The Part where Spaniards like to Hack Apart Farm Animals.

¡Hola guapos! September 26 marks one month that I've been in Spain, and what a month it's been. I've finally started to do some in-Spain travel and am in the process of planning trips to Manchester, Berlin and Basel. After India, it was nice to be a little more settled and take advantage of all Madrid has to offer, but I'm ready to grab my backpack and head into the abyss again. One of the things I think is really important to share with all of you after a month here is something you will not find in a Spanish guidebook. Oh no, no, while Lonely Planet and Rick Steves are great resources, they won't tell you something that I figured out in a weekend here: that Spaniards really love to mutilate the shit out of farm animals.

One of the places I've visited so far is Segovia. It was just a USAC day trip, where we toured a castle and saw really old Roman aqueducts, while a teeny tiny Spanish tour guide over-enunciated every word she said to us through her microphone. I'm not really one for guided tours and large group activities, but the trip was already paid for and Segovia was quaint and lovely, so I decided to go along. Little did I know what would await me when lunch rolled around. Segovia is famous for its roast suckling pig, or cochinillo. Spain is incredibly diverse in its regions, and each region has a dish that is its specialty. In Madrid it's calamari sandwiches (even though it's at least four hours from here to the closest ocean), in Valencia it's paella, and in Segovia it's roast suckling pig. If you've never seen a roast suckling pig, it looks something like this:

When it comes out to your table its little baby piggy body smells of oil and herbs, and it looks at you with a half-grimace, half-smile like it kind of enjoyed the roasting it just endured (little masochist). It's little baby hooves and little baby tail are toasty and crisp even though the rest of its body is flattened out like roadkill. For me, this was the best part of the day. I totally love weird food and trying new food, so when the waiter set the pig on a tray next to me before cutting it up, I could hardly contain my excitement. What I didn't know, though, is that part of the cochinillo tradition is that you don't carve it with a knife like a turkey. Instead, you take a plate, turn it sideways and start whacking that little baby pig as hard as you can.

Chunks of meat fly like bits of shrapnel as the pig starts looking less like Babe and more like lunch. Finally, when the pig is thoroughly hacked apart, the cutting plate is thrown on the ground and breaks into a billion pieces. Then lunch can be served. If you're me, you're really excited that you get to stare at this while you eat:

Other people in the group were not so stoked on their lunch smiling at them. Eh, to each his own. However, this was not the only farm animal I would watch be hacked apart over the weekend. Oh no, no. On the contrary, there was a day filled with much more blood and gore as I also had the pleasure (if that's what you want to call it) of going to a bull fight.

(Here's us being toro-like before the fight. Intimidating, no?)

I'll tell you flat out that I know absolutely nothing about bulls or bull fights. I went because it's part of the culture and a good excuse to do some day drinking. I know it's super controversial and gory and a lot of people are not into it at all, but for me, it's all part of the experience. A Spanish friend and I got onto the topic of bullfights the other day, and he had a really interesting point to make about all of it. In the United States most of the meat we eat is raised in super small cages where it's packed full of hormones and antibiotics for the duration of its pathetic life before eat it. Who's to say if that's better or worse than a bullfight? It certainly happens in much larger quantities than bull fights do. However, in typical American fashion, it all happens behind closed doors. Bull fights, in all of their Spanish essence, happen right in your face. As your stuffing pistachios and beer into your mouth, you're looking at this:

The end of September is not bullfighting season in Madrid. Because of this, tickets were super cheap and the fights were mostly amateur. We got front row seats for 10 euros, which was awesome, but what was even better was that we were lucky enough to sit in front of an old Spanish woman and her husband who have been going to bull fights for twenty years!! WHOA!! They were serious fans and explained the art to us in thorough detail. Both of them were not at all impressed with the fights that night and the amount of suffering the bulls had to endure. It was really sad to watch the decline of the bulls. By the time they're close to death, a constant stream of blood is pouring out of their wildly pumping arteries and their tongues hang out in a pathetic, surrendered manner. When the matador finally does kill the bull, it collapses like a great soldier stricken down in battle, a ton of muscle and force falling to the ground, accepting defeat. Then a horse-drawn cart drags it out of the ring, leaving a pathway of blood behind it as the matador in his very masculine pink socks receives praise from the crowds.

So there you have it. Spaniards hack apart farm animals, people pay to watch it and (human) life goes on. Así es la vida.

The Part where I don´t actually go to School in Spain.

Happy first (or more likely second) week of school everybody! How´s it been going? I hope you´ve all learned a lot and that your textbooks didn´t cost a fortune. I´m sending good thoughts your way that your lab partner won´t be that girl who only ever talks about her sorority and your professors will be radical and inspiring. As for me, I´m still just hanging out in Madrid, because for the past two days my classes have been canceled. The professor for all of the advanced Spanish classes (all of my classes) is having some sort of emergency that they won´t tell us about and has been unable to attend class. For tomorrow and Thursday there is a substitute for the grammar class, but my literature and stylistics classes are canceled for the whole week. Happy extra week of summer vacation to me? While it´s kind of awesome that I still get to just hang out, estoy aquí para aprender, ¿no?

Anyways, I figured you may be wondering what one does in a big, beautiful city like Madrid when all responsibilities seem to vanish into thin air. Luckily for me, there are a million things you can learn just by being in la calle, and honestly, I don´t mean to toot my own horn, but I totally kick ass at being Spanish! Seriously, people keep asking me for directions and stuff! Then they hear me talk and it´s suddenly obvious that I´m not from here.. anyways, here´s a list of 10 things you can do to make yourself super Spanish without ever going to school:

1. Strut your stuff with confidence. Spanish women are beautiful and effortlessly stylish. They´re the kind of women who can make high heels seem casual for walking your dog on a Tuesday afternoon, and I kind of love it. While my possessions currently total four shirts, a skirt, a sweater and a pair of jeans (the minimalistic lifestyle is a long story for another day), you better believe I´ve been trying to keep up with these sassy, Spanish ladies.

2. Stare. Seriously. Spanish people unabashidly stare more than anyone I´ve ever seen. They´ll stare at you for a 40 minute metro ride, and when you make eye-contact with them, they won´t smile. They´ll just keep on staring. Don´t smile at them either. While this is totally weird and creepy at first, it´s actually kind of fun because it means you can stare at other people without being rude. Watching people is a great way to learn the culture and the languge.

3. If you´re a boy yell "guapa, guapa, guapa" like a chicken at every girl who passes you on the street, even if she´s not that cute. If you´re girl, keep up the strut you had going earlier and ignore this.

4. When in doubt of what to say, always go with vale. Vale is like "okay" and can be used for pretty much anything that has a positive answer. You will hear people say it a million times a day and you should say it too... ¿vale?

5. Eat tapas. People in Spain don´t eat giant meals like we do in the US. Breakfast is usually a small but delicious café con leche and perhaps a pastry or toast with tomatoes and olive oil, while dinner is an array of tapas, or appetizers, that you pair with wine or beer and share with people. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, but Spaniards also take nap after eating it. You should take a nap too because you´ll inevitably...

6. Stay up late. In Madrid it´s not uncommon to see kids playing in the street until 11 pm. If you´re going to go out with friends, you´ll meet up around 11 for dinner, go to the bars until 1 or 2, then to the clubs that open at 2 am, where you´ll find yourself dancing until 6 am when the metro starts up again. Believe me, you´ll love your little siesta in the middle of the day.

7. This one is silly and shouldn´t even have to be mentioned, but I am going to say it anyways: speak Spanish. Even if all you know is vale, that´s better than nothing and people will appreciate it. The Americans are really easy to pick out here because we are so loud and jabbering away in a foreign language. Madrileños aren´t huge fans of foreigners anyway, but if you try to make them cater to your culture instead of the other way around, they can be especially unpleasant.

8. Leave you flip-flops and university sweatshirt at home. Remember the woman walking her dog in high heels? She´s offended by your flip-flops. Now, believe me, I love a good pair of flip-flops and a hoodie as much as the next person, but at the right place and time. Europeans don´t wear flip-flops in public, nor do they wear Stanford sweatshirts. I wouldn´t have worn tank-tops or short skirts in India because Indians don´t wear that. Same idea.

9. Botellón (drinking in public). Spaniards love to drink in the streets/metro/plazas/parks. Join them! Most people get pretty chatty after passing around a bottle of vino, and you´ll love the stories you hear from them. If you run out of booze, you can buy it from a Chino with backpack. 6 cañas for €5. Don´t get wasted, though. While Spaniards obviously like to have a good time, they really don´t like public drunkenness and will find belligerent study abroad students obnoxious and rude.

10. For number 10: to everyone I know who´s been to/lived in Spain, I´d love to hear your tidbit about what makes you a rocking Spaniard. Can you roll the world´s best cigarette? Does joder put up a fair fight with vale for the most commonly used word in the Spanish language? Must you always look exhausted and annoyed on the metro to be a true Spaniard? Do you sport your Real Madrid jersey with pride?

Hopefully, one of these days I will start classes like I came here to do. Until then, I´ll keep learning in la calle and updating you on my love affair with this fantastic place. Dos besos.

The Next Part

A year ago I started planning for this adventure, and since then I´ve been telling people that I´m going to go to India and then I´m going to go to Spain. Welp, the India part is completed and now I find myself sitting in a locutería (that´s an internet cafe if you ever are in Spain) down the street from my teeny tiny apartment. How bizarre that this is actually working, and going well on top of that. It´s surreal, really.

I left India on Friday morning, flew 10 hours to London then another 2 to Madrid, arriving around 12:00 am. I navigated the metro all by myself (I´m so grown-up!), and found my CouchSurfer´s apartment. If ya´ll haven´t heard of CouchSurfing, check it out! It´s a super awesome organization of people that provides you with an instant network of friends wherever you go. Seriously, in the past three days they have given me a roof over my head, food to eat, beer to drink, jokes to laugh at, taken me to the flea market, and tonight we´re going on a picnic. The ones that I have been hanging out with all live in an apartment together and met over Couchsurfing, so it´s a very international household. German, English, Spanish and Portuguese have abounded in our conversations, and I am so, so thankful to Trini, Ben, Leo and Pablo for making me feel at home in this big, strange city.

However, I have also learned a few things in the past three days that encourages me to tell all of you to take the plundge and put yourself, by yourself, in a totally foreign situation. It´s not at hard as you think!! Granted, I do speak the language here, and it would be much harder to be here if I couldn´t communicate with the locals, but whatever. Go to England, or Australia, or New Zealand! What the hell, go to India! They speak English (kind of). Just go somewhere new, put yourself in awkward, foreign situations. Get lost. Curse the world when you can´t figure out how your apartment keys work. Love the old man sitting next to you in the restaurant who is feeding pastries to his tiny dog under the table. Grip your purse like a paranoid maniac because everyone keeps telling you that you'll get pick-pocketed. Laugh at the awkward moments between teenage boys and girls on the metro. Wander the streets until you get to know your neighborhood. And talk to everyone. I mean everyone. That includes the grumpy lady sitting next to you in the post office, the Cuban waitress who makes your cafe con leche, the drag queen walking down the street on her way home when you emerge from your building in the morning (have I mentioned I live in the gay neighborhood?), the overly polite and formal store clerk who is helping you buy sheets in sizes you don´t understand. You´ll be amazed at the stories people will share with you, the warmth they will exude, the insight they will give you into the culture.

Now, I´m not saying this is all fun and exciting. I´ve cried more over the past few days than I have in a while, because right now I am totally and completely alone, and it´s often frustrating. True, I have met some incredibly helpful and kind people through CouchSurfing, but they have their own lives and can´t hold my hand everyday. And while Spain is a cakewalk compared to India, it is still a foreign country and things don´t make sense (what do you mean everything closes for four hours in the afternoon so everyone can have a siesta!?), but through all of this, I will become a stronger and more well-rounded person. I´m proving to myself that I´m capable of things that at other points in my life would have seemed impossible. And outside of that, my study abroad program starts on Wednesday, so I´ll meet other people who are going through the same wild adjustment as me, and we will all come to realize together our boundless capabilities.

Wish me luck, my loved ones. It´s only day 3 and I´ve got many more ahead, but I feel that this next part is going to be an amazing and life-changing adventure.

The Part where the Tibetans Forever Steal a Piece of my Heart.

We've been in India for two weeks now. We've spent the last week in McLeod Ganj volunteering, making all sorts of interesting, international friends and eating a whole lot of food. We keep joking that we're actually in Tibindia (that's a Tibet-India combination) since the Tibetan culture is so prevalent here. I love them! I absolutely love the Tibetans and everything to do with them (especially their food, happy tummy at last)! The organization that we've been volunteering through is called Tibet Hope Center, and we've met so many wonderful, profound people there. We've been spending a couple of hours volunteering each day and helping Tibetan refugees learn English, either in the conversation class or in the entry level class after their lecture time with the teacher, Kusang. Kusang is also the founder of the Center and is a really cool guy. He came to India from Tibet when he was pretty young and really benefited from all of the services the government-in-exile has set up here. As a young Tibetan refugee, if you maintain good grades, the government will pay for everything - your education, accommodations, even clothing, but while they are doing this they remind you of the importance of giving back to your community. What can you do once you graduate to better the Tibetan people? This mantra was in Kusang's thoughts when he graduated from college with a degree in Mass Media. At the time he was tutoring a monk friend in English (he speaks English, Hindi, Korean and Tibetan) who started bringing more friends to him who wanted to learn English. He realized this could be a real opportunity to contribute to his culture and starting looking into how to start an NGO. Kusang really had no idea what to expect in 2007 when he started the Center in one room with only a chair and a table, but after four years, the Center has grown tremendously and currently has over 80 refugee students enrolled in classes.

Today we volunteered in the conversation class where we talked to the more advanced students about how to give directions and how to go to the doctor. We made up all kinds of silly scenarios, which they laughed at (Tibetans have the greatest sense of humor ever), but I think it was actually very useful to them. In the entry level class we talked about asking the time, how to read a clock, and telling how long you've been/lived/studied/worked somewhere. We drew big clocks on the whiteboards and changed the time on it a bunch for them to practice. I also would write a time and ask them what they do during that time of day. It was a great way for them to get a little creative with the material we were learning, and I've had so much fun helping them learn that it's really reinforced my thoughts about working with English language learners in the future.

The students are so sweet. The majority of the class is made up of monks, with a few other adults thrown in. They are also mostly male, but I think the females in the class really love having Emily and me around. The one girl, Dolma, calls me "teacher, teacher" and insists that I sit next to her every time. The other girl in the class, Tenzi, is a Buddhist nun and the teeniest tiniest person you've ever met. I've taken lots of pictures of the class, which I'll have to add to here later.

All of the Tibetans are so positive, happy, and hilarious that I tend to forget the hardships they've experienced. Then I have encounters like I did today, and it's all put back into perspective for me. After the entry level class we were walking up the hill with one of the monks, Choeney. We were telling him that we were very hungry because we hadn't eaten lunch yet. We said we were going to get some thukpa, which is a spicy Tibetan soup with long spaghetti-like noodles in it. He said he wanted to cook food for us, which we thought might mean tomorrow or the next day. Turns out he wanted to cook us thukpa today instead of having us go eat in a restaurant. There was no way we could turn down this gracious invitation, so we followed him back up a rocky side street to his apartment building. We wandered down a series of dark hallways until we came to his apartment: one room that he shares with two other monks. Inside three mattresses rested on the floor against headboards made of cardboard boxes, and a two burner cook-top stood in the corner with a small table next to it. This comprised the kitchen. In the apartment there was also a shelf containing utensils, toiletries, and miscellaneous bottles, a very small end table, and a clothes line strung from one side of the room to the other where their extra robes were hung drying. The one window looked out onto the building next door. And that was it. A shared bathroom was located down the hallway as well as a faucet for running water.

Choeney left us in the room while he ran to the closest vegetable vendor to pick up an eggplant, green beans, and tomatoes. He doesn't have a refrigerator, so I would imagine that he has to buy only as much as he needs if he's going to cook at home. When he came back he pulled out a small cutting board, a knife and two pots and began to cook us some delicious, fresh thukpa. While he cooked each of his roommates came home. They both hung out for a little while and spoke a little bit of English, so we chatted about life in India. The one roommate was telling us that he and Choeney came here together from a monastery in South India about three months ago when they both got very sick. He also told us of how he had crossed the Himalayas on foot when he fled into exile. It took him 35 days and he got frostbite on his one foot during the crossing. He poured us tea out of a thermos that rested on the floor while he told us this, smiling in his maroon robes. Then Choeney poured the thukpa into the only two bowls they have, handed us some chopsticks and sat down to watch us eat. We were confused and asked him if he was going to eat with us, but he said he had eaten earlier. At that moment I had feelings of guilt and extreme gratitude all rolled up in one. I kept thinking that I should be making him lunch, or I should pay for the vegetables or something. I should do something, but I also realized that my presence at the Hope Center was giving the students like Choeney an invaluable gift. This was his way of repaying us for the time we spent with them laughing, hearing their stories, and practicing English. My heart broke a little bit as I sat perched on the mattress in the tiny apartment with the three monks smiling at me. How do they maintain such high spirits when life is clearly not easy?

Emily and I left the apartment a little over an hour ago. We ate all of the thukpa, drank multiple cups of tea, took a ton of pictures with them, and shared stories in broken English about life in our home countries. We are all visitors to India, some of us more permanent than others, and while we've found things we love about this place (freedom to be a monk without being thrown in prison, for example) we all miss our homes. Almost none of the refugees I've met here have any family in India, but they create new ties among the other refugees, knowing that they may not see their families again for a very long time, if ever.

This is not the first impoverished country I've visited. This is not the first time that people who have nothing have wanted to give me something which I've felt guilty about. I know that if I entered the majority of homes here, I would find a similar situation with multiple people living in one room. Yet somehow I have a hard time finding the logic when I encounter these situations. Here I am, sitting in this tiny room, telling refugees how I get to go to college and come visit India simply because I wanted to. At home I complain about how small my kitchen is even though I actually have a kitchen. I whine about doing my homework and going to my jobs when I earn more money in one day than many people do here in a week. I get angry when I'm stuck in traffic, while people on the other side of the world are trekking over mountains on foot, all the time worrying about being thrown in prison and brutally tortured if they are caught escaping. I have a fridge full of food, a closet full of clothes and shoes, my own car, my own bedroom, hot water all the time, and most importantly, my family close by. How fortunate I am to end up in this situation, and all of these different experiences act as constant reminders to be grateful for the life I lead.

The Tibetans are the most amazing, resilient people I have ever met. Coming to India just to volunteer at the Tibet Hope Center would have been worth all of the planning and money it took to get here. Their unwavering Buddhist faith gives them capacities for happiness and forgiveness that I don't think many people in the Western world understand. Everyone I've talked to here feels lucky and so fortunate to be where they are. They don't hate the Chinese government for what it's done to them. They openly forgive them and happily live their simple lives. They're constantly cracking jokes and sharing what little they have without a second thought. Even in class, we often don't have enough photocopies of the material for everyone. They all pass around the worksheets without ever thinking "that's mine."

Lunch at Choeney's might be my favorite part of the trip so far. It was the best meal I've had in India and I'll forever be grateful to the kindness and compassion he showed to almost complete strangers.

As you read this I hope you keep in mind how fortunate you are to lead the life you do, and always remember that happiness is a state of mind. You could have the most expensive flat screen TV, the newest iPhone, the fastest car, designer clothes, and eat off of dishes made of diamonds, but unless you show love and compassion towards others, what is all of that stuff worth? As cheesy as it sounds folks, it's love that makes the world go round. I love you all and miss you too.

The Part where I get become a Celebrity, view a real live Silly Walk, and Get all Shanti Shanti.

On Wednesday we arrived in Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj, home of the exiled Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama. Prior to this I was having a really hard time understanding how people could come to India and have these overwhelming spiritual experiences, what with the poverty and dirt and constant heckling that goes on, but now I'm beginning to understand. This peaceful town is snuggled into misty mountains tops of the Himalayas where Buddhist monks wander the streets and prayer flags fly from every roof. It is also quiet here, like actually quiet, minus the constant pitter patter of rain. The most you will be harassed is by the copious amount of monkeys trying to steal your stuff, but as long as you make sure to protect your valuables (they have an uncanny knack for taking the one thing you really don't want them to take) and eat your food quickly, these fluffy little rabies machines will leave you alone.

Yesterday we visited the Dalai Lama's temple and a museum about the Tibetan struggle and their exile to India. There are so many Tibetans here, each with a unique but similar story, and it's amazing to think that they've all had to experience this horrible, tragic history. China has essentially decided to wipe out the Tibetan culture and religion. They arrest and torture protesters and monks who resist the "cultural revolution". Most people who have gone into exile have done so by foot, crossing the Himalayas with little more than a blanket to protect them. There are many people here missing fingers and toes from frostbite acquired on the journey, yet the Tibetans always maintain their peaceful, happy demeanor that is so ingrained in their Buddhist culture. What a change it is from the Indians who, while also kind and helpful, are pushy, loud, and totally in your face.

There are abundant resources here for the refugees and ways to get involved. Yesterday we took a yoga class from a very silly, yet incredibly flexible refugee and today we're going to be conversation partners with some recently arrived Tibetans who are trying to learn English.

But before I float off into the fog and find my inner Buddha, I have to explain the other part of this title: my being a celebrity and discovering the source of all of Monty Python's wisdom, no?

Tuesday we had another day in Amritsar. We were exhausted after wading through the cholera water all day the day before, so we attempted to take it easy. We thought a walk in Jallianwala Bagh, a local park would be, well, a walk in the park, but as India has continually proved to me, even the most simple seeming things can become complicated. Jallianwala Bagh was the site of a horrible massacre during the early 1900s. The British had arrested some important Indian leaders for unwarranted reasons, and the Indians were holding a peaceful protest against their arrest. To break up the protest, the British opened fire on the unarmed Indians, firing over 1,000 rounds into the crowd in less than 10 minutes, killing over 300 people and injuring 1,000 more. Today the park acts as a memorial to the people who were injured and killed, but we couldn't appreciate this because every single person in the park wanted to take a picture with us. "One snap, one snap" rang out from every corner as people rushed towards us with their camera phones.The little kids were cute, just wanting to see what they look like on the cameras screen. One man thrust his baby at me, who was not so stoked that some super sweaty stranger was holding her, but mostly it was young men who wanted to take their picture with us, one at a time. We later found out that they like to do this so that they can show people pictures of their "western girlfriends," which I find totally insane because Indian women are so beautiful I am so sweaty here all the time.

Later that day we took a cab ride (by that I mean 12 people stuffed in a jeep that barely ran) to the Indian/Pakistani border to watch the border closing ceremony. They do it every day, and it is a highly formalized, official, and completely ridiculous looking affair. The soldiers who perform the ceremony wear helmets with a huge fan on top and try to out intimidate the other side with their super masculine high kicks. Seriously, I didn't know 1) that Indians over five feet tall existed anywhere and 2) that any man in the world could get his leg to kick so high as to touch his silly headdress. I think Monty Python must have shown up to the border ceremony, witnessed this bizarre tradition, and wrote their silly walk skit off of it. Huge crowds of Indians and puny, all-male crowds of Pakistanis show up to support their country in this highly patriotic affair with cheers and chants and dancing and music. Just in case you've never seen the silly walk, I've provided a comparison of the two for you below. In fact, I'm not the first one to find this striking similarity. You're welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ0ue-XGl9c

The Part where I find myself Knee-Deep in Monsoon Flood Water

Hello friends and family!

I arrived in India 5 days ago, and what an adventure it's already been! If I wasn't sitting at a roadside computer in a scary internet cafe, I would try to upload some pictures to show you, but I'm afraid those might have to wait until I get to Spain and have my laptop again.

We spent our first two days in Delhi, navigating the metro system, wading through swarms of people, avoiding hagglers, and riding on crazy death bike and auto rickshaws. The most amazing part of Delhi we visited was Old Delhi, which is where I think the city probably gets it's bad reputation from. It is a hot, stinky, rundown part of town. People are everywhere - gambling on the sidewalk, sleeping in the trash, selling and eating food on the side of the road, and yelling "hallo, hallo" at the two weird white girls walking past. The traffic is also insane, although I've decided since I could successfully cross the street in Old Delhi, I can do anything!! There is constantly bumper to bumper traffic and honking horns, made up of cars, taxis, cows, and the occasional dumbfounded looking goat, but mostly rickshaws. They are everywhere! One of the best parts was the end of the day when school got out and we saw a million small children  in school uniforms stuffed like sardines into the bike rickshaws, waving at us with bemused excitement as we passed.

Two days in Delhi was a great experience, we saw many a dilapidated monument (to quote Emily, "Everything in India is falling apart, even their museums"), bought some kurtis to wear so we aren't so obviously foreign (didn't really help), and met some very interesting people. I was happy to get out of there at the end of it, though.

On Sunday we took what was supposed to be a 10 hour train ride to Amristar, which turned into more of a 13 hour train ride. At first we went to the wrong train station, thinking our train left from New Delhi, when it really left from Old Delhi (yes, we had to go back there... duh duh duh), so we ran back to the metro, ran through the metro, and ran through the other train station. We made it in time, but were quite possibly the sweatiest, stinkiest people on the entire planet by that point. For the next ten hours I listened to the man in the berth below me play Shakira over and over on his cell phone.

Once we found out that our train was going to be late, we became a little worried about showing up to a strange city at one o'clock in the morning, so the only English speaking train worker set off to save the day for us (people here are very concerned about two females traveling by themselves) and made the bedding collector, who was also going all the way to Amritsar, act as our guard dog. He wouldn't let anyone into our car after that (although the police still managed to come in and steal our dinner. I didn't know how to say no! Apparently that's not an uncommon thing.), and found us a safe taxi when we finally arrived at the train station a billion years later.

Yesterday it rained ALL DAY LONG!!! Helloooo, monsoon!!! At first we didn't think much of it, busting out our uber-nerdy yet incredibly practical matching  yellow rain jackets to explore the city, but as the day when on and the rain never slowed down, we came to understand the meaning of "monsoon". Friends, this is not a little rain. This is a torrential downpour that floods the entire city. Yet even the great Biblical flood cannot slow things down in India. Life still goes on even though you're sitting in an inch of water inside your auto rickshaw.

We went to the Golden Temple in the morning, an amazing Sikh holy place, and the only place we've been to that isn't falling apart. A huge marble complex surrounds the solid golden temple that sits in the middle of a pool where a ceremony is always taking place. All are welcome at the Golden Temple, with free meals being prepared and served by people of all ranks and classes throughout the day. At this point, it wasn't raining too badly, we we're only standing in about two inches of water, so it was very enjoyable. When we left Emily said that she felt as if she had "just seen the Pope." Awesome.

From there we took an auto to the bus station to check out times for the Pakistani/Indian border ceremony and buses to Dharamsala. This is where the real rain began. At one point our rickshaw (and every other car/bike/shoe-less Indian walking in the road) was in about a foot of water. We got stuck in such a bad traffic jam that the rickshaw driver told us to get out and walk the rest of the way to the bus station. This meant getting in the brown muck with everyone else. I may come home from India with diseases. But as with every daily unexpected twist and turn here, you just do things because you have to, so we plopped out into the flood water alongside women in drenched saris and men covering up their turbans with shower caps. We weaved through the traffic, trying not to think about what was in the water with us to find out the times, and then waded across the street to the cinema, figuring a four hour Bollywood movie would be a good way to pass some rainy, rainy, rainy, muddy, hours. Mind you, every Indian we passed along the way was laughing at our matching Morton Salt Girl rain jackets. I think they were really just jealous.

The Bollywood movie was hilarious!!!! I can't remember what it was called because the name was very long and in Punjabi, but it cracked me up. Women don't really go to the movies by themselves in India, so the workers escorted us into the theater, found us seats, and then escorted us out. The best part of the movie, besides the copious amounts of cheesy fight scenes and random song and dance (which I think I'm slightly addicted to), was the cheering crowd. The whole theater would erupt with cheers at certain points in the movie. Sometimes someone would yell something out about what was happening and the crowd would burst into laughter. When a bad guy would get punched with over-the-top sound effects and end up with an instant black eye, everyone would holler and applaud. The movie was also so long that there was an intermission. I have a feeling life in the US may seem very dull and square after all of this...

We have one more day in Amristar and then we're off to seek Tibetan enlightenment in Dharamsala/McLeod Gang. We'll see what other adventures come our way today in this pulsing, chaotic, poverty-stricken place. There is never a dull moment in India.

The Part Where you get so Excited That you can't Sleep and then you Reminisce for a While.

Two and a half weeks out, and I'm feeling antsy! One of my favorite things to do when gearing up to travel is to look back on some of the other experiences I've had and re-live the total awesomeness that is traveling. It helps to fulfill the wanderlust and also keep me excited for the new things to come. So, in light of that, let's look through some photos of said awesomeness.

This photo is waaaay old, but from one of the first times I went anywhere all by myself. I was... sixteen? My best friend Allie had moved to Atlanta, Georgia the summer before our freshman year of high school and I went to go visit her a few times. On this trip the two of us drove to South Carolina where we stayed at her aunt's lake house and proceeded to drink Smirnoff Ice and then whip jet skis around the lake all day every day... oh to be sixteen again. On the way back to Reno I got super lost in the Atlanta airport and cried and some very nice man helped me find the right terminal on the other side of the airport. Travel lesson number one learned: when all else fails, cry.

This is me and some hot gay babes in San Francisco. My freshman year of college my friend Lyni (third from the left with the cheesy tourist t-shirt) invited me to go to SF with her, her two best friends and their girlfriends for the weekend. Needless to say this was an eye-opening experience. Clubbing in the Castro, anyone? If you've never experienced the world's greatest gay city with some super fun lesbians, I recommend you do so ASAP. You'll get sandwiched between drag queens, put dollar bills in some assless chaps, and lose your voice by the end of the weekend. It'll take you three weeks to recover once you get home, but it'll be so. worth. it.

Hanging out in the Dirty Punt! The summer after my freshman year of college I studied abroad for the first time in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It was my very first time out of the country, and it changed my life. I know that sounds totally cliché and corny, but it's really true! I've never gotten over the wanderlust I acquired there. These are my amazing host parents, Laila and Edgar, who put up with my sad, broken Spanish, my cultural awkwardness, my inability to come home quietly at nighttime, and my multiple tropical diseases. And somehow they loved me through all of it! This picture is from my 20th birthday. It was my last night in the Punt. They threw me a little birthday party, we took a billion pictures of us together, and then we all cried and laughed and hugged and said in different languages how we would miss each other.

While in Puntarenas, I found myself a wild Australian soulmate named Jean. The two of us instantly fell in love, and she invited me to backpack north to Mexico with her and her brother Bill. Without hesitation, I canceled my plane ticket back to the US, much to my mother's dismay, and spent two months after my study abroad program traveling with these crazy Aussies. I am forever grateful to the opportunity they provided me with, and they will always hold a special place in my heart. At that point, they were much better traveled than I was, and without them I wouldn't have been able to do any of the things I did. While I never actually made it to Mexico, I did make it through most of the countries in Central America and the culture, people, and poverty I witnessed shook up my world. This picture is from Playa el Tuno, El Salvador, which was a much welcome refuge after crossing the Honduras/El Salvador border and trying to navigate our way through San Salvador without getting kidnapped, robbed, or killed.

My sophomore year of college I got a ridiculous urge one night to take a road trip to visit my friend Shari in San Luis Obispo. The next day I woke up at the crack of dawn and drove over the mountain without any idea of what I was actually doing. It was March, but driving over the Sierras in March is like driving over them in the dead of winter. I got stuck in a blizzard and then my windshield washer fluid ran out, so I had to pull over on the side of the freeway every ten minutes to wipe off the windshield with a towel I had brought along while cars sped past me at 70 mph. I also got lost in the middle of the California countryside, where the only living creatures I saw for a few hours besides myself were cows. I did eventually make in to SLO where Shari and I had a blast, and I also learned a few things along the way: 1. Bring a map, 2. It snows a lot ALWAYS in the mountains, 3. Spontaneous solo road trips are awesome and totally necessary and getting lost/almost dying is half the fun.

One October I went to Austin, Texas with my roommates for the Austin City Limits music festival. We stayed with my cousin Alli (center), who is one of the funniest and smartest people I know. Alli is also an insatiable vagabond, and one night while we were laying in her bed telling travel tales between fits of giggles she told me how her family was going to Turkey the next summer to visit her dad's side of the family. In classic form I told her how I wanted to go, she said I should and then I went back to Reno and wrote my aunt an email asking her if it'd be okay. By some divine intervention she said yes, and I found myself heading to Turkey with them in the summer. We spent a month there visiting their family, traveling through a ton of different regions, being woken up at the crack of dawn every morning by the mullah's call to prayer, eating the best food of my life, learning completely unhelpful Turkish phrases like "I like watermelon sweetheart", falling in love with the generous, warm people we met, and trying to be conservative enough to satisfy Alli's eighty-something-year-old grandma. This picture is from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Notice how nice and conservative the good little Turkish girl is in the middle with her bra straps hanging out.

The part before you leave.

Okay, friends! Here's my travel blog, laid out nice and neat in front of you. In three weeks, I'll be going on great adventures, I'll be seeing things that rock my world, I'll be experiencing things that forever change my perspective on life.

But now?

Now I'm sitting in Reno dealing with the part before you leave. And this part, honestly, is kind of shitty. It's the part that no one ever talks about, yet we all experience it and have to learn how to tie up all these lose ends that make up our lives. This time for me it's been a little more intense since this will be the longest I'll have ever been abroad. So, in an attempt to help me deal with the ever-fluctuating emotions inside of me, let's discuss some of these lose ends.

Obviously, there's the logistical stuff - jobs, housing, credit cards, malaria medication, etc. Most of these can be taken care of with a simple phone call or email. These are the things that hang on your mind, but once you decide to take care of them, they each take ten minutes and you're done. 

The heavier stuff comes next - friends, family, that pathetic thing you think could be the beginnings of a relationship if you weren't leaving (ugh). These are the things that are really hard to deal with. And believe me, three (plus) weeks out, I'm already starting to feel it. When I talk to my friends and family about my up-coming travels, they get misty-eyed and I have to change the topic. I've started saying good-byes to people I know I won't see before I leave, or, in other cases, I pretend like I will see them again so I don't have to say goodbye. While I know everyone is excited for me and only wishes me the best, the occasional sob that leaks out and the don't-worry-it's-just-allergies eye dab pulls at my heart strings. How can such a wonderful opportunity seem so bittersweet at times? 

So for now, I'm working on maintaining a positive outlook. I'm reminding myself as much as my friends/family/pathetic whatever-it-is that leaving friends and family is a part of growing up, that when you look at the big picture, I'm really not gone for that long, and when I return things are back to what they've always been. While I waver between being so excited that I want to jump out of my skin, being so over this shit that I could blow up the entire city of Reno, and being heart broken as I look into the faces of my loved ones knowing that I am voluntarily leaving them, I remind myself that I have one life to live. This is my shot and I must take full advantage of it. So get ready for me, World, because I'm coming for you.