5 posts tagged “travel”
I know that the amygdala is reponsible for linking scent to memory but is there another section of the brain that does the same thing for weather? Today is one of those early Spring gloomy days that is slightly muggy and threatening to break out into rain. Normally it would make think of being in Chiapas during the summer of 2000, but today it's making me think of New York. More specifically being on the Upper West side having breakfast at Zabar's and then wandering around the Museum of Natural History. It's so odd to get seized with this kind of longing when I should be excited about being in Brazil very very soon. Hopefully there's some kind of equivalent to Zabars in Sao Paolo or Rio so that I don't spend my visit wishing that I was somewhere else. Probably not helping that I've been reading that "Most Dangerous Place in the World" dude's summary of Brazil.
Also speaking of memory, but I spent Saturday on a visit to the house of a family friend who's deceased. His wife passed away in November and one of his daughter is trying to liquidate most of the belongings (maybe keep the house) - so there was a tour of what's going to be for sale and a request that I take a look at his old books to determine if anything would be of historic value. I've only been there once when the couple was still alive, but this guy was really my dad's best friend. And an actual living link to all the history surrounding the V-2 and the Apollo program. It wasn't sad or weird for me to be in this man's house and going through his belonging, mostly because I think his daughter is at peace with her parents being gone. But I have to wonder what it was really like for her (or my father) to be in that place that you must so strongly associate with one person and have them not be there. Like they'd just stepped out the door or something.
About 5 years ago, a cousin I was really close to passed away and it's just been too hard for me to look at any of the notes, cards, or ephemera that I have related to her. But it's been 5 years, so it's easier for me to think about it now and in honor of Day of the Dead, I made a little shrine to her in my house. One thing that I always loved about her was how she got out of a terrible relationship/marriage with her college boyfriend, applied to Delta Airlines, and became a glamourous, sassy stewardess during the height of the Swinging 60s. It's even how she met her second husband, who turned out to be her best friend and love of her life. My mom has some really great photos of her in her stewardess outfit, including one where she's wearing thigh high white vinyl boots and fox fur eyelashes and just looking totally sexy and ready to take on the world on her own terms. She was awesome and one of the ladies who inspired me from an early age to be a traveller. Also, even though she was from Tennessee, she spent most of her adult life in Texas and just matured into one of those straight talking, quick witted, no-nonse type of gal like Ann Richards or Molly Ivens. Like I said, just awesome and a total role model for me.
Anyhow, one memento I have of her is a photocopy of the newspaper clipping from the tiny little town in Tennessee that our family comes from, about how she's graduating from stewardess school and going to be working the US/Caribbean/Latin American route for Delta. It's getting kind of dog eared, so I decided to call the newspaper this morning to ask if they had any way for me to get a new copy. I know from working with archivists and historians in the past that a lot of newspaper will end up giving their records to universities or historical societies for storage and imaging. But the town my family is from is so tiny, that even though the newspaper is old (and I love their tagline of "Covering ____ County like the dew from Heaven since 1834"), the only original copies they have are in their office. The lady who answered the phone was so nice though - once I told her the abbreviated story, she said "Well honey, if you can find the year and the date, I'll go and find the original and make a copy for you." I have no idea what the date is for the original article (and probably anybody who would know is dead), but the fact that she offered to do that for a total stranger was just so sweet. And probably very Tennessee - I have a hard time imagining somebody in this part of the world making an offer like that.
Not in October, but in April 2007. The timing of making arrangements was just stressing me out because of work and if I do get on the grant to go to Ethiopia (not likely) in November. It's surreal because I managed to find a ticket for $71 (which would normally retail for $1200) using my frequent flier miles, an outfitter that caters to single/backpacker travellers, and have enough vacation days. I'm sure when I actually tell my family that I am going there by myself for 3 weeks, I will get grief. But who cares? I've wanted to go to Brazil for over 10 years and I can finally go! Rio really doesn't appeal to me, but I'm stoked on getting to see Salvador, Igassu Falls (including the Argentinian side, hello extra passport stamp!), the Pantanal, Parity, and Sao Paolo.
In other travel news, I am finally cleaning out and organizing a huge box full of photos and letters. It's been really nice looking at everything. My photography skills are mediocre at best, but it's nice to be reminded of all the different places I've been so far in the Caribbean/Latin America:
- Guadeloupe
- Dominica
- St Lucia
- St Kitts
- Grenada
- Venezuela
- Costa Rica
- Panama
- Nicaragua
- Cuba
- Puerto Rico
- Mexico - the Yucatan, Chiapas, Oaxaca, & Monterrey
...and very soon Brazil! There's also some nice photos in there that I'd forgotten from Colorado (Durango), Texas (Austin & Houston) and around here (American River Canyon, the Carson Valley, and the annual Thanksgiving Day bike ride in Sacramento).
1) I just discovered at random that American Airlines has released a huge block of seats to Latin America for its frequent flier mile members. I could either get a ticket to Mexico City for $60 or to Rio for $75!!!! If I bought the ticket to Rio, I'd have to spend some extra money on getting a Brazilian visa, but still!!! I'm a little overwhelmed at the thought of dealing with Portuguese instead of Spanish. But I think this is the opportunity I've been waiting for. Plus I'd have enough miles left over to pay for another ticket somewhere in the US or Mexico.
2) It's not guaranteed, but I was asked to submit my CV to a group that's writing a response to a National Library of Medicine RFP for library training in Ethiopia. They're giving priority to people who've been in the Peace Corps in Africa, but other than that I have all the qualifications. If it went through, they'd pay for everything and when I told my boss about it, he said he might even be able to work it out so that it would be counted as administrative leave (i.e. work related professional service) rather than vacation. I'm trying to think about this as being simply an honor that my CV was included in the response, rather than OMG I COULD GO TO ETHIOPIA FOR THREE WEEKS IN NOVEMBER!!! Maybe looking into plane tickets to Brazil is meant to distract me from getting obsessed about whether or not this happens.
3) I'm going to DC in 3 days and still haven't really bothered thinking about what I'd like to do there. I get the impression that it's not really possible to drop in on the Peace Corps or Foreign Service headquarters. One of the tours for the conference goes to the IMF and World Bank - could these be any more boring than the UN tour I went on back in May?
I've had this account for a month and have been dying for it to become fully functional - yippee!
What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
The two cocktails I've usually liked were either vodka collins (vodka + grenadine) or a rum & coke. When I lived in the Caribbean during my Peace Corps years, rum was pretty much cheaper and cleaner than the local water supply. Rum production was a big part of the whole commerce triangle between Europe, Africa, and the New World during the days of colonialism - slaves, sugar and rum. I've been two of the oldest rum distilleries in the Western Hemisphere. The first visit was to a 300+ year old distillery in Grenada that was still manually operated with a pair of oxen going around in circles to run the machine that crushes the sugar cane into cane juice for fermenting. I'm sure there's a more technical term for this, but it escapes me at the moment. The best part was finding out that the reason why there's a bat on the Bacardi label is because Bats LOVE sugar and therefore flock to sugar cane fields and rum distilleries. For those of you who've read The Jungle, yes there's a certain % of bat guano in every bottle of rum. The second visit was to the actual Bacardi distillery itself in Santiago Cuba (now known as Havana Club because the Bacardis fled to Puerto Rico after the Revolution). It's a little more touristy and hokey than the place in Havana, but is also strangely kitty corner to the cemetary where Jose Marti is buried. The day I was there it was incredibly hot and humid, plus they gave us shots of rum as samples, so I have this very fuzzy memory of wandering around the structure that holds Marti's remainds. The other brand that I really like a lot is Flor de Cana, which I discovered on my second trip to Costa Rica/Panama right before the canel reverted back to local control. I know nothing about FdC beyond it being produced in Nicaragua (!!), but dang if it ain't the smoothiest and tastiest rum I've ever sampled. I was really pleasantly surprised to discover that you can get it in the local Hispanic supermarket chain here in Reno.
But in the past few years, I really can't drink rum anymore because the combination of it with cola just results in a massive sugar headache. So these days I'm pretty happy just with a straight shot of really good reposado tequila, which is something I learned about from a trip to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and Chiapas state. My favorite is probably a tie between Don Julio Reposado tequila and the Chamucos label. Both are great for a single one shot that lights up your solar plexus - it's kind of like a more intense version of eating something with wasabi.
