described small-town living as “unfairly sweet.”

Before leaving on this gap year, I wrote my own 6 page tribute to my Los Angeles and my upbringing that tried to capture the bits and pieces that were truly unfairly sweet, before my memories washed away in a sea of nostalgia. Something about this small village stole me right back to driving on the 101, to my mind wandering and thinking about my childhood and my city, to sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and reading Frazier’s article for the first time.

And I know that my afternoon there wasn’t an accurate portrayal of what life is like there. I know that despite the homegrown lunch feast, the villagers aren’t self-sufficient. (I asked). I know that the villages’ residents have their own problems, issues and secrets, that with all the young people moving out and into the cities, they really aren’t at all removed from the hustle-bustle of urban life. I know that life there isn’t nearly as pure and simple and sweet as it seemed to me this afternoon.

But none of that knowledge stops me from thinking about giving up all future ambitions, presidential and otherwise, sinking into anonymity and moving to a tiny village whose name I can’t pronounce, an hour outside of a small city, five hours northeast of the capital of Russia. And that’s why when Nikolai’s van started pulling away, I was sad to leave.

Village of sweetness Part 2

2008-10-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

After we finished with a few cups of tea, we headed outside to tour the village’s cathedral. The whole region of villages consists of somewhere around 300 people, little more than my graduating high school class, but the villagers in one village still built a massive cathedral in the middle of the 18th century. It is shaped like a ship and goes from West to East, just like the Volga River it was built parallel to, and has a summer cathedral with a large tower, a winter cathedral, and a bell tower. It is so impressive that these villagers sank so much time, effort and money into building such a beautiful building, especially when one considers how very modest their own homes are in comparison.

The cathedral is surrounded by a graveyard on all four sides with paths cut in between. There’s a grave for a 7 year-old at one spot, and a little ways away, Jaime noticed that another grave claims that its owner lived to be 121, from1857-1978.

We first entered the summer cathedral, which had some frescoes still faintly visible on its walls. They began renovating this cathedral in 2000. We then entered the former winter cathedral, which made the summer cathedral look fully functioning by comparison. The winter cathedral had dirt in place of a floor, wood and other construction materials in piles strewn everywhere, and little to suggest this was once a house of worship.

The current winter cathedral was next door. It was very small, and we stayed in there for only a moment before heading up the many rickety wooden ladders to the top of the bell tower. From the top of the tower we had a panoramic view of the flat Russian plains. For some reason Willa Cather’s O Pioneers jumped into my head as I was taking panoramic shots of the prairie.

On our way down the wooden ladders, I thought about the faith and devotion that went into the bricks and clay and egg-based mortar of this building. And I thought more and decided that this cathedral in some ways has just as much religious significance as the Sistine Chapel or the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

We spent some time in the backyard of the house where we ate lunch picking different kinds of round blue berries, eating them and spitting out the big seeds. And after a few of us took turns in the outhouse, we headed to the lake named ram’s horn in Russian that divided one village from another. We played a little with the well that many villagers still use for fresh water, and then we crossed the wooden planked bridge to go to the other town.

While walking along the main road in the other town, a man shouted at us. Nadia answered him in Russian and we kept walking, thinking the exchange over. But the old, unshaven and red-faced man followed us out of his garden and kept talking. Nadia translated that he remembered Nadia from one of her previous volunteer groups, and trusted her, so we were invited into his house. We went in, all the volunteers exchanging excited and confused glances, and the man showed us his massive stove that heated the entire house. Nadia explained that it was so big that you could sleep on it when it got really cold in the winter.

The man, who we later found out was named Alexander, posed in front of the stove for pictures. Then to no one’s surprise explained that he was drunk and had been celebrating a friend’s birthday for the last three days. In short order Alexander mentioned that his wife was in the hospital, that Americans and Russians should be friends, that his father died in the war and nobody knows where he is buried. Through the course of our stay in his house he added that people are easier to recognize in beards, and repeatedly challenged Nadia on her translations despite knowing no English.

He then offered to play us a song on his accordion. While he went to look for it, coming in and out of the kitchen repeatedly, we played with one of his cats, who Meg nicknamed Circles, because he kept walking around in circles. Another cat came in as two dogs barked outside, and Alexander finally returned with the accordion. He sat down and played us a few songs, sometimes singing boisterously. Eventually, Nadia told him it was time for his last song and we made our escape.

Village of sweetness Part 1

2008-10-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

We just got back from our Wednesday cultural trip to one of the villages about an hour outside Yaroslavl, and I had to sit down right away to capture my thoughts before they escaped me. So now I’ve set my iPod to play RJD2- Ghostwriter on repeat and I’m ready to write…

We all fell asleep on the ride over and I was woken up by the jolting bumps of the road turning from the usual sloppily paved variety to dirt. We got out of Nikolai’s van with him yawning at us and mocking us and went into a wooden home from the 19th century where our lunch feast was set out for us. There was borscht, potatoes with mushrooms, whole pieces of fish (head, fins and all), beet salad, small herring, chili, white bread, dark bread, rolls stuffed with potato and cabbage, apples, sweet cream cheese frosted rolls and candy all set out for us. And all of it came from the village of Peter and Paul.

The fish had been caught that day. The vegetables were grown in the ladies’ gardens. The breads were baked by the lad y who was our tour guide and her friends who helped her out earlier that morning.

We sat and just ate and ate and ate for probably an hour. Nikolai joked that it was rude to leave a table without eating anything on it. And I joked back to our 71 year-old driver that it was the responsibility of the eldest to finish what was left. The beet soup borscht which had tasted so awful back at the hotel yesterday was delicious today. I ate all of my potatoes and half a plate more and wasn’t at all bothered by the mushrooms. I even dared to try the fish, picking at the blackened skin and scales with my hands like I was told to and spitting out the bones. Nadia told us that workers in villages like this were typically judged by how much and how well they ate. Christine commented that she had never seen me eat like this. And we ate some more. It was the perfect last meal before fasting for Yom Kippur tonight and tomorrow.

Random stories from the first couple of days

2008-10-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

From the section Cultural Differences, the award for weirdest phrase in my Russian phrasebook goes to…

“I don’t mind watching, but I’d prefer not to participate.”

***

I came down a few minutes late for lunch on Saturday and was greeted by the normally silent and stoic waiters following me with a cell phone camera. They let me walk into the wrong dining hall where the wedding was being set up and then followed me on foot into the alternative dining hall. They said something in Russian to me and when they realized I only spoke English, the guy holding the Sony Ericcson camera phone told me in English to say, “I love Russia” into the camera.

After obliging and finally being seated at the table with the remaining 4 volunteers, the longest tenured volunteer explained that during parties it is customary for the waiting staff to drink with the guests, and the guests are even offended if they don’t. Apparently our waiter got started a little early.

He later came back after being reprimanded by his supervisor and apologized in broken English, introduced himself as Andre, and proceeded to offer me some vodka.

***

One kid, Kiril, at the Hospital for Kids winks almost constantly at all the volunteers. Don’t know why, or what he means by it, but I’ve stopped questioning it and just wink back.

***

Although we’ve yet to hear it yet, the old volunteers informed us that Akon- Smack That used to be a staple of the breakfast mix in the hotel’s restaurant. The music in the restaurant deserves a post all its own a little later. We’ve been trying to keep track of every song we recognize.

Had some McDonald's today

2008-10-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

Most delicious meal of the trip so far, even though it was about an hour after lunch. 9 piece Chicken Mcnuggets, medium fries, large Diet Coke and a vanilla ice cream with some caramel topping. Now we just walked to a free internet cafe called Vanilla Sky on the bank of the Volga River. I had some green tea and Jaime had some salmon sushi. The opposite bank of the river has a ton of trees on it and it serves for a really nice view as the Sun is going down.

Week 1 update Part 2: The CCS Program and the people I work with

2008-10-05T01:20:00.000-07:00

Before reading this post, scroll down to read Week 1 update Part 1.

The CCS program

Cross-Cultural Solutions Russia has been operating for 8 years in Yaroslavl. Our director is Nadia, who announced on Friday much to everyone’s surprise that she will be leaving at the end of October to move to Atlanta with her fiancée. We have 3 Russian translators, Olga, Katya and Asya, who come with us to our different volunteer placements and 2 drivers, Vladimir and Nikolai who take us to our placements and cultural activities.

We wake up on weekdays to shower and eat breakfast by 9:30. At 9:30 we leave for our first volunteer placements, and we are typically there for 2 hours. We come back for lunch at the hotel at 1, and go out to our second placements at either 2:45 or 3:45. We come back and unpack our bags for dinner, also in the hotel, at 7. The schedule changes for our Russian lessons twice a week, Monday’s cultural lecture and Wednesday’s cultural excursion. Last Wednesday we went to Rostov, another city in the Golden Ring that is famous for its enamel artwork. On Monday we’ll get to hear a lecture about Russian fairy tales. Weekends and nights are free for us to travel and go out into the city, respectively.

Volunteer stays in Yaroslavl can range from 3 weeks to 11. There were 3 volunteers who were here when Jaime, the two other new volunteers and I got here last Sunday. The 2 Australian sisters in their mid-twenties, Mish and Vera, had been traveling around Europe for 6 months. They left on Friday for home, but Jaime and I plan to see them when we head to Australia in January. The other old volunteer is Meg from Seattle. She is doing a study-abroad program here through her small college and will be with CCS for 11 weeks, leaving the same day as Jaime and me.

Liz from Kentucky and Christine the schoolteacher grandmother from the UK, both started the same day as Jaime and I. Liz will be here for 6 weeks, and Christine will be leaving this weekend at the end of her second week.

The people I volunteer with

CCS tries to make an effort to keep you at the same volunteer placements so that you can form a bond with the people you work with. They partner with somewhere around 13 organizations so it takes some effort to make that happen. This past week I went to the Hospital for Kids four times and Boarding School #1 once. Last week there was no working with the elderly because of a holiday, so with those placements back in play and the sisters gone, we’ll be spreading out a little bit more.

This week I will go to the Hospital for Kids four times, and once each to Boarding School #1, Leninski Elderly, Frunzenski City Camp and the botanical garden. At each placement save the garden, we bring art projects (always “crafts” here) that we pre-prepare and have made examples of for the kids and elderly to make. Russia is unique in that the psychologists and doctors here believe that focused, task-oriented playing is better for the kids, so there is less mindless playing and more jobs to be done. This past week the crafts we made included a braided bracelet out of lanyard wire, a button bracelet, ironed pegboard bead designs and animals out of lanyard string and beads.

The Hospital for Kids is really not a hospital at all. The children who live there range from the abused, like one boy who had to be taken out of his home because his abusive parents poured gasoline on his arm and burned the skin off of it, to the petty thiefs, like another boy who stole 1500 rubles off a woman (around $60) and used it to buy food.

The kids there are all really fun to play with. When we get there and the kids see us, one little boy named Sasha shouts “Americanse!” The kid who stole the money from the old woman spent a half hour crying in a corner earlier this week because somebody stole his balloon, and continued crying after it was returned to him.

One of my favorite kids is an older boy also named Sasha, who I call “No Smoking Sasha,” because “no smoking” was the only thing in English he knew how to say besides “my name is,” “hello” and “what is your name?.” Now No Smoking Sasha and I spend some time when I go to the Hospital teaching each other English and Russian. I’ll point to something and say the word for it in English telling him “pa Angleeski” (In English) first. And then I’ll ask him “pa Russki” and he’ll tell me and we’ll correct each other’s pronunciations.

Wrap-up

All in all it’s been a great first week. We got to go to a hockey game one night between the Yaroslavl Locomotive and a team from Moscow. Yaroslavl won 5-2. Last night we were kicked out of the hotel because of a wedding, so we went to a Soviet-themed restaurant. Jaime and I are getting along great. We are able to go from being cordial roommates to best friends pretty seamlessly. It was a little sad to miss Rosh Hashanah, but I plan on fasting for Yom Kippur. Shanah Tovah. I’m still at the stage of learning Russian where it’s still exciting to go out into the city and attempt to sound out and read everything I see. I only understand the words that sound like English and the few Russian words and phrases we’ve been taught, but it’s still fun.

Well now, I’m off to lunch! Goodbye.

Week 1 update Part 1: Yaroslavl and the Hotel Kotorosl

2008-10-05T01:16:00.001-07:00

What a whirlwind of a first week. I have so much that I want to write and update you all on; the city of Yaroslavl, the hotel, the program, the kids we work with and everything else I’ve been doing. The internet is inconveniently located only on the first floor, but I’ve been doing my best to journal on my laptop everyday. I thought I’d spare you all the boring play-by-play of my days here. It is hard to decide though what to include and what not to since I find everything here so different and exciting!

Yaroslavl

Let’s start with the city of Yaroslavl (pronounced Yah-row-slah-vuhl). It’s a small city of around 670,000 people and it is beautiful. The colors of fall are abundant here with the leaves on the trees all colored different shades of red, orange and yellow. The Soviet-era apartment buildings located around our hotel, the Hotel Kotorosl, are all really run-down and graffitied. There is a lot of graffiti on buildings throughout the city, surprising because the city is very safe. The hotel is also located right next to a long road of home improvement stores.

We are a 15 minute walk, or 5 minute, approx 40 cent (10 rubles) tram ride from the city center, downtown. There are over 50 churches in the city, most of them with colorful onion domes and spires. There are a wealth of centuries-old churches, museums, monuments, memorials, homes, a monastery and a massive cathedral that is set to be ready for the city’s millennial anniversary. Construction is also ongoing for what will one day, by the looks of the designs, be a beautiful planetarium.

Two memorials stick out when thinking about the city. In one park there is a massive black and gold pillar for some reason dedicated to the state university in Yaroslavl. And in another park is a beautiful memorial dedicated to the Great Patriotic War (World War II). There are two stones both about 10 feet high facing each other. On the right there is the face of a soldier cut into the stone and the left has a woman who helped the war effort from home, a la the American, Rosie the Rooter. Between the two is an eternal flame, which is where all local marrying couples take their picture on their wedding day.

There is a statue in the city center honoring the city’s founder, Yaroslavl the Wise. Legend has it that the city was founded in 1010 at the behest of the village’s residents after Yaroslavl killed a bear at the riverbank where the Volga and Kotorosl Rivers meet. So of course the city’s seal is the silhouette of a bear carrying an axe over its shoulder.

There are a ton of stray dogs and cats in the city. We saw one cute cat walking alone in the supermarket and another dog narrowly miss being hit by a car. None of the locals of course seem to think this out of the ordinary.

The Hotel Kotorosl and Russian Food

Mayonnaise, sour cream and dill are staple of pretty much every dish. Not sure why exactly, and not all that pleasing considering I like none of the three, but now that I know how to saw no sour cream “nie nada svitana” I feel a little bit better about my chances.

The hotel is nice. The room has gotten noticeably warmer since my last post, so that’s good. There is still a booming woman’s voice every night, all night, that directs the cargo trains to contend with. CCS programs in other countries, like South Africa, have their own properties that serve as Home-Bases, but in Russia a property has been harder to come by. We share a bathroom and shower with one other volunteer who lives next door to Jaime and I. CCS has two offices on the first floor, which is also where the hotel’s restaurant is located.

Meals from the hotel are included with our program fee. Jaime and I decided that we consider breakfast to be a roll with butter or jam and a fruit yogurt. Those two are our staples. On the rare occasions we like what they are serving that day, like cheese blintzes, it’s a big plus. Most of the time, like the days with the cheesy egg-y soufflé and the hot dogs this morning, there is no plus.

Lunch is a salad, soup and a main entrée. Dinner has no soup, but does come with dessert. Dinners have included potato balls with mushroom inside, dim sum dumplings with sour cream, rice with vegetables and other dishes. One lunch lowlight was the beef stroganoff which I wrote off as stale meat and continued eating until I was informed it was liver.

The menu is set, so we just get to sit and eat, and don’t worry about struggling with ordering. We get along fine. It’s an interesting balance between trying to experience more of the culture through its food and trying to enjoy your meal especially for someone as picky as me.

Welcome to Russia

2008-09-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Note: This was written last night. Today we had our first full day. I'll try to write and catch up to today later.

Welcome to Yaroslavl, Russia! Finally. After a 4 hour flight to Atlanta, a 2 hour layover, a 10 hour flight to Moscow, a 7 hour wait in the airport and a 5 hour drive from the airport to the hotel, we are here.

Jaime is asleep next to me in our quaint hotel room, complete with a fridge, tv and phone. It just stopped raining outside, which we could hear as a little pounding on the metal ledge outside our window. It is also below freezing in our room. Jaime is sleeping in a full heavy jacket and my pajama pants, and I plan on toughing it out in shorts, shirt, sweater and socks. We are sharing a little suite with another new volunteer, Liz from Kentucky. We’re sharing a bathroom and a shower. And we are not allowed to drink the tap water, which means mouth closed in the shower and bottled water to brush our teeth.

But let me back it up a little bit. Let’s start in Atlanta where we met the first of the two friendly South Africans. Jaime and I missed an announcement about a slight delay in our flight so we asked a middle-aged woman sitting near us what the announcement was. Through conversation we found out that she was headed back to S Africa, and once she found out we would be there in a few months she really opened up. We talked about her job as the conductor for a youth orchestra and she gave us her card and insisted we e-mail or call when we get to Cape Town. She lives in a beach town a little ways away near an elephant game preserve.

Next came the uneventful long flight. Jaime and I were stuck in the back left of the plane in seats that didn’t really recline all the way, but other than that it was fine. We went to pick up our bags from baggage claim, Jaime, Liz and I, and lo and behold Jaime’s was nowhere to be found. Jaime as always kept upbeat and filed a claim, so it should be delivered to our hotel once it’s found. Supposedly lost baggage is pretty common in the Moscow airport (SVO). Unfortunately the last new volunteer, Christine from the UK, also lost a bag.

Then we waited in line and I wished aloud that I knew how to read Russian. Then our second friendly South African piped in behind us, explaining it wasn’t all that hard and he began to give an impromptu reading lesson. In truth it really isn’t all that hard to read Russian. I’m sure I’m butchering the pronunciations and I have no idea what I’m saying, but I am definitely getting better. It’s easier when you realize, as our South African friend instructed us, that half the letters are English, and a quarter are Greek. However a handful of English letters are pronounced differently than we are used to. For example, B is pronounced V, P is pronounced R and H is pronounced N. I spent a lot of our wait in the airport using my Russian phrasebook to read and practice.

Finally the wait ended after Christine arrived and we left the airport for Yaroslavl. Katya, one of our three translators and a Yaro native, met us at the café in the airport and led us to our car and driver. The driver’s name is Vladimir, which apparently is commonly mispronounced in the West. (It should be more Vla-DEE-meer, rather than VLA-di-meer with the capitalizations where it should be stressed).

Halfway into our trip in the beat-up Volvo minivan, we stopped for what was either lunch or dinner. We went to a small café that they always take new volunteers to and Katya recommended we order the chicken noodle soup and pancakes. The pancakes came in either cottage cheese or meat variety, and unsure what the meat would be and not feeling too daring, I went with the cottage cheese. Soup was good and the pancakes more resembled fatter cheese blintzes.

We slept for pretty much the rest of the car ride as we did during the first half, and Katya woke us up by announcing we had arrived in Yaroslavl. It is a small city of 600,000 located in Russia’s Golden Ring, a circle of cities that are all almost 1000 years old. Yaroslavl will celebrate its 10000th anniversary in 2010. We didn’t get to see much of the actual city because it was night and we drove straight to our hotel. Now I’m going to get some rest because it is already after midnight and we’re waking up at 8.

Da svidanya!

Itty bitty laptop

2008-09-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

So I got my laptop today. 9 inch screen, 2.2 pounds. This post is first from the computer I'll be using all year.

Here it is with a newspaper next to it for size comparison:

And here it is in all it's glory with the miniature mouse:

Alright, I'm off to do some reading, or writing. Or maybe packing and cleaning. Later

Quick hits on gap year prep

2008-09-20T16:21:00.001-07:00

So it's been a while since I've last written and we find ourselves with 7 days left. Crazy. I've been rather busy preparing so I thought I'd let you all in on what I've been up to.

Shopping trips with my Mom to REI and Adventure 16 to prepare for the harsh Russian winter

Highlights include a North Face jacket that can be packed into one of its own pockets to conserve space and a Swiss Card (credit card-sized and shaped Swiss Army gadget)

Purchased an International Student Identification Card (or ISIC for short) from STA Travel for $20ish. Good for discounts around the world, and valid for one year.
Purchased an International Driver's License from AAA for ~$30. Valid also for one year, and it allows me to drive in every country I'll be going to besides China. Jaime and I have talked about driving a little while we travel through Australia and New Zealand after the new year.
Registered to get an absentee ballot in Russia through the Federal Voting Assistance Program

For this one I had to download and complete a form and fax it back. I selected e-mail as my preference to get the ballot, so we'll see how it comes.
It'll be pretty neat and strange to cast my first ballot in Russia. And I'm not sure how Jaime's voting, but I hope to help seal the all-important Russian vote for Obama.

Participated in an hour and a half pre-departure CCS conference call last week

We went over little details about the flight and the airport, and spent a lot more time talking about the program and volunteer placements once we get there
Two other volunteers were on the call with me in addition to the New York-based Russia program manager. One a recent college graduate from Kentucky, and the other, a British woman of indeterminate age who spoke very softly and was dropped from the call 25 minutes in. Jaime was busy working at his uncle's bank in San Francisco so I took notes for him.

Went back to my doctor to get the second and final dose of chicken pox immunization

I looked up the recommended shots and vaccinations to get on the Center for Disease Control's website. The chicken pox shots were my idea though because I have never been infected and I knew I'd be working with kids

Received a camera that my sisters had bought me for my birthday

Strange coincidence, Jaime has the same one!

Took my typhoid immunization pills

These had to be picked up from the pharmacy in a refrigerated container and kept refrigerated until I swallowed them. The 4 pills had to be swallowed with a cold glass of water one hour before a meal every other day. I definitely had trouble remembering that, but I got them all down eventually.

Got a place to stay in Cape Town courtesy of Mrs. Ozen, my friend Daniel's mom

We needed a place for the first week we were going to be there originally. Then the flights changed, and now we're going to have a two day layover in NY instead of a couple hours. Jaime and I will stay at my sister Michelle's place, try to go see her school and also try to hang out with some Columbia and NYU kids.

Purchased a mini 9 inch screen, 2.2 pound laptop aka netbook

Easier to travel with, and only will be using it for internet and word processor

Got a year's supply of contacts from my aunt the optometrist
Sent in my resume/CV and writing samples to Projects-Abroad so they can find me a journalism internship in Shanghai
Went to lunch with Andrew Schein (HW Class of 07) to rack his brain for gap year tips

Andrew spent his year in Spain and London

E-mailed Projects-Abroad's Visa team and established that I'll get my Chinese visa while back in LA. (They had originally suggested New Zealand b/c it would be closer to my date of arrival in China).

I was also pretty busy with (and stressed about) the organic farms in Australia and New Zealand. Probably around a month ago Jaime and I sent e-mails to 3 Kiwi farms and 2 Aussie ones, after creating a schedule for the 10 weeks we'll be there and fitting them in.

Within a day we got two no replies, due to both farms already having WWOOFers staying with them during the time we requested. One of the nos was the Italian cooking school/farm we were looking forward to working. The other was a cattle ranch which I was especially intrigued by. Later a third no crushed one of Jaime's dreams, the chance to work on an alpaca farm.

We regrouped, sent out more e-mails..... and got no replies. So I contacted the support organizations in each country and had them contact the farms for us, because for some reason when I tried calling, it never went through. The WWOOF support teams replied promptly and helped to get us in contact with the farms, and I figured out eventually why my calls weren't going through. (You have to leave out the 0 between the country and area codes that was for some reason always in the listing. In my defense at least, my first 2 or 3 Google searches didn't inform me of this).

Finally, I was able to talk to the owners of the 4 farms we picked by phone. The first was a library/ Thai gardens/ meditation center outside of Sydney. The woman refused to confirm WWOOFers so early in advance, which is understandable because she didn't want to risk us not coming and lose out on other WWOOFers in the meantime. This stance also put us in quite the bind as one can see, because on the one hand we were being informed that places were already booked, and on the other being told that we were calling too early. The owner agreed to pencil us in. Not exactly what we were looking for, but she did however give us the clever suggestion of checking out the WWOOF e-mail bulletin board, where hosts post notices of their need for volunteers. She also told me to call when we got to Australia.

Call #2 went a lot better. This farm is a "lost island" off of Melbourne with a ridiculously large koala population. With no trouble at all, the nice owner confirmed us for Feb 2nd- Feb 6th. This farm can host up to 10 volunteers so Jaime and I may have company there. Should be interesting to hang out with koalas!

Next, on to New Zealand. I called up the owner of a vineyard that has a 9 hole frisbee golf course and claims to make the best pizza in the world. It was a good thing I called the owner's cell and not his home number because he and his family were in Chicago at the time. He also started to tell me it was too early to commit, but I think someone in the background his wife maybe convinced him otherwise. And he told me to shoot an e-mail to confirm. Still no response on that yet either. Fortunately though this looks like it will work out, which will make it the only one out of our original five picks. We plan on staying there from Feb. 22nd to March 7th.

The fourth call was another farm in Auckland. This one is a remote pub/restaurant on an island. The receptionist who picked up told me it was too early to tell and apologized for not responding to my e-mail. She said she had e-mailed back the WWOOF Support team when they contacted her and thought she e-mailed me as well. Also, fascinatingly she told me she herself was a WWOOFer 4 years ago when she came to the farm and ended up staying on and working there.

So now what's left on the to-do list?

Finish War and Peace (Only 380 pages to go! Lord help me)
Buy a better memory card for my new camera, and a mouse for the mini laptop
Medical insurance while in S. Africa without CCS, and in Australia
Buy an unlocked phone and get an international SIM card

My Dad and I have spent many hours over the last two days searching for the best deal. The ISIC card comes with an offer for an int'l SIM card, but my Dad and I have both found better offers.

Pack!

And that's about it! I'm also just getting ready mentally for a trip I've been waiting for and planning for the last 8 or 9 months.

7 days. 7 days. 7 days.....

Dust to Dust (A little dose of sentimentality upon graduating)

2008-08-30T04:27:00.000-07:00

Here’s a little piece I jotted down in my notebook back in June and forgot to put online. I feel it’s appropriate again what with everyone leaving or having left for college.

So, I just graduated. And I feel like I should have something really deep to say about myself, high school, “the long strange trip.” But there is really only one image sticking in my head. Towards Christmas of 7th grade, Mr. Corsello and Ms. Cazeau told our class at the end of an assembly in the Marshall Center that they had presents for us. And then they handed us all these pencils with Class of 2008 emblazoned on them.

Finally, from that far-off assembly in December of 2002, we’ve come here. From the dozens of elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, home schools, we became one. It only lasted ever so long, until now. Now, we disperse like dust in the wind (apologies to Kansas the band) to so many colleges, universities and other ventures. We came together, congealed I think is the right word, from our many different beginnings and now we move on to our many different paths in life. We were one only for so long, through one of Alex Stepheson’s thunderous dunks back in sophomore year, or the amazing run our football team made junior year. But even that, the “we were one” is oversimplifying it greatly. There were fractions and fissures, love hate and drama enough to fill a reality show with Flava Flav.

But none of that really matters. We grew up together. We found out a little bit of who we were going to. Together. And I think that’s enough. That’s enough “one-ness” to overcome any fraction, fissure or even the San Andreas fault.

And I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it. So thank you Class of 2008. Abbott to Mia Zee, wherever you are, thank you. And good luck to you all.

Who Wants a Healthier Life?

2008-08-26T01:59:00.000-07:00

This post is an old column from February 2006, my sophomore year. It didn't end up making the Chronicle. I was going through the old files in my computer to try to find writing samples for Projects Abroad and I stumbled across this again. Pretty funny that 3 years later, I'll end up doing a lot of what I mentioned here. I hadn't thought of this column in forever and honestly even when I thought about cattle ranching in Australia through WWOOF (the organic farming program), I didn't give a thought to this column. So enjoy.

Who Wants a Healthier Life?

By David A. Alpert

February 2006

I sat in my Algebra Two classroom as my teacher waxed poetic about next year’s course options and the rest of our lives. “Some of you aren’t cut out for calculus next year. That’s ok. I didn’t take calculus until college, and look how I turned out.”

My mind began to wander. I thought about how I aspired to move back onto the honors track, aspirations that were partly instilled in me by my parents.

“You might want to go to a great college. Your parents might want you to go to a great college.” I snapped to attention.

“But you can go to a good college.” he continued, emphasizing good. “You can do well there and have a better life. You can have a healthier life.”

Who among us wants that healthier life? The sophomores and juniors turned in their schedules for next year, a few weeks ago after careful analysis of the curriculum guide. Most students ambitiously piled on as many AP and honors classes as (super)humanly possible.

I am guilty of the same charge. Next year, I will take higher level classes in subjects that barely interest me.

We are told from our first days at Harvard- Westlake to expect big things of ourselves. We are taught to stretch ourselves to a previously unheard of limit, break through that limit, and set a new one. This way of thought brings to mind the school motto. Possunt quia posse videntur. They can because they think they can.

Even as I was filling out my schedule, with both school motto and future firmly planted in mind, I could not push my math teacher’s words out of my head. A healthier life. The challenges that lie in our future, next year and beyond. There must be some balance between stressful, late-night lab reports and the completely unperturbed mind. Can there not be some sort of promised land where the two can co-exist?

As I reflected more on my math teacher’s advice, I thought back to a dinner table conversation I had had with my parents a few nights previous. They had won an all-expense-paid trip for two to Australia at a dinner party raffle, earlier that month. However, the trip would be centered on cattle ranching, something that did not appeal to my mother.

I sensed an opportunity and jumped at it, offering to take my mother’s place. I may not be the most rugged outdoorsman, but I thought it would make for an interesting experience, and a great chance to see Australia.

As more details filtered out, it was revealed that the trip was to be taken next May. Immediately my excitement dissipated. I knew I could not go. May 2007 would also be when my first AP exams would be held, and valuable time for early finals studying. I remarked to my parents how unhealthy it seemed to me that after being presented with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, my mind quickly jumped to the tests that did away with the chance.

Instead of experiencing life on the free and open range, and spending my days equipped with a horse and lasso as I simultaneously racked up bruises and experience, I will spend next May locked in my room equipped with textbooks and a number two pencil. Considering the path I’m choosing, I lack the authority to give any advice on the issue, but I feel I must anyways. While the guy next to you is daydreaming about which Pre-Calculus course to take, dare to be the one who daydreams about rough Australian cattle and the cuts and bruises they induced. After all, isn’t the occasional cut healthier in the long run?

Finally! Another gap year update

2008-08-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

So it's been far too long since I've last written about Jaime's and my plans for the gap year and quite a bit has changed. When I last wrote, Argentina was still in the cards. Due to the price of adding another flight and program and time constraints, it no longer is part of the gap year. There is a small chance that I'll go to South America with my family at the end of my gap year, but we'll see if that works out. But while we were still planning on going to Argentina, in doing some research Jaime found a great program called Projects Abroad.

It's an internship program with the most independence of anything we'll be doing. So we both almost immediately agreed to substitue it in for Cross-Cultural Soultions (CCS) China. So instead of doing more international volunteering in Xi'an, we'll be interning in Shanghai for two months. I had my heart set on interning in a law firm, but there was the small matter that in order to actually be able to place interns in a law firm they had to be currently enrolled in law school. I called the program and they said they make exceptions for interns in college, and despite my feeble protests there was no budging.

So instead, I'll be doing journalism which I'm still pretty excited about. Projects Abroad seems to lack a lot of the handholding of CCS, which can be good and bad. I think we placed it in the perfect spot at the end of the year as we become more and more independent. According to the testimonials I solicited from past participants, Proj Abroad staff pretty much shows you to your apartment, or flat as they all called it, shows you how to get to your work and gives you some spending money for food for the month. I'll be in Shanghai, which incidentally I was surprised to learn is more populous than Beijing, from April 1st to June 1st at which point I'll head home. Jaime will head home earlier, May 23rd I believe, to get to a cousin's wedding at Stanford.

To backtrack a bit, the first part of the second half of the gap year has been set as well. Flights have even been booked as of a couple days ago! So now to take this in the proper order, we depart Jan. 17th for Sydney, Australia. We'll be there for 5 weeks (until Feb. 22) organic farming with Worldwide/ Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF for short). We then fly out of Sydney to Auckland, New Zealand to try our hand at some more organic farming until March 27th. The 28th will have us in Jogjakarta, Indonesia for the wedding of a different one of Jaime's cousins. We'll stay there until March 31st when we head to Shanghai for Projects Abroad.

So now for a bit more detail about this WWOOF planning. Jaime bought a copy of the Australian WWOOF book and I bought the NZ one. The book serves as proof of our one year membership and has to be presented upon arrival at any and every organic farm to prove our identities. The NZ one comes with insurance, while Aus seems to have some sort of universal health care. (Jaime investigated a different insurance option that he'll be doing in Aus and he's giving me the details on it and I may choose to use it as well. CCS and Proj Abroad both come with insurance).

The WWOOF books list all the organic farms willing to host volunteer workers in exchange for room and board for that year with details about each farm written by their owners along with ways to contact them. Jaime went through the Auckland region of the NZ WWOOF book and picked out farms he liked. I narrowed that group down to 9 farms and that needs to be narrowed down further. Each farm ranges in the minimum stays required, some only a handful of days, others a few weeks. The highlights of the 9 farms include a farm run by Italian emigrants who also own and run an Italian cooking school. Learning how to cook Italian isn't what one necessarily pictures when thinking of organic farming, but this gap year is all about a wide variety of experiences!

Jaime and I are also intrigued by working on a vineyard, and I am taken with doing some sort of cattle ranching and working with traditional farm animals like chickens, sheep and cows. I think Jaime wants to really stretch himself and go to one of the rural, undeveloped farms with pit toilets and no running water. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It seems interesting to experience for a couple days, but I don't think I'd like to spend a few weeks there. I'd like to stay closer to the bigger cities. Jaime and I plan to meet in the next week to discuss it all further. We leave for Camp Harmony, a community service camp for homeless and transitionally-housed kids, on Monday and we'll be there for about a week.

We leave for Russia in about 6 1/2 weeks on Sept. 27. I got my Russian visa a couple months ago in my passport which is pretty cool! I'll be in Yaroslavl from (9/27 to 11/15) and Cape Town (from 11/16-12/27) with CCS. All the details are hammered out for that first half except for a place to stay in Cape Town from 11/16 to 11/22. We may choose to stay in a hostel, but I'd prefer to stay with someone who knows the area and could show us around a little bit. Of course a full week is quite the burden, so if anyone knows anyone who'd be willing to host us for a couple days, I'd love to hear about it! Finally, prayers go out to Georgia, its people and the Russian and Georgian armies.

Nakedness, soul and why you should care about the Honor Code

2008-06-26T00:54:00.000-07:00

Ok I’m going to try to pull together a couple ideas that have been buzzing around my head, some for weeks, others for months. So here we go in the order that makes sense to me.

First up is a conversation I had at Mel’s with a good friend in the weeks before graduation. As a recurring commitment of ours ended for the final time, we discussed the feeling of all the duties, titles and responsibilities we had been given or accumulated throughout the years being stripped away. “I’m in high school” *nah uh* “I go to Harvard-Westlake” *no you don’t* “I’m on the newspaper” *check next year’s staff box*

It leaves one with the haunting feeling of nakedness. Because after all, as my friend Dr. Zeuss so eloquently put it, we come to define ourselves not by who we are, but by what we do. And as we stop doing those things that we do, there’s that void and feeling of being placeless.

With that ending though comes the requisite new beginning. As the image you crafted for yourself, or the labels that stuck to you against your will become remnants of your past, you have the chance to start all over again. Terrifying if you loved who you were. Liberating if you didn’t. Probably somewhere in between for most people. Definitely exciting.

But the thing is, even though I just wrote about the “chance to start all over again,” the truth is that chance doesn’t really exist. It does exist in the sense of the things that you do, but when you dig deeper to who you really are, some intrinsic force, “soul” (or call it what you will) that sticks with you throughout your life experience, that chance never really existed.

That soul however is what guides you to choose who you are and of course what you do and the path your life takes for your life’s duration.

Now to step back into the concrete for a moment. As a Prefect this year at Harvard-Westlake in a turbulent year chockfull of Honor Code issues, I was involved in lots of different discussions and asked lots of interesting questions. One question that stuck with me for the last few months was one that went something like this:

“I have my own set of morals that I follow irrespective of Harvard-Westlake’s Honor Code. I don’t know what the Honor Code says. I don’t care about the Honor Code. I’m a perfectly fine law-abiding person already. Why should I care about the Honor Code?”

I always felt like this was such an easy question, but I was never able to really articulate my answer clearly. I would stumble through an explanation that contained in parts, “It’s your duty” and “you signed your name to the Honor Code in 7th grade” and a couple helpings of angry frustration at my inarticulate answer.

But now that I’m a little bit removed from it all, I think I’ve gained some more clarity into it all (with the help of Sonya Mitchell's senior column.).

Sonya writes, “…I realized a sad but accurate fact: the class of 2008 is a mere piece of the Harvard-Westlake mosaic.”

That fact doesn’t strike me as sad at all. And it makes perfect sense. Just as we talked about before, that Harvard-Westlake student was merely what I did, not who I was. So to borrow Sonya’s language, that identity was just a mere piece of the David Alpert mosaic. And as we covered before, it was just a mere cursory piece, especially relative to the deeper soul in that mosaic of me.

So to make the biggest leap here in my thinking and complete the analogy, the class of 2008 was not who Harvard-Westlake was, but “what it did.” The myriad accomplishments and identities in my class and every other class don’t really matter because they are passing phenomena. The same goes for the teachers, the classes, the sports teams, et al. So that begs the question, if my thinking suggests that everything Harvard-Westlake is known for is merely “what it did,” then what really is Harvard-Westlake? What is its soul?

And here we are, finally back at the Honor Code. I don’t mean to suggest that a decade-old code of ethos comprises the entirety of the school’s soul, especially considering the current lack of respect it garners, but take a look at the facts. It has already survived countless coaches, teams, classes and administrators. So I think it plays a pretty hefty part in that soul.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is why you should care about the Honor Code. For while you and your own set of morals are good for your own life, while you are living out the part of “what you do” that is Harvard-Westlake student, you’re beholden to the maintenance, or even betterment, of the soul of the institution. So in a way my answer hasn’t moved all that far from “it’s your responsibility.” But there’s a lot more depth to that responsibility than it might appear on the surface.

Yep, I like the sound of that answer. What do all y’all think?

Quick update on the gap year (aka the reason you're here reading)

2008-06-20T02:47:00.000-07:00

I received an e-mail from someone at Cross-Cultural Solutions this past week saying that my Russian Letter of Invitation has arrived. Now I have to complete a two page form and send away $180 to get my Russian visa. Jaime has already completed this. As usual, I'm behind the curve.

Jaime and I also booked our flights in the last month. I leave for SVO airport in Moscow on September 27th and arrive on the 28th before 3 pm for a 5 hour bus ride to Yaroslavl, where I'll spend the next 7 weeks. The program ends on November 16th and our CCS program in South Africa does not begin until November 22nd so we debated about coming home quickly or going straight to Cape Town and we decided on the latter. I think the 5 or 6 days will make for good practice for living outside of an organized program, which we'll be doing for the majority of the second half of the year. We leave Cape Town for Los Angeles on December 27th and arrive on the 28th. I'm excited to be able to spend New Year's at home!

Jaime and I plan on meeting next week to begin seriously planning that second half of the year. We know that it will include Australia, New Zealand, China and a Spanish-speaking country, possibly Spain. Complications arose with China however. China is the only one of these four countries that will be on a program, again with CCS, so we have to work with the scheduled start dates. We assumed that they'd be similar to the 2008 start dates, and had pinpointed 3/15, the Ides of March, as a good time after spending a month each organic farming in Aus and NZ. However, CCS wasn't as cooperative and their start dates for Xi'an are 2/28 and 3/28. So it seemed we'd either have to spend two weeks more or less than we originally planned for Down Under.

Then Jaime found out that he had a cousin getting married in Thailand in March, and we figured it'd be convenient to leave from New Zealand. So now it appears we'll wait on the wedding date, maybe spend a week there and then move on to China. We originally planned on 7 weeks in China, but that might have to be cut down. More updates to come after Jaime and I begin to plan next week!

And finally, about a month later-the senior column

2008-06-20T01:46:00.000-07:00

For your reading convenience, here is the senior column I last blogged about. You can click on the link below for my vanity's sake (the number of hits are tracked). Below the column are some more random thoughts about it, so scroll down even if you've read it already.

http://students.hw.com/chronicle/Opinion/tabid/1230/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2101/On-failure-and-expectaions.aspx

On failure and expectaions

By David Alpert

I never broke five minutes in the mile. I wasn’t elected Head Prefect. As a matter of fact, I haven’t fulfilled a single campaign promise to date. I didn’t get into Georgetown- early, regular, off the waitlist. I was quite possibly the only senior ever to be a three year veteran of the JV Cross Country team.

I didn’t clear 10 feet in the pole vault. I don’t even have a single varsity letter to show for my seven seasons of running. And I never found my “That 70’s Show”-esque group of friends where everybody’s comfortable with each other and the laugh track checks in every couple of minutes. And my grades- well they were just plain mediocre.

I failed at Harvard-Westlake. Or at least I didn’t meet my expectations, which if you’re keeping score at home just so happens to be the same as failing. Maybe my expectations were too high.

But no, I don’t buy that. That thinking suggests a self-pitying lack of ability and capability. The expectations were just right. And in some respects, so was the failure.

Emma Kaplan and I fought for months over the journey speech for ring ceremony. (She won and did a great job with it). But now that I have my soapbox, allow me to step up on it and preach.The failure was right. And why was the failure right? Because naturally, it taught me something success never could have. Something much more important than the easy lessons success teaches you, that hard work and determination pay off.

I want so badly to have something profound to say here; some life changing words that will immortalize my name at 3700 Coldwater Canyon long after I’m gone. But the truth is I don’t. Not here. Not now. But someday I will. And I think that’s what I learned at Harvard-Westlake. I learned that despite not measuring up, despite failing time after time, I still expected great things of myself.

(Now here’s for my shameless plug. If you like my writing, or if you like me, or hell if you’d just like to get a taste for the world through my eyes, check out my blog. It can be found at nevereversayno.blogspot.com. That’s ‘never ever say no dot blogspot dot com.’ The name’s explained in my first post. I leave for my gap year at the end of September, but I’ve already started writing, and I plan to keep writing all summer long. So come check it out. And now back to the happily ever after already in progress…)

I think that’s what is going to make me great. Not today. Not yesterday, because in my opinion I wasn’t great here. But someday I will be great because no matter how many times I fail, I still expect to be great. And I think I owe that to Harvard-Westlake.

So thank you, Harvard-Westlake. And to the rest of you, all the current, former and future students, faculty and staff that make up Harvard-Westlake, keep the school’s motto in mind Possunt Quia Posse Videntur, or ‘They Can Because They Think They Can.’ Keep thinking you can and you will. Be great today.

Now here's some musings on the column. First, a comment about two failures. When I first showed the column to my dad he commented that he thought I would offend some of my friends with the "That 70s Show" line. Honestly, that thought hadn't crossed my mind, because I thought that anyone who knows me would agree. I made a ton of great friends, and met lots of amazing people at HW, but I never found that tight knit group that I expected to find or make. Still two of my best friends reported that their mothers expressed either shock or sadness at that line.

Second, the Georgetown line. This is the one I was most nervous about because I thought this is where I bared the most about myself. I had sat silently in Weiler Hall, the Chronicle's building and had listened to other people on the staff talk disparagingly about Georgetown, in terms of its ranking and other meaningless numbers. I had kept the fact that I applied early to Gtown a secret for a long time before the decisions came out before deciding to tell my friends. But neither of those factors were what gave me pause.

I was more concerned about the fact that in the print version of the May issue of the Chronicle, a reader could read my column and then flip a few pages earlier in the Senior Supplement to the matriculation list, check where I picked to go to college (William and Mary) and misperceive my feelings. The truth is that I'm really, really excited for WM. (As a matter of fact, just about an hour ago, I bought my first piece of WM gear online). I just felt, and still feel, that I might be happier at Georgetown, or better served by going there. But that in no way, shape or form diminishes my excitement for Williamsburg.

Oh and I was also given pause by the fact that while I wasn't accepted from Georgetown's Waiting List, I wasn't denied either. I was moved to the university's Extended Waiting List, which I still had/have a chance to get accepted from. But chances of that happening are looking slimmer by the day, as they free that wait list, and tell you to stick with whatever school you chose, on June 30. And I honestly am very okay with that. I'm sad that I probably won't be going to Georgetown. But then I think about Wren Hall, (the oldest building on WM's campus dating back to the 1700s where incoming freshmen take the honor pledge), the Sunken Gardens, (which is actually more a long stretch of grass than a garden with brick walkways) and the little stone at the entrance to William and Mary's campus that has the school's name and founding date of 1693 inscribed on it, and I get really happy. So it all works.

Finally, a last word about the ending I chose. When I read it again, it still sort of seems like a cop-out. I originally wrote it as filler and planned on replacing it, but then I showed it to someone who really liked it and I began to consider it as a legitimate possibility. Then I showed it to someone else who agreed with my fear that it was too sappy. But the more I thought about it, I realized that there was too much truth in the ending to replace it. If I were to replace it with anything, in my mind it would have to be something deep and profound. I had mulled it over for a long time and still had come up with zilch, so instead of faking something, I just wrote the truth. I'm okay with that. And I've gotten lots of nice comments from friends, family and even a complete stranger so I feel good about ending my Chronicle career on that note.

Senior Column Writing

2008-05-21T01:16:00.001-07:00

I'm sick, sore throat, and should definitely be asleep by now. I have detention in a mere 5 and a half hours for ditching a period on ditch day. It's ok though. I'm actually looking forward to detention because it's themed and we'll be in underwater gear.

I'm struggling right now with my senior column. I think I'm going to title it "On Failure and Expectations." So naturally it begins with descriptions of all my failures at Harvard-Westlake. But I'm not sure where I want to go with it from there. I really only see two possible paths. There's one, less appealing at the moment, which goes "I failed, but it's ok because I'm happy anyways, in spite of, or because of my failings." The other, at the moment more appealing, goes "I failed, but it's ok because I graduate having learned this important life changing lesson."

But of course despite gravitating to the latter option, I really have no idea what lesson I learned. And part of me tells me I should probably have known that before even beginning to write. I wish I could write a rambling, stream of conciousness blog post-esque column. All I got right now is the description of my failings and the quick interlude that leads me into my sermonizing on the lesson. But ack! What lesson?

This column is pretty important. It's my last one, hence senior column. Instead of going in the normal opinion section of the paper, (the Chronicle by the way, found at chronicle.hw.com) the senior columns go in the special senior section of the paper, along with the matriculation list and a fun cartoony recap of the past six years. And the columns are due to Ms. Neumeyer, the Chronicle's adviser, 4th period tomorrow. I just feel like it'd be good to finally turn something in on-time for the paper and for school. I've definitely missed more deadlines than I've made for the paper. It would just be a great way to go out to avoid that stress and finish the column on-time.

Why'd I pick failure to write on? Great question! It's not nearly as self-pitying or deprecating or something else bad as it might sound. It actually feels in a strange way, liberating, to be able to go out and admit everything that I did not do. Get to air out my conscience. Clean the skeletons out of the closet in a way. I think the topic first occured to me in conversations with my parents. I had a similar revelation as I have in my column about how I didn't achieve nearly as much as I set out to do, and they tried to comfort me and do everything nice, kind parents would do when it sounds like their kid could be down on himself. But I really wasn't down on myself. To that end there's a couple lines in the column, "By all accounts, I failed at Harvard-Westlake. Or at least I didn’t meet my expectations, which if you’re keeping score at home just so happens to be the same as failing."

What I mean by that is I'm not sad, mad or down on myself. I'm just acknowledging the truth, my truth, my reality. This is what I think I'll see when I look back at my high school experience later in life. Or at least, this is what I see now. I was a tremendous success in elementary school at Valley Beth Shalom. And I planned to continue in that path at Harvard-Westlake. But I didn't. So now I'd like to acknowledge that and admit that that's an ok way to be because I learned.... I learned that you learn more from failure than success? No doesn't ring right. Although that's probably true. Failure leads to more introspection than success. Success leads to celebration, glory and victory. Not really the same as introspection.

But still that's not what I learned because I don't think I ever really applied myself wholly and completely to any of my failings. Or to most of them. Had I and still failed, I think I would've had a lot to learn and probably learned it. But I knew I wasn't applying myself, which just allowed me to shrug off every failure, no matter how painful, and just tell myself that next time I would apply myself and succeed beyond my wildest imagination. So why waste time and take stock of yourself after this failure? Success is around the next corner. Optimism. Only skin deep.

Back to Microsoft Word in hopes of some stunning realization hitting me, before I hit the green bean bag to my right. (That's hit in terms of 'hitting the sack' and not angry frustration, although there will be a little bit of both tonight).

D. A. Alpert

Prom, College Decisions and more Gap Year news

2008-05-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

So last night was Prom. Lots of fun. One of the more interesting parts of my night was seeing a friend who I hadn't spoken to or seen in months. And it was really cool because, aside from some good-natured ribbing and guilt tripping about being bad at keeping in touch, we didn't miss a beat and our friendship felt just as strong as before. It's just comforting I guess to know that there's people who you can go a long time without talking to or seeing, and can still keep up the same rapport.

...Emory was really quite nice, despite the rain. And I really felt that I could be at home there rather quickly, which might be part of the reason I'm still headed to William&Mary. Not that it's so different, but I like the fact that WM will put me a little more out of my comfort zone (as any college will). I also had this silly notion in my head that wouldn't give that no matter how fun Emory seemed, and that's the first word that comes to mind, something at WM will spur me out of my underachieving ways. That might not be a healthy way to look at it, putting all that pressure on the school when it's really me who has to start working and time-managing, but I just feel like it's some combination of me and me at the school that will really click.

...I signed up for the South Africa program with CCS from 11/22 to 12/27 this past week and I'm really excited. Cape Town should be really great especially since CCS' Home-Base (where they station the volunteers) is near the University of Cape Town. CCS' volunteers can range from their teens to their seventies, so it'll be good to have people my age for a month near-by.

That's all for now. I need to go watch 'No Country for Old Men' to compare it to the book for my final paper in high school (for Cinema Studies II).

-DA

Off to Atlanta

2008-05-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well I'm leaving in about an hour to go see Emory. I got in off the waitlist on Tuesday, only 4 days after I picked William & Mary in Virginia to finally end the process, or so I thought. It'll be rainy and muggy while I'm there and graduation just happened so the campus will be dead, but I'm still excited to see it. Either way, both schools are ok with the gap year. I actually got my deferrment letter from WM last week and Emory's admissions office said they would be ok with it too, so I'm still on!

Later,
DA

Where does the blog's name come from?

2008-05-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

The name of this blog, and to a large extent, the theme of the gap year comes from the same idea; never say no. (Unfortunately, that name was taken, so I went with never ever say no). Credit for the idea and phrase has to go to Tim Allan.

The idea is self-explanatory to a degree but it deserves some commenting. Jaime (DyBuncio, who will be joining me on the gap year) and I really believe that we'll get a lot more out of life and we will be able to fully enhance our year and the experiences during it by being more open-minded. This extends past simple experiences, events and invitations. Even more than any of that it really applies to ideas, cultures and different ways of life. In order to really broaden my horizons, the goal for this gap year, and the rest of my life, is to say yes as often as I can, without putting life or limb in too much jeopardy, in order to learn about this world and move past my limited life experience.

I will be blogging all summer long in order to get a hang of this and get in the habit of doing it as often as I can, so do check back here often. And finally, just so we're all on the same page, here's the itinerary for these next 12 months:

June-Aug '08: Reprise my internship at the Lt. Governor's office (Downtown L.A.)
Work on John Perez's State Assembly campaign

Mid- to late-Aug: One week at Camp Harmony (Malibu)

Sept 28- Nov 16: Volunteer with Cross-Cultural Solutions (Yaroslavl, Russia)

Nov 22- late-Dec: Volunteer with CCS (Cape Town, South Africa)

Late-Dec to mid-Jan '09: Break at home (Los Angeles)

Mid-Jan to mid-March: Organic farming and travel on the cheap (Australia and New Zealand)

Mid-March to May: Volunteer with CCS (Xi'an, China)

May: Organic farming and travel on the cheap (Spain)

Just as an added teaser, here's a link to an album in a Facebook group with pictures from Russia. Only 4 months and 17 days! http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=2209453793&view=all