Orangette and MY [future] life in Paris or Fromage Bleu

Do you know that girl who wrote the blog/book about her dad Burg, thinly veiled with mediocre food talk. She called it Orangette after some chocolate covered orange peel, sounds gross right. Well as I prepare to move to Paris I was thinking I should entitle this chapter of my blog/life Bleu Cheese, or Fromage Bleu.

While we were in Chile, I missed cheese the most, so it was no surprise when Sylvain went to Fairway market that I wrote blue cheese and baguette at the top of his shopping list. He bought a huge chunk and I didn't get through very much of it what with all the dinners out celebrating the holidays and our return with friends. So when I got home tonight I was lucky to find that chunk of blue cheese (and some of my roommates crackers) or I would have starved. Five cheesy cracker later, I discover Im not the only one who enjoys the stink. My cat Manny, who NEVER eats human food, or even tuna or wet cat food, started licking the plate of cheese crumbs.

Speaking of France I asked for and received Julia Childs "My Life in France" for Christmas, and started reading it a few minutes ago. My Aunt Loretta asked for some book recommendations for her cruise down the west coast to Lima and although I didn't have anything concrete, I advised on travel writing. My favorite hands down is Paul Theroux, an old sailor friend gave me The Patagonian Express for my birthday right after I returned from Peru having been living in Boston and having hiked Macchu Pichu (Paul's journey starts and ends in the same places). Afterwards I read almost the collection of his travel writing. Dark Star and Riding the Red Rooster were also good.

So why not read about Julia in France? She and I seem to have a lot in common, we love to eat, we love to cook and we went to Smith College. Were practically leading parallel lives. Having also received her cookbook for Christmas I couldn't help but notice how food fads have changed over the last 40 years or so. Wisconsin never let molded Jello salad recipes die, but I'm pretty sure Aspics have died out world wide- at least I hope they did, because while I'd try anything once, I have a feeling I wouldn't like it.

Wisconsin at Xmas

Snow covered Wisconsin can be very beautiful. Wisconsin is pretty flat so it isn’t overpowering and majestic as it can be in the east and west, but it’s still serene and its beauty has power too. Last night a blanket of snow fell, and my parents live on 50 acres of land with a tree lined river a hundred yard dash from my bedroom window.

I’ve spent about a week here and the weather has been warm, usually I arrive bitterly complaining of the cold, but this year it has hovered around freezing and therefore the precipitation has vassilated from rain to sleet to snow. What I’ve found is that everyone in Wisconsin rests their conversation on the weather. If it’s the precipitation or lack of precipitation or the cold it’s the foundation of any exchange- gaining traction it might veer off into how the weather is affecting driving, plowing, shoveling, the corn growth in the summers, how the farmers are taking it etc. My parents generally start off with it when they pick up the phone to call me. I’ve blogged about it before when my mom expresses disbelief over unusually warm temperatures and then denies global warming. Well people, it was warm in Wisconsin this year, while during my Christmas home stay I’ve worn nothing more than a hoodie instead of a winter coat, hat, scarves, and ten layers underneath.

My cousin Ken wrote me “I always felt kind of strange when I went back to G.B.- like I was an undercover agent who knew of a world beyond the mountain pass that no one ever wanted to cross. That mountain pass of course being the state border of Wisconsin”

Well put Ken.

My cousin Tom is a teacher, a few Christmas’ ago I came home, we used to be close and I asked him if he’d like to go out for a beer while I was home. He told me of course, but he didn’t know if I’d enjoy it since his friends dropped the N bomb from time to time, and me being an east coast liberal and all… I flew into a fit, “you’re a teacher how can you have friends who use the N word, why don’t you stand up and say something!”. By last Christmas after Obama’s election I had learned to avoid conversations like these- especially when they started talking about how much more prepared to govern the country Sarah Palin was. Tom shot a deer out of my bedroom window this Christmas- so you can see how Sarah Palin would be a family favorite, deer hunter, still looks like a woman, and conservative! Cousin Tom loves his country, but he hasn’t passed the border of Wisconsin, and he doesn’t want to, he acknowledges his students are rednecks and he feels “Anyone living in America who works hard can make it” and “why are there no African American male role models”. My uncle charms in "Tom's not a bigot" but I know anytime you start defending yourself as not racist, its a pretty good indication you are, especially after you make statements like "Obama got elected how can you say racism still exists" I wish Tom could see my kids and their parents, understand their struggles and see that beyond whitewashed Wisconsin, things are not as simple as they seem.

Future Travel

A few years ago a friend of mine was having some personal life issues and started seeing a therapist. One of the things the therapist asked my friend to do was set goals for herself in different categories of her life, setting a goal for in the next year, and also in five years. I started doing this around the first of every year because I thought it was interesting and fun. The category that was always my favorite was Travel.

I've done a great deal of traveling in the last year, and I even ticked that Mt Kili box that had been showing up in my goal list as a repeat offender year after year. But when you cross one thing off your to-do list, something always takes it's place. This year I ticked Chile and Argentina off and they weren't even close to making it on my list. But while I was there I had a lot of time to think about travel and what kind of traveler I am.

I feel like I'd like to put these big trips on the shelf for a while, the biking across Vietnam can wait, morocco, india, I'll get there someday, but not now... When you're a traveler as I suppose I am, you meet other travelers along the way and you end up reciting your resume of travel, all the boxes you've ticked and the exchange is usually rather lifeless, yeah, been there, done that. I'm about to go live in Paris for a few months and this is a trip I'm very pleased to take. It's a city I think I'll like, a city I've spent a decent amount of time in, but always in long weekend format, and this time I have the opportunity to infiltrate the real Paris.

In Pucon we kept meeting these travelers who were on year-long expeditions alone or with their partners. I couldn't imagine anything I'd like to do less. They never had any money to do the stuff that one does to experience the purpose of said locale, and they cooked all their own food and spent their days in the hostels planning the next leg of their trip. If you ask me, What's the point? I admire their frugality, but after a year of traveling what have you really done? They will always end up having some good stories, or mis-adventures but for me a week or two at a time of being away from real-life is about all I care for. I enjoy travel more when it feels like something I deserve after having worked hard for a few months. Something I have to look forward to.

Having spent months in Valparaiso I can say I understand it much better than had I spent only a few days as I'm sure most travelers do as they pass through on their expeditions living la vida hostel and guidebook. My first impressions of Valparaiso were so different than the ones I left with, they weren't replaced but they were developed.

This year, I'm going to do Paris, and Lyon and possibly if the opportunity presents itself a few other places in France, and I hope thats all I do.

Apple Store UWS

Merry Xmas me, and welcome back to nyc. Remember the exploding charger that made me laptopless for the last couple weeks in Chile? Having purchased apple care the charger should be covered, so when shopping in soho I stopped in the apple store and they set me up with an appt.

So which store is closest to where you live?

Well I live on the UWS-

Great so the new store at Lincoln Center would work best huh?

New Apple Store on the UWS!

So instead of taking me an hour to get to my appt it only took me 20, and while I arrived on time, they weren't ready for me. But instead of a bench that can comfortably seat 6 people as in the Soho store, this store has huge tables, each outfitted with 4 MacBook Pro's for people to play on while they wait.

No complaints here while I wait... Now if only my dentist, doctor and every other appt I wait for made waiting so convenient.

What to wear

I've been more than looking forward to being home for a lot of reasons, one being that I didn't really jive with the southern hemisphere situation and missed seasonally appropriate fall and winter, but another reason was because I'd get to change my clothes. For almost 4 months I had the same 4 outfits, almost all of which I donated in Valparaiso. The last few days I had been wearing a gray pair of pants with two holes in the crotch, two buttons missing from the waist tab closure, and a ripped belt loop, it felt satisfying to leave them in Pucon. What I came home with was a pair of black leggings, a black dress to go over the leggings and a cardigan to match, a few t-shirts, my yoga pants and two sun dresses. I couldnt remember exactly what clothes I had left in my apartment but it was a huge ikea bag and I knew I would be like a kid at Christmas tearing through it all.

So when I got home and couldnt find the bag the excitement was even heightened, a melange of Christmas and Easter, I had to hunt for the bag in a tiny NYC apartment. Unfortunately when I finally found it, there were no pants were in the bag. So here I am in New York, it's cold, and for four days, I have a pair of black leggings to wear.

To be completely honest I have one other pair of dress pants hanging in the coat closet. I bought them just before I left when I had been about 10 pounds lighter. I know I could wear these pants, but the idea of trying them on and finding them too tight is not an appealing idea. I know they will be too tight, but they could range anywhere from unzippable to just taut.

So its probably a good thing that Sylvain and I went to the gym last night, we got our workout on, and had a nice walk through Harlem. My contract ended in November but because I wasnt here to officially cancel my membership Ive already paid for December. Sylvain was impressed, I'm a member at Planet Fitness and my Harlem branch just opened last year so almost everything is still fresh and new, its only 20 bucks a month and I can also bring a guest for free. I dont think any city will ever feel as much like home as NY. Its true, Im ready to move on, but there are things like my gym which I wont find in France, at least not for $20 a month. Americans are gym people, we start in school and we keep going, in France they dont have teams in school, and everyone smokes anyway so no one really works out, Sylvain is an exception to the working out aspect of the equation. While there are sure to be gyms in Paris they wont be cheap, and they probably wont come with a free guest pass. In London when I went to the gym, you had to buy a membership and in addition pay a fee between 2 and 4 dollars every time you used it depending on whether you wanted to swim or use the treadmill and whether it was a peak hour or not. I'm going to miss working out at Planet Fitness. I'm also going to miss my blackberry. I will probably have some sort of pay as you go hand me down phone from Sylvain, but I wont have the luxuriousness of email, internet, camera and phone all in one. We have a free but unfurnished apartment lined up in Paris, which is great, but knowing that I have a whole furnished- and nicely furnished apartment here in NYC makes it kind of a bummer, we could live like the adults we are, but in all likelihood we will have a pull-out couch and some random furniture Sylvain might be able to nab from home along with a spare kitchen and none of the art I have here. Frankly though, like Chile its only for a few months, and poor or not, I'll still be living in Paris.

36 hours of traveling

We popped a Tylenol Pm on the Tur Bus back to Santiago and 12 hours later feeling as rested as anyone could on a sleeper bus, we found ourselves a taxi, or rather a taxi man found us and we headed to the airport where we would have about a 14 hour wait for our flight to New York. We had literally given the taxi man the last of our money,

The second we dropped our bags and sat down I went to go "freshen up" but when I went to the bathroom I realized my dop bad was missing, I was upset. The thing about dop bags is not the makeup, toiletries and assortment of pills they carry but the sheer cost of it all. I almost never wear make-up, but I own it, and I had just purchased a barrage of pills which after all, add up. I estimated the cost to be no less than $200. Since Im skint, and a lot of the items would have to be replaced (like my contacts) it was a serious drag. After about an hour sitting there, with each of us taking turns as luggage watchdog and airport walker Sylvain went to see if we could get wifi somewhere, we could just upstairs and so we gathered our luggage, 7 pieces in all, and low and behold, my dop bag is lodged underneath the pile. Whew.

So we collect ourselves and find a couch set up at Gatsby's the restaurant where we spent the next 10 hours. Having withdrawn some money we were able to eat overpriced and underdelicious food. Within 20 minutes we needed to recharge batteries and so Sylvain moved to another table where there was an outlet. I'll remember those ten hours as some of the dullest in my life.

Whenever people see my passport they either say, washing machine, and I nod and smile, or they act like because its battered and old- I literally have two pages of open space left to stamp- it has somehow lost its potency and I will no longer be able to pass check points. These people irritate me, because usually they have the minimally skilled job of looking at your passport and recognizing its you and possibly that it matches the name on your airline ticket. They are in no position to deny me access to my own country or anyone elses and yet they all seem to need to show it to a colleague and speculate on my chances of passing borders.

Finally making it to the states I passed border control with a guy named Ashford who liked my outfit and stamped my passport without additional small talk, welcome back, thanks, Im glad to be here. And I meant it. I was euphoric to be home. Sylvains "visitor" line was shorter but taking longer so I headed down to baggage claim, we didnt have that much time to make our flight- enough, but not excessive. All 4 bags show up one by one, and I grab a cart, pile everything on and begin to wait. Its been a while, and now Im worried, so I ask the guard and he says he'll watch my bags if I want to go check, I head upstairs and another guard tells me I'll have to wait for a third guard to escort me to the far end of the room where the visitor's pass border. He asks me what Sylvain looks like, I say, my height, brown hair, skinny with a grey sweatshirt. He's not anywhere I can see, and then Ashford is there asking whats wrong, I describe the situation and they ask if he's Chilean I say, no French, so there should be no problem. They take me to the two holding cells, there are a lot of listless dark brown faces, but no white ones. I head back downstairs thinking maybe we missed each other in transit. But no, and then I look for my ipod to check the time and I realize Ive left it on the plane. I have already had to go back for my passport today which immediately after deboarding I realized I left in the seat pocket. I humbly accept that I am an idiot and stress because frankly I use that Ipod a lot and I really cant afford to have to replace it. So I ask the nice guard if there is anything I can do, he says yeah go tell that lady from Delta in the suit over there. I say, what color suit, and he says, well its not a suit, just a vest. Sure. She calls the plane and someones checking. Finally after an hour of waiting, I see Sylvain coming down the escalator. We grab our bags and get in the long snaking customs line and the lady says she'll send the Delta guy with my ipod to the recheck your baggage point, but then passing customs Sylvain is detained. He has to pay a fine to the US for buying one too many cartons of cigarettes at the Duty Free, and he gives Sylvain a severe chiding for smoking. We pay his fine, pass go, and at this point its more than unlikely we'll make it to our gate. I grab my Ipod from the guy who retrieved my passport and give him a hug and my appreciation. The line to pass the xrays is short, but its taking forever, and they're hassling a guy from Japan because they want to search his bag but he doesnt understand and keeps touching his bag, while they say over and over "sir, you cannot touch your bag". We head to A13 because we've already missed our flight and thats where the next flight to LGA leaves from. We get on the waitlist grab a starbucks which I spill all over my hand thus burning it, and we have just enough time to pick up two magazines before we board.

In New York, I dont even mind that I have only leggings on and its cold standing in the long taxi stand. For the first time in my life, I feel so excited about the weird way Americans overdo the whole Christmas thing and how literally everyone is saying hello, thank you, your welcome, oh excuse me, merry christmas, happy holidays and the like. Even Im saying it with extra zeal. I realize this excessive love will wear off with time, but for now, I enjoy it. It's great being home, I love the brisk seasonally appropriate air, I love being back home, all is good.

goodbye pucon, goodbye chile

We spent about 3 days in Pucon and frankly it capped our chilean experience off perfectly. We enjoyed the therma hot springs and today we did hydrospeed, which is essentially letting the water carry you down a rapid river on what is more or less a large kickboard. It was, not to sound all American or anything, a blast.

Ive met my fifth person from Wisconsin here, I guy from Mequon- he also lived in Lyon for a semester where Sylvain is from, as always when you travel, you discover, as if you didn´t already know, its a small world.

We´ve run into Laura from Wisconsin, a couple we met at a party in Santiago, and a German girl from Sylvains communications theory class, we went hydrospeeding with a couple guys from Toronto and tried to help one of them with advice for his sham marriage to get a US visa.

Glad to go home, but going home on a great note, feeling good about Chile and excited about the future.