Mexico 2009: Finale

Hi again,

As my time here draws to a close, I feel like an update is in order. My spanish is definitely improving. My thought process has moved from very broken span-glish to a fully spanish mindset. I still do not know many words but at least I am able to think in spanish (albeit in short sentences). Class still take up most of my day. Occasionally, I have some time to wander around the city. Some of my recent haunts have been to the local ripley´s believe-it-or-not museum, a market that is 3 stories tall and full or approximately 1,000,000,000 vendors and the audio district. I do not know if Audio District is at all the proper name but after seeing 30-50 stores all selling audio equipment (one store right next to another, etc), I do not know how it could be called anything else.

Since I last wrote, I´ve also been to beach! A group of 14 of us went to Barra de Navidad, a small beach town on the Pacific Ocean. The 5 hour bus ride was full of picturesque views of the changing altitudes with ranches, cactus trees and beautiful mountain drop-offs. The bus we took was nicer than any plane I´ve ever been on. Large seats, drinks and food, amazing foot rests and hilariously bad movies (i.e. Blue Smoke). We did not get there until late. Once we finally moved into our exactly-what-we-paid-for hotel ($6 per person per night) we were all itching to go swiming, so most of us went skinny diping! Most of my time at the beach was spent sleeping, eating the most amazing guacamole and sea kayaking and jetskiing. I drove a jet ski for the first time (without glasses or contacts). Naturally I wanted to go as far out as possible. The man working there drove out to us to say "did you guys know sharks could tip your jetski in this part of the ocean?" I still wonder why he did not mention this before we got on.

(In case you´re feeling jealous, my good time came with a price. I got food poisoning from tamales bought on the bus ride home (which was bumpy and made everyone nauseous). Luckily I have just recovered.)

Obama´s inauguration was very fun with 30 obies! We were allowed to skip class for the speech and following musical/vocal interludes. We got our own room to watch it in. There were so many wise cracks at Bush´s sad face, so many ooos and awws at Obama´s speech. We all cheered the loudest when Bush finally got on the helicopter and left the capital. To celebrate we went to a cuban restaurant (irony?) after class (about 15 of us). Cuban food is amazing!



I just got back from a vegetarian restaurant where I got a huge bowl of soup and tostadas for 15 pesos, approximately $1.10. I am really going to miss the cheapness of this place. Ray

Mexico 2009: Part 1

Hello all!

I hope everyone´s finals, winter breaks, and winter terms (and for some spring semesters) have been going great! I am here to report from Mexico and let me tell you, there is a lot to say.

It´s a balmly 50 degrees here in Guadalajara, Mexico in the mornings (which is rather a bummer once you get used to the weather... 75-80 during most of the day). The program I am doing is an intensive spanish immersion. We are trying to do a semester´s worth of spanish in 15ish days. To put that into perspective, in Oberlin it took us 4 months to cover 6 chapters. Here we covered 2 chapters in half of a week. That´s what 4 hours of lecture and 1 hour of conversation a day does to you I guess. In addition to classroom time, I live in a home with a family who only knows spanish. As in the grandkids know colors in english and everyone seems to listen to terrible american top 100 hits here.... and that´s where english ends.

Mexico is a very different place than the States. In some ways it is a lot more friendly (by american standards). I´ve seen jam-packed buses pass bus fare from the person who is squished against the back door to the bus driver in the front. Thank you, excuse me and hello and expected of everyone by everyone. Yet, it is not uncommon to see people chilling with semi-automatics, or open-air trucks with military personnel with guns and camo. I have yet to feel unsafe, threatened or stolen from in any way.

Since my host family can only speak spanish, my entire relationship with them is based around food. My host mom makes the best everything. I have not had anything like it matched in any of the restaurants here. Also everything has a spicy edge (even the hot chocolate) with extra hot sauce on the side. I must say though I had no idea how disheartening it is to not be able to communicate your thoughts, opinions, or expressions to others around you. At this point my spanish is only good enough to cover my immediate needs and describing literal actions I did or wanted to do. That does not leave you with much to say at the dinner table, let me tell you!

The center has taken us on many trips -- around the city, to huge open air markets. Tomorrow (my birthday) we go to the lake outside town and hot springs! And hopefully afterwards I will be found salsa dancing with some of the other obies on the trip.

Hoping to find you all well, Ray p.s. Since I wrote this, my birthday has happened. It was a great day! Very relaxing during the hot springs. At night a few friends of mine went out for cuban food (some of the best food I´ve had here) and then went to a discotec for dancing. Can you believe that obies started the dance floor at the discotec?!?! Yes we started the party and got the locals to join in. Here's a video from one of the CDs I picked up in Mexico:

Germany 2008: Finale

Hello,

It is the end of my last day in Germany. It's been a trip, certainly. This will obviously be my last email. Well I'll stop rambling, here is the ending to this story:

I got on my first sleeper train, which took me to Wien (Vienna). Couchettes or cheap sleepers consist of 2 columns of 3 beds (more like upholstered benches) with a rickety ladder inbetween. Even in the cramped quarters (where does your luggage go?), everybody was very nice. I was always offered food, poor to excellent attempts at English and a smile or a hello. Which Germans tend not to do in the street. So while Americans smile at everyone, our natural reaction is to close off and alienate ourselves while in cramped quarters. But Germans, you sleep with them, you're family.

Vienna is so jampacked with music and was gorgeous. The first day I got terribly lost (I was in Vienna for 2 days) and ended up in the Viennan equivalent of Wheaton (a suburb of DC that is thought of for its shootings and for its really cheap, good ethnic food ... which maybe makes it safer?). Was I in safe Wheaton or sketchy Wheaton? I got out of the place as fast as I could. I went to Mozart's apartment and the Haus der Musik (House of Music) which was full of crazy "ears"-on experiments showing the quirks of the human ear. As you can imagine I was entranced for a good, long time. I spent most of my time in Stephensplatz -- where luckily all the places I wanted to go were located, along with many street musicians and posh restaurants. I went to a Jewish museum for a change of pace. Their permanent exhibit consisted of holy Jewish objects that were donated by the community. Some of them were blackened because of Nazis trying to burn them or the temple they existed in. Very moving. But the exhibit I spent to most time in was on Erich Korngold -- a Hollywood film composer and Viennan Jew. So I spent a few hours listening to his music.

Then I went to Munich but was so tired I didn't start seeing the city until dark. I went to Olympic Park -- which was a trip because of the horrifying events that happened there (and the lack of any obvious acknowledgment of those events) and the absolutely amazing architecture that was completely gravity-defying, massive and curvy. I also ended up going to a German bier haus in Munich -- which according to my German hostel-roomate was completely full of tourists. The glasses of bier must have been 2 or 3 pint cups -- a glass having the mass of a full growth human skull at least. We ended up splitting one. We also got hit on by men from Holland my dad's age... who also reminded us how they had wives and kids (but they mostly told us that to deflect the "you're so gay" jokes they were passing around... wow). I got her to leave pretty early on.

The next day I left for Soll... the skiing town in the Austrian Alps. I spent the first day reading and taking in the views. The second day I went snowboarding. You took a gondola to GET to the lifts. It was crazy. There was a second gonola, picking up where the first one left off, that went to the top of the mountain. I took it just to see the views. I got there and saw I was standing above cloud level. Next to me, coming up the side of the mountain was a huge, puffy cloud. I starred face to face with a cloud. It was so scary and wonderful.

I somehow got back to Harsewinkel. Everything seemed to go wrong on the trip back -- the bus to to train station didn't come, my sleeper train's number didn't match my ticket but was still the right train (luckily I asked), on it goes. But I got back 2 days ago. I've been catching up on sleep since then and in less than 24 hours I will be on a plane back to the States. Hope you are all well.

Love, Ray

Germany 2008: Part 2

Hi,

Yes I am still alive. Germany has not eaten me yet, although there were some close calls. So I havent written in awhile first because nothing noteworthy was happening (ex. "so today I lounged around and read, again. Just like yesterday. Just like tomorrow...") and then when things did happen I just was too lazy to sit down and document them. But once again here is a brief recap of my adventures so far:

So never go to Europe without your travel plans booked. I figured I could do everything in Europe which is NOT A GOOD IDEA. I decided to get a railpass for the whole of the Europe's train systems that was good for 15 consecutive days. Getting any sort of rail pass (as opposed to individual tickets) is the way to go if you want to see Europe: it cuts down on price significantly and you have the flexibility to see what you want, when you want. BUT because I wasn't a European but wanted to buy the pass in Europe, I was going to have to pay almost double (as opposed to a European or if I had bought it in America). End of story my family had to buy it and have the company send it to Germany. That was the first crazy thing.

Finally with a way to leave the small town I live in I hit the rails, seeing Berlin and Hanover. Berlin is really just a huge shopping district at this point with a lot of gardens -- an interesting twist considering the dark history of the place. Hanover is just beautiful and has the mecca of modern art museums the Sprengel museum. (That is one of the projects I've been pursuing -- reading about modern art and going around and seeing modern art museums in Germany -- along with reading about my family history, and getting to know Germany via traveling around.)

My most recent news is this: I just came back from a two day trip to Brussels and Amsterdam -- staying in a hostel in Brussels along the way where I met some great people from Argentina. Brussels, famous for their naked peeing statue, is such a university town with guitar and east asian trinket shops everywhere you look. Very trendy. In fact all of Europe is "trendy" -- as in people seem to only own designer clothes. It's really strange because I feel so poor and untrendy here. Amsterdam was interesting. I went to a sex museum (which was like 3 floors of photographic porn at 3 Euros a person) and the Anne Frank House (where she hid with her family when she wrote her diary. I SAW her diary. Pretty moving and sad. Amsterdam did have a strange feeling to it -- lots of groups of men wandering around. I was glad to leave before it got dark as I am doing these trips alone.

Tonight I leave for my second major trip -- Vienna, Munich and Soll (for snowboarding yay). I hope your Januarys' are going superbly, Ray

Germany 2008: Part 1

Hello All,

I hope everyones' dreams came true on their respective winter holidays -- if not there is always drinking tonight to forget about all that and to begin to think about winter term!!!!(for the 90% of you on this list who go to Oberlin and know what I'm talking about)!!! My winter term started a tad early as I am already in Germany and have been for the last week. I brought all you guys' emails together (and no doubt I forgot many good peoples) because I know that I can send emails about my life to you guys and not feel like a totally sketchball. This list can be used as a way to keep in touch, just to email me, to email me that you don't want to be on this list (no hurt feelings:)), or not. My plan is to use it to tell you about my adventures and for you to tell me about yours during this wintery month of January (in a few hours that is).

I flew into Frankfurt on the 26th and landed very jetlagged. Germany is 6 hours ahead of EST so right now it is 4:30 pm (10:30 am EST). After we got our rental we (my family came over with me) drove to Harsewinkel, the town were I am living for the month. It took awhile to do this however because for some reason the GSP thought we were driving from Paris to Harsewinkel (as opposed to where we really were which was frankfurt). So it kept telling us we were 600 miles away and wouldnt reset. Eventually it decided to reset itself and all was fine. Germany is quite a pretty place. It is very similar to Wisconsin. It is easy to see why so many German settlers (like my family) settled in WIS because the land is identical. It is sort of similar to Ohio -- Harsewinkel is completely flat, surrounded by farms and is a very small town -- but much prettier. There are lots of trees and farms and winding roads. Germany seems to have a lot of beer, wurst (sausage), wind energy and circuses. I've seen spinning towers and ads for circuses in every town I've driven through so far and a few day ago a saw a bunch of unicyclists.

I took advantage of my parents being here with a car to see some of the country. I went to kz (german acronym for concentration camp) Bergen-Belson -- where Anne Frank died. Wow what a powerful place. All the buildings were burned down when the camp was liberated because of the rampant typhoid in the place. You walk around these huge empty fields surrounded by beautiful, thick forest and see no birds and hear nothing but the wind whipping through the trees. A very heartbreaking place to visit.

On a brighter note, I made it to a German Christmas market. Yes it is true -- Germany does make better sausage. They also make this hot, spiced red wine called Gluvine which is very tasty. My parents left today so finally FREEDOM.

Well I hope everyone New Year's is excellent, Ray p.s. - American History X is a wonderful movie and everyone should see it :)