Today was a day to recover and catch up from the previous busy days. After sleeping in, I caught up writing these blog posts, sorting through pictures, and working on my grad school application essays while Lisa went to the bank and did other such errands, and Ma tagged along with her. They also went to visit some goats.
We met up with Miriam, Lisa’s boss, at Osteria El Gato, a small restaurant near their school. We ate more delicious food, in the many-hours-long multi-course-with-wine Italian lunch tradition. Miriam is wonderful, warm and intelligent and high-spirited: I wished we could have lunched for even longer to enjoy her company more. Some of our truly lively topics of conversation over the meal included her family’s history (fascinating romantic saga), the effect of facism and WWII on Italy, goats, the insulating techniques of potato barns, and her parent’s pellet furnace. (If you know me, you can see why I liked her.)
After lunch we went with Lisa to her office, where she did some work and arranged for our onward train tickets, I did more photo editing, Ma read a book on the history of the city, and we were able to chat online with Petra in Haiti. On our way home we wandered into some of the kitschy tourist shops, featuring wares such as silk scarves with the neighborhood crests, painted ceramic plates, painted ceramic everything-under-the-sun, highly decorative paper goods, and various tacky crap. We fortified ourselves with an appetizer of pizza slices, then went grocery shopping, trudged back to the apartment for dinner (gnocchi with amazing mystery sauce and sautéed brussel sprouts with pistachio pudding for dessert), and an early night to bed.
Photos from this day are by my mother: you can see where I get some of my photographic habits from! :)
Monday, December 27, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Italy Day 4: Day after Christmas
We finally awoke to sunshine! The apartment and the city out the window were practically unrecognizable from the gloom to which we had become accustomed. The golden glow beckoned us such that we wolfed down our breakfast (scrambled eggs with bursting sautéed cherry tomatoes and grated fresh parmesan cheese and whole-grain toast with local cherry jam) so we could rush outside before the clouds returned.
It was another day of mostly just wandering around the city again. The views we could catch out over the Tuscan countryside were all the more arresting, much greener greens even than before, and the stucco and terra cotta houses practically glowed in the sunshine. Our first stop of the day was the Medici fortress on the outskirts of town, built essentially as bragging rights after the final decisive victory of Florence over Siena. It is large and brick and empty and in very good repair, now essentially a walled public park with great views from the high walls back onto the old city and surrounds.
Of course it was snack time next, so off to Nanini’s coffee shop for a rice pastry, which we dutifully ate sitting in the sun in Il Campo (the main plaza) like good tourists. Our next stop, a farm in a green valley within the old city walls, was sadly closed, so no Italian mountain goats for us.
Instead we briskly strode through the Torre contrada / ghetto neighborhood toward the church of S. Clemente in S. Maria del Servi from which Lisa promised great views. Of course, as soon as we got there, the sun disappeared. So we just enjoyed the church itself, which was more effectively decorated and seemed more cozy than the other giant churches of the city. This one had a great mosaic over an exterior side door in which the skin of all the figures had turned green, probably something to do with the ancient paint’s pigments. Inside were two remarkably well-preserved mummies of 1300s saints, one of which looked disturbingly like me, and some very famous frescoes by the Lorenzetti brothers, which we ignored.
Lisa took us next to the grounds of the former city psychiatric hospital, now part of the University, and the nearby Porto Romana (Roman gate), very well-preserved with its whole gatehouse and gate tower and everything still intact. It was funny to see cars zooming through the gatehouse, since the road still enters the city there. Sitting in an arrow slit nook, we took a quick repast of Lisa’s favorite Italian beverage, a packaged iced tea with lemon and rosewater added.
Then commenced an endless nearly-futile search for open restaurant. During our search we kept our spirits up by going via the alley of potted plants of the day before, admiring the whimsical figures topping the hundreds of iron horse securing rings along the streets, and noting the dangerous toilet balconies mounted on the outside of the high walls. Unfortunately, all the swift walking from today and the past few days has brought about shinsplints in my legs, so I was miserably hobbling along the later streets.
After searching through about five neighborhoods we finally found an open restaurant, which was really quite delightful entirely in addition to it being warm, having chairs, and having food. Our table was in a very low arched brick nook that was either an old wine cellar or tunnel or oven or just a room for really small people. We ate more delicious food.
After checking email etc at Lisa’s freezing cold office, we felt justified in further indulging with intense hot chocolate, mine with milk and Lisa’s without milk, from a specialty sorbet-and-chocolate shop called Grom. My mother insanely got sorbet (it was freezing out!), a delicious Mandarin orange flavor.
Then on to the Teatro Dei Rozzi for an early-evening concert featuring the Unione Corale Senese (the Sienese Choralle), soprano Cristina Ferri and tenor Altero Mensi, and directed by Francesca Lazzeroni (who also sang a few of the soprano solos). The theater itself was interesting, small and set up in a very old mostly-circular terraced style. I’d call it over-decorated, though Ma says it was tasteful and appropriate for what it is, and Lisa says there’s no such thing as over-decorated, especially since they were singing Madame Butterfly. We got to sit in a box seat, since it was a free concert with open seating and we were near the front of the line: I felt very posh. The program was like Italian Opera’s Greatest Hits, with short selections from Verdi, Verdi, Donizetti, Verdi, Verdi, Cajkovskij, Puccini, Puccini, Puccini, (intermission), Puccini, Puccini, Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Mascagni, and an unbilled encore sing-along. The crowd seemed to know all the pieces by heart, though only a few sounded vaguely familiar to me. The soloists were very, very, very stereotypically Italian: confident, highly dramatic, strident, loud, endearing, and quite talented. The youngish Ms. Ferri was lovely enough with her honest delight in her own performance and perfectly tailored modern gauzy dress to mostly excuse her over-use of vibrato, while Mr. Mensi was as sweet and dignified as his white hair and paunch would lead one to suspect. We walked/hobbled home singing the main melodic phrase of the last piece.
Dinner back at the apartment was leftovers of the previous meals plus more almond cookies, and more pecarino cheese with honey drizzled over it, and a Kinder egg (with purple bouncy toy). The three of us cozied up on the couch and sang all the Christmas carols we could think of, occasionally sung in the mode of monkeys and/or fish, which made me laugh so hard I had real trouble breathing. The later songs I accompanied on guitar, making my fingers ask what I was doing to them (as I haven’t played in years). Then sleep.
It was another day of mostly just wandering around the city again. The views we could catch out over the Tuscan countryside were all the more arresting, much greener greens even than before, and the stucco and terra cotta houses practically glowed in the sunshine. Our first stop of the day was the Medici fortress on the outskirts of town, built essentially as bragging rights after the final decisive victory of Florence over Siena. It is large and brick and empty and in very good repair, now essentially a walled public park with great views from the high walls back onto the old city and surrounds.
Of course it was snack time next, so off to Nanini’s coffee shop for a rice pastry, which we dutifully ate sitting in the sun in Il Campo (the main plaza) like good tourists. Our next stop, a farm in a green valley within the old city walls, was sadly closed, so no Italian mountain goats for us.
Instead we briskly strode through the Torre contrada / ghetto neighborhood toward the church of S. Clemente in S. Maria del Servi from which Lisa promised great views. Of course, as soon as we got there, the sun disappeared. So we just enjoyed the church itself, which was more effectively decorated and seemed more cozy than the other giant churches of the city. This one had a great mosaic over an exterior side door in which the skin of all the figures had turned green, probably something to do with the ancient paint’s pigments. Inside were two remarkably well-preserved mummies of 1300s saints, one of which looked disturbingly like me, and some very famous frescoes by the Lorenzetti brothers, which we ignored.
Lisa took us next to the grounds of the former city psychiatric hospital, now part of the University, and the nearby Porto Romana (Roman gate), very well-preserved with its whole gatehouse and gate tower and everything still intact. It was funny to see cars zooming through the gatehouse, since the road still enters the city there. Sitting in an arrow slit nook, we took a quick repast of Lisa’s favorite Italian beverage, a packaged iced tea with lemon and rosewater added.
Then commenced an endless nearly-futile search for open restaurant. During our search we kept our spirits up by going via the alley of potted plants of the day before, admiring the whimsical figures topping the hundreds of iron horse securing rings along the streets, and noting the dangerous toilet balconies mounted on the outside of the high walls. Unfortunately, all the swift walking from today and the past few days has brought about shinsplints in my legs, so I was miserably hobbling along the later streets.
After searching through about five neighborhoods we finally found an open restaurant, which was really quite delightful entirely in addition to it being warm, having chairs, and having food. Our table was in a very low arched brick nook that was either an old wine cellar or tunnel or oven or just a room for really small people. We ate more delicious food.
After checking email etc at Lisa’s freezing cold office, we felt justified in further indulging with intense hot chocolate, mine with milk and Lisa’s without milk, from a specialty sorbet-and-chocolate shop called Grom. My mother insanely got sorbet (it was freezing out!), a delicious Mandarin orange flavor.
Then on to the Teatro Dei Rozzi for an early-evening concert featuring the Unione Corale Senese (the Sienese Choralle), soprano Cristina Ferri and tenor Altero Mensi, and directed by Francesca Lazzeroni (who also sang a few of the soprano solos). The theater itself was interesting, small and set up in a very old mostly-circular terraced style. I’d call it over-decorated, though Ma says it was tasteful and appropriate for what it is, and Lisa says there’s no such thing as over-decorated, especially since they were singing Madame Butterfly. We got to sit in a box seat, since it was a free concert with open seating and we were near the front of the line: I felt very posh. The program was like Italian Opera’s Greatest Hits, with short selections from Verdi, Verdi, Donizetti, Verdi, Verdi, Cajkovskij, Puccini, Puccini, Puccini, (intermission), Puccini, Puccini, Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Mascagni, and an unbilled encore sing-along. The crowd seemed to know all the pieces by heart, though only a few sounded vaguely familiar to me. The soloists were very, very, very stereotypically Italian: confident, highly dramatic, strident, loud, endearing, and quite talented. The youngish Ms. Ferri was lovely enough with her honest delight in her own performance and perfectly tailored modern gauzy dress to mostly excuse her over-use of vibrato, while Mr. Mensi was as sweet and dignified as his white hair and paunch would lead one to suspect. We walked/hobbled home singing the main melodic phrase of the last piece.
Dinner back at the apartment was leftovers of the previous meals plus more almond cookies, and more pecarino cheese with honey drizzled over it, and a Kinder egg (with purple bouncy toy). The three of us cozied up on the couch and sang all the Christmas carols we could think of, occasionally sung in the mode of monkeys and/or fish, which made me laugh so hard I had real trouble breathing. The later songs I accompanied on guitar, making my fingers ask what I was doing to them (as I haven’t played in years). Then sleep.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Italy Day 3: Christmas Day
We awoke on Christmas morning to another rainy day. Rather than lounge about in our pjs, we hustled off to the crypt of the other giant cathedral-ish building in town, the Basilica of St. Dominico, built in 1226. This church has always seemed to me very threatening and dangerous and vaguely unpleasant, perhaps because its gargantuan brick hulk squats precariously on a sandstone bluff on the edge of the old city; perhaps because of its unsurpassed collection of atrocious art, from simultaneously insipid and violent pastel frescos to horrid and yet engaging dark modern stained glass to positively treacherous sharp cast metal doors; perhaps because of the sad state of disrepair of the nave; or perhaps because of the displayed thumb and shrunken head of the local insane St. Catherine. Yeah, it’s probably the head.
Compared to the nave, the 1300s crypt where the Christmas morning service was held, locally called “the Church Down Under”, was positively cozy. Even the locals don’t want to go to mass in the giant, cold and freaky church above. We only stayed for the first bit of the mass, driven out by the combination of the cold, the shockingly out-of-tune organ, and my losing battle with not snickering at the sermon, which featured the phrases “pico Jesu bambino” (little baby Jesus) and “nostro piccolo dio” (our tiny God) and the like so often that Talladega Nights was too much in the forefront of my mind. And, in case you didn’t know, we’re not Catholic anyways, so all these services were getting to me.
As an alternative to worship, we visited another ancient fountain (of which Lisa has an inexhaustible knowledge) which all amaze me with their proof of the continued functionality of the ancient underground aqueduct mazes. And of course we took a ridiculously circuitous route back to the apartment that just had to necessitate the use of the outdoor escalators (the hill was so steep even the Sienese didn’t want to walk up it) and through some unmodernized neighborhoods. To my family’s chagrin, I became temporarily obsessed with staring at doorknobs and the intersections of the ‘ground’ and doorframes. We did eventually make it home for lunch (pasta with tomato and hare ragut, and grilled zucchini).
With bellies full, we admired (or rather, lovingly snickered at) the ‘glorious’ Christmas tree Lisa had so nicely put together from the dollar store, and enjoyed opening our presents to one another: a chocolate each (notably, Kinder eggs) with bonus bookmarks for me and Ma, and a shared package of coconut candies. Of course, our main present to all of us was getting to spend our Christmas together, which we greatly appreciated with extra hugs.
After praising the superiority of European confections and with bellies even more full, we took a constitutional in the drizzle. In keeping with the day, we went to another ancient fountain (ironically called the Fonte Nuova, which was under repair), a plain neighborhood church (Oratorio di S. Rocco, which was closed), an ornate neighborhood church (the baroque white-marble-facaded S. Maria di Provenzano, which was also closed), and the Basilica di St. Francesco (which was open!). This church, like the morning’s, was huge and empty and sadly unlovely and in declining repair, but less threateningly so. Its great claim to fame is a miracle of a box of 400-year-old not-rotten communion crackers (I do not jest). It had less horrible art but also less lighting than S. Domenico’s, and was painted to look stripey like the Duomo.
Our intrepid guide (Lisa) brought us from there on a steep and circuitous route through some then-as-yet-unexplored-by-us neighborhoods and over to a particularly odd alley/street in the southeastern section of the city, Via Degli Orefici, with especially narrow twistiness, a proliferation of potted plants, original terra cotta drain pipes, and a dead end.
We, notably I, required fueling before returning home, and so stopped off at the vaguely-American bookstore-cum-coffee shop to rest our feet and consume not only the required cappuccinos but also a tart thing with mulberries and red currants on it. Rejuvenated, we made it back across the city to enjoy another lovely meal by Chef Lisa, this time grilled radicchio with ribolita (Tuscan bread soup, i.e. bean soup with a lot of stale bread turned to mush in it, much much tastier than you’d think). A lazy evening watching a documentary on the city’s famous annual horse race, then sleep.
Compared to the nave, the 1300s crypt where the Christmas morning service was held, locally called “the Church Down Under”, was positively cozy. Even the locals don’t want to go to mass in the giant, cold and freaky church above. We only stayed for the first bit of the mass, driven out by the combination of the cold, the shockingly out-of-tune organ, and my losing battle with not snickering at the sermon, which featured the phrases “pico Jesu bambino” (little baby Jesus) and “nostro piccolo dio” (our tiny God) and the like so often that Talladega Nights was too much in the forefront of my mind. And, in case you didn’t know, we’re not Catholic anyways, so all these services were getting to me.
As an alternative to worship, we visited another ancient fountain (of which Lisa has an inexhaustible knowledge) which all amaze me with their proof of the continued functionality of the ancient underground aqueduct mazes. And of course we took a ridiculously circuitous route back to the apartment that just had to necessitate the use of the outdoor escalators (the hill was so steep even the Sienese didn’t want to walk up it) and through some unmodernized neighborhoods. To my family’s chagrin, I became temporarily obsessed with staring at doorknobs and the intersections of the ‘ground’ and doorframes. We did eventually make it home for lunch (pasta with tomato and hare ragut, and grilled zucchini).
With bellies full, we admired (or rather, lovingly snickered at) the ‘glorious’ Christmas tree Lisa had so nicely put together from the dollar store, and enjoyed opening our presents to one another: a chocolate each (notably, Kinder eggs) with bonus bookmarks for me and Ma, and a shared package of coconut candies. Of course, our main present to all of us was getting to spend our Christmas together, which we greatly appreciated with extra hugs.
After praising the superiority of European confections and with bellies even more full, we took a constitutional in the drizzle. In keeping with the day, we went to another ancient fountain (ironically called the Fonte Nuova, which was under repair), a plain neighborhood church (Oratorio di S. Rocco, which was closed), an ornate neighborhood church (the baroque white-marble-facaded S. Maria di Provenzano, which was also closed), and the Basilica di St. Francesco (which was open!). This church, like the morning’s, was huge and empty and sadly unlovely and in declining repair, but less threateningly so. Its great claim to fame is a miracle of a box of 400-year-old not-rotten communion crackers (I do not jest). It had less horrible art but also less lighting than S. Domenico’s, and was painted to look stripey like the Duomo.
Our intrepid guide (Lisa) brought us from there on a steep and circuitous route through some then-as-yet-unexplored-by-us neighborhoods and over to a particularly odd alley/street in the southeastern section of the city, Via Degli Orefici, with especially narrow twistiness, a proliferation of potted plants, original terra cotta drain pipes, and a dead end.
We, notably I, required fueling before returning home, and so stopped off at the vaguely-American bookstore-cum-coffee shop to rest our feet and consume not only the required cappuccinos but also a tart thing with mulberries and red currants on it. Rejuvenated, we made it back across the city to enjoy another lovely meal by Chef Lisa, this time grilled radicchio with ribolita (Tuscan bread soup, i.e. bean soup with a lot of stale bread turned to mush in it, much much tastier than you’d think). A lazy evening watching a documentary on the city’s famous annual horse race, then sleep.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Haiti: Wedding
Two days before Christmas Eve, I attended a wedding. The bride is the head nurse at Fondasa Haiti, one of ESF’s partner agencies.
The wedding was in almost all regards exactly like a standard American Christian wedding. Even the beauty parlor where we went beforehand to so my boss could have her hair straightened and curled was eerily similar to any Black American beauty salon in the States (I suspected, she confirmed). There were, however, a few striking cultural differences. First, I was surprised by the timing. The invitation said 4:00. Though we were running late and arrived at 4:20, we were the first guests. More striking than that, the lack of guests did not stop the ceremony from beginning about five minutes later when the limousine carrying the bridal party arrived: the music started, and the bridesmaids paced down the aisle of the virtually empty church! The guests arrived over the course of the next hour or so, such that the ceremony concluded to a full house. I assume it’s to make up for the lack of initial audience that the reception began with a complete repetition of the wedding procession.
Second, people not only took pictures throughout the ceremony, but in fact got up out of their seats to crowd around the happy couple at the front of the church, snapping close-ups of them saying their vows, exchanging rings, etc. At times the participants were completely obscured by the profusion of waving cameras and mobile phones. Their special moment is very well documented indeed.
It was a lovely wedding. Selfishly, I enjoyed having an excuse to wear something other than scrubs. I also appreciated the opportunity that the wedding afforded to reflect on the kind of arresting juxtapositions that you only find in circumstances such as those in Port-Au-Prince today:
• The experience of being all dressed up in dainty gold high-heeled sandals and a silk sundress, picking my way over concrete rubble to climb into a dented and much-abused four-wheel drive;
• The image of the somewhat worse-for-wear limousine crawling through the crowded and narrow third-world street, and coming to a stop in front of the church opposite the sagging, folded concrete slabs of a house that remains as it was when it collapsed in the earthquake almost exactly a year ago;
• The view of a teenage boy and his kid sister, dressed respectively in an immaculate formal suite and a pristine white first-communion dress complete with white floral headdress and veil, stepping carefully around the muddy drainage ditch in the otherwise dusty road, making their way past piles of rubble and a herd of smelly marauding goats;
The reception was held in a nice hotel in a wealthier residential neighborhood. The houses were large, with gardens and green trees, and surrounded by high cement walls with iron gates. Despite the fact that most of the houses in this neighborhood appeared intact, the vast majority of them seemed uninhabited. The darkened windows by themselves didn’t necessarily imply an empty house, since here even large and fancy houses usually lack electricity. A stronger clue was the presence of tents in the front yard, the driveway, or the street in front of the gate. Buildings that look sound are not necessarily so, and my colleagues tell me of people with sound houses who are nevertheless too scared and traumatized to live in them.
(Apologies, these pictures are not up to our usual standard: the next batch will be better)
The wedding was in almost all regards exactly like a standard American Christian wedding. Even the beauty parlor where we went beforehand to so my boss could have her hair straightened and curled was eerily similar to any Black American beauty salon in the States (I suspected, she confirmed). There were, however, a few striking cultural differences. First, I was surprised by the timing. The invitation said 4:00. Though we were running late and arrived at 4:20, we were the first guests. More striking than that, the lack of guests did not stop the ceremony from beginning about five minutes later when the limousine carrying the bridal party arrived: the music started, and the bridesmaids paced down the aisle of the virtually empty church! The guests arrived over the course of the next hour or so, such that the ceremony concluded to a full house. I assume it’s to make up for the lack of initial audience that the reception began with a complete repetition of the wedding procession.
Second, people not only took pictures throughout the ceremony, but in fact got up out of their seats to crowd around the happy couple at the front of the church, snapping close-ups of them saying their vows, exchanging rings, etc. At times the participants were completely obscured by the profusion of waving cameras and mobile phones. Their special moment is very well documented indeed.
It was a lovely wedding. Selfishly, I enjoyed having an excuse to wear something other than scrubs. I also appreciated the opportunity that the wedding afforded to reflect on the kind of arresting juxtapositions that you only find in circumstances such as those in Port-Au-Prince today:
• The experience of being all dressed up in dainty gold high-heeled sandals and a silk sundress, picking my way over concrete rubble to climb into a dented and much-abused four-wheel drive;
• The image of the somewhat worse-for-wear limousine crawling through the crowded and narrow third-world street, and coming to a stop in front of the church opposite the sagging, folded concrete slabs of a house that remains as it was when it collapsed in the earthquake almost exactly a year ago;
• The view of a teenage boy and his kid sister, dressed respectively in an immaculate formal suite and a pristine white first-communion dress complete with white floral headdress and veil, stepping carefully around the muddy drainage ditch in the otherwise dusty road, making their way past piles of rubble and a herd of smelly marauding goats;
The reception was held in a nice hotel in a wealthier residential neighborhood. The houses were large, with gardens and green trees, and surrounded by high cement walls with iron gates. Despite the fact that most of the houses in this neighborhood appeared intact, the vast majority of them seemed uninhabited. The darkened windows by themselves didn’t necessarily imply an empty house, since here even large and fancy houses usually lack electricity. A stronger clue was the presence of tents in the front yard, the driveway, or the street in front of the gate. Buildings that look sound are not necessarily so, and my colleagues tell me of people with sound houses who are nevertheless too scared and traumatized to live in them.
(Apologies, these pictures are not up to our usual standard: the next batch will be better)
Italy Day 2: Christmas Eve
We started the day on a decadent note by having half a Panettone for breakfast. If you are not familiar with the traditional Italian puffy Christmas fruit cake and its bulbous boxes, picture a squat cylinder with an orb top for the shape, the color of caramel or dark toast. Its consistency is a combination of slightly stale Italian bread and a croissant, airy and fun to pull apart with the fingers but not very layered. Its flavor is dominated by the scattered embedded pieces of citron (candied orange, lemon, and lime peel).
Rather than visit many tourist destinations, we made the city itself our destination of the day, wandering the streets and looking at the streets themselves and the walls surrounding them. Siena is incredibly old, settled at least as far back as the Etruscans of 700 BC (i.e. pre-Roman), with bits of their stonemasonry still in evidence. Most of the existing buildings are from more around the 12-1300s, with some 1500s thrown in. Because Florence dominated economically and politically from 1348 on (thanks to Siena being decimated by the plague and being hopeless in battle), Siena, like York in England, didn’t have the money to keep up with the architectural times, and therefore remains an unsurpassed time capsule of medieval architecture.
Perched on a small series of hill ridges creased with steep valleys, tiny Siena (dense population steady at 60,000 for the last 1000 years) is dominated by brick and stone just the color your Crayola upbringing would suggest. Its antiquity and the extremely steep topography thwarts any relation to modern city planning, tending more towards a street map like a bowl of spaghetti or the efforts of a drunk maze designer. The streets have about three possible widths: barely wide enough to squeeze two Fiats past each other (which they drive buses down), barely wide enough for one Fiat and a Vespa to share, or too narrow or steep for any Fiats and therefore devolving into a staircase. To say this city isn’t accessible to the physically handicapped is a gross understatement. I particularly enjoyed the errant angles and slopes of the streets, and the frequency with which the buildings on either side of the street actually touched at the top or leaned into one another with narrow arches, creating frames for the views beyond.
My mother and I particularly enjoyed the walls of the buildings (as well as the old city walls) because of the way they had been patched up and had windows and doors added and filled in and reinforced and painted and broken etc. so many times over their existences. It brought strongly to mind the philosophical question of identity and physical continuity, i.e. if over time you replace all the parts of a thing, is it still the same thing as the original thing? Any answer would still have these walls being genuinely old, though, since most of the repairs etc were themselves ancient.
We covered a fair bit of the city in our wanderings, made easier by my sister’s familiarity with its layout, allowing us to stride blindly after her. When Petra and I visited Siena briefly years ago, we spent most of our time lost and consulting our map. This time, we saw the Piazza Gramsci at which we arrived and the Porta Camollia near which we are staying, the gargantuan and useless Medici fort, the length of the Via Di Camollia/Montanni/di Sopra/di Citta (as if the map weren’t confusing enough, the streets change names every few blocks), the grand Il Campo plaza (generally agreed to be the best plaza in all of Italy and recognizable from such recent films as James Bond Quantum of Solace and the red cloak scene from that Twilight movie), some of the ancient Jewish ghetto, the environs of the University, the oldest spot in the city (Castel Vecchio which is more like a courtyard with a garden-shack of a stone tower), and every tiny slanting street in between.
My sister Lisa made sure to treat us to coffees at a tiny local café as soon as possible. We all had café macchiato, which was just as strong and tiny and generally Italian as one could wish. Ma didn’t like it at all, made amazingly funny distressed faces, and had a hard time finishing her thimbleful. As she is of the coffee sipping school, I think she rather generally missed the point of it. We will make a second attempt to encourage her Italian coffee appreciation another day.
It was a good day for coffee as it was very rainy at first and remained grey and drizzly rest of the day, though not too cold. Outside stayed a fairly consistent 48 degrees all day. Thanks to the rain, the matte light and shiny streets and profusion of umbrellas made for some great photographic conditions.
We of course took lots of pictures: as we only brought the one camera between us, Ma and I had a back-and-forth photo commentary going all day, improving upon one another’s compositions. It’s a very challenging city to photograph in, though. The composition itself is difficult, not only because of the mental overload of such a visually rich environment, but since the views are very narrow and cropped, it’s nearly always hard to either get far enough away or close enough to whatever the focal point of the frame is. More difficult is the lighting, which has extremes of dark and light in almost every possible frame. A majority of the images we snapped this first day didn’t turn out as we had hoped.
Over lunch we enjoyed a truly grand sweeping vista south from the edge of the old city’s mesa. I certainly didn’t expect turning left from a cramped street through a stone doorway past the University would lead us to a wide green field with olive trees and benches, a modern park built above a recent parking garage but in keeping with what would have been the grounds of an old nunnery. Our food was tasty crunchy hot two-euro things called ciacino like pizza ham and cheese sandwiches.
As a bit of a rest, we visited Lisa’s school. Lisa is working with the head of the Siena School of Liberal Arts and the Getty family to found a new art school, called the Siena Art Institute. They will have art classes as well as artists in residence, workshops, community programs, and more. It will all very high-caliber stuff with a decidedly international bent: English will be the main language of the Institute. They already have lovely premises in an airy, light-filled building near the cathedral in one of the highest and oldest parts of the city. Many of the rooftop and vista pictures you’ll see are from their windows.
To increase the day’s surreal quotient, Babo Natale (i.e. Santa) arrived in one of the city’s ancient plazas via a covered wagon drawn by some pint-sized wet and shaggy draft horses. A ragtag band dressed in Santa-inspired garb played carols lugubriously while children pranced and Santa was much photographed with the tykes and handed out plastic crap toys. The adults all delighted in doffing sparkly red caps, even bedecking the ever-patient horses. Then it was clearly time for more coffee. Ma had tea this time. I had a nearly-perfect cappuccino.
Dinner this night was back at the apartment, light nibbles perched around the tiny flowery kitchen table. Lisa whipped up a delectable appetizer of fresh organic ricotta drizzled with local fresh-pressed olive oil and salt and ground black pepper. Then bread (one puffy and one cracker-like with rosemary) with cheese (soft and hard pecorino) with a chestnut honey and a tomato and pumpkin flower tapenade, accompanied by a local adventurously-non-chianti red from the local Monte Chiaro. For dessert we munched on some hard biscuits (i.e. cookies, related to British digestives, vaguely like graham crackers) called Grancereale, in four varieties: original, crunchy, fruited, and chocolate. My favorites were the crunchy, which lived up to its name and was very buttery, and the chocolate, which was actually rather nutty.
But no, that was not the end of the day, not with my sister at the helm. She sings regularly with a local chorus, which was performing as the choir at the Christmas Eve mass at San Giuseppe’s, the Church of the Onda (i.e. Wave) Contrada, now tucked amongst other brick rambles on a hillside on the south edge of the old city. As they needed more altos, I joined as a ringer with no rehearsal, which was fine because they were very haphazard themselves and it was all Christmas music anyways. I was excited to get to enter the church by an iron-gated courtyard and barred side door rather than the public front door entrance. After making my way up a very worn steep stone staircase about as wide as my hips and high as my shoulders and thanking my blessed stars I wasn’t proportioned like the average American, I joined the cantada in the organ loft, a frighteningly creaky ancient wooden balcony about the size of two twin beds on which about twenty people and the ancient organ were crammed. It gave us a great view from which to see the colorful ornate gilded and frescoed nave and apse of the small sanctuary, and to watch the congregation freely ignore the priest’s long, dynamic, rambling sermon (in Italian so I couldn’t understand a word). Dolphins, light blue, and clouds, and gold were the dominant decorative features, and “bellissimo” was the most common recognizable word. We sang admirably. They gave us each a darling clutch bouquet with pink roses and fluffy greens and a sparkly silver thing in thanks: my inner six-year-old-girl/diva was thrilled.
Though it was already past 11pm, we all trekked from there up to the city’s cathedral, Il Duomo, an old ornate stripey stone thing from the 1200s plunked on a plaza high on one of the hilltops. For the holidays they had uncovered some of the delicate floor murals, which was a treat, and had created not only a giant crèche of incredible levels of tackiness, but had a veritable forest/mountain of poinsettias adding some color to the general zebra/op art/moiré décor. Ma and Lisa stayed for the cultural experience of the endless midnight mass, but I bowed out in favor of sleep.
Rather than visit many tourist destinations, we made the city itself our destination of the day, wandering the streets and looking at the streets themselves and the walls surrounding them. Siena is incredibly old, settled at least as far back as the Etruscans of 700 BC (i.e. pre-Roman), with bits of their stonemasonry still in evidence. Most of the existing buildings are from more around the 12-1300s, with some 1500s thrown in. Because Florence dominated economically and politically from 1348 on (thanks to Siena being decimated by the plague and being hopeless in battle), Siena, like York in England, didn’t have the money to keep up with the architectural times, and therefore remains an unsurpassed time capsule of medieval architecture.
Perched on a small series of hill ridges creased with steep valleys, tiny Siena (dense population steady at 60,000 for the last 1000 years) is dominated by brick and stone just the color your Crayola upbringing would suggest. Its antiquity and the extremely steep topography thwarts any relation to modern city planning, tending more towards a street map like a bowl of spaghetti or the efforts of a drunk maze designer. The streets have about three possible widths: barely wide enough to squeeze two Fiats past each other (which they drive buses down), barely wide enough for one Fiat and a Vespa to share, or too narrow or steep for any Fiats and therefore devolving into a staircase. To say this city isn’t accessible to the physically handicapped is a gross understatement. I particularly enjoyed the errant angles and slopes of the streets, and the frequency with which the buildings on either side of the street actually touched at the top or leaned into one another with narrow arches, creating frames for the views beyond.
My mother and I particularly enjoyed the walls of the buildings (as well as the old city walls) because of the way they had been patched up and had windows and doors added and filled in and reinforced and painted and broken etc. so many times over their existences. It brought strongly to mind the philosophical question of identity and physical continuity, i.e. if over time you replace all the parts of a thing, is it still the same thing as the original thing? Any answer would still have these walls being genuinely old, though, since most of the repairs etc were themselves ancient.
We covered a fair bit of the city in our wanderings, made easier by my sister’s familiarity with its layout, allowing us to stride blindly after her. When Petra and I visited Siena briefly years ago, we spent most of our time lost and consulting our map. This time, we saw the Piazza Gramsci at which we arrived and the Porta Camollia near which we are staying, the gargantuan and useless Medici fort, the length of the Via Di Camollia/Montanni/di Sopra/di Citta (as if the map weren’t confusing enough, the streets change names every few blocks), the grand Il Campo plaza (generally agreed to be the best plaza in all of Italy and recognizable from such recent films as James Bond Quantum of Solace and the red cloak scene from that Twilight movie), some of the ancient Jewish ghetto, the environs of the University, the oldest spot in the city (Castel Vecchio which is more like a courtyard with a garden-shack of a stone tower), and every tiny slanting street in between.
My sister Lisa made sure to treat us to coffees at a tiny local café as soon as possible. We all had café macchiato, which was just as strong and tiny and generally Italian as one could wish. Ma didn’t like it at all, made amazingly funny distressed faces, and had a hard time finishing her thimbleful. As she is of the coffee sipping school, I think she rather generally missed the point of it. We will make a second attempt to encourage her Italian coffee appreciation another day.
It was a good day for coffee as it was very rainy at first and remained grey and drizzly rest of the day, though not too cold. Outside stayed a fairly consistent 48 degrees all day. Thanks to the rain, the matte light and shiny streets and profusion of umbrellas made for some great photographic conditions.
We of course took lots of pictures: as we only brought the one camera between us, Ma and I had a back-and-forth photo commentary going all day, improving upon one another’s compositions. It’s a very challenging city to photograph in, though. The composition itself is difficult, not only because of the mental overload of such a visually rich environment, but since the views are very narrow and cropped, it’s nearly always hard to either get far enough away or close enough to whatever the focal point of the frame is. More difficult is the lighting, which has extremes of dark and light in almost every possible frame. A majority of the images we snapped this first day didn’t turn out as we had hoped.
Over lunch we enjoyed a truly grand sweeping vista south from the edge of the old city’s mesa. I certainly didn’t expect turning left from a cramped street through a stone doorway past the University would lead us to a wide green field with olive trees and benches, a modern park built above a recent parking garage but in keeping with what would have been the grounds of an old nunnery. Our food was tasty crunchy hot two-euro things called ciacino like pizza ham and cheese sandwiches.
As a bit of a rest, we visited Lisa’s school. Lisa is working with the head of the Siena School of Liberal Arts and the Getty family to found a new art school, called the Siena Art Institute. They will have art classes as well as artists in residence, workshops, community programs, and more. It will all very high-caliber stuff with a decidedly international bent: English will be the main language of the Institute. They already have lovely premises in an airy, light-filled building near the cathedral in one of the highest and oldest parts of the city. Many of the rooftop and vista pictures you’ll see are from their windows.
To increase the day’s surreal quotient, Babo Natale (i.e. Santa) arrived in one of the city’s ancient plazas via a covered wagon drawn by some pint-sized wet and shaggy draft horses. A ragtag band dressed in Santa-inspired garb played carols lugubriously while children pranced and Santa was much photographed with the tykes and handed out plastic crap toys. The adults all delighted in doffing sparkly red caps, even bedecking the ever-patient horses. Then it was clearly time for more coffee. Ma had tea this time. I had a nearly-perfect cappuccino.
Dinner this night was back at the apartment, light nibbles perched around the tiny flowery kitchen table. Lisa whipped up a delectable appetizer of fresh organic ricotta drizzled with local fresh-pressed olive oil and salt and ground black pepper. Then bread (one puffy and one cracker-like with rosemary) with cheese (soft and hard pecorino) with a chestnut honey and a tomato and pumpkin flower tapenade, accompanied by a local adventurously-non-chianti red from the local Monte Chiaro. For dessert we munched on some hard biscuits (i.e. cookies, related to British digestives, vaguely like graham crackers) called Grancereale, in four varieties: original, crunchy, fruited, and chocolate. My favorites were the crunchy, which lived up to its name and was very buttery, and the chocolate, which was actually rather nutty.
But no, that was not the end of the day, not with my sister at the helm. She sings regularly with a local chorus, which was performing as the choir at the Christmas Eve mass at San Giuseppe’s, the Church of the Onda (i.e. Wave) Contrada, now tucked amongst other brick rambles on a hillside on the south edge of the old city. As they needed more altos, I joined as a ringer with no rehearsal, which was fine because they were very haphazard themselves and it was all Christmas music anyways. I was excited to get to enter the church by an iron-gated courtyard and barred side door rather than the public front door entrance. After making my way up a very worn steep stone staircase about as wide as my hips and high as my shoulders and thanking my blessed stars I wasn’t proportioned like the average American, I joined the cantada in the organ loft, a frighteningly creaky ancient wooden balcony about the size of two twin beds on which about twenty people and the ancient organ were crammed. It gave us a great view from which to see the colorful ornate gilded and frescoed nave and apse of the small sanctuary, and to watch the congregation freely ignore the priest’s long, dynamic, rambling sermon (in Italian so I couldn’t understand a word). Dolphins, light blue, and clouds, and gold were the dominant decorative features, and “bellissimo” was the most common recognizable word. We sang admirably. They gave us each a darling clutch bouquet with pink roses and fluffy greens and a sparkly silver thing in thanks: my inner six-year-old-girl/diva was thrilled.
Though it was already past 11pm, we all trekked from there up to the city’s cathedral, Il Duomo, an old ornate stripey stone thing from the 1200s plunked on a plaza high on one of the hilltops. For the holidays they had uncovered some of the delicate floor murals, which was a treat, and had created not only a giant crèche of incredible levels of tackiness, but had a veritable forest/mountain of poinsettias adding some color to the general zebra/op art/moiré décor. Ma and Lisa stayed for the cultural experience of the endless midnight mass, but I bowed out in favor of sleep.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Italy Day 1: Arrival in Siena
Just to confuse you all, while Petra is currently in Haiti, I (Erika) am in Italy visiting my sister Lisa.
After a 2-day delay thanks to snow storms in Europe, and a rather yucky long flight on an old Delta plane with inedible food and unwatchable movie screens, my mother and I flew into Rome. We made a swift and heroic trip across Rome on public transit, successfully purchased tickets and found the right track twice, and proudly took a bus from the Rome station to Siena.
This of course meant we got to drive through the Tuscan countryside. Notable sites included hilltop and cliff-clinging towns, green green harvested fields, lots of rain, sheep, umbrella trees and tall pointy trees, crumbly stone and brick buildings, geometric vineyards, and very rolling hills.
By mid-afternoon we had arrived safely in the center of Siena, where my twin sister Lisa greeted us. We spent the rest of the afternoon dragging our bags up and down the very steep hills of the city, first to Lisa’s apartment, which was modern and moldy and cold, then to Lisa’s friend’s apartment. We are staying at her friend’s place since he’s away visiting relatives, and because his place is clean and warmer and more spacious, has a view from the back garden directly onto the old city walls, and is conveniently right by the Porto Camomille, one of the main gates of the old city.
Warmer is a relative term, though: I am so unimpressed by Italian building standards, tending as they do towards making houses as miserably cold and damp and unheatable as possible, with incredibly high ceilings and huge plate windows and damp plaster walls and solid marble floors. It is consistently colder inside than out. I suppose that’s nice in the summer, but not now. I am incurably cold.
As we were too wiped by travel to cook, we had dinner at a family-style restaurant Lisa frequents, named Fonte Giusta. We ate some truly amazing food. And then off to blissful, long-awaited sleep.
After a 2-day delay thanks to snow storms in Europe, and a rather yucky long flight on an old Delta plane with inedible food and unwatchable movie screens, my mother and I flew into Rome. We made a swift and heroic trip across Rome on public transit, successfully purchased tickets and found the right track twice, and proudly took a bus from the Rome station to Siena.
This of course meant we got to drive through the Tuscan countryside. Notable sites included hilltop and cliff-clinging towns, green green harvested fields, lots of rain, sheep, umbrella trees and tall pointy trees, crumbly stone and brick buildings, geometric vineyards, and very rolling hills.
By mid-afternoon we had arrived safely in the center of Siena, where my twin sister Lisa greeted us. We spent the rest of the afternoon dragging our bags up and down the very steep hills of the city, first to Lisa’s apartment, which was modern and moldy and cold, then to Lisa’s friend’s apartment. We are staying at her friend’s place since he’s away visiting relatives, and because his place is clean and warmer and more spacious, has a view from the back garden directly onto the old city walls, and is conveniently right by the Porto Camomille, one of the main gates of the old city.
Warmer is a relative term, though: I am so unimpressed by Italian building standards, tending as they do towards making houses as miserably cold and damp and unheatable as possible, with incredibly high ceilings and huge plate windows and damp plaster walls and solid marble floors. It is consistently colder inside than out. I suppose that’s nice in the summer, but not now. I am incurably cold.
As we were too wiped by travel to cook, we had dinner at a family-style restaurant Lisa frequents, named Fonte Giusta. We ate some truly amazing food. And then off to blissful, long-awaited sleep.
hello from Haiti
It’s the end of my fifth day in Haiti, and so far everything is going well. I spent the first full day working in the pharmacy end of a mobile clinic in Cinnieas, a tent city of 18,000 in the suburbs of Port-Au-Prince. Beyond a variety of coughs, colds, psycho-social conditions related to stress and trauma, and the ever-present malnutrition, the main ailments are worms, vaginal yeast infections, and UTIs. Given the atrocious sanitation infrastructure, this is hardly surprising. We treated about 200 people and went through what felt like pounds of amoxicillin, mebendazole, and anti-fungal creams. It’s wonderful to make such a direct and immediate positive impact on people. At the same time, it’s infuriating that so many people are suffering unecessarily from conditions that are so easy not only to treat, but to prevent.
The second day, I spent a lot of time in a four-wheel drive truck bouncing from one end of the city to the other attending meetings and collecting a donation of medicines from Americares at their airport warehouse. The remaining days have been variations on the first two. The traffic combined with the poor roads exponentially increases the amount of time it takes to run simple errands, as do breakdowns in infrastructure (Gas, for example, are in short supply: it took visiting 12 or 13 gas stations over two days to find a place to fill the truck!). Consequently, we get up at 5:30-6:00 AM every day in order to allow enough time for mishaps and delays. I am keeping my journal consistently, but each day is a bit incomplete because I've fallen asleep with pencil in hand every night so far!
Haiti is a beautiful country. I love the weather, and the stars at night are absolutely clear and lovely. The food is excellent: lots of rice and beans and thick stews of meat and vegetables. The people have been nothing but lovely, warm, and generous. I'm having an intense experience, but so far it's good. Tomorrow we will throw a Christmas party for the orphans in nearby Camp Toto, with food, singing, games, and a few gifts: namely, blankets for the cool nights. From the tent city next door, I can hear strands of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing," in Creole.
My internet connection is to slow to upload photos, but I will start posting as soon as I return. In the meantime, my Facebook profile has a link to a friend’s album. He has just returned from working here in Haiti with ESF, and we overlapped for a few days. More photos coming soon.
The second day, I spent a lot of time in a four-wheel drive truck bouncing from one end of the city to the other attending meetings and collecting a donation of medicines from Americares at their airport warehouse. The remaining days have been variations on the first two. The traffic combined with the poor roads exponentially increases the amount of time it takes to run simple errands, as do breakdowns in infrastructure (Gas, for example, are in short supply: it took visiting 12 or 13 gas stations over two days to find a place to fill the truck!). Consequently, we get up at 5:30-6:00 AM every day in order to allow enough time for mishaps and delays. I am keeping my journal consistently, but each day is a bit incomplete because I've fallen asleep with pencil in hand every night so far!
Haiti is a beautiful country. I love the weather, and the stars at night are absolutely clear and lovely. The food is excellent: lots of rice and beans and thick stews of meat and vegetables. The people have been nothing but lovely, warm, and generous. I'm having an intense experience, but so far it's good. Tomorrow we will throw a Christmas party for the orphans in nearby Camp Toto, with food, singing, games, and a few gifts: namely, blankets for the cool nights. From the tent city next door, I can hear strands of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing," in Creole.
My internet connection is to slow to upload photos, but I will start posting as soon as I return. In the meantime, my Facebook profile has a link to a friend’s album. He has just returned from working here in Haiti with ESF, and we overlapped for a few days. More photos coming soon.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Petra's going to Haiti!
Exciting news! I (Petra) will be volunteering in Haiti over the holidays with Explorers Sans Frontiers. I’m excited both about the good work I’ll be able to help do, and with what an amazing opportunity this internship provides for me.
Starting tomorrow, the work I’ll be doing in Port Au Prince will be twofold: Firstly, I’ll be assisting at a mobile medical clinic, observing and acting as an extra set of hands. The health concerns are huge, and they need all the help they can get to assist and educate the populace. I’m grateful to be able to help people in such immediate need. Secondly, I’ll be serving as an institutional consultant, applying my experiences from World Vision to streamline their administrative practices and help set up an office base to help make their work more efficient and effective. As a small and new organization, I hope that my input will make a big difference for ESF and, through them, for Haitian people into the future.
This is such a great opportunity for me for a number of reasons: in order to advance my international affairs career, experience in multiple regions is a huge bonus, as is multiple language environments. My previous experience has been in the development side of international work, so having experience with the disaster relief / humanitarian aid / medical side of things will be invaluable. The very small grassroots structure of ESF is a useful organizational contrast to the enormity of World Vision. And in the interests of being closer to most of my family and friends, I’m exploring working in the closest place to the US where great need (i.e. abject poverty) exists.
It should be quite the adventure. I’m somewhat daunted and very much excited. Check back here starting Dec. 20th or so for updates from the road, though if you don't hear from me don't worry: I'll be very busy. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Happy Holidays 2010!
I think it’s been about three years since our last holiday letter, so we have a bit of ground to cover! If I recall correctly, we left of at Christmas 2007, having just returned from volunteering in New Orleans for the fall.
First thing in 2008, we moved to Melbourne, Australia. Erika attended the University of Melbourne for a postgraduate degree in Philosophy, focusing on environmental ethics. She loved her job there, teaching and tutoring students in the Philosophy of Biology. Petra worked for World Vision Australia, a Christian international development and humanitarian aid organization, and not only loved her work but made some great friends amongst her colleagues.
We both enjoyed being near Petra’s Aussie relatives, and spent most of our social time with cousins. We had fun taking short trips to the Dandenong mountain ranges east of the city with their towering mountain ash trees and giant fern trees and elusive lyre birds; the Great Ocean Road southeast of the city with its tiny fishing towns and glorious cliffs; a big trip up north to Queensland with Petra’s parents where we basked in the tropical splendor and snorkeled amazedly amidst the teeming life of the Great Barrier Reef; and a few beautiful weeks in New Zealand where Erika’s sister and mom met us for hiking. The wonderful people around us in Oz, the fascinating and beautiful natural world of Australia, the amazingly humane standards of living there, and its mild weather combined to make a truly great year. We look forward to returning to Australia in a few years’ time.
Through her work at World Vision, Petra was offered a position dually with World Vision Thailand and the Australian version of the Peace Corps. So, first thing in 2009, we moved to Bangkok. Petra’s job was in Anti-human-trafficking: she mainly led workshops training staff in the small local offices around rural Thailand and Cambodia about how to integrate anti-trafficking goals into their existing programs. As part of this work, she not only learned Thai very well and got to travel around the Mekong region regularly, but also fell in love with Monitoring and Evaluation, the nerdy quality assurance side of NGO management. Human trafficking is of course a heartbreaking problem, and Petra struggled to keep her optimism in the face of the extremes of human suffering.
Erika spent the year volunteering as a children’s and adult’s English and Music teacher at a UNHCR refugee center in the center of Bankgok. The refugees came from not only Thailand’s neighboring countries, but also places of strife like Somalia, the Congo, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Iraq. The cultural, religious, and linguistic mishmash combined with their broad span of life histories (subsistence farmers to elite politicians) made the center the most truly diverse community we had ever experienced. This diversity, while usually delightful, often made teaching a challenge. Additionally, the center was under-resourced and went through a number of major staff changes throughout the year, leading to significant management and oversight gaps. With the help of Petra, ex-patriot friends, and volunteers from the refugee community, Erika took on a number of extra satisfying projects, including renovating, cleaning, and painting the derelict classrooms and public spaces of the center.
Living in Thailand was generally fascinating, surprising, and tiring. We loved the food (Petra LOVED the fruit, Erika the curries and soups), the architecture, the Buddhist animist religious environment, the playfulness of the Thai people, and the many dear friends we made. In addition to Petra’s regular work trips, we also vacationed in Chiang Mai, an ancient walled city in the northern mountains, where we meditated in temples, participated in the annual water festival, enjoyed the Hmong handicrafts, mountain-biked, rode elephants, and went rafting; in the islands in the Gulf of Thailand, where we slept in hammocks strung between trees on the beach, ate lots of spicy fish, and where Erika fell dangerously in love with scuba diving; in the Siam Reap area of Cambodia, where we gloried in the Ankor Wat temples and pretended to be Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider, laughed at monkeys, and chatted with the children; and in Bangkok itself, where we shopped in the markets, explored the rivers and canals, admired the palaces and temples, and retreated to the underdeveloped neighborhoods of leafy banana forests and stilt-houses. Of course, we miss all of this now.
It wasn’t all glorious, though. It was really, really sweatily hot all the time (which Petra loved). Our workplaces and the violent political turmoil tested our mettle and morals. We both became ill on a very regular basis, from bad food, bad water, and insect-borne illnesses. Having to grapple against extortion and corruption daily became infuriating. The crowdedness and pollution and infrastructural danger (bare wires, kamikaze buses, etc.) of Bangkok were often very uncomfortable, as was missing our favorite foods (dairy products, bread, etc.). And of course we missed our friends and family from the US and Australia.
A convergence of Petra’s contract ending and her desiring to try for her Masters as well as an especially violent attempted coup in Bangkok led us to move back to the USA in the spring of this year. For the spring and summer, we bounced around visiting family and friends while Petra finished her grad school applications, studied up on Economics and math, and Erika temped and applied for jobs. We got outside a bit for canoeing and hikes and the like, but not nearly as much as we'd wish.
In August we moved into our new apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City, and soon thereafter Petra started her Masters in International Affairs at Columbia University. Since then, Petra’s been studying like crazy, while Erika’s continued temping and applying for jobs. (If you know of any great jobs in international human rights or environmental NGOs in NYC, let Erika know!)
We've enjoyed having a number of visitors this fall, especially the long stay of Petra's cousin Matt from Australia, whom we wished would never leave. Let us know if any of you are planning on being in the city, we'd love to see you!
In a few weeks’ time, over the holidays, Petra will be volunteering in Haiti, while Erika will visit her twin sister’s new home in Italy. More information on these trips will be available on this blog as we travel.
We hope you and yours are well. Wishing you all the blessings of the season.
-Erika and Petra
Monday, May 24, 2010
I have a few blog posts to catch up on…
The past few months have been extrodinarily busy and intense even by our rather extreme standards, and writing is one of the commitments I have had to de-prioritize. I'd love to write more about my travel within Thailand and my experience of the escalating political unrest, the emotional and logistical roller coaster of my last two weeks, the precious interval reconnecting with my wonderful Aussie family, and finally my return to the States and everything that entails: culture shock, life decisions, and all the crisscrossing and travel within the US that we’ve been able to squeeze in to the past two months visiting family and friends (we’re traveling now while we can. Once we start full-time study and work again, we won’t be able to do this for a while). I would like to write a bit more about my work in anti-human trafficking Thailand. I'll post-date these writings to match the blog's chronology, so look back to find them.
I’ll do my best to keep things organized during this series of retroactive posts. In the hopes of eliminating confusion, I offer the following rough chart:
Month Erika Petra
January Bangkok & Boston Bangkok
February Boston & Connecticut (CT) Bangkok & Melbourne
March Boston & CT Melbourne & Boston
April Boston, Amish country, Chicago, NYC, Washington DC, & CT
May Boston, New Hampshire, Maine, & Erika went to Chicago again
Without further ado, I submit the first installment of Petra’s 2010 Blog Catch-up Extravaganza. (Ayuthaya, Nov 2010) Enjoy!
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