After brief stops in Boston (happy birthday mom!), and San Francisco (have a great trip Bri!), I'm headed off to Oregon for my month of work and play at the Oregon Country Fair (http://www.oregoncountryfair.org). The Fair is an incredible coming together of artists, craftspeople, food, music, dance, and family. I have the lucky task of helping to build and repair the fairgrounds in preparation for the weekend of July 13-15, when tens of thousands of people will come from all over the state and beyond to experience the Fair. That means I get to hang out in a beautiful Oregon forest, camp, meet lots of amazing people, and hone my fairly non-existent construction skills. What could be better?

I took the train to New Haven from New York with Gianna, Lara, Daeve and Anne this afternoon, and being on the Metro-North certainly brought back some memories! It's the regional train that runs from New York through Connecticut, and for our years in college was our connection to the city. I didn't remember quite how crowded it got, though. When I boarded the train with my three bags (which included several pounds of gifts, and winter clothing that I needed while in Argentina, but was totally useless in the heat and humidity of an East Coast summer), I was a little bit ill-equipped to navigate the narrow aisles, with feet and shoulders jutting out into the aisles. The only block of five seats we found together was right next to the bathroom, whose door conveniently didn't close. We got to play the "how long will it take before the door swings open on someone who is in mid-pee" game, which contrary to how simple it sounds, provided a solid hour of entertainment. Good times.

Arriving in New Haven, the entire town seemed to have been taken over by alumni, and we hustled ourselves to the dorms where we were staying. Staying in dorms again was really fun, especially since they've all been renovated and no longer contain bunk beds. We all got assigned rooms together (hooray!), and the first thing we did was disable the locks on the doors with duct tape, to allow for easy passage between all our rooms. I spent my entire sophomore year with no lock on my door, which seems crazy now, but was de rigeur at the time.

Our first night, we were somewhat caught off guard by the shut down of our class cocktail party at the very early hour of 1am. We tried (and failed) to throw an impromptu after-party in our rooms, but due to a severe alcohol shortage, and lack of pre-promotion, we all ended up in bed by 2. The next night, Saturday, we resolved to do better...

Saturday dawned and we all headed out to various activities. I went for a run, much to the surprise of everyone, including myself, and got a chance to enjoy the New Haven scenery a bit. The loop I used to do every day seemed a lot longer than it used to, but maybe age is catching up with me a bit. To help in our party-throwing redemption, I went with Gianna to create flyers for our second attempt at an after-party, and the girls and I distributed them for the rest of the day. We were determined to make Saturday last well into Sunday morning.

As the dinner hour approached, 5 of us headed to the local convenience store to stock up for our party, and ended up buying enough supplies that we needed to have one of the clerks come back to the dorms with us, with a handtruck. The thought did cross my mind at one point that maybe we had overdone it, but then I snapped out of it, and remembered the purpose of the 5-year reunion: Party, and party hard.


Oh, the party power of the wee...

The party ended up being a raging success, and lasted until almost 5am. I heard reports the next day that people were up well past dawn. Ah, sweet success.


My nearest and dearest from college (and the co-hosts of the rager)

I'm back in Buenos Aires, triumphantly carrying 6 bottles of wine, and a receipt for a half a case more that will arrive in the US in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully my dad won't decide to drink it before I get back to California (just kidding Dad!).

It's my last night here, and I'm sad at the prospect of leaving this beautiful country, and the new friends I've made here. I know I'll come back, but I never imagined that I would have such a great time, or that I'd love this city so much. I really felt at home here.

HOWEVER, I am heading off to a very fun time at my 5th year college reunion. There is much partying and merriment in store, so my current sadness will hopefully be turned around once I'm there.

I arrived in Mendoza, Argentina's verson of Napa, two days ago, and have been scheming since I got here about how I can get a case of wine back to the States. Argentinian wine is AMAZING, and it's impossible to find some of the bottles of wine that I've loved here in the US. Yesterday I visited a few wineries, and although I have no idea how I'll get the wine back, I bought half a case of it from a boutique winery that doesn't even import to the US. I couldn't resist. At the least, I'll have a party in the airport with a few newfound friends...

(fast forward a few hours...)

I've figured it out! My quest to import over the 2 bottle limit of wine to the US has finally been achieved. I came across the Vines of Mendoza tasting room today, which is a multi-winery tasting room that will ship wine to the US for a pretty reasonable fee. I was pretty ecstatic about the whole arrangement, and may have made my sommelier a little uncomfortable with the vigorous fist pumping and yelling, but hey, when you're excited, you're excited, you know?

My sommelier, Josefina, trying not to look scared...

My time in Buenos Aires is coming to a close, and today I head to Mendoza for 3 days. I'm feeling very sad that I will have to head back to the States next week, even though I'm excited for the next phase of my travels. Being here, and especially spending time with Bianca, has been so much fun. I'm really glad that I will at least get to spend more time with her in Palo Alto, if not in Buenos Aires.

On Monday, I moved to Bianca's mother's house, after she very sweetly invited me to stay there, and when I demurred, politely prodded me until I realized I'd be silly to continue to refuse. Bianca is incredibly giving and it's been wonderful getting to know her while I've been here. Her mother is out of town right now, and has a huge house in Palermo, which is where I've been spending most of my time while not in class. Bianca very rightly pointed out that I am paying for the room I'm staying in now, and it is not nearly as nice as the free room I could stay in at her mother's house. Who can argue with logic like that? So, without further argument, I moved, and am very glad that I did. I'm much closer to Bianca and Manuel's apartment now, and to school, which makes the daily excursions about town much easier. (Bianca, you're an angel, thanks again!).

I think I'm going to stay an extra week in Buenos Aires, instead of heading to wine country right away, I feel like I could spend several more months here and only just scratch the surface of this amazing city. I can take one more week of Spanish classes, and hopefully retain enough that I'll be able to pick up again when I start classes in the fall. Tengo que practicar!

On Sunday, Runa, Tara and I went to the Feria de San Telmo, a famous street fair in Buenos Aires. It was mostly a flea market, with lots of antique silverware and lamps, but there were some very cool booths that had art deco artwork. I bought a tango program with a very interesting painting on the front of it for Nate, as a bit of a joke, and then stumbled upon the independent designer garage within the feria. The designer garage was a little corner of a building that had about 20 clothing design students and their creations packed into it. The clothes ranged from scary to wonderful, and were all extremely cheap. Argentina is a hotbed of new clothing designers right now, and the population of Buenos Aires is unrepentantly fashionable, so finding good deals on clothing can be a challenge sometimes. We shopped around a bit more, and then headed out to see some street performers.


My favorite performer was this puppeteer. He did some really amazing things with his puppet, but what I liked most was that he was dressed in the exact same outfit as his marionette, down to the splits in his shoes and his suspenders. I appreciated his total commitment to his art :)

The rest of the week/weekend has been a whirlwind of dinners out, heading out to START partying at 1am, and trying to drag myself out of bed for class at 9. I don't know how portenos (people from Buenos Aires) function on what seems to be about 4 hours of sleep a night, I'm struggling, and I'm on vacation!

I love it here. The city is such a mix of cultures and foods and art and traffic and noise and music. It's just fascinating. Buenos Aires is a "new city," which means that it is built on a grid, but it still has some incredibly beautiful holdovers from an older time, like the wood paneled subway car that I take to and from school each day. Argentina as a country has had a similar immigration policy to the U.S., in that it accepts a lot of immigrants from around the world, mostly from Europe, but also from Asia. This has resulted in a blended society, where you are likely to run across someone who is Italian-German-Polish, and who speaks Argentinian Spanish perfectly.

Speaking of Argentinian Spanish, if you've studied Spanish, you know that it is a little bit different than the Mexican Spanish that most estadounidenses are used to. The "ll" is my favorite sound, pronounced like "jsh" it gives a soft, lyrical quality to everyday phrases like "me llamo Saamra." Bianca has promised to keep me honest about Argentinian pronounciation when we're all back in the States together.

This evening (Friday), I went to a college party with my two housemates, Runa and Tara. They are both German, about 20 years old, and are staying in Susana's house for a few months while they experience Buenos Aires. They're studying tango, and picking up Spanish as they go. They have made friends with Susana's 22 year old daughter, who is currently at university, and we headed out to a party of one of her friends tonight. It was eye-opening to say the least. I felt about a hundred years old, surrounded by 17-20 year olds. The highlight of my evening was a 10 minute long conversation in which I attempted to explain to a Guns and Roses-obsessed young gentleman that: a. I don't really listen to Guns and Roses, and b. I was way too old to go out with his friend. In Spanish. Right.

This evening I headed to an asado, a traditional Argentinean BBQ party, where I met three of my future classmates and my classmate's wife. (From the left) Bianca, Manuel, (me), Ignacio and Rupa met at Manu and Bianca's apartment in Palermo, one of the nicest areas of Buenos Aires. I had been e-introduced to these four by Ime (Yale classmate, 2003), who is currently at the Stanford GSB. When he found out I was headed to Argentina, he pulled a Jedi email string and got me several connections before I even left the ground (thanks Ime!). Rupa is also in Buenos Aires as a visitor, doing a several month internship with a nonprofit here, so Ignacio (Nacho), Manuel and Bianca decided that holding an asado would be an excellent meeting occasion for us all.

A traditional asado is all about meat, and lots of it. During dinner, we were treated to Manu's exceptional skill as an asador, and at the end gave him the well deserved salute, "Un aplauso por el asador!" I ate until my stomach hurt, and loved every meaty minute of it (mmmm, choripan!). I can tell that my traditionally low-meat menu is going to be put on hold for the next couple weeks.

COINED is a language school with branches across Central and South America. I was happy to see when I arrived that the school was in a beautiful and traditional building, with gorgeous wood floors and architecture (it's not actually the building in the picture, but you get the idea...). There's something about studying in a pretty environment that makes the brain gymnastics a little easier.



I have two teachers, both named Cecilia (that creates a little confusion when they have a difference of opinion about some grammatical rule: "But Cecilia told me this." "I don't remember saying that!" "No, the OTHER Cecilia."). They are both incredibly sweet, and great teachers. In the mornings I have 4 hours of class with two other students, Dagmar from Germany and Charlotte from South Carolina. They're both younger (~20 years old), but very nice and enthusiastic. In the afternoons, I head to a two or three hour private lesson, where I usually spend at least half the time talking in Spanish and the other half the time listening. It's very interesting to try to have a conversation in a language that you've only been studying for about 15 hours, and say anything meaningful. My instructor is very good at reading between the lines...

This is a picture of another instructor who is legendary for her dry erase artistic expertise. She filled up the whole board with marker animals!

After a lovely 10-hour flight, I arrived in Buenos Aires, if not refreshed then at least very excited for the next three weeks. I went straight to COINED, the school where I'm taking intensive Spanish classes for the next 2-3 weeks, where I accosted the poor receptionist multiple times with lots of random questions (where is the bathroom? can I leave my huge bag behind your desk? how do I get to my host family's house via train, bus and taxi?). After failing my pre-test miserably (not surprising, as I know no Spanish at all yet), I was put in the very beginner level, and began my illustrious career as a student of Spanish. Hooray!

After 4 bleary-eyed hours of class, I was supposed to head into another 2 hour intensive private lesson, when I decided that I'd rather jump off the building than sit for another minute in my 2 day old and decidedly stinky clothes. I went to our friendly neighborhood receptionist, and begged her to let me off the hook for the afternoon class for the day. She graciously obliged and sent me on my merry way to my host family's house, giddy at the prospect of a shower and brushing my teeth.

Susana, my host mother, lives in Caballito, which is a middle-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires, from which a large portion of the city-going population commutes to downtown. When I arrived, she was waiting for me, and showed me around the place. It was two stories, with 5 bedrooms, all occupied by her family or other wayward travelers like myself. My room was small, but cozy, with shelves full of books in Spanish that I was excited to see I could almost understand the titles of. Maybe after my kick-ass Spanish lessons are over, I'll be able to read the first page of one of them?

On my way

After a year of gainful employment in the US, I've entered the next phase of my travels. (Actually, I entered it about 2 and a half months ago, but free internet access has been limited, so reports from the front have been slightly delayed...).

On May 2nd, I left my job to go on leave for 2 years and head to business school at Stanford. I'm excited about the prospect of being a student again; as I recall, it was a very fun time. Oh, and I learned stuff too. But at the moment, my real focus is the next 4 months, during which I'll be traveling around the world, trying to remember to take pictures to supplement my horrible memory.

First stop: Buenos Aires.

Well, it's been a long time, but I'm back in the US now, and settling back into my "normal" life. The funny thing is that what I used to think was normal no longer really seems that way. Everything from drinking water out of several plastic bottles a day, to going to Whole Foods, to filling up a gas tank seems slightly surreal. I feel like I've entered the land of the consumer in full force, and it's making me a bit uneasy. But, at the same time, I'm surrounded by loved ones, and every time I see someone for the first time again I get this amazing feeling of right-ness. So I guess it's an exercise in reconciliation. I have to reconcile myself to being back in this "normal" life.

This was our pre-New Years dinner, at the nicest hotel in Bombay, the Taj Mahal. They have a sushi restaurant there, Wasabi, that is phenomenal. Yeah, I know, sushi in India, a little risky perhaps, but not at this place. It's the Nobu of India. 

New Years was a blast with Ashwin, Neel and Brian. Look at those cheesy smiles! 

We were obviously having a good time. The one in the back with the jazz hands we lovingly termed, "Johnny Fever." 

Reg and me, sharing the love. 

We invented a new holiday in Hyderabad: Diwaloween. Halloween and Divali fell within a day of each other, and so we combined them. Brian is dressed as one of the best known beers in India, Kingfisher, and I am "The Personification of Disco." 

My boss is on the left, and one of my colleagues is on the right. I love working for a company where you're the weird one if you don't dress up for Halloween. 

Campbell, Roy's daughter, in heaven with some bubble wrap. Remember when all you needed for entertainment was some bubble wrap? I miss those days.

Kalpana and Raunak. Kalpana is a colleague and friend, and Raunak is her smart-as-a-whip son.  

Brian and Raunak playing the hand slap game. I think Raunak won... 

Scuba diving in Koh Tao. I want to live in the house that's behind me.  

Claire and I, preparing for a night dive off Koh Tao. Don't we look all sporty and professional in our wetsuits? Ok, just pretend we do then. 

Thailand is truly, truly beautiful. It just grabs and holds you breathless. 

So, after getting off my 14 hour flight, I decided to get on another plane. I know, I know, I'm crazy, but when the end point of my journey is Park City Utah and skiing, can you blame me? I mean, look at that view! 

This is the biggest statue of Ganesh I've ever seen. The day after this picture, the statue was taken to the lake in the middle of town and thrown in. It's all part of a Hindu holiday called Ganesh Chaturthi :)

Just a quick digression from the normal chronological order for a truly unique and spectacular event... Swampfest 2005. For Sara Wampler's birthday, we all donned shirts that identified us as either Banjara Hillbillies, or part of the Banjara Hills 90210 crew. We then proceeded to terrorize the city of Hyderabad on a scavenger hunt that took us from buffaloes to beer to bangles. It was a blast, and as with all modern scavenger hunts, involved photo documentation. Hence, I have some truly memorable moments to share below. Enjoy!

Yes, it is legal to buy fireworks here. In fact, it might even be legal to buy dynamite. Fireworks and beer are a great combo, by the way. 

It's amazing to me that so many women wear burqas here, and yet they work, drive scooters, and generally lead their lives with no discernable difference other than their outward appearance. 

This is my feeble attempt to kiss a water buffalo. I think the buffalo didn't want me kissing him as much as I didn't want to kiss him! 

So, there's this boarding house down the street from where our office is in Hyderabad, and this is the sign. Interesting... 

Well, I owe anyone who's been trying to read my blog for the past several months a big apology. It's been almost 6 months since I updated it (gasp!), and I really have no valid excuse. Yes, I've been busy, yes, I've been running around, but I have certainly had time to spend in the blogosphere... Anyways, I'm sorry, let's move on.

To summarize the last several months (see pictures for evidence):
-Turned 25, had a wine and cheese party that degenerated into an arrack and paneer/dance fever experience (if you don't know what arrack and paneer are, search them on google :)
-Went back to the US for a few weeks of fun with the ladies, and a *very* fun trip to Vegas
-Dressed up as a disco princess for halloween
-Went to Mumbai and the Sula Winery with Ashwin and crew (I have now been wine tasting on multiple continents)
-Had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner complete with real turkey (not too common in India, as you might imagine)
-Spent Christmas with the Gilberts
-Spent New Years in Mumbai, was up till 7:30 am (a personal record)
-Went back to Mumbai in mid-Jan (anyone see a theme here? Mumbai is phenomenal...)


Now I'm in my last month in Hyderabad, and as I look back on my time here, I'm starting to get impossibly nostalgic. India has changed me in so many ways, and it's difficult for me to imagine what my life will be like when I go back to San Francisco, even though that is technically "home." I will carry little pieces of India with me for the rest of my life: an appreciation of really good chai, the varied flavors of chat masala (perhaps the most complicated spice I've ever tasted), the memory of my friend Maya's particular tone of voice and intonation when she's being teased about something, an appreciation of staring in public being an acceptable convention, the pride in knowing how to get around a city that has no street names or building numbers.

I will wear the saris and bangles I'm bringing back to the States with pride, and plan to organize "salwar kameez" Thursdays at work. I know I will never find dal like the dal from Angeethi. I plan to make appam and prawn curry at home (I'll probably fail, but I WILL try). I will probably do the head bobble for several months after I return, and will certainly get strange looks for it.

So much of my time here has been in a bubble of the expat lifestyle, but I have also walked around the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, and have gained a profound respect for the people of this country, who despite crushing poverty and backbreaking work, still find time to smile, laugh, and love fiercely. India is a humbling place.

Alright, enough of the reflection. I've added some new pictures below, take a look, leave a comment, etc.

People carry all kinds of stuff on scooters here, it's really incredible. 40-inch TV anyone?