Traveling

Burning Man

2006-09-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

Festivities

2006-08-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

Pictures from Sierra Nevada World Music Festival and the wedding of Maia Nickel and Chris Mangone

23 and Parasite Free

2006-04-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

Photos (slightly out of order): Sarah, Donna (one of the managers) and Tony (the fabulous gardener), Me and Michael, my head blocking the view of the non existant waterfall in Thailand, french friends in Thailand, the sunset view from Jeff and Jacque's kitchen, a beautiful beach, the Octagon room, the forest, a view of Mana and the guardian crystal from the top of the mountain on the land, views from the mountain, the kitchen, the Tara Sanctuary, the bungalow I stayed in in Thailand.

Hello from kiwi land!
So, I've switched hemispheres, and as far as I can tell the toilet flushing isn't drastically different, but most of the toilets I've seen flush with more waterfall style than swirling action. So, sorry to leave that unsolved for you all.
But, on to other news...

I spent my last week or so in Thailand in this little itty bitty town called Pai. It's about a four hour bus ride away from Chiang Mai and it's out in the countryside which was a nice change from the bustling city. I stayed in a little bungalow overlooking a garlic field, where cows were grazing and the sun was shining which was quite a (nice) change from the airconditioned apartment I'd been luxuriating in in Chiang Mai. Life is real slow in Pai, there's not a lot going on. It's geared for the backpacker scene so there's lots of cafes to hang out in and yoga classes to take and that kind of thing. Unfortnuately, not all the cafes were winners, I ate some of the worst food of my life in Pai. It was supposed to be a vegetable curry but was really a lot more like snot with noodles. So bad it was fascinating. I went on a couple of great hikes, one to a waterfall that was virtually non existant because it's the dry season. Despite the lack of waterfalls, the forest was full of butterflys, hundreds of them flying all around through the trees and around my head which made it a truly magical experience.

To get to New Zealand, I embarked on a four hour bus ride, followed by a 14 hour train ride followed by a 12 hour plane ride, all of which had five hour layovers in between. Quite the extensive journey, but I finally made it to Aukland where I was picked up at the airport by Jeff, a family friend who took me to his and Jacque's lovely home on Hearst Island just oustide Aukland. I spent three days with them, walking around Aukland a bit and adjusting to my change in surroundings. We also went to a dance performance called Black Milk which was extremely well done and moving. It was choreographed by Douglas Wright, the premier choreographer here in New Zealand and was full of powerful images and food for thought. Words can't describe. Jeff and Jacque were so welcoming, I really appreciated having a place to make a soft landing in a new country. A million thanks to them.

Right now I'm staying at the Mana Retreat Centre on the Coromandel peninsula. It's on the NE part of the North Island and it is just gorgeous. The center is surrounded by beautiful forests, with lots of little winding paths that curve through the hills. They lead to lots of little treasures spread throughout the land. The sacred spiral is a relaxing place to lounge in a tree, on the Goddess Path, figurines of voluptous women greet you from their resting places in the roots of trees and crevices of rocks. The earth makes a bit of a hollow sound in some places when you walk because layers and layers of roots have left the soil spongy on impact. And tree ferns spread through the canopy, the kind that make you think a brontasaurus is about to come crashing through the bushes and munch the top off of one. Birds are everywhere singing their calls, kakas (New Zealand parrots) and dozens of others constantly flying overhead. Other than that it's completely silent, no noise from the road makes it this far up the hill.

So, what am I doing on this magnificent piece of land besides wandering around in the woods? I'm a wwoofer (WWOOF stands for world wide oportunities on organic farms), which means I work six hours a day five days a week in exchange for accomadation and food. So, my tasks include anything from scrubbing toilets and making hospital corners on the beds, to making raw banana ice cream for 40 people, to weeding in the garden. Working in the kitchen or the garden are my preferences without a doubt, folding toilet paper into little triangles and scrubbing sinks all day just doesn't feed my soul for some reason.

The people I'm working with are really nice. A short description of my fellow wwoofers: Michael is from Germany, has been travelling the past 5 years and came here to connect with the fairies in the forest, Lisa emigrated to New Zealand from England and is taking some time off from work to wwoof and enjoy life, Tatiana is from France and can ring the gong for dinner like a professional, Sarah is a psychic/makeup artist from England, and Krista is an extremely genuine Austrian woman. So, we make up a group of varied backgrounds, but still manage to be highly successful when it come to getting things done. For example, last weekend when we had a 30 person retreat at the center and one of our cooks was sick and the other's daughter was having a baby, we wwoofers were left on our own to find a way to feed all those people. Lucky for them we pulled through and made some delicious food and even scattered flower petals on the salad.

After work there are all the perks of being here. There's an extensive library where I can feed my brain all kinds of information about how I really should stop being in my mind so much, paths to walk on, a sauna to use, a room called the Octagon to dance or stretch in, and a magical place called the Tara Sanctuary that's built using sacred geometry and has the most amazing acoustics I've ever heard. Just one person singing can sound like a whole chorus of angels. It has a bell tower that rings at 9am and 6pm every day. Being in there when the bells go off is a bit like having the top of your head unscrewed and then having rainbows swirl around in the place where regularly your stressy brain would be.

In other news, it's my birthday next week and I think I might have a parasite. I went to the doctor, they extracted every kind of fluid/waste my body has ever made and on Monday I hear the news. I just hope they won't have to amputate. But, the 29th is my birthday so I'm hoping to be 23 and parasite free by then. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

So far, my conclusion is that I love New Zealand. It's gorgeous, it's acceptable to go to the grocery store (or wherever else) barefoot, the accents are charming and the roads are winding, what else could you want? I'm leaving here May 1 to do some more exploring and head down to the South Island, which is supposedly even more fantastically beautiful. So, that'll be nice. It's really doing me some good to be in a place where natural beauty is more abundant than buildings, the air is clean and the ocean sparkles like diamonds off in the distance. I'm still looking for hobbits, so I'll keep you all posted on that one.

Love,
Liz

Runny noses and silver dust

2006-03-12T02:16:00.000-08:00

These pictures are, a scene from a temple, a couple from the orphanage, a shot of Zoe, Dahlia, Zoe's family and me all dressed up for the Jewish holiday Purim, pounding herbs at Thai massage school to make herbal compresses, lots of buddhas at a market here, a traditional house up in the hills, snake whisky, a hot spring they cook eggs in rather than swim in, a night out on the town, art made out of durian, and Zoe with an adorable puppy

Loved ones,

I'm still here in Thailand, but only for about another week and a half. I've spent the last month in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. It's the first time I've been in one place for more than 10 days in a really long time and I've been loving it. Zoe and I had a lovely little apartment to share for the month, complete with a refridgerator, hot water and a swimming pool. Definately luxurious. So, my daily routine has included swimming in the pool at least once, and pulling fresh cold coconuts out of the fridge whenever I've got the urge. Not to mention eating delicious thai food for about a dollar a meal, enjoying beautiful tropical weather, and the smiles and laughter of the Thai people.

Chiang Mai is a truly wonderful place to be. So wonderful, in fact, that about 50,000 ex-pats live here. So, there are westerners everywhere and the town is an interesting mix of shops and restaurants geared for tourists, others for the locals, and lots of overlap in between those places. The apartment I've been staying in is right near the university so there are lots of young people everywhere. It's a nice part of town, very new, with lots of coffee shops and places to eat. It doesn't have quite as much flavor as the older part of the city, but it's inexpensive and the pool makes it all worthwhile. And, it's really neat to see all the young people walking around. It makes me question the whole concept of "foriegn" because a lot of the young folks are wearing the same thing as you would see in the states, listening to the same music, text messaging eachother and going to University. I can even get a bagel at the place on the corner. There's also a big scene for the gay youths. Lots of lesbian and gay couples out and in plain view. The culture here is a lot more open to different sexualites (recall from my last email all the stuff about ladyboys).

The only downside of Chaing Mai that I've noticed is that the air pollution is terrible. It looks like there are lots of low grey clouds, but they're not clouds, they're smog. For those of you thinking that it's probably just like LA, nope...it's worse. Some fragile farang (foreigner in thai) even develop coughs while they're here, and lots of the locals wear surgical style masks when they're out and around town. It's especially bad this time of year because the surrounding farmers are burning their fields.

But, what have I actually been doing with my time? Zoe and I did a two week Thai massage course at the Old Medicine Hospital here in Chaing Mai. We were taught how to pull, push, press on and move the body around in what the Thai people call a "relaxing massage". It's definately different than our western concept of what a massage should be, but they taught us some valuable skills for stretching out your kinks even if it might be slightly more acrobatic than the massage you're used to.

I also did a few days of a silver smithing class where I learned how to cut, sand, solder, polish, and bend silver into jewlery. It was an amazing experience for me. I think I've found a new passion, a new art form that hits a deep cord within me and brings me a lot of joy. I had to tear myself away from the class, but hopefully there will be more working with silver in my future.

I've also gone to play with little kids at an orphanage here in Chiang Mai a few times. I've been working with the 1-3 year olds and they are absolutely adorable. They just want to be held, and don't get quite as much as attention as they might like so they are full of hugs and smiles and laughter just waiting to be brought out. (Yes, some of them cry non-stop so it's not all giggles and cuddles, but that's what you get when you've got a room full of toddlers). They all just got over a case of the chicken pox, so when I met them they were covered in scabs from the pox, had snot running out of their noses and were very endearing because it was just so incredibly toddler-like.
Other than that, not much to report. Except...I did recently have a dream that I was the pope...that was interesting. But, mostly I've just been enjoying being in one place for more than a few days and have just been kind of hanging out and living life. It's been really nice.
On April 3 I head to New Zealand. I'm looking forward to it, I'm going to be doing work exchange at the Mana Retreat Centre for at least part of my time there, and it sounds like a wonderful place with lots of great workshops and beautiful land.
Hope you all are well.
Love,
Liz

Badass Babes on Bikes

2006-02-21T02:51:00.000-08:00

The pictures: Zoe and my beach bungalow, beautiful sun-setting, phalic rock, Zoe Melinda and Julia at a waterfall, Liz and Zoe wrestling a Durian, beach scenes, girls on a motorbike, and Zoe's family surrounded by ladyboys after a cabaret show we went to.
People of the world:
I write this in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The sun is beginning to set, cars are wooshing by, it's hot out and a breeze is passing through the internet cafe.
I arrived in Chiang Mai two days ago after spending a few weeks down in southern Thailand on the island of Koh Samui. Koh Samui is basically a tropcial paradise tourist playground full of massage parlors, stores selling skimpy clothing, bars, hotels, restuarants, beautiful beaches, lots of motorbikes, and ladyboys galore. Koh Samui is the capital of the world for sex change operations, and as a result there is a huge number of ladyboys (a male-bodied person who lives as a woman). This gender-bending was mind expanding and greatly appreciated by both Zoe and I. One night we went to see a cabaret show and I believe that it was there that I truly learned to scream like a girl from one of the gay waiters.
Zoe and I arrived on the island and found ourselves a satisfyingly rootsy spot called Rasta Baby where we called a humble beach bungalow our home for a week. The ocean was just a hop skip and a jump away, and hop skip and jump we did right into those sparkly waters every day, sometimes twice a day. We ate fruit on the front porch, including the famed durian, which tastes like a combination of chicken, onion, and vanilla and just melts in your mouth like the sweetest of honeys when it's really good. It also smells like stinky socks. We rented a motorbike to cruise around the island on and visited such sights as a the seashell museum, where a crazy french man described to us his passion for shells and showed us the donation box twice.
Two friends I met in India, Melinda and Julia were also on the island of Koh Samui so we hung out with them, scooting around the island on our motorbikes. We attempted to engage in the local night life by going to a bar called the reggae pub where they played music that in no way resembled reggae and the DJ kept saying things like "fiesta fiesta!" and "que pasa, que pasa!" while unsuccessfully attempting to make hand motions like a badass rapper. Not discouraged by the bland pop rhythms that we had at our disposal, we got funky anyway, dancing and laughing and enjoying the ironies of watching couples who were engaging in the unhealthy superficial and sexually degrading interaction that is promoted by much of mass media today singing along to a Cranberries song in which the main chorus consists of the singer repeating "Zombie, Zombie" over and over in an irish accent. Zoe and I topped off the evening by riding home on our scooter while howling at all the neighborhood dogs on the sides of the road, many of whom responded with enthusiastic barking in return. Back at home we went for a midnight dip in the ocean and played with the phosphoresents that make it seem like every movement underwater is followed by sparkly fairy dust.
After about a week, Zoe went up to spend some time with her family in Chiang Mai before my arrival and Julia, Melinda and I moved ourselves to a spa where we spent five days luxuriating in herbal steams, daily massages and use of the "ultimate relaxation device". Yes, it was ultimately relaxing.
My last morning on the island I got into a motorbike accident. As I was driving along, all of a sudden, the grandfather of all potholes which feeds on the destruction of car tires and dented motorcycle helments and manifested itself as six foot long, five foot wide stretch of mangled concrete appeared from behind the car in front of me. No time to swerve, no time to stop, I drove straight into the thick of it. The bike stopped in it's tracks, but I kept going, flying towards the warm embrace of the concrete on the side of the road. I don't remeber flying through the air, but I do remember opening my eyes on the pavement, doing a mental scan of my body and realizing that all of my extremeties were still atatched and in full working order except for that I was missing the shoe of my left foot. So, I stood up, took off my helmet, re-did my hair, put my helmet and my shoe back on, climbed back on the bike (brought over to me by a man who stopped on the road) and drove off. I now think that this may have been a strange reaction to such a traumatic experience, but at the time I just figured there wasn't really anything else that I could do. Now I basically look like a kid who fell off her bike. Skinned knees and a banged up elbow, but otherwise virtually unharmed. ALWAYS WEAR YOUR HELMET. ALWAYS. It just might have saved my life.
So, now I am in Chaing Mai, with Zoe and her family, eating good food, swimming in the pool and feeling very enthusiastic about embracing every moment of life. In my future, Thai massage school and a sweet little apartment to call home for a month with Zoe here in Chiang Mai.
love to all of you,
Liz

Monkeys ate my christmas present

2006-02-04T20:44:00.000-08:00

Loved ones,
My last weeks in India were spent in Varanasi and Sarnath. Varanasi is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It is said that the god Shiva commaned that the city would remain in one age (the third I think) even while the rest of the world continued on into the next. Based on the narrow alleyways which are likely to be blocked by a wandering cow, cubby holes out of which stickers, treats, cosmetic items, foods, and like are sold, the banks of the great Ganges river, the huge old stone buildings, the insane monkeys, and complete and total chaos, I'd have to say that Shiva's command continues to this day. Varanasi is one big heap of people, cows, dogs, rats, rickshaws, boats and sadhus. Walk down the banks of the Ganges and every third person will ask you if you want a boat ride, if no, then maybe you want to see their silk shop...not that either...how about some chai?...no chai...okay how about some hash, or maybe a thai massage, or just give me a rupee. The hassle never ends, not even in the comfort of your own home.
Christmas Eve I returned to my hotel room to get some rest after winding my way through the cow pies and piles of mangy puppies and people and shops. Upon opening the door I found that monkeys had broken into the room. They ravaged anything that looked edible or was in a plastic bag. They ate the Christmas present I bought for my friend Joseph and tried unsucessfully to drink some grape seed extract. I caught them later out on the porch, pushing on the door trying to get in. Little devils didn't give a damn I was there and had no reaction whatsover to my presence.
Varanasi broke my heart. We'd walk down the streets and see these adorable little piles of puppies lying in heaps of trash because it's warmer than being on the stone. The next day we'd walk by again and they'd all be dead. Everything is covered in shit there. It rained one night and I got all optimistic and hoped that maybe it would wash the streets clean. But, no. Instead the shit turned into a wonderful slippery goo through which everyone slid around the city and in which it was altogether too easy to lose your shoe. When we ate dinner, we chose to go to the restaurant that advertised "Yes! We are less dirty!" because everything there is so covered in filth that a lot of the food will make you sick. It was hard to be there. A constant attack of smells, sights, and various other kinds of stimulus that culminated in me feeling totally exhasted.
To escape Varanasi, I went to Sarnath with my friend Joseph. Sarnath is the place where the buddha gave his first teachings after reaching enlightenment. We arrived on Christmas morning after bumping down the road in a tuk tuk for 45 minutes and wandered around our friend Holger (who we knew was there somewhere, but not exactly where) started calling our names and tells us we are just in time to go hear a teaching given by the Karmapa (the buddhist lama I have mentioned in previous emails). So, we all scarfed down some thali for lunch and headed over to the temple where the Karmapa was giving teachings. Upon arriving he told us all "Merry Christmas!" in a very sweet tibetan accent and while seated in front of a huge ornate altar with a gigantic goldent buddha statue in a beautiful buddhist temple. He then gave us all a wonderful little speech that included the advice that we should all relax because it was sunday and christmas. He arranged that a dinner be made especially for the Westerners to celebrate the occasion, and when we went it was some of the best food I've eaten in a long time and people even sang christmas carols. It was a wonderful way to spend christmas.
The next morning, trying to do some home-making, I dropped an extremely heavy iron bed onto my ankle. Luckily Joseph was there to help, and while I laid down (with a lump the size of a tennis ball growing on my ankle) he went for help. We went to the doctor, who poked the wound, made a little hissing sound through is teeth that seemed to say..ooo, that looks like it really hurts, poured some iodine on it, wrapped a bandage around it and sent me on my way just after telling the man sitting next to me to lay down and pull down his pants so he could get a shot in his butt.
I spent the next four days at the mercy of two wonderful friends, Joseph and Holger who became my crutches. They helped me hobble to wherever I needed to go, but mostly I just layed around waiting until I could be upright and moving around again. After a few days, some other friends I met earlier in my trip, Melinda and Julia, came to my rescue and started taking care of me. We spent a few more days in Sarnath and then went back to Varanasi where we got ourselves a room in a nice hotel with room service and where there was a hot shower, they gave us towels and the beds were comfy and barely left our room for the next two days.
We parted ways, I went back to Delhi to find my way back to the US to visit friends and family and be the Best Man in a wedding and Melinda and Julia headed down to the desert in Southern India to go to a 200,000 person event called the Kalachakra where the Dalai Lama gives teachings.
More to come...

What's the first thing you're going to do when you get enlightened?

2005-12-08T01:07:00.000-08:00

These pictures are: Me and a rickshaw driver (a friend is pedaling), my friend Peter working on a painting, the view from the roof in Bodh Gaya, Bambi, a village street, local kids, some shots of the temple and the bodhi tree and some pictures from the train.

(That's a trick question)
Loved ones,
Right now I am in Delhi. The weather has turned colder since I was last here, but the madness continues. Shop keeprs yelling "Hello Madam!" as I walk past...traffic tangles...cows...smells... It's quite the shift from Bodh Gaya, in the state of Bihar where I just visited. Bihar is the poorest state in India and also the one where there is the most governmental corruption (perhaps that is why it is so poor). Life is just more raw here, the roads are worse, the buildings are crappier, the cows are uglier. People's lives are harder, there is more misery, poverty in your face and in the air in the form of dust and soot. The first few days were hard, the initial shock and images of poverty right in front of my face were hard to swallow. Like the small girl I met in a rice paddie, she was washing a huge burn on her arm in the water they were flooding the fields with. Take off those rose colored glasses now...
But there are many layers in Bodh gaya: it is where the Buddha got enlightened sitting under a bodhi tree. The fourth generation of that tree, cultivated from saplings, and then cuttings, and taken to Sri Lanka and back is growing here, right smack dab next to a temple which is the most sacred place for buddhists in the whole world. There are monastaries from every asian country here and so many beggars missing body parts and religious pilgrams and stalls selling buddha gear. At night I sit and watch as monks lead a groups of little old ladies in prayer. Then they walk in circles, chanting, around and around the temple. They are doing a tantric initiation. Their devotion is so inspiring, they came all this way to recieve this initiation next to buddha's tree. And it really is a buddha tree. You can feel it, it's called the buddha field, and it hangs over everything and brings with it a sense of peace. But, it is the people who come here that bring it to the place. The monks doing prostration after prostration, the tibetans who circle around and around chanting prayers, the regular people who come from every country in the world to worship or experience. Everyone takes off their shoes. Entering the temple grounds is like entering an empty house. The emptiness is so strong you can feel it, but you can't see it or touch it. But, you know it is there. And that knowing brings peace.
From the window of my guest house I see out into the world of a village. I see cow shit mixed with straw drying on red tiled rooftops in little pancakes that are used for fuel and sometimes I here the smack smack sound of the women making it. I can see down into the courtyards where there are cows and goats and naked babies and women combing eachother's hair. I see the haze from fires rise in the morning and at dusk, hear transistor radios switch on and off and can recognize which of the three men who does the prayer calls at the mosque is on duty by the sound of his voice.
There is a baby cow that is tied up just outside the courtyard of the place where I have a room. In the mornings, the air is still fresh and cool I stop and pet this little Bambi. He seems to like it. His back skin twitches when I scratch it and if I rub his nose he starts pointing it in the air and his eyes roll around in a possessed kind of way. When he starts licking and trying to chew my sweater, I know it is time to move on.
On the street of the village, which is just a dirt alley way with dirty stagnant waste water running down one side, there is garbage, plastic wrappers, chip bags, plastic bags, and general crap just strewn everywhere; there are goats and cows and chickens. The baby ones are so cute and sometimes there are puppies and I want to take one home and pick the fleas off of it and make sure that it will never get all mangy, or have some thing that makes it have to walk on three legs. And then there's all the people. So many, especially children. Little toddlers running around, saying "Hello!" in their little baby voices to me. They stare up at me with huge deep eyes that are lined with kohl and some of them are shy and hide behind one another and giggle as I walk past.
In Bodh Gaya I had a lot of time just to think, watch life from the rooftop of my guest house, do yoga, sit at the temple, walk the streets. Slowly I began to feel more peaceful, let the peace of country life sink in a little, talk a little with the kids in the village, exchange smiles and say Namaste with the young women who were washing clothes or getting water from the pump. It was a chance to take a pause, process the many things I've been experiencing here for the past month.
Before Bodh Gaya I was on a train for two nights and one and a half days. Just like the bumbling tourist that I am, I stumbled onto the wrong train car where I found myself in the middle of a 55 person Indian tour group that had just gone from Calcutta to Kashmir and was on their way home. The little old ladies smiled big big smiles at me, and said "sweetie sweetie" while wobbling thier heads back and forth. They continuously spoke to me in Bengali and seemed confused when I couldn't understand a word they said so they just kept talking at me anyway. At night they snored louder than I would have thought possible for little old ladies who are only about four feet tall and are wearing fancy saris and bangles and big old gold jewlery in their noses. The young people took me in and sat me down in the middle of all of them while they sang Bengali folk songs and clapped their hands and one of them danced and kept lifting up his shirt and shaking his round belly. It was good fun and lots of laughing. A Zen saying: When the big belly thunders with loud roars of laughter, thousands of white lotuses rain through the world
Now I am in Delhi and how am I doing? I'm doing well...starting to feel more at peace with the manner in which my mind explodes with overstimulation each day. Lots of learning...part of me feels as though this email is inadequate because I have not been able to convey the transformations taking place in my brain. But...oh well. I can tell you that I have just moved from one Bodhi tree to another. The room where I'm staying has a terrace through which grows a bodhi tree that must be over a 100 years old. buildings have been constructed around it, holes made in the walls to give room for it's branches as it winds up through the neighborhood. I have yet to find the bottom of the trunk, it is probably somewhere down an alley with a shrine built around it. The buddha field is not confined to one time or place...the world expands and contracts at the same time...other esoteric ramblings... I'll be here another few days or so, and then head to Varanasi on the 17th. I'm curious about you all, and I love you very much and that love makes me smile, so thanks for existing.

Fresh air makes you think better

2005-11-27T23:23:00.000-08:00

So, I went to a lot of dharma classes, and I'd like to think I got at least a little out of it, some food for thought. One Rinpoche, Ming Yur talked a little bit on non-existance both of time and of material objects. This is a little piece of what he said and my thought process about it
Take the present moment, how long is it? It is connected to the past and the future. So then it can be split into two parts, the one connected to the past and the one connected to the future. But then what is left in the middle? Either something or nothing, and if it's something it can again be divided into two parts in a cycle that continues for ever and ever in a process that reaches no finite ending point, so it does not exist. If it is nothing, nothing is non-existant so it does not exist in that case either. The same train of thought can be done with anything in physical existance. Te table doesn't inherently exist, it is just made up of legs and nails and boards, which are made up of other things. And even if you get down to the level of the atom, scientists will tell you that when you split the atom nothing is there. No such thing as independant existance. If there is no independant existance and no time, who am I? The person who started typing this sentence is different than the person who is typing right NOW. But, then what keeps me together as an entity that continues to exist? Something bigger. Buddhists call it buddha nature, but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Logic can't take us as far as we need to go and a little bit of magic, a little bit of faith is going to have to be called on.

This is what my life looks like (right now)

2005-11-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

These pictures are: Top row: Our apartment in the morning sun, Melinda and me. Second row: Playing cards at a cafe with Haggai, Joseph and Melinda, a picture of the monastary where I went to some classes, and the path to our apartment. Third row, Joseph on the street in Mc Leod Ganj and another view of Melinda on a different part of the path to our apartment. Last row is two pictures from Thanksgiving dinner with Joseph, Steve, Holger Melinda and me, where we ate dal, mashed sweet potatoes, rice and spinach sitting on the floor and had delicious apple pie for dessert.

Cow cuddling

2005-11-12T20:23:00.000-08:00

An explanation of the photos starting from the top: on the ferris wheel, the man who gave me a tour of the sikh temple, with Unclie Richard in Delhi, two from a hike I did to a ridge called Triund and the two dogs who hiked all the way with me, sunset from my the patio at my hotel, riding a motorcycle with Steve, a Rinpoche whose teachings I've been going to hear, friends Melinda and Joseph and finally me getting acupuncture from a monk.

Loved ones,
How are you all? Does mass emailing offend you? If so, let me know... But, here is the story of my adventures here in India so far....
Getting off the plane, I wandered out into the crowd of people, taxis and hot weather of Mumbai. Thus began my seven hour attempt to buy a train ticket out of there. Leaving was harder than I had imagined. I went to all three train stations (some of them twice) and one bus station and managed to get ripped off by taxi drivers only twice. Eventually, I emerged from the fray and madness of it all clutching my ticket to Delhi on the second class sleeper car, no AC. On the train I found myself sitting amongst a family of 10 travelling with aunts uncles, grandchild the age of two and great grandpa, age 94. Grandma fed me along with the family, all of the delicious homeade delicacies they had packed along with them.
20 hours later we arrived in Delhi where it was already dark and there were plenty of people standing outside the train station with rickshaws, taxis or a plan to get you to stay in their hotel. I made it, through my own navigational skills to Hotel Navrang and got myself a room where I promptly showered (if that's what you call getting wet from water sputtering out of a rusty pipe) and passed out asleep.
The next morning I made the aquantiance of a Hungarian painter who has been living in India for almost three years. A very funny man, who loves to laugh, knows how to bargain with rickshaw drivers and proclaimed that God was dead when we went to a Jain temple and it was closed. So, we wandered around another tourist spot instead, Red Fort where the majority of tourists where Indian and it seemed like almost all of them wanted to take a picture with the white girl. I think I might be in about 20 family photos by now and I got to hold some very cute babies.
After getting tired of being a toursit attraction at the tourist atttraction, Peter and I headed over to the fair across the street (which actually was more like a big knot of rickshaw drivers, taxis, cars, and cows, all going very fast except for the cows) to ride the ferris wheel. After watching the machine operators reattach the fly wheel which had come off, we climbed into our seats alongside a little girl whose father didn't want to ride. She immediately began screaming, laughing and clutching me in a combined outburst of joy and fear, which was very sweet.
I also got to see my Uncle Richard who just happened to be in Delhi. Amazing synchronicity. It felt good to see some family, touch base with home and get a little spoiled. I also got to go on a whirlwind tour of various historical sites in Delhi along with Richard and his work folks which was really nice. And, the taxi driver who drove me to Richard's hotel took me on a free tour of the Sikh temple complete with free literature including a pamphlet entitled, "Human Hair: A Factory of Vital Energy". Very educational.
After a long night of "bus yoga" which consists of trying to find a comfotable position and holding it while keeping your teeth from rattling out and sleeping, I arrived in Mc Leod Ganj, very near Dharmasala. It is beautiful here, far in the North of India in the Himilayas. It's cold too, but it's nice to get a little taste of winter and the cold means that every day is clear and sunny and you can see the beautiful mountain peaks all around. It is the home of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama and many Tibetans who have fled their home land. The town is an interesting mix of Tibetans, Indians and tourists (who are now more scarce because of the cold).
After staying in a little cell like room for a week, I have moved into a very beautiful little apartment here with a girl from new York named Melinda. To get to the apartment we walk through the nunnery where there are always Tibetan nuns washing clothes, sitting in the sun or doing whatever else, who smile at as and we exchange greetings in Tibetan. Then we meander through the pine forests along a little path before arriving at home. It's a little piece of paradise.
Here in Mc Leod I have been going to lots of classes taught by various Tibetan Lamas and Rinpoches on Tibetan Buddhism. Everyone sits on the floor and learns how to get enlightened, bows to the teacher when he enters and leaves the room and chants in Tibetan at the beginning and end of class. I've learned a lot, from the classes but also from my friends Melinda and Joseph who are both here studying dharma and have been practicing buddhists for several years. My favorite quote from one of the teachings: "What's the first thing you're going to do when you get enlightened?"
I also went to see the Karmapa, a very high lama reincarnation. The whole day was an adventure. I went with a man from Alaska, Steve, who drives a motorcycle here, and as we were trying to leave, we discovered that a policeman was writing us a parking ticket. The policeman tried to explain the situation in very broken English, and when Steve didn't understand him, things got worse and worse, with the policeman yelling and strutting about and a crowd gathering to watch as the stupid Americans tried to figure out how to get out of the situation. Eventually a Tibetan man stepped in and negotiated a bribe for us. 100 rupees and the whole situation just disappeared. It was pretty funny.
So then we zoomed along on the motorcycle (don't worry family, Steve is an excellent driver) to the monastary where the Karmapa lives. The Karmapa has a strong presence. He doesn't smile, doesn't laugh and looks kind of cranky to be perfectly honest. He's only about 20 and one of the times I met him he was wearing these fantastically stylish yellow shades. During his public audiences, people line up and recieve a sacred thread from him, a red thread with a knot tied in it. Being in close proximity to him is quite the experience. When I met him I felt as though a door in my heart got shoved open, a physical sensation which was quite powerful. He really is a special person.
My life here is very mellow but also full. I go to a class on buddhism every day, teach English several times a week, I'm taking a jewlery making class and doing various other things that all manage to make the days pass fairly quickly. One of those things is relaxing at the chai shop where a man with six fingers on his right hand serves up "The Best Chai in Asia" which should not be confused with "The Best Chai in India" that can be purchased right next door.
Some of my favorite things are the cows and the stray dogs. They are suprisingly fat and happy compared to other places in India. The dogs just splay out in the sun around the library or the temple, or trot around the street sniffing eachother. The cows meander along road sides, block traffic, eat garbage, and look beautiful. I absolutely love the cows. I could write a novel about how much I love them. Sometimes I scratch them and they just stand there and get all relaxed or even nudge you for more. Anyway, I'll probably stay here until around the end of the month until I move on.
No pictures yet, check back in a few days, the ISB cord for my camera fell out through a hole in the bottom of the crappy purse I bought in Delhi. Oh well, at least it wasn't my wallet that I lost.
So, tell me about your lives, really, even those mundane details are intersting.
BIG LOVE,
Liz

My donkey muscles still hurt

2005-11-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

dinner in the sukkah

the music festival, Beresheet

In Jordan

Loved ones,
Sitting here in Ra'nana Israel on my last night in this country I wonder exactly how to even begin to describe my last month here in this country. There are so many layers here, political, social, spiritual, cultural and they all intersect and affect one another in so many ways.
I arrived in Israel after some of the most intense questioning I'd ever experienced in my life at the airport to the warm embrace of Sarah's family in Ra'nana. The presence of Sarah's family and their home was a real blessing all throughout our trip here. David and Judy have four children, who have various friends and significant others that are always coming over and so seem to be used to a constant flow of young people coming and going, talking, yelling, eating, eating, eating. So, they welcomed me quite easily into all of this, treated me as one of their own, fed and housed me and looked after all my needs. I got to eat shabbat dinner with them, see how each friday they bless each one of their children before this special meal. I learned about kosher kitchens and feasted in the sukkah during sukkot. A big big thank you to them, it's nice to have a home in a foriegn land.
Yom Kippur was a few days after we arrived, and after an afternoon meal, we fasted from sunset until sunset and went to services. The entire country shuts down on Yom Kippur. No one drives. Really no one, not even people who are not religious because sometimes people will throw rocks at your car if you are caught driving. But, people might throw rocks at you just for being a woman wearing pants if you walk through the wrong neighborhood in Jerusalem, so things are a little different here. We were here during the high holidays, so numerous times throughout our trip we had to think about coordinating with the fact that buses stop running from sunset to sunset if it's a holiday, or if it's shabbat. Even though many people here are not religous, or if they are religious, they aren't Jewish, the country is run based on the Jewish calender and Jewish beliefs.
The army is also a huge presence here. Everyone goes into it after they graduate college. So, all over the country there are teenagers in army uniforms carrying around their M16s. Regulations dictate that they have to keep their fingers on the trigger as they walk around with their guns. And this mentality of fear, of the feeling of a potential need for violence and the threat of a constant enemy inflitrates the mood of this country and many people who live in it. People on the street, in shops, aren't very nice and are even downright rude. There is a lot of anger here, and it can be hard to escape. When you're raised to hate your neighbor, that has a pretty profound effect on your consciousness.
After Yom Kippur we spent a few days with our friend Nirah from Santa Cruz. She is working on an amazing film right now called Art and Apathy which is about artists from Palestine and Israel in relationship to the political situation here. Our time with Nirah was really special. We spent a night in the desert at the home of a friend of hers (the very first pictures you see), went to the Dead Sea and spent a night in Jerusalem. The dead sea was incredible. We were there around sunset which is just about the time that the mountains on the Jordan side begin to fade from your view into the pinkish dusty haze that is hanging over the desert. We paddled around dog paddle style with our butts sticking way up out of the water because you cant help but float. We packed sulphery mud on ourselves, admired huge chunks of salt we found in it and washed off in a fresh water stream. We tried our best to ignore the gigantic amounts of trash that people had left everywhere. Just because it's the holy land doesn't seem to mean people respect it much.
Throughout all these wanderings we also got a heightened political consciousness from Nirah and heard many of her stories. We saw the places where Beduoin tribes are being forced out into the margins of what used to be their lands. They are now surrounded by a virtual wall that consists of chemical plants and other factories that make the land toxic and inhospitable. They are forced to settle down after thousands of years of being nomadic but then not given any infrastructure such as trash pick up, electricity, sewage. So when their trash piles up and they live in shacks made of car doors and other materials they can scrape together they recieve the reputation of being dirty and lazy from the people who just whizz by these villages when they drive down the highway. If you want to learn more about an organization that is trying to improve this situation, google Bhustan l'Shalom.
Just when I was feeling totally disillusioned about this country, Sarah and I went to a music festival for three days. We had a fantastic time, met amazing people and danced till we couldn't dance no more. The whole experience was one where a picture would have been worth a thousand words, but we were having too much fun to really take many pictures.
From there we spent a few days in Jerusalem. The city is fascinating. Muslims, many different sects of Jews and Christians all live on top of eachother in the same city, but hardly interact with eachother at all. You can walk for five minutes and go from an area where everything is written in Arabic and everyone is Muslim, to an area where everyone is Jewish, all the women wearing skirts and the men wearing white shirts, black jackets and various forms of kipot and then to an area where you may as well be in the US besides the different architecture. And while you are in each of these places you will notice that there is hardly any mingling of Muslims in the Jewish areas or Jews in the Muslim areas. People live as neighbors, but keep themselves and the culture seperate. But, the old city is absolutely beautiful. You still enter through one of the numerous gates that lines the city, and there you wander down narrow streets, you can explore the Arab shouk, sift through beads, eat dates, and admire all the beautiful things that have been imported from India to sell to tourists. The Jewish quarter is nearby, where you can visit the wailing wall to say your prayers, stuffing small pieces of paper into the cracks in the rocks. The mosque is right next door.
The most powerful experience we had in Jerusalem was the day that we went to the wall that Israel is building to keep Palestinians out. I barely have words to describe the absolutely horrifying nature of this wall. It feels massive, permanent, unmoving, impermeable, it is at least 25ft high and made of thick concrete. One side is completey seperated from the other. Nothing and no one gets through unless they pass through a checkpoint where they are forced to show ID and be searched by young faces barely poking out of the various army gear they are wearing. You can't even do that if you don't have the right papers, so many people are permanently seperated from families, loved ones and their land.
In our last week in this area, we spent four days and three nights in Jordan. We crossed the border at She Hussain Bridge where we were forced to wait 45 minutes for a five minute bus ride across a distance we could have walked and pay various large sums of money on both sides of the border. Once across, our taxi wound its way up through the mountains that we had gazed at from the dead sea where there were pine trees sticking sideways out of the hills and the colors of the day were changing rapidly as the sun set. Right as it went down, our driver switched on the radio which then announced the end of the daily fast for Ramadan (so we think, it was in Arabic) and him and the other passanger immediately began to eat little packaged cakes, take sips of water and chain smoke.
We arrived in Aman to Sarah's sister's friend Ahab's house where he is staying right now with his mother. She had ready for us an incredible platter of cabbage leaves stuffed with spiced rice which was some of the best food I've eaten on this trip so far. In the evening we walked around down town Aman with Ahab, experienced all the bustle and bright lights of people shopping in preparation for the celebration at the end of Ramadan. The vast majority of the city was not there 15 years ago. When we returned to Ahab's house, we found that his mom had set out three nightgowns and little slippers for us to use. When we left the next day to go to Petra, she insisted that we take all three of the nightgowns, in addition to belly dancing paraphanalia that we had admired with us. This woman was not going to take no for an answer.
In Petra we wandered through wadis (washes) climbing on rocks and exploring all of the caves and huge facades that people began to carve on the rocks here thousands of years ago. It was amazing, not only the facades, but also the pink and purple rocks that jutted up everywhere. Until 20 years ago a Bedouin tribe lived in the caves here. They were asked to move by the government and the area turned into an expensive park for tourists. Now all the Bedouins work in the park, selling rides on donkeys, camels and horses. One young man from the village, Ahmed, befriended us and took us on a free donkey ride up to the highest point in the park where there is a huge carved monastary. We mounted our mighty steeds, Matteus and Suzanna, and plodded and leaped gracefully up the mountain trail past all those people huffing and puffing while we sang bob marley songs with Ahmed. At the top we drank tea made over a little fire of twigs and watched the sunset into the desert. Because of the dust haze, we were able to look directly at the sun, see it as the big firey ball that it really is, and when it finally went down it looked as though the earth was swallowing it. Our ride out of the park, was a race against darkness where darkness won, and we rode out through the canyon in near pitch blackness with the stars coming out bright above us.
Many of you have expressed your curiosity about my impressions on this country. All I can tell you is that they are slightly muddled. On the one hand I have never been so horrified by the actions a government has taken against it's people. It sickens me that they would spend thousands of dollars to move boulders into lands where they demolished the houses of Palestinians so the people cannot rebuild. It sickens me that they are systematically erradicating the culture of the indigenous people of the land and ignoring the multitude of cultures and beliefs that has existed in this area for thousands of years. On the other hand, my whole experience here has been incredible. Sarah and I have experienced a rhythm and flow to our travels that was not present before. We have been shown amazing amounts of kindness and strength, which are only magnified further by the contrasting negativity and hatred that hangs over the country. I understand why this land is called the holy land, I can feel that somewhere in my heart. Not at the wailing wall, not during the prayer calls, not at any specific moment or place, but there is something here moves me, subtley permeates my being. This place has been a great teacher for me, and I am thankful for that.
Tonight I fly to India...
So, what were you all for Halloween? I was sitting on a bus in Jordan, no costume for me.
So much love,
Liz

I´d like my Guiness raw please

2005-10-07T03:07:00.000-07:00

Scenes from the farm...

London with Monica and Lizzy

Stonehenge and Avebury

our mansion

Loved ones,
I am writing to you all right now from Madrid. Sarah and I have had quite the variety of adventures over the past few weeks...raw food farm to London and back again.
The farm was quite the experience. I´ll admit, I had expectations about it. When I think of a farm where a community people are living because they choose to eat only raw food (and based on the finca cruda website) I picture a place full of gardens and fruit trees where there are naked golden radient hippies with huge hair walking around and giving each other massages or communing with the moon. So, when Sarah and I arrived at this small, dry plot of earth where there were only orange trees with over ripe, dried out oranges hanging off of them to find four 44 year old men with missing teeth and strange habits, we were a little taken off guard. But, while initially we planned to run as fast as we could out of there the following morning, we ended up staying for 10 days and having a rather pleasant stay. To really explain the experience, it is necessary to explain the people who made the experience:
(Briefly for those of you who haven´t heard of the raw food diet: It consists of eating only food that has not been heated or cooked. No frying, baking, steaming or anything like that. The reasoning for this is that cooking kills the enzymes in food and that cooking food is not natural. Our closest relatives are monkies and they only eat raw food, so we should too. Also, cooked food is the cause of all the worlds problems, everything from overpopulation to disease to crying babies. I read a book about raw food while I was there where every chapter ended with ¨Cooked food is poison¨)
Balta is the owner and visionary and person who orders everyone else around. He does fit into my vision of the golden hippies I expected to find. Long white hair, full white beard, he is shorter than I am and actually has some meat on his bones, which can be rare for raw foodists. He is quite famous in the raw food community and even publishes a raw food magazine. he has been eating only raw food for about 15 years and has had numerous farms where people come and stay and work the land and eat only raw food. He also drives like an absolute maniac and almost constantly sings songs in the flamenco style. By the end of our stay I had developed a lot of respect for Balta, his heart is very open to all kinds of people. He does not judge people based on their dietary habits even though he believes so strongly in the path he has chosen. He is also one of the hairiest people I have ever met.
Celio is a fruitarian. Fruitarians are people who chose to only eat fruit and some nuts. No vegetables, no grains, no spices. Sarah and I sat down to eat our first food at the farm, big plates of fruit, and when Sarah was peeling one of her peaches with a knife, Celio was looking at her like she was butchering a cow or something right in front of him. He was the first person we really spent time with during our first hours on the farm and he really scared the crap out of us. We were relieved to find out that the others on the farm do not agree with his way of eating and think that he is basically anorexic and has a generally bad attitude. His favorite topic of conversation was to lecture us all on ¨respecting the combinations¨ in other words, you´re only allowed to eat certain foods together at the same time. But, I think being in the community at the farm was good for Celio, by the time we left he actually managed to converse about things other than food combining.
Manuel was from Madrid, used to be a taxi driver and had only arrived at the farm about four days before us. He was missing all of his front teeth and had very bright blue eyes and a very steady and stable feeling to him. He worked hard, went to bed early and loved onions. He came to the farm because he had no money and no other place to be, and was working for his food and housing.
Alberto (save the best for last) walked around in tiny orange shorts and always wore a bell around his waist so he jingled wherever he went. He had by far the best laugh I have every heard, this nasally kind of ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa where he would throw his head back and just lose himself in the laugh. He also was constantly moving, stepping back and forth from one foot to the other and had the habit of saying most things twice and very quickly. Alberto did all kinds of ¨taboo¨things on the farm, such as one night when he pulled Sarah aside and whispered to her, ¨Hey do you like chocolate milk?....Cause I´ve got some milk and some chocolate so you know...later, I´m going to make some and you can have some if you want....¨ (The spainsh version is as follows: ¨¿Te gusta leche? ¿Te gusta leche? Porque yo lo tengo, yo lo tengo...) Sarah politely refused. He would do things like walk to town and come back with candy wrappers in his pocket or big cardboard tubes that he would sing into pretending they were digereedoos.
In terms of what we did at the farm, we didn´t do much. We went around to other farms and scavenged things like about 75 pounds of avocados or several boxes of persimmons. We picked olives out of other people´s orchards and sarah and I learned that goats can climb trees and will do so if they are hungry for olives. We also sat around the fire every night and drummed, and after the drumming we philosophised. At night we ate dinner by candlelight and drank home made wine from Balta´s friends in Portugal. Other than that we did a lot of sleeping and reading.
And then...we went to London.
Yes, we decided that we couldn´t be on this continent and not go visit Monica and Lizzy (friends from England that we met in Santa Cruz). So, we flew out of Malaga at about midnight and arrived in London that morning at Monica´s house at about 4am. Monica and Lizzy were still up waiting for us and greeted us with huge hugs and smiles and laughter and a plate of these delicious cakey things called food of the gods. We chattered for a while in the kitchen and then went to sleep in our luxurious fluffy bed with real pillows and a down comforter and everything.
The next day we went on ¨Lizzy´s informal tour of London¨ highlights included: walking by the London foot hosptial, trying to visit the preserved head of the founder of the university she went to which has to be rolled into all the important meetings at the school, and more typical things such as a stroll in Hyde park, a visit to the British National museum which Lizzy and Monica acurately described to us as ¨all the things the British have stolen over the years¨ and riding a double decker bus. That night we ate raviolis and watched Lord of the Rings, very relaxing. Monica left too soon, she had to go back to school, and we all moved over to Lizzy´s house for the night. The next day Sarah and I moved into our mansion in London. Yes, we had our very own two story, four bedroom, two bath, full kitchen, living room, free cable, dining room that seats 10 flat for our very own personal use from Monday till thursday. Ah, the penthouse, it rocked. Monica´s family has access to this apartment, and were kind enough to let us stay there for a few days. (THANK YOU MONICA!!!!!!!!) In the apartment we ate chocolate, raspberries, grapes and drank wine, took baths and watched trashy tv by nightfall. During the day we went to bookstores, museums, random neighborhoods, saw the new Pride and Prejudice, and rode the tube all over town.

Then...we rented a car.
For those of you who don´t know, Sarah doesn´t drive (however ¨I´m an excellent navigator, dude!¨ which is true). So, I got in that backwardass car and drove us on the wrong side of the road all over the English countryside so that we could visit such wonders of the world as Stonehenge and Avebury and the Salisbury Hill.
At Stonehenge we were outraged by the fact that we had to pay 5.50 pounds (which is like $9) each to get in. But, a tour group arrived at the same time, so we just moseyed on through the gate alongside the tour group. We were hoping to run into some faries or at least some pagans while we there so they could explain to us the mysteries of stonhenge, but the place mostly just seemed to be full of toursits, so we just walked around the stones in awe, taking pictures and giggling. Avebury was also very cool, but in some ways the best part about it was the sheep. The stones there are much more spread out and sheep just graze freely around the field. It means you have to watch your step but also you are surrounded by fluffy white sheep bawing and munching grass which really just seems so typical of the English countryside. Which, by the way I am in love with. We drove all through these tiny winding roads through the misty countryside, going through little towns where houses still have thatched roofs and there are rolling fields and chimneys with smoke coming out of them and such. It made me just want to sit in a little cabin and spin wool all winter.
We headed back to London just in time to get stuck in rush hour traffic, but were home in time to make dinner and spend some time with Lizzy on our last night. Then, the next morning (still night time?) we woke up at 3:30am and drove to the airport where we dropped off our car and boarded our plane back to spain. On Saturday night Sarah flies out to Israel and I follow her the following morning. We have an adress there, so....if you feel like sending us anything.....feel free to (but mail takes awhile, so do it in the next weekish).....no pressure......we love mail.....no pressure....the adress is:
Our Names
c/o David Kaplan
20 Hashiryon St
Ra´anana 43266
ISRAEL

Lots of love to all of you, and I´d love to hear how you´re doing.
Liz

Happiness is a bed on an overnight train

2005-09-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

Marrakesh, scenes from the plaza and medina

At Jamal´s drum shop and his house for dinner.

At Ouzoud, the waterfall

Salaam Alekum...
Having emerged out of the magical madness that is Morroco, I sit here writing to you all from Malaga, Spain. Sarah and I just spent the last week in Morroco, an experience unlike any other I have had before. Our first night we stayed in Tangier, where the people were unbelievably nice. About fifteen people helped to direct us towards our hostel (purely from the niceness of their hearts) a fellow diner at a restaurant shared some of his yummy dates with us for dessert, a hundred others who offered help, kind smiles or conversation.
Having trouble knowing exactly where to start in describing the Morrocan experience. Wandering through the narrow streets and allies of the Medina in Marrakesh there are brightly colored shirts, tons of plastic fake amber jewlery, cheesy daggers, leather shoes, things for the everyday lives of the people who live there like saftey pins, mint, huge piles of olives, spices, hanging slabs of meat, notebooks for the kids who are returning to school. The spice sellers all try to get us into their shops where they give us a quick tour of the oddities that they keep in the jars that line their shelves. Blue iridescent beetles that work just like viagra, leeches for what ails you, and "if that cream I gave you doesn´t work, you can come back tomorrow and stick those leeches on my head!" And, yes there really are snake charmers who sit surrounded by cobras playing the whiny sounding flute and old berber ladies who will read your palm for 100 derham as long as you don´t mind that neither of you speak the same language.
Sometimes we find refuge from the madness in a music shop, owned by our new friends jamal and abdul. They make us endless cups of mint tea which you pour from two feet in the air into a tiny little cup and sip with satisfied slurping noises and chit chat. Jamal learns we like Tracy Chapman and thus begins the endless loop of Tracy Chapman music that we listen to in his shop surrounded by fabrics, drums, more fake daggers, carpets, and traditional berber guitars. We´re touched as we read the huge scrapbook that Jamal has complied over the years of postcards and notes that people have sent him from all over the world after they met in his shop in Marrekesh and debate the state of the world and other such philosphical notions. We also spend long periods of time hearing about Sarah, Jamals niece, who is about one and a half and who he very much wants us to meet. We accept his dinner invitation and zoom across Marrakesh on the backs of the motorbikes that everyone weaves through pedestrians, taxis and small allies with potholes and stray cats. I get my only official tour of Marrakesh (Jamal used to be a guide) by the light of the full moon where I get to see various gardens, the olive orchards that surround the city, the royal palace, and the place where the huge storks (just like the ones we saw in Teruel) roost at night on top of the huge earth wall that surrounds the Medina.
Jamal´s brother´s wife who is gigantically pregnant prepares food for us all, ptoato salad, french fries and some yummy curry thing which we all eat out of the same plates, reaching across eachother to pick up tasty morsels with our fingers and sop up sauses with our bread. Jamal eats faster than anyone I have every seen. The food flies into his mouth at the speed of light while he continues to talk even though there are french fries hanging out of the side of his mouth and small bits of rice fall onto the table. Then we drink tea on the roof terrace, listen to more Tracy Chapman, and listen to the cooing of the pet pigeons his brother keeps.
Our days in Marrakesh pass fairly peacefully, yes we are hassled, but Marrakesh has cleaned up its act in the last few years, we learn from the local rastas that as a Morrocan you can be fined and even get jail time for talking to tourists if you are not a permitted guide so in general the environment is somewhat more laid back when it comes to hassling tourists. And we find refuge in little things, like going to visit one of the guys who sells dates, apricots, figs, and nuts to buy some of his goodies to hand out to people and nibble on oursleves as the day goes by. He always greets us with a huge smile and presses little tidbits of his treats into our hands for us to munch while we make our purchases. The friendly guys who work at the hotel give us free bannana milkshakes, we lean back against cushions after stuffing ourselves with olives, potato salad, tomato cucumber salad and other such delicacies.
After a few days in the dusty city, we head out of town to Ouzoud, the biggest and most beautiful waterfall in Morroco. We are dropped off in Ouzoud, and as the taxi zooms away, we feel slightly confused because the landscape here looks just as dusty, hot and uninviting as the rest of the surrounding landscape has been. Parched from our hot taxi ride, we shrug and start walking. As we pass through the miniscule town, the sound of rushing water begins to massage our eardrums. A hugely tall waterfall crashes down and creates a small valley that is lined with olive trees, squash vines, small cafes where you can camp and wild monkeys that climb the steep walls and wrestle about in the bushes. We camp at the bottom of the waterfall, away from most of the hustle and bustle where it is quiet, and I can sleep, because by this point my lymph nodes have miraculously swollen to the size of golf balls and sleep is the only thing on my mind. Sarah watches as the setting sun makes the waterfall change all the colors of the rainbow while I sleep peacefully under grape arbors on pillows on the ground. Sadly, we only get to spend one night in this little chunk of paradise because we have already bought our tickets in the sleeper compartment of a train headed back to Tangiers the next day. So after a relaxing morning in the shade of the grape vines, where I write notes to Sarah in a notebook because my throat hurts too much to talk at this point, we walk up the 700 steps to the top of the waterfall. We climb back into the hot dusty taxi in which a total of six passengers plus one driver are crammed into a mercedes and wind our way back across the desert with the sun beating through the windows, endless olive orchards and herds of goats munching the dry bushes of the countryside. Our butts hurt like crazy, and I´m still feeling feverish, but the journey was more than worth it.
Back in Marrakesh, we sneak showers at the hostel, eat dinner, drink more free bananna juice and board the night train for Tangers. I immediately fall asleep not to awake until the next morning when the conductor taps on our window to announce our arrival.
Now, back in Spain, we head to finca cruda tomorrow or the next day to enjoy a bit of mother nature and get our hands in the dirt.
So much love to all of you,
Liz

I´m still picking tomato out of my mullet

2005-09-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

A drum circle that happens every sunday in the park in Madrid

Dinner at Dablo´s house, camping in the RV park, the beach

Photos from Barcelona (including the chocolate shop which is the best place to people watch in the whole city)

Girona and the view of La Rambla from our hostel in Barcelona

Photos from Teruel, our balcony where we ate breakfast, the view from the balcony and the plaza full of motorcycles.

Friends and family around the world...
I am writing this email listening to calming spanish guitar music and drinking yummy tea in the home of a friend of ours, Dablo, in Madrid. It´s so nice to be in a place where people actually live and there´s a couch and kitchen and such.
Sarah and I have had many adventures since the last time I wrote. We decided to camp at the beach and somehow found ourselves setting up our tent on a patch of dirt in an RV park in a town called Benicassim which is on the coast between Valencia and Barcelona. But, we still got to sit on the beach and relax a bit, went to bed early and it was just nice to sleep outside. We then went to Barcelona where we spent about five days. We found a hostel right on La Rambla (the main strip which is poppin 24 hours a day) so we were right up in the center of the action. It was probably the most uncomfortable living experience I´ve had in a very long time. It was hot, crowded, loud and smoky. But, what kept us there was the kitchen (which was actually more like a hot plate than anything else). We cooked up some quinoa, tempeh, and made a yummy salad with seaweed and everything (everyone thought we were crazy granola eating hippies). After three nights we switched to another hostel, by far nicer, and stayed on an all girls floor which made things a little mellower. Picture, girls sprawled out sleeping peacefully in their underwear versus drunk australian guys yelling in board shorts. But, Barcelona was very cool. Sarah and I spent the vast majority of our time wandering the streets. Down alleys and narrow roads we ran into all kinds of colorful grafitti, opera singers, jugglers, street performers, new mullet varieties, and thousands of tourists. We also discovered Maoz Fallafel convieniently placed in several locations around the old city which gives you a pita and some falafels and then you can fill up the pita which as many veggies and salads from the buffet as you possibly can. Needless to say, Sarah and I ate there once a day, and proceeded to develop a highly effective strategy for filling our pitas as full as possible while making sure that you could still eat it and that the various condiments would be all mixed together in each bite. An art form really. Speaking of art forms, we also went to the Picasso museum which was very cool...and saw park Guel and La Sagrada Famillia, designed by Guadi, so not all our time was spent mullet gazing and falafel eating. We also met some very cool Italians with whom we hung out in the plaza until the men who come with big hoses to spray the concrete clean every night shooed us out by continuing to spray despite the fact that we were sitting there. We decided to take a day trip to see the Dali museum in Figueres. We stopped along the way in Girona to change buses and decided to walk around the city a bit before going on to the museum. But, Girona´s charm was inescapable and instead of making it to the museum, we spent the day in Girona, exploring the ancient Jewish quarter, gothic architecture, narrow streets with plants spilling everywhere, the odor of butter croissants floating out of windows. We even found a little spot of nature, trees, some benches which made me virtually extatic because we´d been in the city for so long. (the truth is that this ¨nature¨I speak of was actually more like the town drainage ditch, but hey, it smelled like trees and good clean dirt and was very pleasent if you ask me). We also drank glasses of wine on the plaza and exclaimed about our good fortune.
However, my favorite part of the last few days was our trip to Teruel. We decided to wander off the tourist track a bit and chose to go to this sleepy provincial capital where the death rate exceeds the birth rate (the only place in Spain where this is true, all this information according to the guide book). But, after arriving at the town, this ceased to be a surprising fact because we found that the average age of the residents was about 70. Teruel is famous for it´s ham, and very proud that it hosts the sarcophogi of Las Dos Amantes, a story reminiscent of Romeo and Juliette. Aparently visiting the museum and gazing at these dead bodies is a popular pilgramige for young newly weds. Not my idea of romantic, but no one asked me. At any rate, in Teruel we quickly made friends with some of the only young people in sight and proceeded to stay out later with them than we had since we arrived in Spain. No rest for the weary. But, it was really great to be able to hang out with some of the locals. They had never met americans before and were absolutely shocked that Teruel actually even appeared in our guidbook. Saturday, we waved goodbye to fair Teruel as hundreds of motorcyclists rode in for some kind of convention and storks on their migration south perched atop one of the medieval towers that still stands in the town. The juxtaposition was striking, motorcycles, children laughing, old people walking in pairs, storks, and a prevailing sentiment of peace (despite the backfiring or the motorcycles).
Now were are in Madrid for a few days, I have to get my visa to go to India and then we´re heading down to Morocco, and to spend time in Granada and on a farm on La Costa del Sol. I hope this email finds you all well and I´d love to hear from you.
Love,
Liz
PS Sarah sends her love to all of you and was an integral part in the making of this email and the adventures described therin.
PPS For pictures....lualiz.blogspot.com

Um, are these organic?

2005-08-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures of Sarah and I from La Tomatina, but only after we´ve already been sprayed down with hoses repeatedly. They wouldn´t let us back on the train unless we were moderately clean. If you want to see what the actual madness looked like, go to www.latomatina.es. It was not a safe place to bring a camera.

Greetings from the mullet capital of the world!
Not kidding about that one, there really are more mullets here than I ever would imagined. The different varieties astound me. There´s dreadlock mullets, she mullets, mohawk mullets, curly mullets and any combination of the aforementioned with the possibility of shaving random sections of the hair. There´s also those who prefer the rat tail, placement seems to be optional, and you get extra points if it´s dreaded.
But, on a different note, anyone who is not interested in being included in this email list should just let me know. Otherwise, you´ll be getting long winded emails from me from time to time. Also, just so you know, if you write to me, I´ll write you back and I do very much want to know what´s going on with all of you.
Anyway, Sarah and I have been in Spain for a few days now. We spent our first two nights in Madrid. Madrid wasn´t my favorite, everyone has that ¨I´m kind of pissed off because I´m so much cooler than the rest of you¨ vibe, which isn´t really my cup of tea. But, luckily we made friends with some folks who told us about a drum circle that happens in the park every Sunday. It was really great, the sun was setting, the people were drumming, dancing, all in this beautiful colloseum kind of thing with lion sculptures.
Next we journeyed on to Valencia. When we arrived monday night, we found that every single youth hostel in town was full because the town is packed with people all waiting for la tomatina (more on that soon). We trekked all over town with our backpacks, finally found an affordable place and set out to find some dinner. Valencia is a nice city, seems to have more of that alternative kind of vibe to it, we´ve spent time walking around, eating cheap falafel, going to the huge mercat central and getting excited about avocados and olives. Last night we saw a very cool flamenco performance at a club here. A woman from Argentina stomped her feet, swayed her hips and fluttered her hands with the most beautifully dramatic scowl I have seen in a long time.
But, by far the most exciting thing thus far had been la tomatina. It takes place in a town about an hour away from here called Buñal. It´s their yearly festival, and it turns out that about 40,000 people come from all over Europe and anywhere else to join in. Everyone gathers in the center of town, actually packs in like sardines is more accurate. Then, groups of rowdy men begin ripping the shirts off of any other man they see while yelling ¡Camisetta! and then whip eachother with the torn shirts. Women are mostly exempt from this, but the occasional woman does get caught in the fray. At this point you also begin to notice that there are plastic sheets hung up as high as about 25 ft on the surrounding walls and you wonder why. At 11:00 a horn sounds and in rolls a huge truck full of 15 people who begin to chuck tomatoes at the crowd. All hell breaks loose as everyone begins pelting eachother with tomatoes, rubbing them into eachothers faces, hair, everywhere. Then the truck somehow manages to actually drive down the street where there is already no space to make sure that everyone gets their fair share of tomato peltage. You literally cannot move while the truck passes through because you are smashed against everyone else. The truck passed down the street a total of four times, hurling more and more tomatoes. Somehow the street became full of a watery tomato soup substance that came up to our shins. The main goal in all of this seems to be: survive, get absolutly covered in tomatoes, and make sure that everyone else does too. People who get claustrophobic, don´t like tomatoes or crowds, being dirty or smashed should not go to this event. If you want to have an absolutely insane adventure, I highly recommend this one.
In other news, today we found the local health food store, I don´t think the day possibly could have gotten any better.
Love,
Liz
If you want to see pictures check out la tomatina website http://www.latomatina.es/

Venezuela #5

2005-08-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Simone and Rachel in Choroni, our hotel in Merida and the area around the hot springs

8/13/05
To all you special people out there...
Right now I am in Caracas, my last night here on this continent. I´m staying with Katie Lahey, who those of you from Santa Cruz might know. She´s got this great apartment with some other activists from all over the world right in the heart of down town Caracas. Right now the place is especially full because people from all over the world are staying there in order to attend the international youth conference. (In other news, the man next to me just blew his nose into his hand, wiped it on his pants and continued typing). But, as I was saying...it´s cool to be surrounded by so much politically conscious youth all of a sudden. I´ve gotten to hear a bit about the conference, people are into it, but aparently it´s a lot of rhetoric and many participants are hungry for more talk of what actually can be done.
At any rate, Caracas is crazy. It´s HUGE for one thing, and we´re right down town. To get to this email spot we wound our way through crowds of people, past empanada and hot dog stands, streetside fruit vendors, blaring horns, sirens and huge drops of water falling out of the sky. Quite a change from peaceful mountain Merida and the beautiful tropical beach from where I just came.
Before leaving Merida I spent my days going to school, being with friends, and went to a beautiful hot springs one morning. The hot springs was definately a high light. I didn´t have time to go to the really really nice ones, so I went to some closer to town. However, I did manage to avoid going to the main area which is more like a swimming pool than an actual hot springs complete with blaring american music and lots of beer. Instead, I walked through these people´s little farm, under fruit trees, past a very skinny cow, eating wild berries very reminiscent of strawberries. Eventually there it was...a beautiful little stream of hot hot water trickling right out of the side of the mountain, surrounded by green fuzzy moss hair. Slightly further down the stream, a little pool had been built up, perfect for laying in, lounging. I LOVE HOT WATER. And, here I have definately missed it. I think I´ve been lucky enough to have about 3 hot showers since I got here, but I still had been feeling the absence one of those super relaxing showers or baths. But, here I got my fix, surrounded by jungle, with a little view of the mountains peaking out through the trees. Perfect.
Thursday night, my cousin Simone and our friend from language school, Rachel and I all got on a bus to Maracai en route the beach. It was a bus cama, meaning, the seats lay back pretty flat and you can kind of sleep better than you might on a regular bus. The man next to me seemed to agree with this statement, his rhythmic snoring only interuppted ocassionaly by one of my sharp elbows. Not too hard, just enough to stimulate a pause.
We got to Maracai early in the morning, slightly confused and got off the bus to collect our bags. Standing around wondering where to catch the bus to our next stop, Choroni, I started chatting with some taxi drivers about it. They soon informed me that we were not in Maracai, but Valencia, my snoring buddy had been wrong when I asked him on the bus. Luckily the bus was still there, and mishap averted.
In Maracai, we got oursleves on the right bus and rode another two hours on the tiniest mountain curve road ever. It might be barely big enough to consider a one lane road in the states, but here the bus drivers seem to consider it equivalent to any other main highway and zoom around blind curves and hair pin turns blaring their horns. Passing people is especially exciting. We got to the sleepy town of Santa Clara at about 11 Friday morning. Lucky for us, it was the one day a year when they celebrate their patron saint. We quickly found a room in these people´s house right off the main square where we made ourselves comfortable in the ridiculous heat and prepared to spend the day at the beach. The beach was gorgeous, just like you would expect a Carribean beach to be, coco palms, warm water, white sand. Lots and lots of people, beautiful Venezuelan butts hanging out of thong bikinis, speedos, beer. Plopped in the shade of a coco palm we spent the day relaxing and doing nothing.
Night time at the beach is more exciting. The local people (and tourists of course) gather in the main square and play drums and dance. All day people had been asking me if I knew how to dance tambores (drums). I replied yes, of course, and had been planning to dance all day. Unfortnuately I discovered that dancing tambores means you are in the center of a huge crowd of people all watching while you freak dance a guy until another guy comes and pushes either the guy or you and the guy out of the circle and starts dancing. Not my idea of dancing to drums, so I just kind of hung back and watched which was exciting enough.
I also made friends with an older Argentinian man selling rings. We ended up engaging in one of the most intense philosophical conversations I´ve had in a long time (who would have thought I could do it in Spanish!). We debated whether having an open mind was more important than having an open heart... I won´t tell you either of our opinions, good dinner conversation for those of you so inclined.
At any rate, tomorrow I go to the airport at five in the morning. I´ll be back in the states tomorrow, four weeks older than when I left, more able to speak spanish, and excited to talk to as many of you as I possibly can in a week.
Lots of Love, Liz

Venezuela #4

2005-08-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Pictures from our trip to Los Nevados and the ride on the teleferico

8/9/05
Hello loved ones,
It´s been a while since I´ve written. Life sped up a bit and I haven´t had as much time. So, I´ll try to update you all on my adventures since the last time I wrote...
I´ve been continuing with my spanish classes. I´ve learned all the grammer there is to know, it´s just a matter of practice now, especially that pesky subjunctive. But, I´ve also made some close friends here with local people who I can only speak spanish with. That´s been nice on many levels. On one hand it´s like having a personal guide for free, on another its constant spanish lessons, but most importantly it´s just plain fun. I really love the people I´ve met here. They´re very open minded, and love to enjoy life to its fullest. During the day we hang out in the park, at night we go out and dance salsa (I´m still learning, but I have some patient teachers). The other benefit to having local friends is that I don´t get hit on as much. While it is moderately amusing sometimes to walk down the streets to men yelling things like Hey Flacka (hey slim! would be the translation) or Hola princessa, it also gets really old after a while. However, just when I think I can´t stand it any more, some guy will yell something so outrageous that all I can do is laugh, shrug my shoulders, and remember, that´s the culture here.
Other adventures I have had....I had my first South American acupuncture experience. Actually I went three times. There´s a lady who works as a part time dentist part time acupuncturist here who I heard about from a friend at the spanish school. She´s pretty good. My favorite experience was when I was being treated at the same time as another Venezuelan woman and the other woman had brought a meditation tape to listen to while we relaxed with the needles in us during the treatment. So, I got to hear the cheesy wave crashing sound of a meditation tape over which a man was telling me in spanish to relax more deeply with each breath and imagine myself in a meadow feeling the sunshine on my skin. And, truth be told, I felt very relaxed at the end of it all. In other esoteric Liz news, today I am going to go to a woman who reads tarot cards with a couple of teachers from the school. I´m excited to do it. The woman was recommended to one of the teachers at the school by the same acupuncturist I just mentioned.
But, I hope you are all still with me, because I haven´t yet told you of my journey to the mountains. Truly fantastic. As they say here, Lo Maximo! Simone, me and a friend from here in town, Coco, all rode the teleferico (similar to a long ski lift, but enclosed and with benches to sit on) way up the mountain. The view was absolutely gorgeous, town giving way to tiny farms, to jungle, to arid mountain coldness and rocks and shrubs. One plant that must be in the same family as mullin was the most common. We harvested some and made a delicious tea. When we got to the fourth stop of the teleferico, we got out, and proceeded to walk five and a half hours through some of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen in my life to the tiny tiny miniscule town of Los Nevados. I wish I could explain to you all the beauty that exists in those peaks. Jagged rocks, bushes, beautiful bubbling streams pouring out of every hillside. At one stream I decided I had to go swimming (even though it was cold up there). So, in my trusty chacos I splashed up the stream until I came to the most beautiful secluded mountain pool I could ever have dreamed of. THere I proceed to dunk myself into the freezing cold snow melt, I could barely breath, but I swear in that moment all my troubles (as if I really had any to begin with) just got washed right away. Then I just stood there in the middle of that pool, goose bumps, sun shining breathing that clean crisp air and with mountains towering and water rushing. Wow.
Eventually we came to a small bodega, where a woman was sitting, writing in a notebook. SHe had soft drinks, crackers and such to sell and chatted it up with Coco. One of Coco´s favorite tricks up in the mountains is to get nice and friendly with the people who live there, and then he proceeds to take off his hat, out fall is dreadlocks, he proclaims ¨soy un hippie!¨ and all the people can do is laugh. One person even thought his hair was a wig. Through Coco´s conversation we learned that this woman at the bodega, probably in her 50´s could do the same walk that we did in five and a half hours in two and a half, and what she was doing in that notebook was learning to write. It´s never too late.
After we walked about another hour, we finally came to the town of Los Nevados. We found a little posada to call home for the night on the outskirts of town called posada el descanso which Coco managed to secure for us for the amazingly cheap price of 11,000 bolivares each for the night which also included three meals. That´s about $4, maybe a little less. The posada was basically just two extra rooms in these people´s house, which was actually quite nice. I bvecame acquainted with the chickens that wandered in and out of the kitchen, the baby pigs that lived just out side the back door, the runny nosed children who all had colds, and the grandmother of them all who so caringly prepared us a salad of tomatoes, cilantro and onions to eat with our arepas, a bread like thing they make here, these ones made with homegrown wheat.
Los Nevados only got electricity 10 years ago, the only cars are the ones that drive tourists up and down the mountain, they don´t have television, there´s only one phone for the whole town (and no cell reception) and i¨m not sure, but I suspect that there might be more mules than people. At the very least, the mule is the local equivalent of a motorcylce. Not that people there really need them, we rented mules to return to the teleferico (too tired to make the journey on foot) and the owner of the mules walked (very quickly keep in mind, those mules can move) along side the mules while we rode without seeming to break a sweat. I was very impressed. Meanwhile, I was struggling to just maintain myself in my saddle while my trusty steed scaled mountains with me on its back.
But, I have to run...I´ve got an appointment with a tarot card reader after all...
I love you all.
I return to the states on Sunday, I would love to talk with you all, hear your voices before I leave again.
And, for those of you who made it reading this far, congradulations.
Liz

Venezuela #3

2005-08-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Folks from the school

7/26/05
Friends, Loved ones, Family,So you may be asking yourself, another email from Liz...already? Well, yes. My life is fairly leisurly here. And after a while my legs get tired walking around, so I sit myself down in an internet cafe and write to you all about my adventures. I´ve been in Spanish classes for two days now. The school is very nice, they offer english classes for people here which is cool. I have class for two hours in the morning from 8 until 10 (very early) and then again from 2 to 4. So far it´s been pretty easy, but tonight I have to do some homework.Yesterday Simone and I stumbled upon a festival/protest in the street. Some people had a stage set up and different musicians performed. Anything from reggae in Spanish but with words like lion interspersed because it rhymes with zion to hip hop with beat boxing in the background to hard core rock and some young boys forming a mosh pit in front of the stage. There was also a clown show, jugglers, and so on. My kind of place. We chatted a bit with a guy who was helping to put it on. The artists of Merida were protesting because in the constitution here it says they can sell their art whereever they want, on the street or anywhere, but the police here don´t let them. It was also a celebration of the end of the 13 moon cycle of the Mayan calender and thus an international day of peace and the beginning of a new cycle. It was a lot of fun, and warmed my heart to see a bunch of artists being crazy in the streets.This morning the school hosted a little social hour for all the students complete with cake and punch and cheesy games. It was nice to chat with the other students a bit. A good bunch, some from Switzerland, Canada, the US, many different ages too. But, my favorite character was the caretaker of the school. His name is Feliz (which means happy) and he pretty much embodies his name. He really likes to do outdoor kind of stuff and sometimes takes students on adventures in the mountains, which I would definately like to do at some point before we leave. He is also an amature artist and astrologer doesn´t drink and likes to do yoga. I think we´ll get along great.So, things are going well here, making friends, exploring, eating arepas (these cornmeal things that people eat here), walking around A LOT. Every day we walk at least two hours total to go back and forth from school. Much love to you all

Venezuela #2

2005-08-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

Pictures of our host family, the house and the mountains of Merida

7/24/05
Hello loved ones,
Here{s the update on my adventures here in Venezuela. We spent a few days in Cumana, in complete luxury. We hung out in a nice apartment with air conditioning where we had free access to the fridge, cable TV, and DSL internet. Monica and Willy, the host family that we were staying with were very nice and very friendly. Especially Monica, she giggled after almost everything she said and always had second helpings of dessert. Very nice people. One day they took us to a fancy hotel which they belong to like a club and we hung out at the beach and by the pool. The carribean is so nice! Warm turquoise water, white sand...a little bit of paradise. Yesterday we went to Mochima national park which is along the coast. You get a boat to take you to your own secluded beach, hang out there for a few hours, and the boat comes back and picks you up. Unfortunately we chose a beach with almost no shade, so at times we were all huddled next to the cliff that was next to the beach in the 2 feet of shade that was cast by the rocks. But, that didn{t make it any less beautiful. We did a little snorkeling too and saw some nice corals and fish. Night time for us consisted of baking things such as pineapple upside down cake or bananna bread and watching movies in english with spanish subtitles.
Now Simone and I have arrived in Merida. It is absolutely gorgeous here. We stepped off the plane this morning and the view around me took my breath away. Huge steep mountains all around us. The air is much fresher here, it just feels cleaner because it is cooler and less humid. We had to get up at 4 45 this morning to catch our flight here. But, that{s better than having to ride a bus for 20 hours so I{m not complaining. Senora Gladys was there to pick us up from the airport. Sheñs probably in her forties, but just like all the women here she was dressed to the nines in tight pink pants through which you can see the outline of her thong. No one leaves the house here without getting all dressed up. The women buy there clothes a size too small and nothing is left to the imagination. Today simone and I went into a church and I put on my sweater to cover my shoulders and be more polite before I went in. But, turns out I needn{t have worried because almost immediately we came across three 20something women with skin for miles and boobs popping out everywhere.
Walking around Merida, I really like it here. It{s really beatiful, slightly reminiscent of Antigua. There{s quite a few tourists, but I can see why, it{s really gorgeous. I{m hoping to do some trekking in the mountains.
I love you all,
Liz

Venezuela #1

2005-08-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the National Park Mochima

7/21/05
I love getting emails from you all! So, here I am in Venezuela. It´s been an interesting journey so far, but not in ways I would´ve imagined. We got picked up by a man at the airport who had a sign that said ¨Simone Landon y su perro^ Well, Simone is my cousin, and I guess I must be the dog they were referring to. Oh well. We changed dollars to bolivares with a sketchy looking guy who our taxi driver knew. It´s better to do it on the black market here, you get a better exchange rate. We met up with my cousin´s friend Nick who is here staying with people who belong to the rotary club because his parents belong too. For those of you who don´t know what that means (I didn´t) it means that they are very rich. So, we got picked up from the hotel where we spent the night in a fancy taxi that was pre ordered for us, and went to this nice apartment in Caracas. Then, a woman named Fina drove us to Puerto de la Cruz where she lives. The roads here are absolutely crazy. Gas is fantastically inexpensive. In fact, a gallon of water costs more than a gallon of gas. So, everyone has a car and everyone drives, and there´s no rules about how to do it. Or, as the locals say, the only rule is that whoever gets there first has the right of way. But, anyway, as we were speeding at 90 miles an hour down a small and windy road with stray dogs and small children fighteningly close to the edge of the road, I took a little nap, talked to Fina a little bit and just sat there. It took almost all day to drive there. We got to Peurto de la Cruz just in time to see the sun setting and the full moon rising. Very beatuiful...it´s right on the coast with warm soft salty air. Today, we drove from Puerto de la Cruz to Cumana where we are going to stay until Sunday with Nick and his host parents. They are very nice. We went to the grocery store (actually we went to three separate grocery stores) and bought a lot of food and sat around and drank lemonade while they made anti Chavez jokes. Yep, they´re rich, so they hate Chavez. An anti chavez joke they loved was that he can´t have his mole on his forehead removed because that is where he keeps his brain. There´s all kinds of political murals here both pro and anti Chavez. It´s pretty interesting. The view I´m getting of the country right now seems pretty limited. It´s nice to be travelling and living in such luxury, but it´s also not as interesting or fun. But, Sunday Simone (my cousin) and I are going to Merida, in the Andes where we will start language school. I´m excited about it. Merida is a college town that´s said to have a lot of good culture and goings on. So, the travels are going well so far... Spanish here is a little difficult to understand, their accent is pretty different, but I´m catching on. I love you all.
Liz