Serendipitous Senderos

2010: A Year in South America

2011-01-20T11:14:00.000-08:00

Isla del Sol: Two days in sunny, sacred paradise

2010-08-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

I gave into compulsion, pulling my camera off my shoulder although I'd told myself a dozen photos earlier that I had to stop. Only three weeks into my six-week trip, space on my memory card was precious. I climbed on a pile of rocks and looked through the viewfinder into the limitless horizon, breathing heavy in the thin air and rolling my shoulders in an effort to relieve the pangs from my heavy backpack. I snapped yet another picture.

Silky cerulean waters all around. Majestic snowcapped mountains distant on the horizon. Sheep grazing from golden pastures. Undulating hills of rocky green and beige spiraled with ancient Inca terraces. Ruined temples, sacrificial rocks and mythical fountains. Women with weathered faces chatting in the pre-Inca Aymari tongue and leading loaded mules up winding trails. Their husbands tilling earth and holding radios to their ears. Surrounded by glorious sunshine and silence.

Isla del Sol, this place was mystical beauty, no less than the setting for the creation myth of the Inca Empire. The birthplace of the sun god and home to a legendary city, now lost underwater.

The Bolivian island is the largest of 41 islands on Lago Titicaca, the world's highest navigated lake at 12,500 feet-high. It's a fertile refuge at the crossroads of the imposing Andes and the hostile altiplano. Fed by rainfall and glacial meltwater from the Sierras, at some places the lake's depths reach 1,000 feet. This body of water is so massive that it takes a week to cross by boat. Inhabitated three-thousand years before Christ, today the island has no roads or vehicles, only laberynth ruins of Incan nunneries and subsistence farmers and fisherman.

The day before we'd flown from the jungle over the mind-blowing Cordillera to Bolivia's capital La Paz and then taxied straight to the bus stop for the 3.5-hour trip to Copacabana, a sleepy little town near the Peruvian border on Lago Titicaca.

As the home of the cult of the Virgin Morena, hundreds of pilgrims come the the giant Moorish white-washed cathedral the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana in the town center on the weekends for the ritual blessing of miniature objects (toy-like cars and houses or even tiny wads of euros) by Catholic priests in Latin or by shamanes in Aymari.

In the tranquilo European backpackers mecca my Finnish friend and I met a 20-year-old, charismatic German who'd just finished a year teaching in Ecuador. We found a hostel together for the night and hopped on a boat for the two-hour trip to the Isla del Sol the next morning.

Upon disembarking at the little village of Cha'allapampa on the northern shore, we let the tour groups proceed and instead paused on the beach for the Bolivian version of the American breakfast: one egg, bread with margarine and jelly, a small glass of orange juice and a mug of instant coffee or coca mate.

Then we followed wandering sheep and families of pigs into the windswept hills and fields, gawking at the vistas of the sea of cobalt water and the white Cordillera in the distance. We collectively sighed in the serenity of it all.

The island and the lake are right on Peru's notorious Gringo Trail, but we discovered a paradise of hushed solitide. At midday when the sun shone high overhead we stopped hiking for a picnic on a hilltop of 4,000 meters, tired but happy.

After walking all day we came to a hostel with a gorgeous lake front view, high above our $2-3 price range. But after five minutes of bargaining we took off our dusty boots in a luxe (by Bolivian standards) room with down comforters, heat and a private shower. That night an eerily beautiful full moon rose overhead as we ate our modest trout dinners.

In the morning we had to ask the owner to turn on the hot water for our previously agreed upon three-minute allottments. I made my way from the reception to our bathroom in an Olympic sprint. My roommates couldn't stop laughing. My hair has grown long in the past six months, and every drop of water counts.

The next morning we hiked to the south end of the island to the village of Yumani, greeting the more resilient than weary looking locals trudging up the hills and washing laundry on the beach while their children played tag. Before catching a return boat we walked up hundreds of stone stairs to sip from the Fuente del Inca, springs promising aid in love and health.

Just two days on the typical tourist itinerary, but for us it was two days of mystical, unexpected bliss.

Four days without a shower: The Santa Cruz Trek

2010-07-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Huaraz, eight hours north of Lima, is the gateway city to the Cordillera Blanca, a glorious mountain range with more than 22 peaks over 6,000 meters, second only to the Himalayas. (North America has only three mountains over 5,700 meters. Europe, zero.) It´s the Andean adventure capital for daring rock and ice climbers and hard-core trekkers.

Mountaineers and backpackers returning from arduous expeditions congregate in the town center. Getting to my dorm bed involves tripping over giant boots, ice picks, crampons, tents, sleeping bags and piles of provisions.

I am hopelessly intimidated.

It doesn´t help that ¨In Memory of¨plaques with inspirational quotes and photos of young mountain climbers adorn the walls of the cafe in my mountain-lodge-themed budget hostel.

I´m here for the Santa Cruz Trek, a famous four-day circuit with some of the world´s most thrilling scenery -- snowcrusted jagged mountain peaks that jut into the clouds and loom over azure lakes and golden meadows where sheep and cattle graze.

When I handed over my $100 for the excursion I innocently failed to make the connection that I was signing up for four days with no hygienic facilities, showers or running water. I blush at the memory that I packed a towel and my mesh shower sponge. I even stuffed some face powder in my backpack. At least I knew better than to bring more than one outfit as I´d be carrying all my belongings on my back.

The guide would pick me up at 6 a.m. My phone that I´d depended on as an alarm had stopped working, so I asked the guy at reception to knock on my dorm door at 5:40 a.m.

I jolted awake at a knock, grabbed my headlamp to locate my belongings and rushed to the bathroom to get myself together. Then I went to reception bundled in my jacket with my backpack and water bottle in hand, only to find the lights out and the door locked. No bus waited for me in the street. I shined my flashlight on a clock in the office. 3:40 a.m. The groggy receptionist sat up in his mattress on the floor and rubbed his eyes. Lo siento! I hissed. Then I went back to bed still dressed, waiting for another knock.

Over breakfast I met my group: an eccentric mountain-climbing Swedish couple, a comedic little Spanish guy with glasses, a gorgeous medicine-studying, snowboarding couple from Austria and a whiny French mother and daughter. Edith, a soft-spoken young Quechua woman who spoke intermediate English, would be our guide. We all piled in the van for the four-hour journey deep into the surrounding mountains, taking in the aerial views of the villages and agriculture below.

During the drive I mentally replayed the previous day´s experience and the blow it inflicted on my confidence in my athletic ability. The saleswoman in the mountain bike agency had assured me that I´d need no experience. Yet I´d arrived to the bike warehouse to meet the New Zealand couple that would be joining me -- a pair of chiseled athletic gods. The man was seven-feet tall. A professional rugby player. They wore spandex shorts. I had on jeans. They graciously pointed out that I´d put on my cycling gloves backwards.

I tried to remain calm as our taxi drove one hour into the stunning yet tranquil Cordillera Negra mountain range. I tried to maintain my dignity when a second guide had to stay behind with me on a gravel road, only periodically venturing onto the single track trail, as everyone else flew ahead down over grassy boulders and sharp curves.

I couldn´t figure out my gears, but I refused to give up, huffing behind them with my hamstrings on fire up the steep, never-ending hills as we bumped by village women lugging water and children leading mules. I feared my forearms would give out on the brakes. My insides jostled on every rock. When we finished the nearly vertical 1,000 meters down in Huaraz four hours later, I was humiliated, exhilarated, exhausted and throbbing with adrenaline.

Still, I was pumped about Santa Cruz. The 50-kilometer route in the Huascarán National Park (named for a 6,768-meter Andean leviathan) led up the sensational Quebrada Cruz, climbing the valley and crossing the Punta Union pass at 4,760 meters above sea level. It ended with a ramble down into the Quebrada Huaripampa on the other side.

The first day we hiked past towering eucalyptus trees and boulders carpeted in moss with the Río Santa Cruz roaring along the trail. We encountered dozens of other trekkers and even more mules. I felt a pang of sympathy for the burros. They looked as cuddly as a stuffed Eeyore and heaved with exhaustion under the load of all the trekking gear -- tents, sleeping bags and food. The solid and stocky village men led them along, sometimes prodding them with sticks. Occasionally a horse would trot past, an emergency animal used to quickly transport sick trekkers.

We went on, traipsing through expansive pampa meadow and by alpine wildflowers before arriving to our campsite under menacing glacial peaks. There I peeled off my boots to inspect my new callouses and blisters.

That night the wind whipped my little one-man tent as the temperature dropped below 10 degrees. I shivered, curled up into a ball in my high-tech sleeping bag, sliding on the sloped hillside with rocks jutting into my back, wearing all the clothes I had. I coughed most of the night, sure the other campers would eventually toss my tent in the river. Tears welled in my eyes when I tried to work the jammed zipper on my tent door to use the bathroom for the second time. I swore I´d never camp again.

Edith woke us up with coca mate tea at 6 a.m. After my morning bread and hot chocolate I was ready to hit the trail again, feeling better as the sun rose overhead. We trekked along waterfalls spilling over rock walls, jade and emerald lakes and marshland. That day´s walk included a breath-stealing, two-hour ascent to Punta Union. During the entire climb I walked briskly without stopping, looking down at the ground rather than up ahead toward the torturous path. At the top we took in the goose-bump-inducing views of toothy ridges and razored peaks, all white. As we ate our sandwiches and fruit we spotted a viscacha, a rodent that looks like a rabbit with a squirrel´s tail.

That night we camped in a lime-green meadow under Nevado Tailuaya (3,830), where an occasional crash of thunder split the air as avalanches broke from above. I washed my hands, feet and face in the rushing hypothermic river before crawling in my tent that night, trying not to think about the foxes and occasional puma that Edith had mentioned when I´d asked her about local wildlife that afternoon. My aching knees helped distract me.

The third day was a long eight hours. Edith led us on a side trip to a mirador for a sensational mountainscape panorama, and we continued up to the climber´s base camp for Alpamayo (a frozen pyramid once dubbed the most beautiful mountain in the world) and then kept climbing past lovely red quenua trees, amethyst lupins and tube-shaped cacti up to a pristine aqua lake under threateningly close glaciered crowns.

That night Edith filled our bottles with boiled river water before we went to bed so that we could stuff them in our sleeping bags to stay warm. On the two-and-a-half-hour hike the last morning I was too thirsty to mind the foul taste.

At the trail´s end in the hamlet of Vaquería our van awaited us. I tried to appreciate the mind-blowing, airplane-quality views of the countryside below during the dizzying, two-hour descent, but I dozed off in exhaustion with the sun on my face and Latin pop music in my ears, fully content in the moment and willing the bliss to stick around a few days.

Tales of an accidental backpacker

2010-07-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

I´ve been wearing the same shoes every day for nearly six weeks. A pair of hiking boots. When I tie the laces a puff of dust releases into the air. These boots have crossed the world´s driest desert, squashed through muddy jungle, sunk into pampa swamps, braved the frenetic streets of South American metropolises and trekked around some of the world´s highest mountains.

In the past 40 days I´ve learned that it´s possible to live with only two pairs of jeans and two T-shirts. I´ve gotten used to the way my face looks without make-up. My daily routine no longer includes body lotion and perfume. I´ve forgotten how my hair feels when blown out long and smooth with a hair dryer. I´ve gone days without encountering a mirror. Or checking my e-mail or logging on Facebook.

My eyebrows need tweezed, my hair is desperate for a conditioning and my cuticles are a disaster. My back aches from lugging around my heavy backpack, which contains my current livelihood and I therefore protect at all costs. After weeks of traveling between 2,500 and 5,000 meters above sea level, I´m used to gasping for breath. My once oily skin is dry, and my once voluminous hair is almost flat in the thin, dusty air.

Yet through all of this I´ve never gone to bed without washing my face, brushing my teeth, and God bless my orthodontist, putting in my retainers. Sometimes that meant splashing river water on my face, getting out my toothbrush in bus station bathrooms splattered with vomit and diarrhea or scrubbing my retainers in a possibly snake-infested jungle fountain. And, may my dermatologist read this, I never stepped out into the oppressive mountain sun without lathering myself in sunblock and even donning an embarrassing safari hat I bought in the black market on the streets of La Paz before a spontaneous jungle expedition.

I can´t remember bathrooms with toilet paper and soap or with doors that even shut, besides lock. I sigh with relief if water actually flows from the faucet, always cold. I´ve accepted that sometimes baño means a hole in the ground with two footprints in front. I automatically hold my breath when I enter a bathroom and come out breathless like I´ve just finished a sprint. I´ll have to train myself to flush toilet paper again instead of tossing it in an overflowing basket.

Hot showers are a luxurious surprise. A hot shower with good pressure is an extravagance that I´ve encountered only once on this journey. I try to recall what it was like to drink water safe from the tap or buy produce from the market without fearing for my health. Or to accept change without worrying that it´s counterfeit.

I´ve learned to wash my socks and underwear in hostel sinks. I´ve discovered that almost no price is ever fixed, whether it´s a hostel, tour or earrings. I´m now wise enough to request a seat toward the front of the bus after suffering nights bouncing over the wheel on unpaved roads with cold air and exhaust fumes blowing in from the iced-over window that wouldn´t close. And I´ve found out that even if I have my bus ticket, I won´t be allowed to board unless I´ve paid for the right to access the terminal.

I wake up between 6 and 7:30 a.m., sometimes as early as 3 a.m. if an excursion requires it. I go to bed between 9 and 10 p.m., sometimes as early as 7:30 p.m. if I´m exhausted and there´s no electricity. My typical breakfast is bread and jam. My budged lunch and dinner usually consist of soup followed by rice, potatoes and chicken. (However, I tried llama in San Pedro de Atacama and ate lots of fried bananas in Bolivia.)

Every meal is served with coca tea, made from the same leaves as cocaine but sharing none of the illicit drug´s affects. (The people in this part of the world have been planting, chewing and drinking the plant for thousands of years, believing it to possess dozens of medicinal benefits essential for the hostile, high altitude conditions.)

I shake my head at the realization that I´ve been traveling through South America with a backpack for more than a month. It will be 42 days when I fly back to Santiago. Eighteen of them alone. I´ve been in three countries, 12 cities, 14 beds and one tent. I´ve suffered bone-chilling zero-degree temperatures with blustering winds on desert nights and steamy, 90-degree jungle days. I´m 1,667 miles from my home in Valparaíso, Chile with more than 900 photos on my camera´s memory card. I´ve had conversations with people from Sweden, Bolivia, Austrailia, Peru, New Zealand, Chile, Austria, Canada, Germany, England, Poland, France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Japan, Belgium, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Israel, the Czech Republic and Brazil.

I crossed the world´s driest desert in a jeep. I went into the jungle. I traveled down the world´s most dangerous road. I´ve seen geysers, volcanoes, lakes of every color, deadly mines, ancient ruins, pampas, some of the world´s highest mountains and deepest canyons and the world´s largest salt flat. I´ve rafted on canyon rivers, trekked in the Cordillera Blanca, canoed on tropical lakes and mountain biked in the Andes.

I visited villages where electricity and running water have yet to arrive, where mules are used for transport and radios for communication. Communities where Spanish is a second language, if spoken at all, and Aymara and Quechua peoples still hold true to their pre-Inca and Inca dress, food and faith.

In six weeks I´ve had no less than five adventures of a lifetime. Please don´t think I´m bragging. I´m just in awe of my blessings. I´m fully aware that I´m utterly unworthy of any of this -- I´m not especially daring or outgoing. I wear makeup and love shopping and read fashion magazines. I don´t know East from West and bought my first big backpack on the street in Chile two days before I left.

Nothing was planned. This has been an unanticipated, undreamed of gift, the most spectacular trip I´ve experienced thus far, just in time for my quarter-of-a-century birthday.

And now I´m left the unrelenting urge to tell you all about it.

A weekend in El Norte Chico: The mystical Valle de Elqui

2010-06-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

En el valle de Elqui, ceñido
de cien montañas o de más,
que como ofrendas o tributos
arden en rojo y azafrán

I turned in a 10-page analysis on Gabriela Mistral’s poetry the week after I explored the Elqui Valley where the Nobel-Prize winning poet grew up. The narrow slice of paradise protected by looming desert mountains on either side inspired dozens of her poems. Although Mistral left behind her humble beginnings in rural South America to travel the world as a foreign diplomat and live in Madrid, Nice, Naples, Lisbon and Santa Barbara, she insisted that the grand azure sky, oppressive sunshine and voluptuous figs of her childhood home would always define her.

The Elqui Valley is in Chile’s Norte Chico, or “Little North,” about six hours up from the port of Valparaíso. In the lush basin farmers harvest a mouthwatering list of produce including avocados, papaya and olives. The sunny skies drenching the vineyards make for the sweetest grapes in the country, ideal for the production of the national drink, pisco (similar to brandy).

The air in the sleepy towns of Pisco Elqui and Vicuña smells sweet. The fragrance drifts from the tiny, juicy grapes drooping down the terraces and the mandarins adorning the trees. Coral and amethyst blossoms and golden leaves punctuate the rugged, sandy panorama. The strong sunlight casts a warm glow on the rugged landscape and the rustic steeples. And speaking of steeples, the buttercup yellow church with aqua trim in the flourishing main plaza of Pisco Elqui is storybook perfection. I found myself comparing the tranquil and mystical atmosphere to New Mexico -- The two regions share colonial and adobe architecture, lots of cacti and a majestic mountain panorama.

In both towns my friends and I, an exchange student from South Dakota and a couple from Versailles, France, lingered over the spread of artesenia in the markets, boutiques and sidewalks. I'm currently obsessed with stocking up on woolen winter accessories hand knitted with fleece from Chile’s sheep farms. But instead of cold weather gear I picked out a pair of delicate lapislázuli dangles, the semi-precious gem mined in Chile similar to turquoise but royal blue. I resisted the urge to buy a jar of papaya marmalade or manjar with walnuts but finished off a half-kilo bag of raisins, which were mouth-puckeringly sweet dried grapes just plucked from the vine, stems and all.

The region’s clear skies (averaging more than 300 sunny days a year) make it a choice destination for the highest-tech U.S. and European astronomical observatories, where astrophysicists make the majority of current discoveries. We toured the Mamalluca site because it offers night stargazing to the public. It's the most visited facility despite being one of the oldest and smallest because of its accessibility. The big-time observatories open occasionally for daytime (No looking at stars! I was so disappointed when I called.) tours that must be booked months in advance.

Our little guide left us all dumbfounded with a Powerpoint presentation on the vastness of the universe and the mortality of our solar system, making me nostalgic for my two semesters of honors astronomy with my genteel NASA-employed physics professor. Then he made Star Wars Jokes after we climbed upstairs to take turns peering into the telescopes for glimpses of Saturn’s rings, galactic clumps and details of the lunar surface. Outside we shivered in the damp night air and contemplated the unfamiliarity of the Southern Hemisphere sky. I'd just spotted the Southern Cross when we had to descend the hill early after a veil clouds suddenly concealed the stars.

Our last day we toured a garden-like pisco factory deep in the midst of beige, leviathan mountains with snow-crusted peaks in the distance before returning to our home base La Serena two hours away. La Serena is a pleasant colonial city known for Chile’s oldest, most elegant churches and breezy beaches. That night on the overnight bus trip home our bus broke down. We were stuck from 4 to 7 a.m. in the middle of a desolate nowhere, with rugged coastline on our left and sandy hills dotted with cacti on our right.

... Now that I'm reading up for my upcoming trip to Bolivia I think the delay was a warm up for the misadventures to come in the true Third World.

Falling for Chile

2010-04-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

El Cajón de Maipo -- outside Santiago. Whenever I have a rough day, I look back on these past (almost!) three months and remember why I can't stay mad at Chile.

Welcome to the World of Rotary: Service Above Self

2010-04-21T09:09:00.001-07:00

The gray-haired Chilean man with round glasses stepped down from the podium and thrust the microphone in my face. I sat in the front of the ballroom of the Hotel Militar Coraceros, behind a long table with a plate of half-eaten noodle casserole with breadcrumb topping in front of me. I nervously tapped the binder of class notes at my feet. A visiting Rotary International director from Tucson was set to present a complex earthquake fund proposal heavy with Rotary jargon. He wanted me to translate. I looked into the crowd of men in suits and gulped. “Gracias,” I began.

My Rotary host counselor Dan Luis Martinez invited me to the Viña del Mar club lunch meeting a week earlier. I’d prepared a photo-heavy PowerPoint presentation, which I'd saved it to my Macbook. I’d toted the laptop on the wild bus ride and up the steep hill to my class in Sausalito that morning. Several of the students glanced at me when I walked in the classroom that morning dressed in black pants, ballerina flats and a pink sweater that stood out among the Chilean college student uniform of distressed jeans, destroyed sneakers and bomber jackets.

I slipped out early to walk down the hill to the Rotary meeting conveniently located 10 minutes away in a hotel on a quiet leafy street in Viña, a new location due to earthquake damages in their traditional meeting spot. I entered the lobby and tracked down my counselor in the crowd of mingling men in suits. I quickly realized that I was the only woman present among the dignified men, average age 75.

A waiter passed around a tray of drinks, and I passed up the pisco sour for what looked like a fancy latte. The circle of men surrounding me quickly warned me that it contained alcohol. While the men sipped their drinks my host counselor introduced me to the president of one of the many clubs in Valparaíso. The gracious gentleman invited me attend one of his club meetings. Next the district governor handed me his card and offered to help me with anything I needed during my stay in Chile.

The friendly Rotarians dialed up their hearing aids and practiced their English with me, asking me where I was from and what I was studying. They wanted me to meet the Rotary International director visiting Chile from Arizona. All the while I engaged in the Rotary custom of exchanging cards with everyone I met. (Thanks to my Charleston sponsor club for giving me a stack of beautiful, professional business cards!)

Some of the Rotarians suggested I get in touch with the Valparaíso Rotaract club. I actually made contact with the group, a Rotary sponsored served organization for young people, before I left the States. I’m looking forward to meeting with them Friday evening and adding a Rotary-affiliated service project to my current volunteer activities at La Católica.

After the three-course lunch the members stood to sing the solemn Rotary anthem. The meeting commenced with a presentation on community projects from the youngest member present. Afterward they asked me to stand and briefly introduce myself before the other American's presentation.

I thanked them for the invitation and expressed how grateful I was to finally get in touch with Rotary and how blessed I feel to be given this opportunity to study in Chile this year through the generosity of Rotary. In conclusion I presented them with the club banner from the Charleston club (I must say I’m proud of the pretty and colorful design depicting Broad Street).

After the two-and-a-half-hour meeting I was running late for my next class, but one of the hospitable Rotarians offered to drop me off at the university on his way into Valparaíso. Traveling between the two cities via car instead of jolting bus offered a new experience. As we sped on the highway I gazed out the window watching waves crash against the rocks below the castles and resorts of Viña as the sun glimmered and ships sailed on the cobalt sea. Thank you Rotary, I thought.

Porteña at heart?

2010-04-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

I was young and in love. I remember the six-month affair as a hazy muddle of euphoria and depression, passion and frustration. When we went our separate ways my emotions faded. On the other side of the world I all but forgot my former infatuation.

Yet some memories still make me shudder or induce a wave of nausea while others accelerate my heart rate and induce a wave of nostalgia. I remember being cold and lonely, always lost. But I also remember smiling and dancing, feeling so alive.

After three years of 5,230 miles of separation, I suddenly reencountered my former flame. I'd always wondered what it would be like. I was sure my feelings would have changed -- I'd explored so many places since we left off. I was jittery at the first encounter, then a flood of long-turned-subconscious memories washed over me. We spent almost a week getting reacquainted. I kept thinking, How did we end up back together?

Melodramatic imagery aside (the turbulent relationship in question is with a city, not a man), my experience with Buenos Aires is complicated. The city seduced me with a dream-like, balmy summer and then turned on me with a tragic, dreary winter.

But I swooned all over again for the beguiling South American capital as soon as my taxi from the airport entered the city. With every verdant park, palatial building and Italian-inflected line of Spanish the driver uttered, a layer of my grudge melted.

I was back home. But it wasn’t so sweet. Although everything was familiar I found myself disoriented and confused, looking at maps upside down and furiously flipping through my Guia T bus guide. And things had changed. Where were all the mullets and mate drinkers? And when did Starbucks get here?

But running through the Bosques de Palermo, carrying out a load of shopping bags out of Palermo Viejo and wandering through slick art museums with my iPod blasting soothed my irritation. As did spending a day at the spa, lingering over gourmet dinners of spinach gnocchi with vintage Malbec and downing dozens of cappuccinos and Volta ice cream cones (some of the best, coming from someone who frequented multiple gelato establishments daily during a three-week tour of Italy). I hate to admit it, but the 4:1 peso/dollar exchange rate can bring happiness.

Soon I forgave Buenos Aires. For everything. I would do anything to be back.

Why Buenos Aires? That's complicated -- It's a chaotic, European-style metropolis made up of a bundle of diverse neighborhoods at the far southern end of the world. A sprawling city known for books and theater, design and fashion, art and music, luxury and poverty, cafés and dulce de leche. It seems as if everyone on the street is walking a purebred dog or in a passionate embrace. But all that comes with a heavy dose of exasperating bureaucracy, disconcerting plastic surgery and psychoanalysis and constant political protests. And watching elegant women clicking in heels and toting designer bags walk down the same block as leather-faced men from the slums driving horse-drawn carts and sorting through trash can make anyone feel uncomfortable.

The city has stolen and broken many a heart. So many who visit fall in love. But like a jealous, naive girlfriend I secretly believe that the swarms of tourists gushing about the clubbing scene (deserved -- during my taxi ride to the airport at 5:30 a.m. we passed still-pulsing clubs) just don’t know the city like I do.

On the colectivo bus ride to the Palacio Barolo where I interned with Time Out on Avenida de Mayo I contemplated my feelings. Buenos Aires is an exciting city. It’s a volatile combination of thrills and frustration. Anything is possible, yet nothing is possible. Things just don’t work the way they should. Its cycle of political strife, economic failure and government corruption continues.

Over cortados in the business district an 11-year expat and former supervisor tried to divert my fantasies about starting a life there. But the heart wants what the heart wants. And mine wants Buenos Aires. Whether Buenos Aires will ever have me back, that’s yet to be determined.

Into Patagonia

2010-04-16T01:07:00.001-07:00

The sky dimmed with the passing hours as we leaned over the rails and pondered the colossal sea of ice looming below. Snow-crusted mountains framed the frozen city that extended beyond our vision, like the ocean itself. Thunder ruptured the silence whenever a chunk of ice cracked from the mass and crashed into the aqua lake below, shooting a water high into the sky. Each explosion brought on a wave of chills. The glacier seemed so powerful, so alive. The jagged jaws of ice gleamed a brilliant blue, their dagger-like forms jutting into the sky with an air of violence.

Standing in the mighty vicinity of El Glacier Perito Moreno in El Parque Nacional de Glacieres of southern Argentina is a thrilling, even spiritual experience. The glacier is an imposing, active presence. I mulled over the idea that the entire metropolis of Buenos Aires could fit inside the 100-square mile, 200-foot-tall mass of ice as the last of the sunlight gleamed an incandescent pink through a break in the clouds. Antarctica seemed dangerously close. It was ... surreal. There I was, more than 6,000 miles from home in the Southern Patagonian Ice Fields, facing one of the world’s natural wonders.

A week earlier I hadn’t known this glacier existed, but after a three-hour flight south of Buenos Aires I'd landed in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. I suddenly found myself 2,000 miles away from my apartment in Valparaíso and my chaotic new class routine in La Universidad Católica. I'd arrived with three new acquaintances-turned-friends: Natalie, my shining fellow Rotary Scholar and two tall, blond and beautiful Christian-school teachers. During the next three days we bonded over conversaton accompanied by Quilmes, empanadas, Malbec, ice cream and gooey Argentine pizza after our long days of excursions.

We took refuge in our cozy and rustic hospedaje in El Calafate, the boomtown gateway to Argentine Patagonia (its population has more than tripled since 2001). In the mornings Balén and her husband served us homemade bread and jam made from fruit from the backyard trees (our favorite tasted better than cherry pie) along with the quintessential medialunas. We topped our sweet-grain cheerios with vanilla or strawberry yogurt and sipped mate cocido or coffee by the old-fashioned stove. From the moment the warm and beautiful couple (always chasing after or scooping up their puppy-eyed, snotty-nosed toddler) first greeted us I swooned, dismissing any doubts I had about my former affinity for Argentine accents and memories of Argentine hospitality. The husband was a typical shaggy-haired and aquamarine-eyed Argentine – imagine an older brother of Gael García Berna (from The Motorcycle Diaries and Y Tu Mamá También).

Our second day in El Calafate we woke up for a three-hour bus ride to the village of El Chaltén, the base for some of the best trekking in Patagonia where we hiked around the Fitz Roy Massif. While walking through the sunny forest we met three red-headed Magellanic woodpeckers. The giant birds announced their presence with the drum of their tree-demolishing double knocks. Again I reflected on my circumstances -- Here I was, meandering though the rugged wilds of Patagonia, admiring turquoise lakes, peering down into gargantuan valleys and gazing up at the sheer granite faces of the extra-terrestrial-shaped Fitz Roy mountains. The peaks protruded like fangs into the clouds of the Patagonian heavens, perhaps the most spectacular on planet earth.

The next afternoon following a round of cappuccinos in the pleasantly touristy El Calafate, Natalie and I walked to the Laguna Nimez Reserve on the edge of town. The wind whipped our hair and our hiking boots sunk into the soft, wildflower-carpeted field shoring the lake. A flock of flamingos soared over the water while horses grazed and upland geese waddled through the grass.

Later that evening we hired a taxi to the Lago Roca, an almost-secret spot where the locals spend their weekend afternoons. Our driver turned out to be a private local guide, an opinionated character named Mauricio who drove us through the lonesome highways of rugged Patagonia, dodging dozens of leaping, dog-sized hares reminiscent of miniature kangaroos in the golden glow of evening. He paused for photo opps of aqua lakes and a took us for a look around of one of the estancias (a sheep farm in this case) before parking at the shores of Lago Roca to share a round of mate in the plains below El Perito Moreno. After the sunset we piled back in the car, just as the stars punctuated the humbling expanse of Patagonian sky to ride home in silent, sleepy gratitude.

And there I was, unworthy, exploring Patagonia, the namesake of the ultimate brand of outdoor gear and the wilderness enthusiast’s definitive adventure at the southern ends of the earth.

(see the rest of my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/22876764@N03/)

On the Argentine Capital

2010-04-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Buenos Aires, where I lived for half of 2007. Three years later I have mixed emotions on returning to the cosmopolitan South American metropolis. You could even say I'm nervous. There I had some of my highest highs and my lowest lows.

I liked Barcelona, Santiago and Madrid just fine, but as elegant or sophisticated as those cities could be, they lacked that certain energy. Buenos Aires throbs with it. I don't know if it's the ongoing history of economic and political struggle and protest, the passionate fusion of Latin American and Italian cultures or all the sensual Tango, but that city has something.

At 21, Buenos Aires swept me off my feet. I swooned for the chocolate amargo ice cream delivered by motorbike. At night my friends and I sipped Malbec and ate gooey pizza topped with salsa blanca and chorizo or bowls of creamy gnocchi on breezy sidewalks. I'd fly across the sprawling city in cheap colectivos and taxis, always clutching my Guia T. In the mornings I'd run laps in the Bosques de Palermo, admiring the rose garden and trying not to stare at all the affectionate couples and the bronzed, scantily clad joggers and inline skaters.

In the evenings I'd drink mate, charging up for the night ahead. While we'd wait in line to get in a boliche I'd stare at the silicone enhancements and genetic miracles ahead of us, barely concealed under thin layers of Lycra. Then we'd dance the night away and leave the still raging club to catch a bus home at dawn.

I'm remembering the afternoons I walked up and down avenidas Santa Fe and 9 de Julio, passing Plaza de Mayo and contemplating the protests or the marching madres de los desparecidos. I can still recite the barrios: hip Palermo, charming San Telmo, elegant Recoleta, chaotic Constitución, gritty Abasto, residential Belgrano, colorful La Boca and modern Puerto Madero.

Buenos Aires -- the land of Jorge Luis Borges, Maradona and Evita Perón. The capital of dulce de leche and chorripan. The massive city of mullets and make outs, full of dog walkers and green parks. Where tiny old ladies walk their little dogs at 3 a.m. dressed in fur coats and the men in the market belt out Italian love ballads. The land of vos y "zsho," a country where a thong is the equivalent of a swimsuit and no part of a cow is left uneaten. The place where I could afford blow outs and waxes and spent my weekends hiding my shock in avant-garde art galleries and sipping cortados in Victorian cafes.

I'm afraid I won't want to come back to the Pacific side of the continent. Even though I suspect I'll soon have similar emotions about Valparaíso, right now I'm oh-so ready to escape so I can put on a dress and take lots of pictures without fearing for my life. I plan to buy loads of books without going broke. I'm going to admire all the design and fashion, all too absent in my current home.

And after going to bed hungry in Chile I'm looking forward to escaping to a country where dinner is a meal, even if served at 11 p.m.

Bienvenido a Vaparaíso

2010-03-25T06:21:00.001-07:00

I'm alone in my 12th-floor apartment. Through the curtains I can see the city lights spreading over the hills and reflecting on the ocean. I've closed the glass doors to block out the howling traffic and squawking seagulls. I sip a glass of fine Chilean wine (from a bargain $6 bottle) and bite into the bread I picked up at the packed bakery on my way home from class this evening smeared with the 25-cent avocado I bought at the market yesterday. A professor told me that Chileans are the world's second largest consumers of bread, after France.

I can only laugh when I remember my daily routine in college included a solo run through downtown Charleston, in shorts no less. Now the idea of stepping outside my front door with an iPod is hilarious. It's hard to imagine I used to march around in a skirt and heels. Or how I wore bags that didn't strap across my chest and whipped out my wallet with abandon rather than scrounging coins out of my pocket. I fantasize about buying myself a big diamond ring when I get back to the States and flashing it daily.

Yesterday on the bus I blinked when I saw a rat running across a telephone wire. Later from my patio I spotted a large mammal wriggling in the ocean, which my roommate's friends confirmed was a sea lion. I'm not so sure because it looked bigger than the cars whizzing by on Avenida Errazuriz. Then at 10 p.m. I passed a group of transvestite prostitutes huddled on the corner two blocks from my apartment tower. In the building across the street I could see college students listening to a lecture on the second floor. (Valparaíso alone has nine universities, and a there's a slew of other institutions of higher education in the surrounding region.)

Downtown Valparaíso shady men who act like they've never seen a pair of green eyes barrel me with piropos, hisses and comments. They don't mind urinating, spitting and scratching themselves in the street either. My feet are always dirty and calloused from the already filthy, now earthquake shattered sidewalks. The other night I walked along the coast of the tidier, less intimidating city of Viña del Mar with a friend, passing the apartment I almost rented and thinking about what could have been.

But just when I decide I don't want to inhale another breath of fumes from cruddy cars or trip over another pile of grime, Valparaíso casts its spell on me. When I climb up a cerro and catch a glimpse of the cerulean bay and the ramshackle spread of colorful houses below, I almost have to catch my breath.

Last week a friend (a potential roommate I met in Santiago) led me around the city, where she's studied law the past five years. First we made a trip to the market to pick up the ingredients for our lunch of assorted baked vegetables over multi-grain rice with salad. We took the precarious antique elevators up the hills and admired the decaying mansions and graffiti murals. We visited Nobel-prize winning poet (and Chilean national hero) Pablo Neruda's whimsical house, La Sebastiana. The panoramic vistas would inspire anyone to write a few lines of verse.

After a steep descent back down to el plan (the flat city center) we stopped for a long browse in a thrift store loaded with antiques, where I bought a chocolate suede '70s era purse for $4. When we passed the port we jumped on an almost private boat tour of the bay in the golden evening sun, gazing out at the miles of sandy and rugged coast and the massive sea lions napping on the rocks.

On the way home we stopped at a couple of university-run, avant-guarde cultural centers because the official museums and art galleries remain closed indefinitely after the earthquake. Catalina pointed out her favorite cafes, bars, used bookstores and bakeries. We wandered past an artisan market along a dusty could-be-elegant plaza and took a break at the hip bohemian bar El Ritual to share some banana-orange-infused red wine.

Then we said chao, and I walked up the dozen flights of stairs (the one functioning elevator in the 27-story tower has to be strained, and I'm practicing in case I move to a hill with staircases) to my comfortable and modern apartment with a breezy balcony and my closet-sized bedroom with an ocean view. My roommate is a 24-year-old Chilean design student in the Universidad de Valparaíso who's always giving me directions to my far-flung classes and teaching me modismos, Chilean slang.

So when I'm not busing between cities to my classes, I take refuge from the dizzying streets of Valpo in my little kitchen -- roasting beets, carrots, and zucchini; caramelizing pumpkin with curry and ginger; or reading a Gabriel Marquez novel at the bar. (Notice I'm not cooking with recipes because apparently it's not a Chilean custom to use measuring cups or spoons or even scales to measure grams.) My mornings start with 30 minutes on a rickety elliptical, watching the ships on the sparkling aqua water through the open window in the little room by the pool my condominium calls the gimnasio. (A list of statistics we read in one of my classes found that something like 90 percent of Chileans don't work out on a regular basis. Yet somehow they've avoided the obesity epidemic, more impressive still as they're rumored to be the world's third largest consumers of mayo.)

In the meantime I practice rolling my r's with the phrase Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril, Rápido corren los carros, los carros del ferrocarril. I can't leave Chile without mastering the Hispanic alveolar trill. I'm contemplating small pleasures, like how I finally found Febreeze, in Jumbo, the Chilean version of Wal-Mart. I'm the freak non-smoker among Chilean students, and now I can socialize without doing laundry everyday.

Now if I could only locate some soy milk. Or an affordable perculator or French press. The powdered Nescafe they serve here just doesn't cut it.

Rotary update: Six weeks after my February arrival to Chile I've made my first Rotarian contact -- One historic earthquake, a chaotic tsunami alert and dozens of aftershocks later. Dr. Dan Martínez invited me to his refined home on a main avenue in Viña del Mar for an elegant Chilean once, evening tea, with his wife Telma, 24-year-old granddaughter and her friend. I exchanged numbers with the two younger women who also study at the Universidad Católica, the second-most prestigious university in the country. Dan and Telma gave me a little flag from their club and showed me pictures from their trips to international Rotary conferences in the States. Now I'm waiting for an invitation to one of their club meetings so I can make my Rotary debut and give my third (of a required seven) presentation.

Back to the libros

2010-03-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

Two years later, and I'm back to class. I might be a capable, 24-year-old adult this time around, but that hasn't kicked my jitters. The day after I moved to Valparaiso I started my orientation for foreign students in a modern building down the street belonging to the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso. South American universities consist of faculty buildings spread throughout a city (or in this case three cities) rather than the North American concept of sprawling, landscaped campuses. That morning I met the four other exchange students in my group of independents, those of us who came to Chile without a study abroad program offered by a private agency or university. We were two Americans, a Japanese guy and two German girls, ages 23-28.

Our student monitor, Natalia, reminisced about the culture shock and linguistic difficulties she'd survived during the six months she'd studied in Mexico earlier this year. Then she led us to an auditorium with the other 260 exchange students (66 percent of the foreign students in the university of 14,000 come from the U.S.) where we listened to important deans present speeches peppered with earthquake history and facts. Afterward we headed to the balcony, where we snacked on avocado and tomato sandwiches and jugos naturales (sugary juice) while watching Chilean folk dance performances accompanied by an impressive live band. The dancers changed costumes four times to perform dances from various regions of Chile, including a saucy number from Valparaiso.

During the next orientation session I got my results from the nerve-wracking Spanish exams and signed up for classes. In a chaotic room, a student representing each department sat at a table ready to answer our questions and enroll us in our courses. I sat down at every table (well except mathematics, engineering, science and business -- anything with earning potential) to interrogate the monitors about the most engaging and entertaining classes in their departments taught by professors with clear spoken Spanish and an empathy for foreign students. So, now I'm signed up for classes in five different departments. And I'm looking forward to all of them, although I have a month to drop and add classes to find my ideal combination.

1. Literature: Intro to the Latin American Detective Novel
2. Physical Education: Personal Health and Active Living
3. Art: Basic Concepts of Cinematic Language
4. Journalism: Multimedia Journalism or Graphic design (still deciding)
5. Architecture: American Workshop: Urban Spaces
6. Art: Paper Making Workshop
7. Art: Human Experience in the Ideas of 20th Century Art

This week, I started classes and realized that while two of them are a 10-minute walk to the historic Casa Central in gritty downtown, the other four are 20-40 minutes away by bus. Oh, how fondly I remember the days of biking to class in Charleston. Now I fear for my life squished on maniacal buses or walking the edges of the taped off sidewalks of post-earthquake Valpo.

Tuesday night I realized that I'd have to wake up at 6 a.m. to get to my journalism class on time. I walked the streets the next morning in the dark and avoided shifty figures as I waited nearly 30 minutes to catch a bus with standing room only to the Curauma campus nearly 40 minutes away. I arrived to the giant modern building at exactly 8:15 a.m. to find the classroom empty and locked. The professor showed up around 9 a.m. to hand us the syllabus and dismiss the class.

The next day I bussed to my art class only to discover after 30 minutes of frantically searching the streets and berating my ability to survive in a foreign country that the faculty had moved 20 minutes away to the Miraflores neighborhood due to earthquake damages. When I arrived an hour late I found out class had been canceled for a professors' meeting.

In the meantime I'm waiting. Waiting for classes to really start. Waiting for the university gym to open and the fitness classes to begin. Waiting to get the schedules for the language exchanges, volunteer projects, and photography workshop I signed up for during orientation. Waiting for Rotary to contact me so I can start attending meetings and giving presentations. And most impatiently, waiting for the water heater repairs in my apartment after two weeks of cold showers.

I used to say the only thing holding me back from joining the Peace Corps was the almost certain absence of hot showers. God is laughing at me.

(images courtesy of derechopucv.com and ceefilosofia.blogspot.com)

Tsunami Alert: Gringa en trauma

2010-03-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

I stirred my oatmeal over the gas flame, contemplating how late I'd arrive to my orientation for foreign students in the university's Casa Central 10 short blocks up the street. That's when the rumbling started. Since moving to a 12th floor apartment two days earlier I'd been bracing myself for replicas, aftershocks from the massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile two weeks earlier.

The overhead lamps swung back and forth, the glasses rattled in the cabinets, the floor trembled and the giant glass windows facing the ocean shook. I had the sensation of swaying in the high rise apartment tower. My heart raced as I switched off the gas and ran to the door where I'd left my keys in the lock so I could quickly place myself beneath the door frame. About a minute passed before the shaking stopped.

I wondered if I should run downstairs. I didn't know if I'd just experienced a significant earthquake or just a moderate temblor (tremor) heightened by my location on the 12th floor. I glanced in the hallway in search of neighbors to consult, but it seems I'm the only occupant in my hall. So I took the most illogical course of action: I gobbled up my breakfast, brushed my teeth, touched up my mascara and even scrubbed my retainers before rushing out the door. But before I could make an exit I heard the low murmur of the lamps swaying and the dishes vibrating. This time the trembling seemed even longer. I heard the whole building moving.

In a twisted way there's something enthralling about earthquakes -- the earth suddenly feels so alive. There's a sentiment of connection. After riding dozens of roller coasters and thrill rides in my adolescence it feels almost gentle. But the destruction the vibrations wreak on human civilization reminds us of the fragility of our existence.

Scared and alone, I ran down the dozen flights of stairs to the lobby. I tried to get the concierge's attention but he was on the phone with a burdened expression on his face and ignored me. People fled out the door before I could say anything. I asked a hysterical girl what was going on. "Viene una tsunami!" she shrieked between sobs.

Her mother and older sister ran in, frantic and crying. They all sprinted out the door, and I followed. Before they jumped in a taxi I asked if I could get in too. We piled in the car, with their big, smelly basset hound howling and trying to scramble out the window. I yanked out an infant car seat to make room and kept it on my lap. In the streets people ran toward the hills -- janitors, office workers, vendors and children. Some were sobbing and screaming as the sirens blared and horns honked. Our car barely moved in the traffic-choked streets. The women in the car cried out how they didn't want to die, how we would all lose everything in our apartment overlooking the sea. They screamed "Tsunami!" out the window as we passed fist-fighting thugs and shouting police officers. I couldn't understand the car radio in the chaos.

My heart pounded as I tried to calm the women, although I had no idea what was going on. I fought back tears as I tried to call the owners of my apartment and my host family in Santiago, but the phone lines had collapsed. Just like us, the people running in the streets kept looking back toward the ocean to see if the wave was coming. I stared back at my apartment building, thinking about my Mac and Nikon and all the belongings I'd stuffed into my suitcases with so much thought and care four weeks earlier. I accepted that they were all gone, that I'd have to find a new home. If the apartment didn't collapse it would be inhabitable. I wondered if I would have to leave Chile. I was living the most terrifying experience of my live thus far.

The car was making no progress, and I asked if we should get out and run instead. Thankfully the driver ignored me. Instead he went against traffic to a more distant hill where we quickly sped up and up through dingier and dingier neighborhoods until we felt that the maremoto wouldn't sweep us away. After we parked I realized that we hadn't been in a taxi, but a private car with a generous and remarkably calm business man who'd fled his office in Valparaiso. On the hillside we talked to the neighbors, a group of women who worked in waste management. They invited us into their warehouse to watch the news.

The earthquakes (up to 6.9 on the Richter scale) jolted Chile as the new president Sebastian Piñera was sworn in at an inaugural ceremony in the National Congress in Valparaiso blocks away from my apartment, with an audience of international diplomats and journalists. Piñera is the first elected right-wing leader 50 years after a repressive military dictatorship ruled the country, killing and torturing thousands citizens. (I'm not taking a political stance at this point in light of my ignorance of Chilean politics. I'll only acknowledge the new president's intelligence as he has a doctorate in economics from Harvard and is a millionaire entrepreneur.)

The tsunami alert remained in effect, so the women in the warehouse served us lunch. My apartment neighbors told me they weren't returning to the building that night, and I shouldn't either. When the tsunami advisory ended we drove back into the city, and they insisted I pack a bag and go with them to stay with a friend who lived on a hill. The chaotic center had converted into a ghost town, with all the businesses closed for the day. Although I didn't consider them the ideal emergency company considering their exemplified tendencies toward hysteria, they convinced me I would sleep through another tsunami alert if I stayed the night alone.

So that's how I ended up spending an uncomfortable night in a humble house in a neighborhood of wild dogs and feral cats. The next morning I made it back down to the city in time to sign up for classes in the university.

Still, every so often I tense up and look for swaying lamps. I don't know when the tremors are real or when it's my imagination. Scientists say the aftershocks from Chile's big quake will last up to a year, which is beyond the date of my departure flight. However, I now know that a tsunami is highly improbable in Valparaiso, and I think I'm safe in my building as it survived the big quake and therefore should hold up in the weaker replicas.

Basically, I'm in for a seismic year.

Life unexpected: La vida inesperada

2010-03-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

I planned to spend my final week in Chile's elegant capital Santiago exploring the Museo de Artes Visuales, the ritzy outlying neighborhoods, and the Parque Forestal, the last sites on my to-see list. I mentally prepared to leave my leafy and sunny Providencia neighborhood and the comfort of my bustling host family for a new city -- Viña del Mar.

I'd made finding an apartment my mission, having arrived to a foreign continent with only four weeks to locate housing in a city two hours away with no prior knowledge of price ranges, neighborhoods, transportation or lease contracts. After weeks of frantically searching through Internet postings and interrogating professors that culminated in a rushed visit to the resort city of Viña, I'd found an apartment in a new tower (by an artificial lake!) half a block away from the beach. With a pool, a gym and sweeping ocean view from two generous patios, everything about it was luxe.

The Feb. 27 earthquake didn't severely affect anyone I know -- I only heard stories about co-workers and cousins whose families had lost everything in the South. However, after the natural disaster I soon realized that my year in Chile wouldn't go as planned. My host family insisted I remain hunkered in the house during the following days. Even though that seismic night passed without any panic or tears on my part, I've felt like I'm carrying a heavy backpack ever since. I'm grateful rather than fearful, but living with a family dealing with post traumatic stress and the constant flow of damning news reports took its toll.

Four days before my planned move to the coast of Viña del Mar to start classes at the Universidad Católica de Valparaiso I got the news that I'd have to look for another place to live. I felt so incredibly alone. I now had to find a room in an apartment with strangers, in a hectic period when shaken-up residents in apartment towers were scramming to move into solid houses and residents of older houses were quickly renting modern apartments; when the few students who hadn't solidified their housing plans months earlier had returned home to be with their families rather than staying in their university city to show their apartments to potential roommates.

But I made it my life's goal to move myself to school on time, spending my days staring at the computer screen and making bus trips back and forth between the two cities. I visited some houses that should have been condemned, with putrid, horror-movie worthy rooms, but I also met some of the most hospitable people I've ever encountered. They'd offer me a bed in their house until I found a place. After I told them I wasn't interested in their apartment they'd still insist in showing me around the city to the other rooms on my list. And they all gave me their phone numbers in case I ever needed anything.

Monday (only two days late) I moved into an apartment, not in the modern beach city of Viña del Mar as planned, but in the gritty neighboring historic port city of Valparaíso. The apartment is small but comfortable and modern. The terrace with the bay view and the familiar American kitchenette sold me. I'm eagerly waiting for my Chilean roommate to move back in next week. The surrounding neighborhood is not a place I should ever be walking through alone at night, and that's disconcerting. But the main highway connecting Valparaíso to its sister city Viña is right outside my front door, with transportation at all hours. I'm hoping that the earthquake repairs in the building happen soon because I miss hot water and more than one functioning elevator would be convenient. But I can't complain when half of the city went without any water the past three days, and further south people are homeless.

I'm still soaking up Valparaíso. The surrounding hills I've explored (so far I've opted to climb up the impossible staircases and vertical streets instead of paying for the antique elevators, an indication of masochistic tendencies, perhaps?) have confirmed the adjective 'breathtaking' that I've read in every guidebook. The spectacular views of the bay and the ramshackle city built on the surrounding hillsides are bewitching. The quirky and colorful neighborhoods spilling on the hilltops are World Heritage sites, and besides their official historic value they have a bohemian charm and energy like no other place I've traveled. These are streets with proper multi-colored British mansions with flower boxes lined near hippie-ish cafes. Streets with elegant restaurants on steep slopes that end in a flamboyant graffiti wall murals leading to 19th century Anglican churches or eccentric castle-mansions turned museums. And did I mention the views?

As far as the center of Valparaíso, well it's grungy, compatible with the disagreeable image the average North American has of a South American city. Ugly modern (Valpo was the epicenter of the devastating 1906 quake and before that victim of a Spanish naval attack) buildings stand beside decrepit Victorian palaces from the port's glory days. My favorite guidebook cliche, "crumbling grandeur" was written for this city. There's too many abandoned warehouses, stray dogs and litter for my taste, but maybe this jewel (in the rough) of the Pacific will win me over before the year's up. For now braving the streets isn't a pleasant stroll. My wrist is sore from clutching my bag so tightly. The maniacal buses, called micros, are a third-world experience. But on a brighter note, my daily routine now includes a trip to the intimidating city market to stock up on the rainbow mountains of gleaming produce on sale for mere cents and a stop by the bakery for fresh bread.

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up here. I have the next nine months to figure out why.

El terromoto de una vida

2010-02-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I waited in the lobby of a restaurant bar in the Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago, where I was spending time with my language school classmates, including my two closest friends who were set to leave the country the next day. I wanted someone to share a taxi with me back to our Providencia neighborhood. Meanwhile my Brazilian friend Betaña started to tear up thinking about how we might never see each other again. I tried to comfort her, feeling shaky myself, from exhaustion and the recalcitrant illness I'd tried to kick all week, annoyed that I'd wasted my $2,000 pesos on that Red Bull I'd ordered earlier.

That's when the floor trembled. I noticed the vibrations that rattled the building right away, but my professors and host family had told me that minor temblores are common in Chile, one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet. However the trembling only intensified. With the passing seconds we could hear the building shaking, bottles breaking. The lights went out. I grabbed my Brazilian friend Evan in a death grip hug, and we didn't let go. They say the quake lasted less than two minutes, but that's a long time when the earth beneath your feet is bouncing, when your mind is racing to recall earthquake safety protocols, whether you should crouch under one of the empty tables or run outside in the street so not to be crushed alive in the building, when suddenly news reports about thousands dead, missing or trapped in Haiti seem all too real.

It was 3:30 a.m., and you might ask why I would be out and about at such an ungodly hour, but you must understand that for Chileans this a perfectly reasonable time to be out on a Friday night, as the proper dinner party at my host family's house yesterday didn't start until nearly 11 p.m. I can assure you that the neighborhood was packed with (mostly) respectable citizens.

Afterward I had the urge to cry but couldn't. Without any taxis or buses, we walked home with the full moon serving as our only light most of the way. We didn't encounter any panic or chaos, but it was a long two hours before I made it back to my house. We maneuvered the sidewalks littered with broken glass, fallen telephone poles, broken bricks and caved in walls. Even crossing the street without stoplights was tricky. It was chilly, I was desperate for a bathroom and a drink of water, and my bronze flats weren't made for distance walking. The ambulances wailing and car radios blaring news only added to the state of emergency atmosphere. Evan offered to walk me to my house, which is 20 minutes away from where everyone else lives.

(As I'm writing this I felt another mild temblor, or replica as they call them here.)

It was so dark that we couldn't read the street signs and ended up lost. Occasionally someone would pass us in the shadows, and my heart would race as I imagined a looter taking advantage of the situation. I finally arrived at my candle-lit doorstep to find my host family and seven children and two dogs huddled in the living room. "Te hemos llamado mil veces!" they explained. Although most cell phone communication had been interrupted, they'd entered my room and stepped over all my belongings and the broken glass strewn in the floor to find my mobile phone box with my number on it in a drawer.

We didn't go to bed until dawn. The Chileans I was with were in a deeper state of shock than I was, with reason. They had babies and small children and other family members to worry about. Some of them lived on the 13th floor of an apartment building, and they'd felt the tower sway, breaking their windows and knocking over their flat screen TV and lamps. They could only huddle under a doorway while they clutched their three daughters.

Our lights didn't come back on until the next morning. The electricity grid in Chile is programmed to automatically turn off in the event of earthquakes above 6.0 on the Richter Scale, and this one was an 8.8, 100 times greater than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti in January. In fact it was the fifth largest earthquake since 1900. But so far in Chile about 400 deaths have been reported in comparison to the 250,000 in Haiti. This has a lot to do with the advanced engineering and strict earthquake-proof construction codes here along with the organized relief infrastructure. Bordered by the Andes cordillera, Chile is one of the most seismically active places on earth (funny how I don't remember ever reading that before now). The strongest earthquake ever measured occurred here in 1960, a 9.5, and another disastrous quake hit in 1985. In fact three of the 10 most powerful earthquakes in recorded history have occurred in Chile, today's disaster included. Chile is a developed nation with its own disaster fund rather than an impoverished, overpopulated state, so the two recent earthquake situations aren't comparable.

Although the TV news shows images of fallen bridges and a church with a collapsed steeple here in Santiago, everyone I know is safe. Our house only suffered one crack in the wall. South of us in Chile's second largest city Concepcion, which is closer to the earthquake's 22-mile deep epicenter, the damage and suffering are on another level, especially in the poorest areas. This evening we sat around the table in the patio to say prayers for those in the south who have lost so much and to give thanks that we are all safe.

And the excursions begin: El Cajón de Maipo

2010-02-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

I laced up my hiking boots, stuffed my big camera into my bag and whipped my hair into a Lara Croft braid at 6:30 a.m. to power walk the 30 minutes to the metro station Saturday. At 8 a.m. I climbed into a rickety van with a spacey Canadian construction student, a Norwegian senior Hydroelectric engineer with some impressive eyebrows, and a teeny Brazilian woman who studies at my school for a one-day trekking excursion into El Cajón de Maipo. "We have to use an old vehicle because the road we're taking would ruin a new car," our guide Alejandro said.

After an hour and a half of driving away from the capital we stopped at the village of San José del Maipo, a world away from modern Santiago. A grocer in a hair net made us jamón y queso sandwiches that we packed for lunch. We continued into the wilderness for two hours, where the road soon dissolved into a dirt trail with the sort of bumps and curves I've only seen on SUV commercials. I felt my organs bouncing inside me and avoided looking down at the steep ledges and thinking about blown out tires and other vehicle malfunctions. The dust our van stirred up was so thick I could taste it. The path is impassable in the winter due to avalanches, so the few goat farmers that live in the area move away during the dangerous season. No one bothers to make a real road because it will inevitably be destroyed every winter.

We stopped at El Embalse del Yeso, a glass-like, deep-turquoise-colored lake with snow capped mountains in the background on our way to El Parque del Valle del Yeso. It's a giant private reserve beside Argentina (it's a three-kilometer, one-day trek over the mountains to the border) lacking any tourist infrastructure or marked trails. We acclimated to the altitude at Las Termas del Plomo, thermal glacial springs fed by a waterfall cascading over an orange rock wall. Our hike took us deep into the valley, so profound that it's name, cajón, is the Spanish word for box. Low green shrubs spotted the desert mountains, where Alejandro stopped to point out lizards, wildflowers, and the rock piles of fossilized oysters and snail shells (one monster mollusk was perfectly intact) from a prehistoric era when ocean covered the valley.

The wind blew and the sun beat on us as we climbed along a waterfall up a mountain. (Despite repeated applications of SPF 30 my nose is now so red that it glows.) I had to use my hands to crawl up at times, and we all stopped every five minutes to adjust to the altitude. Nick the Canadian guy, who periodically paused to chug his liter of Fanta, lagged behind and heaved with exhaustion.

After nearly two hours of climbing we came to a clear, turquoise lake at the summit. It's a secret that Alejandro said his father found as a mountain climber -- I believe him because I couldn't find anything about it (or the park) listed in my guidebooks. The water flows from the glaciers above and is pure enough to drink. "Es el agua de los dioses," Alejandro said. Still, I only had the nerve to take one sip over lunch. (How can it be so clean if it's floating over dirt?) Stein from Norway listened to Pink Floyd on his smart phone as he took in the view, and Nick the Canadian smoked a cigarette while I snapped away on my Nikon. The steep walk down was even trickier than our ascent with the loose dirt and rocks. I couldn't take my eyes off my dirt-encrusted boots.

On the drive home we stopped at a small goat farm. Inside the shanty-like house I bought a kilogram block (one-size-only) of goat cheese made the day before for $5 to share with my host family. And less than four hours later we were back to Santiago, civilization and the world of metros and public bathrooms.

Santiago: Week One

2010-02-11T19:03:00.000-08:00

I head to class in the morning wearing sunblock and sunglasses. Bikes and strollers pass me on the 20-minute walk up the tree-lined streets of the Providencia neighborhood to my language school. The five of us in the advanced class, two from the United States and three from Brazil, practice conversation in a small classroom on the third floor. The breeze rustles the trees and blows through the open window during the four-hour lesson with our profesora Andrea. I'm learning new things about my South American classmates (while trying not to stare at the hyperactive Brazilian-supermodel-with-an-attitude across from me who's always bringing up the "Latin fire that burns within her"), like how their families beg them not to visit the United States because it's dangerous -- too many news reports about mass shootings and terrorist attacks.

I come home to my room in the Munoz family's house. It's a small rectangle with blue walls, high ceilings and wood floors. I sleep in a vintage twin bed and my door opens to the patio. Nine family members live in the house, including two kids and a Cocker spaniel named Coni who likes to doze in my room. My first night we ate completos, hot dogs with avocado, tomatoes, and mayonnaise. Last night we had pastel de choclo, a Chilean version of shepherd's pie baked in a clay bowl topped with creamed corn and and filled with olives (have to watch out for the pits), beef, boiled eggs and chicken.

In the evenings the school has activities -- My first night was cooking class. We made cancon, salmon fillets with tomato, cheese, oregano and sausage, and terremotos, white wine with pineapple ice cream. The next night we went to a futbol match, La Universidad Catolica de Santiago versus Colón de Argentina. When a student asked if it was safe, the director said that it wouldn't be dangerous like the games in Italy and England.

The giant stadium sits at the foot of the Andes mountains that loom over the city of Santiago making for a dramatic sunset. The fans sang and barked chants throughout the game, spewing giant confetti and waving flags. I really tried to pay attention to the field, but the men still in their work clothes who jumped up and down and embraced one minute and nearly shed tears the next before spitting out a string of obscenities rivaling that of a delinquent adolescent were more entertaining.

Last night we had salsa lessons in a Cuban club with a dynamic teacher dressed like an Abercrombie model. I was getting into the steps in the wedding reception-esque setting and thinking how this was the coolest dance class I'd been to and how I'd finally gotten the hang of Latin rhythms after all these years. That is, until during a dance circle in which we exchanged partners every minute when one of the pros (invited to compensate for our group's lack of men) told me to stop jumping and move "más suave."

Today when we twisted into a deep and delicious stretch in my yoga class I had the same dreamy sensation I had earlier that afternoon, when I was biting into my empanada Napolitana and looking at the water shooting from the fountain that sparkled in the sunlight as I sat in a grass with my new friends from school. I keep reminding myself to savor this -- because winter always comes and school always starts and reality always sets in.

Spring break 2008: 10,800 feet above sea level

2010-01-31T20:59:00.000-08:00

My roommates in Charleston don't get it. Fly to South America alone? Am I out of my mind? “She's always locking herself out of the house. She can’t even drive off the peninsula without getting lost,” one of the Southern belles says. “Now she announces that she's flying off to the Third World.”

Ten days later I hike up Wayna Picchu, gasping for air and peeling layers. At the peak I gaze down at Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, inducing a wave of vertigo. I recognize the view from advertisements and postcards and sit on a rock near the ledge just long enough for a stranger to take my picture. The rush of having made it on my own and the conflicting urge to share the experience with someone overwhelms me.

It's spring break my senior year of college, and I've booked a $450 flight to Lima on a whim. At the airport gate I wait in a crowd of brown Latinos in scruffy clothes who whisper in Spanish and cradle small children on their laps. I feel like a lone Caucasian diva and start to worry about more than the two days of classes I'll miss.

That night at the Lima airport my friend Julia, ultra-tanned and wearing teeny shorts, waits for me. "You need some sun!" she squeals and hugs me. "This is Pedro," she introduces a short guy dressed like a Hollister model. Of course she’d try to set me up with one of her friends. On the one-hour drive to Julia's house her Mazda speeds around sand mountains looming over deserted beaches. She's the only one of her friends with a car, and they say she thinks she's the Paris Hilton of Lima. "Hola niñas," her family’s live-in maid, a tiny woman in a nightgown, greets us from the kitchen where she watches a telenovela.

The next day we lounge on the beach before lunch in the bohemian Barranco neighborhood. We sit on a terraza and eat fresh ceviche, chunks of fish marinated in lime juice, anticuchos, grilled marinated beef heart, and papas a la huancaína, boiled potatoes with creamy spiced cheese sauce.

“You should talk to Pedro,” Julia winks a few days later when I tell her I want to travel outside of Lima before I leave. “He studies turismo.” We both know I should go to Machu Picchu, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, a remote archaeological masterpiece 8,000 feet above sea level. But with only four days left I don’t have time for the 24-hour, cliff-hugging bus ride through the Andes.

Julia touches her heart whenever she mentions Cuzco, the entry city to Machu Picchu and the capital of the ancient Inca Empire. It combines her two favorite things – a perpetual party scene with lots of foreign men. "Tienes que ir," Julia says. “You can’t come to Peru and not go."

At 3 a.m. the next morning Julia shakes me awake. My taxi is here to take me to the airport for my 5 a.m. flight. As the plane descends in Cuzco the majestic peaks of the Andes jut above the clouds. We’ve gone from about 1,000 to 11,000 feet above sea level in 45 minutes.

On the ride into town my taxi driver asks where I’m staying. “That place is full of drug dealers,” he says when I name the hostel. He suggests I stay at another pensión instead and parks in front of an office. I’m confused until I realize we’re at a travel agency. His friend has a deal on a trip to Machu Picchu for me, he says. “No necesito un paquete,” I try to explain. I’ll get to the pre-Columbian enigma on my own.

I arrive to the main Plaza de Armas at 7 a.m. It’s 40 degrees and empty. I feel like death and circle the square until I find an open kiosk selling Diamox, altitude sickness pills. I head to the train station to get a ticket to Machu Picchu for the next morning, praying they're not sold out. I snag a departure trip on the budget Backpackers train. The agent tells me that it leaves at 5 a.m. from Ollantaytambo, a village on the way to Machu Picchu. That means I’ll have to go there tonight. Bussing to a remote village without a map or hostel reservation terrifies me. A wave of nausea strikes again as she writes the address of the bus station.

As the sun rises and warms the air I start to feel better. I go on to visit to a colonial church built over an Inca sun temple and watch a parade of Quechua women in colorful traditional costumes break into song and dance. I wonder if it’s a performance for tourists or if life in Cuzco is like a real-life musical.

That afternoon I give a taxi driver the bus station address. He drops me off on a gritty side of town in front of a crowded dirt yard littered with trash. This can’t be it. I’m the only tourist. Everyone is Quechua. The indigenous women have braided hair and bowler hats and carry babies wrapped on their backs in colorful shawls. The word baños is spray painted on a cinder block wall where men urinate, barely concealed by a low ledge. “Éste es la estación de autobus?” I ask.

“Si, Si,” everyone says. Still I’m sure there’s a mistake. I run down the street looking for a taxi, but there are none in this part of town. Half an hour later a bus pulls in. I wait in the long line, panicking as the sun lowers. The little man in front of me, Luis, assures me that this bus will take me to Ollantaytambo. "You just have to change líneas once," he says. “What? Change buses?” I ask. I pay the 20-cent fare and squish my way on. I feel suffocated under the backpack in my lap, inhaling the stench of unwashed bodies. Passengers stand crammed in the aisles, hugging their belongings in garbage bags.

We curve up into the mountains. We’re flying along the cliffs, winding through peaks and valleys of gargantuan proportions. Luis in the seat beside me senses my fear and occasionally makes reassuring comments on our progress. I’m having a minor nervous breakdown, imagining that I’ll freeze in the mountains or bandits will kidnap me. No one in the world knows where I am right now. I am alone in the Andes with a backpack.

What seems like hours later it’s pitch black, and we’re deep in the Sacred Valley of Urubamba. Finally, we come to a town. “Vamos! Rapido!” Luis nudges me. The last bus to Ollantaytambo is leaving. He pushes aside his wife and baby and jumps off the bus while clutching my arm. He runs with me across the dark parking lot to a white van ready to pull away. Inside sit an old man and a couple with a baby who gawk at me. It feels like midnight when the driver pulls down steep gravel driveways to let passengers off in front of what look like shanties in the darkness.

Eventually we turn on a road guarded by an original Inca stonewall. I climb up the hill to Ollantaytambo to a plaza where children play tag and teenagers flirt. Adults chat outside storefronts. Relieved, I find a hostel listed in my Lonely Planet. I’m the only one in the cold, dark, two-story building. I wash my face with the icy water but skip a shower. I try to sleep in the silence but think about Julia and Pedro back in Lima. Pedro showed me around Lima all week, but it doesn't matter now. "You've already ruined it," Julia told me before I left. I replay the scene in my mind.

"Are there no attractive men in Peru?" I'd said to Julia at a dance club. When Pedro glanced toward me and walked away I knew he’d heard.

My alarm goes off at 4 a.m. I look in the mirror and see that my eyes have nearly swollen shut. I imagine I've been bitten by an exotic bed bug. Outside I get disoriented in the rainy night. My train leaves in 10 minutes. I’m panicking. I see headlights ahead and wave. “Dónde está la estación del tren?” I ask the handsome driver with a mustache. He nods to the teenage boy in the backseat and says he’s dropping him off there. He tells me to hop in, and I do.

On the four-hour train ride into the Amazon basin my exhausted head throbs to the blaring laughter and German conversation of the women beside me. We hear the violent Urubamba River rushing down the mountains in the darkness as the train climbs up the steep tracks. Finally dawn breaks, revealing the Andes in all their mystic glory. My classmates are sitting listening to a Media Law lecture right now, and here I am in deep in the South American jungle.

Our train journey ends at the little town of Aguas Calientes where I join a bus with a group of perky visor-wearing and Nikon-toting Japanese tourists. We ziz-zag for 30 minutes up a narrow dirt road to Machu Picchu. I shiver in the dense fog that shrouds the mysterious city. Its isolation protected it from invaders until a British historian rediscovered it in 1911. It lies between two mountains, with its edges dropping down a cliff into the surrounding Urubamba River 1,500 feet below. The self-contained city is invisible from beneath and guarded by a formidable mountain from behind. The fading fog reveals the Indiana Jones-worthy ruins -- houses, temples, and staircases. Llamas graze between the agricultural terraces and aqueducts. Crowning the city is the Intihuatana stone, an astronomic timepiece that aligns with the sun during equinoxes.

Back in Aguas Calientes I follow the signs to the eponymous hot springs when a hole rips in my backpack. My things spill so I hold everything to my chest like a giant baby. When I pay to enter the thermal pools the toothless man wearing a fitted gray cap at the counter offers to sew my backpack. I ask him how much he’ll charge. "Nada," he says. I hesitate, unsure if I should trust him but hand over my backpack.

The pools have a muddy look and the faintest sulfur smell but are soothing and warm. South American women wearing T-shirts and shorts in the water whisper among themselves. “Que bonitas y bronceadas,” one says, admiring a gaggle of bronzed French girls in bikinis.

Back at the counter the toothless man presents me with my sewn-up backpack. "Mil gracias. Un milagro," I say and offer him a few soles, but he flashes his gums and shakes his head. I run to the station in a rainstorm of Biblical proportions.

I join middle-aged American couples wearing designer hiking boots who’ve just trekked the Inca Trail on the tourist train this time. I notice the big diamond rings on the fingers of the women and wonder how they’ve maintained manicured nails. "Why do the parents allow this?" they say when village children chase our train. "They're as bad as the suicidal bus drivers."

At dawn the next morning a taxi drops me off at Sacsayhuamán, a prehistoric walled fortress forming the head of a jaguar overlooking Cuzco. No one is there. When it starts raining I wrap my pink scarf around my hair and wander the ruins alone in the wet silence. From Sacsayhuamán I walk along a deserted, muddy roadside and imagine Pedro and Julia lazing on the beach in Lima and my friends in Charleston hustling to class. I veer off the road to a maze of unmarked ruins in a valley. Then I ask the clerk at a desolate orange store how to get to Puku Pukara and Tambomachay. He points across the road and tells me to wait there for a bombi. While I wait a shepherdess in colorful indigenous dress leads her herd and two dogs up the road. Soon I realize that bombi means another Volkswagen van like the one I rode to Olllantaytambo. This time, I climb in with confidence.

I catch my overnight flight home to the States from Lima two days later, arriving so discombobulated that I circled the long-term lot almost an hour before I find my car. I nod my way through the three-hour drive home. A nasty waterborne bacteria keeps me in bed the next day.

Still, for weeks I walk around campus glowing with my big secret: Who’d believe that the shy girl with the lip gloss and pink scarf just got back from backpacking in the Andes?

Classical Majesty: A West Virginia Symphonic Series

2010-01-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

I went to hear the West Virgina Symphony Orchestra at the Clay Center with my dad last weekend. Guest solo violinist Corey Cerovsek performed on his glossy Stradivarius in a performance entitled Classical Majesty, part of the Symphonic Series led by resident conductor Grant Cooper, a dapper New Zealander.

The event almost sold out (they didn't open the second balcony). Although it was an older crowd in long coats (even a few furs!) I did spot some younger faces and families in the well-heeled audience.

The evening opened with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, my favorite hands down. "What?" my dad said. "You like that stuff better than Mozart?" I appreciated Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 (with some surprise string effects), but sometimes we just like the way a piece of music makes us feel. And I thought Williams' interpretation of British composer Tallis' liturgical music had the qualities of a killer movie soundtrack with the power to inspire imagination and spark emotions. (I just looked it up and it has served as a soundtrack in various movies. Now I don't know whether to feel perceptive or uncultured.) It was a strings-only piece, and I have a thing for violins and cellos, even in pop music. (Now that I think about it, that's probably the reason I appreciate bluegrass.) The full orchestra didn't take the stage until the final segment, Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8.

The three featured composers mastered the architecture of classical music, the structure that keeps music's tendency of passionate explosions in check, to create majestic statements. (My summary of the program description -- I was curious about how it all fit together.)

The Canadian violinist Cerovsek, 37, lives in Paris. Although he's not a household name like, say, Paganini, his international performance credits, along with a few network TV appearances, took up an entire page of tiny type in the program. But what impressed me the most was that he graduated with bachelor's degrees in mathematics and music from the University of Indiana at age 15, earned masters in both at 16, and finished his PhD's at 18. Oh, and he's a concert pianist too.

Left Photo Credit: jwestproductions.com
Right Photo Credit: (c) 2008 Claves Records

Carmen: in HD

2010-01-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

I got an overdue dose of culture this weekend. I went to the opera at the Met. It was my first -- a new production of Carmen directed by Richard Eyre that's been all over the New York Times arts section of late. But I'm still in West Virginia, you're thinking. How did I manage to see a New York opera?

Well, although it was a live performance, I wasn't actually at the Lincoln Center but in a cinema in the little town of Barboursville that broadcast an HD version.

I've always wanted to go to an opera. I like the old glamour of the idea and even tried to see one in the Teatro Colón when I lived in Buenos Aires. But the opera house, which has some of the world's best acoustics, was closed for renovations that year. (Actually I just looked it up, and it's still closed -- it will reopen after a four-year hiatus later this year.)

This movie-theater opera had its appeal. Yes, it lacked the world class people watching and cultured atmosphere I'd expect at the actual venue, and I missed out on an excuse to wear a (faux) fur coat over a luxe outfit. (This full house theater was of the gray-haired, sweats-wearing variety.) But the views were better than a front-row seat at the opera, with the camera crew artfully panning and zooming for maximum dramatic affect and focusing in on the key singers when appropriate.

So for $22 I saw the brass buttons on the soldiers' military coats, the star mezzo soprano's false lashes, and set details like the handwritten postcards on a military camp wall. We probably saw much more than those in the front row Center Parterre who paid up to $370 for their seats, no opera glasses required. When the camera focused on the orchestra pit we could even see the sweat drops on young conductor's forehead.

And in the theater we could eat snacks (smuggled Starbucks in my case) while watching the three-hour performance. During the 30-minute intermission we got to see interviews with the leads, the Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna who played Don Jose and the curly-haired Elina Garanca, who on stage was pure feist and sex but backstage wore a huge grin and rattled away into the microphone in Latvian.

Both of them were well into their 40s, unlike most big Hollywood productions. I suppose it takes years to rise to the level of international opera star. I felt aware of my own superficiality when I couldn't get over how Barbara Frittoli looked about 50 but was playing the young, goody-two shoes Micaëla. I noticed her matronly chest rather than simply appreciating her world class voice and expressive face.

Ultimately, Carmen is intended to shock. The story is rife with sexual tension that culminates in violent tragedy. And this edition was indeed intense -- all cleavage and passion. Bizet's French opera (accompanied by English subtitles) is set in Seville, Spain. (That immediately sold me because last year I spent some time in that Andalusian city, which is a sunny place full of Spanish stereotypes like bullrings, voluptuous dark haired women, and flamenco dancing.) The gypsy Carmen, a fiery and volatile heart breaker, seduces Don Jose, a lowly soldier betrothed to his childhood sweetheart Micaëla. She convinces him to desert and join the gypies for a smuggling operation in the mountains, then ends up leaving him for a celebrity bullfighter. This particular production was dance heavy for an opera, with fierce numbers by an athletic ballerina couple opening each act.

I came across a newspaper article reporting that 240,000 people in 37 countries saw the live telecast. And now you know that record-setting number included a few art-hungry West Virginians.

Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera/ Dusan Reljin

Leaving it all behind: Packing and materialism

2010-01-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

My cushy stay back at home -- even life as I know it in the U.S -- is about to end. Thank God. I'm itching for some independence and a return to an urban lifestyle, ready to discover a whole new country.

But it's bittersweet. After a few extended stints abroad I know I'm in for some sacrifice. I'm leaving my family (along with a certain cuddly cat). And I'll be doing without some shallow comforts as well.

That leads to a confession: I'll never be a hardcore, Swiss-army knife-carrying backpacker. Yes, I'll skip a few showers and sleep in a tent, but please, I beg you, don't deride me because I powdered my face and brushed on mascara before I started trekking through the Peruvian Andes. Don't roll your eyes because I won't skip conditioner or give up my moisturizer. I'm already savoring my last days with a few luxuries that won't be taking up space in my luggage: a fluffy bathrobe, a pair of cozy house slippers, a designer flat iron, and a light-up makeup mirror.

Because while I don't know anyone in Chile or where exactly I'll live, I do know that for the rest of the year I'll be living out of two 50-pound suitcases.

I remind myself that it's a good exercise to cut back to a more simple lifestyle. Since I moved back to the States in May I've already started accumulating more stuff. I'm buying into a materialistic culture fueled by millions of advertising dollars that convinces us that consuming more things will make us happier.

Some of my recent purchases were good investments, like a Mac notebook, an iPod (my first -- a refurbished Nano), and a DSLR camera. But at the same time I've realized that the more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to worry about, and the more complicated life is. Having less can be freeing.

Until the day you must settle into your own apartment and realize you don't have anything to put in it. I'll save that predicament for next year.

(Exploring Incan ruins, with a bit of lip gloss.)

Winter in West Virginia

2010-01-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

Valley Park, Hurricane, WV

On moving down south. Waaay down south.

2010-01-12T16:14:00.000-08:00

Twenty-four days from today, this blog will get a lot more interesting. Because in just a little over three weeks I'm moving to Chile. So this will once again become a real travel blog instead of Rachel's online diary recounting her exile in West Virginia.

About a year and a half ago, with my college graduation approaching, I spent hours writing and polishing nearly 15 pages of essays. Then I spent a week locked in my room translating those essays into Spanish (with some help from South American friends via instant Messenger). I met with the director of my university's Hispanic Studies Department to get the scoop on South American universities, then I pored over his recommendations and their course offerings. I met with local high-society community leaders. The vice president of our college even took me out to lunch. (I wore flip flops. Her initial glance at my feet told me BIG MISTAKE. But they were classy flip flops!) Finally, I drove two hours to the state capital for impromptu written essays and interviews, in which I sat at the end of a long board room table and a dozen professional-types interrogated me.

And it was all worth it. (Somehow) I got the scholarship. I'm going to study for a year at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Valparaíso, Chile (that long, skinny country on the west coast of South America. Yes, some people ask me where it is.). And Rotary International is paying for everything. I'll come back with a certificate in Latin American Studies from a respectable university on the rocky Chilean coast.

Now why would Rotary give me $24,000 to live and study abroad for a year, you ask. Well, their goal through this Ambassadorial Scholarship Program is to promote international peace and understanding by sending young people from all over the world to live and study outside their home country. The idea is that the students who receive these scholarships will be positive ambassadors for their own nations and develop friendly relationships in their host countries, and then they'll come home and share their enlightening cultural experiences, and that ultimately these "scholars will be tomorrow's community and world leaders," according the the Rotary International website.

So in addition to taking classes in Latin American literature, culture, and politics, I'll also be giving presentations on the U.S. to local Rotary clubs and co-heading a service project. I'm a teensy bit nervous about the (Spanish, of course) speaking engagements, but I've heard from other scholars that they're not all that bad -- low key with a sympathetic audience. And I'm really excited about the volunteer project. I won't know exactly what it will be until I get down there and see the needs, but right now it looks like it could involve a big sister-big brother type program with foster kids in an underprivileged mountain village.
When I'm not studying or volunteering I hope to be traveling. I'm dying to get down to Patagonia and maybe up to Brazil or back to Buenos Aires. I'll be flying into Santiago, the capital, where I'll spend a month reviewing Spanish at a language institute and living with a host family. Then I'll have to find my own apartment (eek!) in Valparaíso.

Valparaíso has been called the Little San Francisco of South America, as it's a colorful and shabby seaport city built on hillsides overlooking the Pacific. Antique elevators serve as transportation in some spots, and the historic quarter is a labyrinth of cobblestone streets and allies. The so-called Jewel of the Pacific has become a cultural mecca of late too. I read an Allende novel set in Valparaiso, La Hija de la Fortuna (turned out to be one of my all-time favorite reads) that painted the bohemian city as seedy and full of haughty European ex-pats. (But that was in the 1800s. Surely things have changed by now, right?) Today the university campus is divided between Valparaíso and its sister city, Viña del Mar, which is more polished and modern and popular for its beach resorts.

I've been waiting for this adventure for nearly TWO years. "Are you in Chile yet?" has become a sort of cruel joke. Since I returned from Barcelona in May I've felt like my life has been in limbo. But when very important people conclude that you're worthy of a very generous gift that allows you to see the world, educate yourself, and help others, you don't turn it down. Even if it involves a whole lot of waiting.

Now the waiting is about over, and I'm wondering ... am I ready?

Rewrite: My Hometown in 500 Words

2010-01-07T17:43:00.000-08:00

Way down a sloping gravel driveway a big woman with white hair stands by a barn with her hands on her hips, her muumuu billowing in the breeze. I jog up and down the hills of Cow Creek Road contemplating the trailers in muddy ditches with ‘80s-era swing sets, rusty tricycles, and shells of old cars piled in the front yards. Across the road are gated brick mansions with landscaped lawns, pools, and Hummers in the driveways.

My grade school classmates who lived in the big houses would only stay for a year or two until their dads were transferred again. Now all my other old friends have moved away too. As kids we'd dig crawdads out of muddy creeks in the summer and pile in sleds to fly down snowy hillsides in the winter. Now they’re married and working as nurses, pastors, or accountants. I avoid visiting their Facebook profiles because links such as “Al Gore Invented Global Warming” upset me.

“How did I end up back in West Virginia?” I say to my mom when she picks me up from my run by Mid-Valley Mart. I’d vowed I’d leave for college and never come back. I wanted to move somewhere where I heard foreign languages and everyone didn’t have the same skin color and vote for the same presidential candidates. A place offering urban vitality.

“It’s only for a few months,” my mom laughs. She grew up in an impoverished mining town in the mountains and is content with an upgrade to suburban Teays Valley.

I grew up to a soundtrack of roaring interstate with interludes of bellowing train whistles. This place I consider home doesn’t even qualify as a small town. It’s more of a highway stop-off with gas stations, a couple of truck stops and motels, and a representative of about every fast food establishment in the Southeast. Fifty years ago it was rolling farmland. Today Teays Valley is a district of 13,000 people who live in subdivisions crammed with look-alike houses.

My mom’s phone rings as we pull in the garage of our brick home in New London Commons.

“Hi Janet,” she says to her friend from church.

Janet drove a school bus for 30 years and can’t go anywhere without seeing someone she knows and stopping to chat. She collects fairy lights and nurses wild animals back to health. I can hear her voice on the other end.

“They say it’s gonna be hotter than a hen on a hot rock this weekend,” she says. “Are you and Michael still planning on going out hiking?"

That evening Michael, my dad, comes home from work to pick up my mom for Wednesday night church service. He’s a physician at a rural public clinic nearly an hour away. Although he grew up with a Harvard-educated professor father in a college town, he sometimes speaks in the Appalachian-hollow dialect of his patients. My parents bought a house in Teays Valley because it was a couple of miles from their church and the adjacent Christian school, where they sent my brother and me.

While my parents are at church a storm hits. “Do you hear water running?” my dad asks hours later.

“It’s still raining,” my mom says.

But he goes outside and sees water flooding from our house. He calls Frank, Janet’s husband. He’s a trim, white-haired Korean War veteran who can fix anything.

“Sounds like you got a loose pipe that needs fixing,” Frank says. “I’ll be right over.” It’s 11 p.m.

Frank drives over in his truck. He goes out in the downpour to shut off the main water line in our front lawn. The next morning Janet calls. “I thought y’all might be interested in some hot showers,” she said. “Come on over ‘cause we got some hash brown potatoes, scrambled eggs, and biscuits too.”

This morning, Teays Valley is okay with me.

Bluestone: Winter escape to the mountains

2010-01-04T16:55:00.001-08:00

I holed up in a secluded little cabin with my family in the snowy mountains of Bluestone State Park the first three days of 2010. Outside the wilderness temperatures plunged below 10 degrees, leaving us with a new dusting of snow each morning. We kept a fire burning in the brick fireplace at all times, fueling it with logs from the stack in the backyard. My weekend uniform consisted of ski pants, a puffy down coat, and snow boots. We cooked oatmeal for breakfast and hot soup for dinner and sipped hot cocoa in between. It was three days of snow angels, wind gusts, and snowy footprints.

One morning we walked down the long road from our cabin, winding around rugged hillsides to a trail behind a tiny red cabin that led into the forest. That afternoon we took a drive to Pipestem Resort State Park where we spotted dozens of deer. They were extra shaggy, giving them a prehistoric look. The furry young ones with blunt faces looked as sweet as puppies. I snapped lots of pictures of them, and the forested hills framing Bluestone Lake, and anything else that caught my eye, from pine cones and icicles to frozen waterfalls.

I’d had fears about spending a weekend isolated in the wilderness in a two bedroom cabin (I’d get the cot) with my family, as my tolerance for a certain young couple’s use of the terms “hubby” and “honey” and “sweetie” was already waning. But in the woods I forgot my frustrations, if only for a few brief moments such as an especially competitive round of Uno or Sequence by the fire.

My brother brought along his laptop with its stand (for ergonomic purposes, he reasoned), state-of-the-art headphones (with a splitter for his wife), and a wireless mouse and keyboard (again, ergonomics). He planned to work on his forthcoming philosophy book. I’m serious. I was content curled up on the not-so-comfy couch with cup after cup of green tea reading La Casa de los Espiritus. I’d brought along the Isabel Allende novel rather than Soren Kierkegaard’s A Fragment of Life -- a 640-page philosophical discourse on the ethical versus the aesthetic that my brother and sister-in-law gave me for Christmas. (Maybe he's trying to send me a message? I got him a pair of slim-fit J. Crew jeans.)

On the way home we stopped at Concord University in Athens, WV where my parents met in 1977. On campus they subjected us to the details of their meeting and courtship. They pointed out the student union where a mutual friend introduced them, the pine grove where they'd stroll, and the window of the TV lounge on the bottom floor of their tower dormitories where they'd spent their evenings.

I'm happy that this on-campus love affair led (one two-month engagement and seven years later) to me, but I count myself lucky that I didn't inherit the genetic inclination for collegiate matrimony. (Click here for more photos of our snowy weekend in the mountains.)

Arrivederci, 2009

2010-01-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

The night of December 31, 2008, I traipsed around Rome with a group of new friends. This grouping started with a struggling actress from New York City and her curly-haired, college student sister who were sharing my hostel dorm by the Vatican. They invited me to join them to meet up with their middle sister who was studying in Rome through Loyola University for the year.

That sister’s friends, a tipsy American girl and a blonde Austrian girl who both worked as au pairs in the city, met us on our way to the Coliseum. Finally, a petite American guy who was also studying abroad with the aforementioned middle sister joined us. I don’t remember his name, but I recall his combed hair, fitted leather jacket, and purple scarf. He raved to me about the gourmet dining opportunities in Barcelona, where I was working. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that none of my young foreign friends would spend the money to join me for a sit-down restaurant experience in the economic crisis-stricken city, although they somehow had the cash for club entrance fees and alcohol.

That night I wore a gold T-shirt dress, black tights, and heeled boots. But it didn’t matter, because as with the rest of the 22 days I spent in Italy, I never took off my long brown parka. We carried champagne bottles as we slowly shoved through the masses to near the Centro Historico. We hung onto each other like old friends so not to get lost in the chaos. We'd missed the rock concerts and found no sign of the colorful showers of fireworks we'd expected.

At the stroke of midnight no giant crystal ball dropped, but champagne spewed and ornery spectators shouted and set off renegade firecrackers. The champagne sprayed in my eyes and soaked my hair. The firecrackers shot off like dangerously erratic bullets. Then within minutes the plaza emptied, with gold lights glistening on the wet, litter-strewn streets. I walked home sticky and half deaf and limping after two straight weeks of exploring urban landscapes and steep Tuscan villages on foot.

The two exchange students led us on a circuitous route back to the hostel. After traversing back and forth the city for a week I grumbled that I knew my way around better than these students who lived there. I wasn’t surprised because in my experience studying abroad with an American program tends to foster a routine of afternoons piled in dorm bunks watching DVDs, evenings drinking at the same bar down the street, and weekends jet setting to another European city via RyanAir.

So my New Year’s Eve in Italy wasn’t the night of a lifetime, but I’d still rather be spending the evening stumbling around Rome in the cold instead of sleeping in Hurricane, West Virginia like I did this year. But even if 2009 didn’t go out with a bang, I came up with some highlights worth listing:

1. Exploring sunny Andalusia during my last weeks in Spain, particularly Granada where I wandered through silent Sacromonte, a gypsy cave quarter, and ate Lebanese tapas in Little Morocco with two lovely friends. I won’t forget feeling like a lost outsider during Seville’s world famous Semana Santa, a week-long, raucous street party in celebration of Easter, either. Or hiking down into a 400-foot deep gorge and photographing the sort of countryside that makes you question your urban intentions in the Spanish mountain town of Ronda.

2. Running a 15-mile race (with a significant uphill component to boot!) in a respectable time. My thighs still burn when I think about the overzealous hill training I did the week before.

3. Discovering New Mexico with my parents. We fell for the Southwestern state with its roasted chiles, turquoise jewelry, and adobe chapels. We still rave about the glorious golden views on the Aspen Vista Trail and our hike through the otherworldy Kasha Katuwe Tent Rock Canyon.

4. Getting over myself and baring the braces. In four short weeks I’ll be flashing a broad, well aligned smile for a lifetime.

5. A few milder 2009 highlights – owning my first iPod and Mac, becoming a redhead (part of me doesn’t want trade the fiery shade back for my natural brunette), acquiring new cooking skills, getting reacquainted with my inner yogi, meeting a bunch of travel nuts (like me but brainer) at a scholarship orientation in Philadelphia, and rafting the Gauley River with my dad.

We had ourselves a merry little Christmas

2009-12-22T18:32:00.000-08:00

I found Advent Sunday so magical when I was a little girl. Mom always took me shopping for a Christmas dress for that service. We usually settled on something involving red velvet or green taffeta with puffed sleeves. Mom rolled my wet hair in pink sponge rollers Saturday night so I’d look like Shirley Temple in the morning.

At the beginning of the service a child would light the advent candles. After what seemed like years of waiting and watching all my friends get their spotlight, my turn finally came. I was so nervous that I wouldn’t get the wicks to light. I shuddered imagining I’d drop my candle and burn down the church. So I spent the weekend practicing marching in rhythm while cupping my hand to guard the flame of a little white candle poked through a cardboard halo.

During the service I admired the grand Chrismon tree and the gold and white decorations. In my little girl mind the sanctuary décor was exquisite -- from the potted poinsettias wrapped in red and gold foil to the cardboard angels by the organ. I belted out the words to “Joy to the World” and “Angels We have Heard on High” from the heavy navy hymnal. I sat enraptured while the choir sang their Christmas repertoire, feeling the holiday spirit wash over me. When we bowed our heads to pray I begged God for snow. Sometimes I’d also ask for lots of presents or a boyfriend who’d kiss me under the mistletoe. The sanctuary was fuller than ever that Sunday. I loved staring at all the new faces. During the long sermons and choir numbers I’d make up stories to go with them. After the closing prayer, my little girlfriends and I posed for pictures by the giant tree in our curls and ruffles.

The night of Christmas Eve we’d go back to church for communion. The sanctuary was quiet and dark, and the white lights twinkled in the garland. My family would take off our long wool coats and wait our turn in a back pew while a soloist softly sang a carol in between servings.

After communion we went to my Mom-maw and Pop-paw’s house in Winfield. On the way there we passed a field-of-a-backyard by the river haphazardly strung with hundreds of thousands of colored lights. At Mom-maw and Pop-paw’s we drank fizzy and frothy fruit punch with floating orange slices and ate shrimp cocktail and cheese balls with crackers and olives. Mom-maw served a Southern Living-style red velvet cake for dessert.

After dinner I couldn’t wait to open our gifts. Mom-maw gave us some our nicest (and most elegantly wrapped) presents. Afterward while the adults talked I’d check out the Christmas village lit up on a bed of coconut snow on the end table. I also made sure to peek out the window and look into the night sky, desperate to spot Santa and his reindeer. I’d met Santa a few days earlier at the tall bank downtown Charleston. I'd even sat on his lap and given him my handwritten Christmas list. I knew he was the real Santa because he had a real beard.

On the way home we’d listen to Pachebel’s Canon or to the Vienna Boys Choir sing “Little Drummer Boy” while we detoured around nearby subdivisions to admire the lights. “The ox and lamb kept time, pa-rump-a-pum-pum,” I’d sing along. The Nutcracker Suite was another favorite. Sometimes my brother and I would dance around the living room, doing our best sugarplum fairy impressions to my pink Nutcracker cassette tape. I wore my old ballet recital costume, and he wore his long underwear.

I wished we could listen to carols all year. I also wondered why we couldn’t eat the microwaved summer sausage with cheddar cheese on crackers that we snacked on while decorating the tree more often too. The Christmas tree ritual also included carols played on the boom box. We especially liked our Cowboy Christmas CD. “Here comes Santy Claus,” we’d sing. My brother and I spread out the branches, and Mom and Dad told us to hang the teeny ornaments on top and the heavy ones down low. My favorite ornament was mine – a little elf working on a real Christmas light that looked like he was hanging from a scaffold. Sometimes we’d string popcorn or cranberries to wrap around the tree. After the tree was set up I liked to lie under it and look up at the lights. I also liked to sneak goodies from the piles of Tupperware stuffed with Mom’s homemade pecan tarts and chocolate covered cherry cookies.

When we came home on Christmas Eve night we changed into pajamas and gathered around the tree to read “The Night Before Christmas” with illustrations of a rosy and jolly Santa Claus reminiscent of old-fashioned Coca-Cola ads. Then we read the Christmas story from the Book of Luke before opening the last little window on the Advent calendar to hang the final ornament on the tree. Finally we set out a glass of milk and some of Mom’s cookies for Santa. Sometimes I insisted we leave out a carrot for Rudolph.

I planned to check for reindeer tracks in the morning. And I'd even convince myself I spotted a few in the snow. I never let on that I halfway suspected they were footprints the neighbors' dog left.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2009-12-17T15:12:00.001-08:00

December 25 is eight days away. I'm sipping my Christmas tea from a china teacup stamped with a Christmas tree right now. Every corner of the main floor of our house is festive, decorated with sprinkled snow and porcelain angels or red candles and stuffed snowmen. Mom and I spent a good hour draping the tree (in quite the sophisticated diagonal swirl, I might add) with new burgundy and gold garland we bought at the craft store. Our doorbell rings several times a day. A few seconds after the chime we hear the engine of the UPS truck revving away, announcing a new slew of Christmas packages. Evita is delighted about her playground in the den, a maze of boxes, wrapping paper, and ribbons. You can find her hiding in a cardboard box or chasing a spool of garland.

I’m especially looking forward to seeing my brother for the first time in TWO years next week. In the meantime, my cards are in the mail, and the eggnog (okay, Soynog) is in the fridge. I’m indulging in my favorite holiday habit of blasting AOL Radio’s Holiday Classics station all day and eating peppermint ice cream. We even had our first winter wonderland snowfall last weekend.

But I still have to watch my favorite Christmas movie – the (claymation original!) Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys. Burl Ives' voice is the voice of Christmas. Once I accidentally bought a Bing Crosby CD at Wal-Mart while shopping for cards thinking he was the voice of the genteel mustached Sam the Snowman narrator who sings "Silver and Gold." Crosby comes in second in my Christmas carol voice competition.

And after Christmas it's only five weeks until the braces come off! (Well, the orthodontist is trying to persuade me to keep the lower set on ANOTHER year.) This weekend I had a fiasco with the braces and the aforementioned peppermint ice cream. I popped off a bracket munching on a chunk of frozen candy cane, and the next day it slipped off the wire during my lunch of Thai veggies and tofu. Somehow I swallowed it. I spent the rest of the day moaning about lacerated intestines.

A downside to all this West Virginia winter cheer? The 20-degree weather. I’m always late (today I missed Pilates) because I forget to allot an extra 10 minutes to my morning routine to scrape the ice off my car. What can I say? In South Carolina no one needs an ice scraper in the back seat.

Barcelona: Ya me despide de ti

2009-12-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

I flip to the map of Barcelona in my worn Time Out guidebook. I run my finger down the wide streets I walked so many times – Passeig de Gracia, Portal del Angel, Avenida Diagonal. I think about all the people I passed on those streets, from Korean fashionistas to prostrate gypsies. I want to get lost again down one of the medieval alleys dripping with wet laundry off Carrer Princesa. Or to be looking up at the undulating rainbow roof on the Mercat de Santa Caterina. I sigh at the familiar metro purple symbols of my Reina Elisenda line. The green patches on my map are parks, and the red squares are cathedrals, museums, and palaces with memories attached.

I think about all the hours I wasted in Zara and H&M, compulsively flipping through racks but rarely walking out with anything. I remember the Gothic Francesca Bonnemaison library on Sant Pere més baix where I’d read the free newspapers and fashion magazines after my morning class on Pau Claris. I’d avoid making eye contact with the librarians when I returned my always-overdue books.

Now it’s so far away – another lifetime. I don’t know when I’ll ever go back, and that uncertainty hurts. It sounds dramatic and cliche, but the city will always be a part of me.

How many cups of te de vainilla did I order at Buenas Migas focacceria with friends from Finland, Italy, Andalucia, and Sweden? How many strangers from Loquo language listings did I meet outside El Corte Ingles in the concrete sea of Plaza Catalunya? How many hours did I spend trying to find a Bicing bike to borrow without a flat tire or warped handlebars? How many Euro coins did I spend on Toblerone bars to eat on the hour-long trek back from the city center to my uptown Sarria neighborhood? How many times did I listen to Julieta Venegas’ Limon y Sal on my iPod shuffle as I rushed to my advanced Spanish class with Profesora Paula?

I was always wandering, yet somehow confident and independent. On Saturday mornings I’d pick a nearby town from my Rough Guide to Spain and buy a round trip ticket, outlining a plan for the day on the train or bus ride there. I was obsessive -- visiting and photographing every site listed in the guidebooks, no matter how marginal. I felt compelled to explore every street. But truly absorbing a city requires a lifetime.

I miss rushing down the stairs of the metro station to jump on the train before the doors close. I miss urbanity and the independence and adventure that comes with it.

Epiphany in Barcelona

2009-12-02T14:14:00.000-08:00

I passed a googly-eyed teenage couple lying beside each other on a blanket in the Ciutadella Park. But I wasn’t grimacing at her Ronald McDonald dye job or his over-gelled, bleached curls. I didn’t even gag at their sloppy kisses. Later a beautiful blond woman and a dark and handsome man, both wearing pressed designer jeans and toting leather bags, exchanged whispered secrets and giggles in the seat in front of me on the metro. But I didn’t roll my eyes.

In line outside the La Seu Cathedral a British family argued. The teenage children shoved their hands in their pockets and ignored their parents. I felt a pang of envy. A group of horse-playing students in the Pedralbes Park by the university almost trampled me. I couldn’t get mad. A pair of men holding hands and carrying a load of luxury shopping bags walked into Loewe on Passeig de Gracia. I wanted someone to hold my hand. When families out for evening strolls on Portal de l'Angel blocked my path, I wasn’t irritated with the slow-moving grandparents or the screaming toddlers. I wished I were walking with them.

However a few weeks earlier I’d been in a cranky mood, complaining that it was already December and Barcelona hadn’t even started decorating. I wanted Christmas lights and carols. When the Fira de Santa Llúcia Christmas market in Barri Gotic finally opened, I found all of the little caga tios (Catalan for pooing logs) for sale appalling. They had painted smiles, red hats, and twigs for legs and noses. Children would beat the giant caga tio in the plaza with a stick until the back end produced chocolate candy.

Even more offensive was the caganer, the figure with his pants around his ankles squatting to relieve himself on the edge of all the nativity scenes. How could Catalans be so sacrilegious that even the holiest cathedrals from the middle ages had caganers marring their nativities?

I was bitter and wanted to be home. I missed Rudolph and was dying to hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” and watch Miracle on 34^th Street. The family I stayed with only had a doll-size Christmas tree.

But several days later, after I bought a scoop of chocolate almonds at the Sagrada Familia Christmas market I started feeling jealous of the packs of obnoxious, flirting middle schoolers and the cranky old ladies shoving me out of the way to buy Christmas ornaments. I realized even without the holiday bargains and Christmas parties, these people had the company of the ones they loved.

From then on when I walked alone in L’Eixample I’d consider all the couples and families, from the uppity Italians to the complaining Americans. The friends I’d made in Spain had already gone home to their respective European countries for Christmas, and my own family was an ocean away. I was deep in thought as I admired the glowing Christmas displays in the store windows and sighed at all the fancy chocolates and diamonds I wouldn’t be giving, receiving, or appreciating with anyone.

That Christmas in Barcelona I decided I never wanted to judge friends or strangers who were happy and in love, no matter how annoying I found them or their demonstrations of affection, or how unhealthy I found their relationships. I vowed to hold my criticism and be happy for others who’d found happiness.

Destination: Christmas in Barcelona

2009-12-01T16:16:00.001-08:00

Last December I bicycled down elegant shopping avenues draped in white lights and wandered through Christmas markets selling hand carved nativities and jamon serrano in cosmopolitan Barcelona. Yuletide festivities in the Catalan metropolis are less commercial than those stateside – no Santas, no sales, and far fewer carols and decorations. And no one’s dreaming of a white Christmas in a city located on the Mediterranean coast with an average December temperature of 54 degrees. During the holiday season it’s too cold to swim at the city’s (somewhat gritty) beaches but still warm enough to go exploring on the public bicycle sharing system Bicing or sip cava outside on a terraza.

High fashion storefronts such as Caroline Herrera, Hermés, and Valentino along with chic cafes and tapas bars line posh Passeig de Gracia, the Champs-Élysées of Barcelona. Around Christmas the street turns positively magical at night, bustling with shoppers and decked out in colorful blinking snowflakes and swooped strands of lights. La Pedrera and Casa Batlló, two of renowned modernisme genius Gaudi’s whimsical mansions, have addresses on the grand avenue.

I’d opt to walk the 30 minutes down this gorgeous street instead of taking the metro to the city center. The window-shopping is second only to the people watching -- Weekend afternoons are best. That’s when the beautiful residents go out for a stroll dressed to impress. The next street over, Rambla de Catalunya, was my second favorite evening stroll option for its inviting holiday window displays.

Passeig de Gracia ends at Plaça Catalunya, where Barri Gotic, the gothic quarter, begins. Outside the La Seu cathedral is the Fira de Santa Llúcia Christmas market, which dates back to 1786. Vendors set up stalls for their artisanal nativities and ornaments as well as Christmas trees, mistletoe, poinsettias, and candies. Close by in the Plaça Sant Jaume children play around a life size nativity scene with palm trees. On the weekends I’d let myself get lost in the maze of this medieval neighborhood. When a street violinist plays “Oh Come all ye Faithful” under the gargoyles the setting turns ethereal.

Nearby off the infamous Las Ramblas is La Boqueria, Europe’s largest open-air food market, worth a visit any time of year. I’d occasionally stop in for a snack or just take lots of pictures of the artfully arranged heaps of nuts, vegetables, and fruits. I found the (slimy, sometimes shark-toothed, and often still wiggling) seafood selection in the back particularly exotic.

Outside La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece and Europe’s most fascinating building, is another Christmas market. And the adjacent Avenida de Gaudi is another atmospheric walk.

For more drama I’d head to Montjuic for the glamorous Font Magica fountain light show accompanied by Christmas music outside the Palau Nacional on Fridays and Saturdays from 7-9 p.m. Before or after the show I’d make time for a visit to the CaixaForum, the impressive cultural center in a converted modernista factory space. It hosts temporary exhibitions, serves sandwiches and desserts at a sleek rooftop café, and offers some of the city’s most generous visiting hours, staying open until 10 p.m. on Saturdays and 8 p.m. on Sundays.

On rainy or nippy weekends I’d take refuge in the Museu Picasso in a gothic palace deep in El Born district. The soft, warm lighting makes the medieval space downright cozy. When I was alone I’d put in my iPod earphones for a soundtrack to the hundreds of works illustrating Picasso’s lifetime of artistic development. I’d usually go on the first Sunday of the month when admission is free. Sometimes I’d stick around in the neighborhood to check out the trendy boutiques, bars, and restaurants or visit the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral.

Other neighborhoods for holiday shopping and nightlife are Gracia and Raval. Above Avenida de Diagonal, Gracia has both a small town and bohemian feel, with butcher shops, bookstores, and bars. Even in December it’s often warm enough to opt for outdoor seating on the many terrazas. Down in the center is Raval, the gritty, arty, ethnic neighborhood with lots of vintage stores and two modern art museums. (Be on your guard at night.)

Further uptown is Gaudi’s Park Güell, a fairytale architectural garden like no other with panoramic city-sea views. Even further up on a hill overlooking the city is Tibidabo, site of a landmark church and a theme park that’s much less crowded in the winter. The cable car and art deco funicular train ride up are worth it for the ultimate the views of Barcelona and the surrounding mountains and ocean.

Back in the city, the government hosts a New Year’s concert series in December and January. I saw the Parisian/Argentine electronic tango group GoTan Project in the stunning Palau de Musica concert hall. Visit www.barcelona.cat for current event listings and news.

Last year I complained that Barcelona couldn’t compete with the constant soundtrack of carols, giant trees, and cheesy movies we have in the United States. Far away from home I couldn’t appreciate the city’s sophisticated, understated approach to the holidays. But now I realize a December visit to Barcelona offers breathing room from the masses of summer tourists along with a dash of Christmas spirit.

Lately: The Here and the Now

2009-11-28T19:33:00.002-08:00

This Thanksgiving I helped plan a magazine-spread menu: pumpkin cornbread, savory butternut squash dressing, chardonnay glazed carrots, pan roasted Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes with toasted pecans, spiced cranberry sauce, and a cranberry pecan tart. I’d love to say it was a catalog-worthy feast, but I’m a fledgling cook. The carrots were overdone, the butternut squash was too crisp because I didn’t cube it small enough, and the spiced cranberry sauce was inedible (so we now know that pinot noir vinegar is not pinot noir verjus).

The rents weren't happy that the ingredients included fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme along with wild rice, masa harina, and shallots. (Nor were they pleased about the Brussels sprouts -- who else has to beg their parents to eat their greens?) But I rationalized that the grocery bill would still be less than the $75 take-home dinner they were planning to order from Bob Evans. (The horror!)

On Black Friday we woke up at 3:30 a.m. to go shopping. I intended to bail out but mustered up the motivation to get out of bed by reminding myself I wouldn’t be able to participate in this truly American consumerist tradition next year in Chile. I had the same I’m-going-to-vomit nausea I get when waking up for 6 a.m. flights. When we arrived to Target at 4:50 a.m., hundreds of people lined up outside the doors in the rain. We left and went to the mall. There it seemed like a typical bustling day of holiday shopping until I remembered it was 6 a.m. and people were ordering Chinese in the food court.

A couple of weeks ago before the Thanksgiving chaos, we were on a six-hour drive to D.C. for my visa appointment at the Chilean Consulate. I was thinking about the dozen documents in my manila envelope under the front passenger seat. Signed university acceptance letter. Check. Official statement of scholarship funds. Check. FBI fingerprint cards. Check. I’d heard so many stories about stern officials who never failed to demand new documents not listed on consulate websites or telephone information lines. That’s why I’d also brought along my birth certificate, bank statements, and a letter of my intentions just in case. They couldn’t deny me.

And they didn’t. Fredz, the man who processed my visa, was nothing but friendly and helpful, if eager to charge the $131 fee. After he pasted the document in my passport we had time to explore The Smithsonian Natural History Museum and learn about paintings by Da Vinci, Rubens, and Monet from a scholarly French guide at the palatial National Art Gallery. She led us through dim, glowing rooms with polished marble floors. I spent as much time admiring her demure eye shadow, glowing skin, and manicured nails as I did contemplating Botticelli’s use of symmetry or Caravaggio’s expressions of humanity. This woman oozes polish and sophistication, I thought as I admired her pressed clothes and perfect blowout. But when she stretched up her arm to point out a worm hidden in a Dutch master’s Vase of Flowers and revealed a wedge of dimpled midriff, the illusion of perfection shattered. Then I felt less inadequate with my wrinkled jacket and rain-wrecked curls.

When the museums closed we walked by the Washington Monument and peered through the gates at the back of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. That night I pressured my parents into eating at the Indian restaurant by our Comfort Inn. Now I can’t stop craving Shahi Paneer, tofu-like chunks of homemade Indian cheese in a rich and spicy tomato bisque served with flatbread. I also managed to help my mom eat her Tandoori chicken dipped in yellow curry puree and yogurt sauce with carrots and cucumber.

Back in West Virginia I took a road trip to Lewisburg in Greenbrier County. Surrounded by rolling farmland in the Allegheny Mountains, it's the place small town myths are made of. I walked around the historic downtown stopping to browse at the boutiques, galleries, and antique stores (sometimes they're a better bet for vintage than thrift stores). They have two old fashioned barber shops with the revolving red-white-and blue striped poles in front, a bakery, and hip cafes with vegetarian menus and wi-fi. Advertisements for plays, concerts, and art openings were plastered everywhere. I took pictures of the old churches and graveyards and of the stately Carnegie Hall. On the way in and out of town I stared at the lovely Victorian and Georgian revival homes with green lawns shaded by grand trees (my dream house is an old one), wondering why I couldn't be from this part of West Virginia.

But at least in industrial Charleston I can frequent the Mountain Stage. I’ve heard Brett Dennen, one of my favorites who I found out is super tall with toothpick legs and wiggles while he sings, the virtuoso pianist/bluesy singer Diane Birch (I was disappointed that she was hoarse), and Sam and Ruby. I love the latter’s Suitcase Song.

I also took some time out for TV last week -- I watched the season finale of Project Runway, in which my friend and old roommate Carol Hannah showed a collection in Bryant Park for New York Fashion Week. This was my first experience being a follower of a TV show, and now I’ll have to find another one because it was so fun. When I saw Carol Hannah on Regis and Kelly and discovered that she has 3,000 followers on Twitter, I realized she’s a celebrity. That makes me feel happy and inspired, and lucky that I have a dress she made me in my closet that she’s now selling for $700 on her website. Too bad my current life lacks any occasions to wear it.

However things will soon change … My Rough Guide to Chile just came in the mail, and my flight to Santiago is booked. And The New York Times even recently ran an article about Valparaiso, the city where I’ll be studying. South America is closer every day.

My Hometown in 500 Words

2009-11-23T17:12:00.000-08:00

I run off the road toward the brush when a pick-up truck whizzes past me at a curve. A thorny weed latches around my neck. I’ve forgotten how foggy and cool the West Virginia mornings are in late August. This was not a good plan, I think about my idea to run on Cow Creek Road. But I keep going, passing subdivisions crammed with large look-alike houses as I jog up and down the hills.

I can’t remember ever turning on this road even though I grew up a few miles away in Scott Depot to a soundtrack of roaring interstate punctuated by the bellows of train whistles. This place I consider home doesn’t even qualify as a small town. It’s more of an interstate stop-off with gas stations, a couple of truck stops and motels, and a representative of about every fast food establishment in the Southeast. It's unincorporated, meaning it has no mayor, sheriff, or downtown. It got its name from a now defunct train depot built in rolling farmland. Now it’s part of Teays Valley, a district that has about 13,000 people.

There are no museums, galleries, or cafes in Teays Valley. Shopping is limited to Kmart, Kroger grocery store, and a few short strip malls. The closest thing to fine dining is Applebee’s, which also serves as the local nightlife scene. But while I was away at college the community got a movie theater, and as of 2008 residents can shop at four Wal-Marts within a 30-minute drive.

About 30 minutes into my Cow Creek run I contemplate the brick mansions with pools in the back and Hummers in the front that stand across the road from trailers in muddy ditches with ‘80s-era swing sets, rusty tricycles, and shells of old cars piled in the front lawns.

A mile up the road a rooster crosses a wooden board laid over a creek. Way down a sloping gravel driveway a big woman with white hair stands by a barn with her hands on her hips, her muumuu billowing in the breeze. She stares at me. I’m suddenly self-conscious of my spandex running pants and the purple iPod nano strapped to my arm. But I smile and wave. She gives me the look of death.

I keep running as the road twists up a forested hill. When I pass an abandoned, tire-less car parked on a steep creek ledge and inhale a whiff of something foul, I try not to think about stashed cadavers. At the top, the landscape morphs into hillsides dotted with hay bales. I come to a pair of mobile homes, and a pack of grimy pointers sprints after me, yapping at my heels. I try to remain calm, but a traffic sign blasted with bullet holes makes the backwoods horror movie setting all too relevant. I turn around.

I finally see Midway Valley Mart ahead on the main road at the end of Cow Creek. My mother’s red SUV pulls in to rescue me. I hop in the car, sweaty and breathing hard. “How was your run?” she asks. “Long,” I say, staring out the window. During the five-minute drive home I gaze at the housing developments and office spaces, wondering who lives and works there. When we turn into New London Commons -- my brick subdivision -- I ponder how some of us remain so unaware of the place we came from.

Alone for the holidays

2009-11-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

It was December 23 of last year at about 10 p.m. I sat in an outside seat of a vaporetti boat on the Grand Canal, coughing from the engine fumes and wearing my hood in the chilly rain. I was alone, listening to an ill-timed Weepies ballad on my iPod shuffle. I'm only 23, I thought. How had my life already gone so wrong? I should be glitzed up for holiday parties with my friends or wrapping presents while watching Christmas movies with my mom. Instead I floated past glowing Venetian palaces in an empty, silent city that inspired romantic fantasies and ghost stories, hopelessly and utterly alone.

Nearly a year later, I’m far from empty piazzas shimmering in wet moonlight and hushed medieval allies. I’m home in West Virginia. I stir my multi-grain cereal with milled flaxseed and soy as it bubbles on the stove top. “Tastes like something they’d feed you in prison,” my mom says after I offer her a bite. After breakfast, I pop in a yoga DVD, trying to concentrate on broadening and lengthening as I stand in Proud Warrior. But while yogi Rodney Yee instructs me to empty my mind and be in the moment, I’m thinking about Thanksgiving next week. I resist the urge to press pause and light my new cinnamon apple candle. Bring on the tree trimming, pie baking, and carol singing, I think.

After last year's lonesome Christmas I’m determined to squeeze every drop of holiday warmth out of this year. Following my return from Europe and failure to support myself at a temporary job before the start of my one-year fellowship in South America, I’m living with my family for a few months. Today after a dentist appointment and the library I meet my dad at the pool for a swim. At home we grill hamburgers for dinner. Mom comes in after her weekly girl scout troop meeting, and the three of us sit in the living room. I read my homework, The New New Journalism, my mom flips through an Avon catalog, and my dad reads a Western novel. This is luxury, I think. Until my parents turn on a made-for-TV movie and ruin the bliss of silence. But I stay in the room because I like the warm lighting and the company.

A December night last year I entered a dark and empty hostel dorm in Florence after lugging my suitcase up three flights of stairs. I left my bag on a bunk and went outside in search of an Internet café so I could Skype my family. Soon I was cold and lost. My desperation to talk to someone I knew turned into a panic. An hour later I found an Internet café in the back of a convenience store. The aggressive fluorescent lighting made my head hurt. After I’d paid and sat down at my assigned computer, I realized the settings were in a language consisting of foreign symbols rather than Roman characters. I tried to explain to the Indian owner. He didn't understand but pointed to the other computer. I logged onto Skype and soon heard my mother’s voice in the headset. “Hello?” But she couldn’t hear me. My microphone didn’t work. "Hello?" she repeated. I could hear my brother laughing in the background. I hadn’t seen him in a year. Hearing the familiar voices but being unable to communicate was agonizing. Click, my mom hung up the phone. I rushed out so no one would see my tears.

When I moved to Barcelona to teach English after my college graduation, I’d known I wouldn’t be able to afford a flight home for Christmas. Instead I ended up booking a budget flight to Italy. After a few extended stints abroad I’d overestimated my immunity to homesickness.

These days I sigh with nostalgia when I see photographs of bridges I walked in Venice or paintings I admired in Rome. I wouldn’t trade the three weeks I spent exploring Tuscan countryside and wandering Veronese Christmas markets for anything.

So why now, as I curl up on the living room couch by with my cat at my feet and my parents on either side, do I think of Italy and feel a pang of solitude?

A Southern Education

2009-11-14T19:42:00.000-08:00

When my parents drove away and left me in my corner dorm room on the third floor of Buist Rivers Residence Hall, alone in a city 500 miles from home where I knew no one, I braced myself for a shocking transition. At 18, I was fully aware that I’d grown up in a homogeneous circle of evangelical, middle class people in suburban West Virginia. I cringed admitting I’d attended the same school since kindergarten and graduated with a class of 25 students. Only to me was my moderately sized university of 10,000 students an eclectic metropolis. But looking back five years later, the most bewildering revelations from freshman year didn't relate to the urban surroundings or collegiate depravity that I'd been warned about. My real shock was my introduction to Southern culture and erudite classmates.

“Good grief.” my best friend had muttered in disbelief when she'd accompanied me to my orientation seminar a month earlier. "This is like the Stepford Wives College." I defended myself, insisting that when I’d visited the school that spring during Scholars Weekend the crowd had been different. That summer short, flippy skirts were in, and we were the only girls on campus wearing jeans. We went shopping that afternoon, and I bought a bright yellow, pleated mini. I wore it that evening and the next morning.

The night before classes started I sat on a beanbag on a dorm room floor with a group of girls from my hall. One tried to explain to me what a debutante ball was, showing me pictures of herself wearing a pink gown on stage with a dorky escort at a country club. “Nowadays it’s just a tradition, but it used to be a coming out ceremony where girls from high society families of marrying age were put on display,” she said. Can we say archaic, classist, and demeaning? I thought.

The trauma continued my first week of college. My unruly hair that I’d learned to tame with a laborious blow-dry and ceramic flat iron routine became a frizzy mess in the thick, coastal Carolina humidity. My skin developed a layer of grease as soon as I stepped outside in the 95-degree heat. But everywhere I looked on campus packs of smooth-haired blondes with matte bronze skin marched around in Lily Pulitzer sundresses, designer handbags, and heels. In West Virginia we only wore skirts and heels to church. After being derided most of my life for being overdressed, I’d discovered a place where a dress was appropriate for any occasion. If any of these girls had spoken to me, or if my own appearance wasn’t such a disaster, I would have felt as if I was finally home.

It wasn’t until the end of my first semester that I realized sorority rush had taken place during the first two weeks of class. That explained the daytime cocktail attire on campus. Although the stilettos eventually disappeared from the classroom, I can still hear the stampede of clacks on those 19^th century brick sidewalks.

That fall I'd learn that sorority types or not, Southern girls agreed it was a crime of fashion to wear white after Labor Day. I’d thought that was a myth from my grandmother’s time, but these girls were dead serious. Had they not seen Demi Moore's winter white suit? And if I put on my jean jacket when I was wearing jeans, they'd joke about my Canadian tuxedo. I ignored them, thinking they dressed like soccer moms, wearing the same pearls around their necks and in their ears day in and day out. In class they wore their sunglasses around their necks attached to awful strings I later learned were called Croakies. Later I figured out that their daily uniform, a Ralph Lauren pastel button down shirt or polo paired with Citizens of Humanity jeans and Rainbow flip flops, cost half as much as my wardrobe. At church I saw guys my age dressed in seersucker suits with bowties. They were not trying to be ironic.

My other cultural awakening related to intellect rather than fashion. I lived in an Honors College dorm and couldn’t keep up with my hall mates’ conversations. They talked about bands I’d never heard of. In high school I thought I was pretty cosmopolitan because I listened to music on top-100 radio and not just Michael W. Smith and Casting Crowns. My new college friends only listened to indie music or classics like The Rolling Stones. At first I thought Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were two guys, but I caught on. Soon they were asking me if they could burn my Garden State soundtrack with all the songs from that new Postal Service band.

Not only did my classmates drop names of obscure musicians, but they also loved to compare their trips to Europe, boast about the difficulty of their high schools’ International Baccalaureate programs, and argue about Nietzche versus Kant. They discussed authors and poets and foreign film directors. My roommate and our neighbor had to explain what a nymphet was to me while we watched the independent movie Lolita. At least I’d read the Bell Jar so I could make intelligent commentary when one of my friends showed me her Sylvia Plath inspired journals and verses. My horizons broadened daily. One night my roommate pulled her secret box out of the closet. She showed me her journal detailing all her lovers and conquests, a pair of handcuffs, and some tacky dice. “What’s Kama Sutra?” I asked when I saw the photography book in the bottom.

In my honors English and astronomy classes I kept my mouth shut while my peers discussed the merits of iambic pentameter and the quirks of special relativity. They debated the ethical implications of the racial and economic segregation in their high schools. I was afraid I’d pronounce Goethe wrong or unwittingly reveal that I’d never read Paradise Lost in high school English. I had never felt so ignorant and unsophisticated. My professors must not have noticed, because they gave me all A’s.

Outside of the classroom I learned lessons about the South. I learned not to freak out about the Palmetto bugs (Charlestonian for giant cockroaches) that swarmed the streets at night or try to debate any heretic South Carolinian who believes the Confederacy should have won the Civil War. I also found out what a Lowcountry boil was. Every fall I got invited to several of them -- cookouts with just-caught shrimp, potatoes, corn on the cob, and kielbasa boiled together in giant pots. My first bite was always a horrifying crunch because I'd forget to peel and de-leg the shrimp. In the spring I learned to pry open still-grimy oysters served by the bucket at oyster roasts. I preferred other local specialties – she-crab soup (a crab bisque with sherry and roe) and shrimp and grits (actually delicious at the right restaurant). My last year of school I finally went sailing, but I never learned to shag (the dance) or tolerate the sweet tea. And I'll never say y'all or appreciate a Vera Bradley design.

After four years under the Palmetto flag I accepted that I’ll never be a Southern belle or really get the South, but some dismal days in Europe and and West Virginia I've wanted to repeat Scarlett O'Hara's declamation -- “I'm going back to dignity and grace. I'm going back to Charleston, where I belong.”

Visit Charleston: The cool side of charming

2009-11-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

When you think of Charleston, South Carolina, you might conjure up images of a quaint and cultured coastal city rife with old money, Civil War history, and carriage tours. Charleston is a lovely city – one of the loveliest – but it’s also a college town with a progressive side. The Southern seaport now hosts a fashion week, and its slow food movement has made it a foodie destination on par with much bigger cities. It’s sometimes seriously hip, and hipster, and even hippie. And this casual side of the city is also more financially accessible.

The ideal way to explore Charleston is on foot (or on a bicycle if you’ve got one). The historic district comprising the lower portion of the peninsula is an elegant introduction. Walk by the sparkling gray water of the Cooper River along The Battery, the famous promenade once used for Civil War artillery, spotting sailboats and dolphins on one side and admiring antebellum mansions on the other. Wander the paths and cannons of White Point Gardens and then continue toward the palmetto-tree-lined and oak-canopied Water Front Park. Pause for fountain photo ops, sit on the swings on the pier, and take in the views of the Charleston Harbor and the Ravenel Bridge, an eight-lane, diamond-towered steel wonder. (Sometime during your stay take advantage of the bike and pedestrian lane for glorious views from the continent’s longest cable-stay bridge.)

Take time to meander past the gated 19th-century mansions and gardens shaded by oaks dripping with moss on the surrounding streets. It’s all romance with a capital R. Don’t miss Rainbow Row, the much-photographed series of pastel-colored historic houses on East Bay Street, or the French Quarter and its swanky restaurants and art galleries. (Several Friday evenings a year the galleries open for a free art walk through the gas-lit cobbled streets and alleys that includes wine and hors doeuvres.)

Nearby on gorgeous Broad Street is a little boho restaurant called Gaulart et Maliclet Cafe that has community tables and very reasonably priced, very European specials that include a glass of wine. Locals refer to it as Fast and French. Turning onto lower Meeting Street feels like going back in time 150 years. Most of the churches and graveyards date back to the 1600s – hence Charleston’s nickname the Holy City. Up King Street, the city’s shopping avenue, the high-end antique shops and boutiques begin.

When you come to Saks Fifth Avenue and the venerable and luxe Charleston Place Hotel, flagship-worthy chain stores (The massive Urban Outfitters in a fabulous converted theater space is worth a look if only to check out the crystal chandeliers and sweeping staircases in the dramatic venue.) and fashion forward boutiques occupy the centuries-old buildings. Go inside the Charleston Place to peruse the shops or just savor the opulence of the grandiose lobby with its elegant staircase, live jazz, and polished marble floors.

When you cross Calhoun Street you’re approaching Upper King Street, the up-and-coming design district. You could take a detour here and follow the brick sidewalks into the Spanish moss-and-ivy covered grounds of the College of Charleston campus, est. 1776. On a Saturday morning a side trip to the farmer’s market in Marion Square Park is in order. Browse the local produce and artisan stands and maybe even order a crepe.

Back on King Street stop for a fresh baked gourmet Black Forest or Carrot Cake cupcake at the adorable Cupcake bakery or take a fair-trade latte break at the African-themed Kudu Coffee, frequented by students and creative types. Monza is a good lunch stop for Neapolitan-style pizzas and salads made with fresh, local ingredients. Or you could take a little walk to the corner Bull Street Gourmet for a sandwich. You’ll want to come back to Upper King later for the bar scene. The sleek Chai’s Lounge and Tapas is a standout. The earthy Asian interior with paper lanterns can feel yuppie-ish, but the bamboo garden courtyard in the back is where it’s at in the evenings.

Even though Upper King hosts the city’s new night scene, out-of-towners still flock to the Market Street bars. If bachelorette parties and Jello shots aren’t your thing, wait in line for Rooftop Restaurant and Bar for glowing city views among a preppy crowd. Although with the exception of the renowned Gullah sweetgrass basket weavers the Charleston Market is a best-avoided tourist trap, don’t miss the street itself. Stop by Market Street Sweets for to-die-for praline samples on your way to the dark, Victorian Kaminsky’s Café for desserts made daily by pastry chefs and served late into the night. Wait in line for a table if necessary -- it’s worth it. The Tollhouse Cookie Pie has a cult following (order it a la mode). For a bit of frugal ambience, wait until 11 p.m. for half-price pizza, $2 champagne, and live jazz at the stylish and sensual Mercato, an upscale Italian restaurant.

If the weather’s warm, leave town at least once for an afternoon at one of the nearby beaches. Isle of Palms is the family friendly beach where the vacationers head. The surfers and coeds with beer coolers flock to shabby Folly beach. Taco Boy decked out in umbrellas and Christmas lights is great for lunch and cocktails. (The new downtown location on Huger Street is also a hotspot with bands playing on the patio in the evenings.) Charming Sullivan’s Island is the quietest beach and the closest at barely 15 minutes away. Pass the lighthouse and head to station 17 if you don’t mind a 10-minute nature walk (wildflowers and butterflies!) to a secluded shore that you’ll most likely have to yourself. On the island Poe’s Tavern, named for Edgar Allan Poe who was stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s, is famous for its burgers and can get rowdy.

To find out what’s going on back downtown, grab a free copy of The Charleston City Paper. The alternative weekly also includes a vast restaurant and music directory. The online Charlie Magazine also gives voice to all happenings artistic and progressive in Charleston. Or end your stay with one of two stand-by options: signing up for a commercial but oh-so fun ghost tour or taking in an indie flick with a bottle of wine or chocolate chip cookie at the art house Terrace Theatre on humble James Island.

Gaulart et Maliclet Café, 98 Broad St. (843) 577-9797.
Charleston Place Hotel, 205 Meeting St. (843) 722-4900.
Cupcake, 433 King St. (843) 853-8181.
Kudu Coffee, 4 Vanderhorst. St. (843) 853-7186.
Monza, 451 King St. (843) 720-8787.
Bull Street Gourmet, 60 Bull St. (843) 720-8992.
Chai’s Lounge and Tapas, 462 King St. (843) 722-7313.
Rooftop Bar and Restaurant, 23 Vendue Range St. (843) 723-0485.
Market Street Sweets, 100 N. Market St. (843) 722-1397.
Kaminsky’s Café, 78 N. Market St. (843) 853-8270.
Mercato, 102 N. Market St. (843) 722-6393.
Taco Boy, 15 Center St. (843) 588-9761.
Poe’s Tavern, 2210 Middle St. (843) 883-008. Terrace Theatre, 1956D Maybank Highway (843) 762-4247.

Get your travel stories in print

2009-11-05T16:53:00.000-08:00

Do you have a travel story so good that you have the urge to write it down and share it? Here are five local outlets -- a glossy magazine, two websites, and a couple of regional newspapers -- that publish travel articles.

1. The Charleston Gazette
www.wvgazette.com
Contact: Rosalie Earle, e-mail

2. The Post and Courier
www.charleston.net
Contact: Stephanie Harvin, sharvin@postandcourier.com

3. World Hum
www.worldhum.com
Contact: dispatches@worldhum.com
Paste your submission of less than 2,000 words or a short pitch as well as a brief bio into the body of an email -- they will not open attachments. Do not send multiple submissions. Include the section of the site you want to contribute to in the subject line of your email. Payment varies and response not guaranteed.

4. Women's Adventure Magazine
www.womensadventuremagazine.com
Contact: edit@womensadventuremagazine.com
Accepts formal queries meant for specific features or departments.

5. Glimpse
www.glimpse.org
Contact: Submit stories directly on their website here.
Accepts first-person, slice-of-life narratives that focus on a single experience or a set of closely related experiences. Usually, they recount a specific adventure you embarked upon, or an interesting person you got to know. In the process, the story should reveal something surprising or noteworthy about your host country or someone from that country. Response to queries is prompt.

Land of Enchantment

2009-11-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

I've wanted to go out West to New Mexico and Santa Fe for awhile. I envisioned painted deserts and blazing sunsets that set the backdrop for sacred Native American ceremonial dances. I wanted to see this faraway, spiritual land -- the land of artists and writers who find inspiration and freedom in the sand and mountains and vast plains. A foreign, mystical place of dry heat and ancient rituals that sparks creativity and brings peace. A wild place of cliffs and boulders, of legends and reservations.

When I found out I was actually going to New Mexico I started reading guidebooks. I learned that New Mexico is one of the largest, least populated, and poorest states. My imaginings of complex landscapes, boutique art, and ancient peoples broadened to include mountain hikes and ghost towns. I developed a new interest in Georgia O'Keefe. Now I wanted to take the Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe and the High Road to Taos, to drive down Route 66 in its retro glory. My mouth watered for green chile cheeseburgers and huevos rancheros. Scenic byways and national monuments beckoned me. Soon I'd look out at the Great Sandia and Jemez mountains in the distance and watch the sun set over the Sangre de Cristo rockies.

I kept reading, envisioning the Old Town plazas and cathedrals constructed by Spanish pioneers centuries before the pilgrims docked the Mayflower or Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. I pondered New Mexico's post-multicultural society, a melding of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo ethnicities that had brewed for centuries. I fantasized about floating up in a hot air balloon over Albuquerque during the International Balloon Fiesta (the area has the world's most ideal wind conditions for ballooning) and soaking in a hot tub at a rustic Santa Fe mountain spa. I hoped to sample Frito Pie and fill my suitcase with on-trend Southwestern accessories.

My real trip to New Mexico wasn't all that different from my expectations. The first morning in Albuquerque we hopped on a bus to Old Town where I ordered a breakfast burrito smothered in green chiles at Church Street Cafe, an adobe residence built around 1706 now decked out in homey Southwestern memorabilia. At every restaurant they asked if I wanted red or green chiles or Christmas (both). I couldn't get enough of them. (They're rich in anti-oxidants! Studies have found that they dull pain and trigger pleasure sensors in the brain!) I also developed a romantic affinity for ristras, the ubiquitous bunches of dried red chiles hanging in every doorway and sold by roadside vendors.

On our way up to Sandia Crest, 10,678 feet above sea level, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees -- to below freezing. We stopped at the quirky roadside museum of Tinkertown housing the work and junk-turned-treasure collection of an eccentric woodcarver/philosopher. Up at Sandia Crest and later at Aspen Vista in the Santa Fe National Forest we hiked through flaming yellow Aspens and birches and by alpine flowers and blue spruces that towered like telephone poles wearing Christmas tree branches. We made it to mountain peaks and looked out over mountain ranges and cities from viewpoints I can only compare to peering out the window of an airplane.

Some days were so sunny that my head hurt from furrowing my brow in a deep squint, and I had to look at the ground while I walked. On one of those blinding days we followed a sandy path that wound through flat desert surrounded by hillsides covered in black volcanic boulders etched with petroglyphs, prehistoric images carved by Pueblo Indians. Other days we explored the art galleries lining Santa Fe's Canyon Road and the dozens of chic boutiques downtown selling indigenous and Southwestern art and jewelry. I bought a chunk of turquoise hand-carved into a square cross to wear as a pendant from a man with waist-length black hair and lusted over cowboy boots and silver rings. Around town Dad and I discussed what would happen if he adopted the hairstyle that nearly every New Mexican man we passed sported -- the ponytail.

Sometimes we left the city, driving for hours on straight highway stretches through dramatic wilderness of mesas and valleys, stopping at scenic lookout points, ghost towns like Cerrillos, and tiny churches. I stuck my head out the window on the interstate to snap photos of the Puye Clifftops against the big turquoise sky. We spotted a tarantula crossing the road in the abandoned-mining-town-turned-hippie-artist-haven of Madrid. I contemplated how so many Americans live in adobe rather than the brick or vinyl siding houses I grew up with. I took dozens of photos of bull skulls and rugged adobe steeples. (I periodically yelled for my dad to stop the rental SUV for a good photo op.) The colorful graveyards and crucifixes draped in rainbows of rosaries surrounding the churches were like something out of Mexico.

On a side trip to Bandelier National Monument in Frijoles Canyon we hiked along Native American clifftop dwellings and to a rocky waterfall. On another day excursion we scrambled up the Kasha Katawe Tent Rocks through lunaresque canyon paths in an otherworldly forest of bleached rock formations. Up north in Taos we learned from a Pocohontas-look-alike tour guide how indigenous peoples live in modern society at the 1,000 year-old Taos Pueblo village. Down the road we parked to cross the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge on foot. When we made it to the middle of the fifth highest bridge in the U.S., two semi-trucks blasted toward us, rattling the entire thing. Back at the car a guy with long black hair blowing in the breeze sat beside his giant rusty blue Ford truck with the grassy plains and jutting blue mountains behind him.

I suffered my first flame face from a habanero pepper at Baja Bumblebee's Grill. I tried one, and it was so good that I went back for another. But tears streamed down my face after the second one. I don't know if the tears were an autonomical reaction to the spicy pepper or tears of pure pain. My tongue hurt so bad I couldn't touch the rest of my meal for 10 minutes. I had another traumatic cuisine encounter at the Kakawa Chocolate House where I tasted the first chocolate I didn't like, an Aztec warrior elixir made according to the original Mesoamerican recipe. I couldn't get past a few sips of the oily and spicy unsweetened concoction. But most of the local food I would eat every day if I could -- dishes like green chile and pinon nut meat loaf, blue corn pancakes, and stuffed acorn squash with mole sauce.

I feel like I filled a college course worth of history, geography, and culture into a two-week trip. After exploring a bit of Europe and South America I'm long due for discovering the vast diversity of the United States of America. I have a feeling I'll be back in Santa Fe one day -- I won't be able to stay away from that big turquoise sky and clear mountain air. And did I mention all that handcrafted turquoise and those fresh roasted chiles?

Visa taboos and small town joys

2009-11-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

I'm going to Chile in three months. My scholarship year is ever so slowly approaching, 18 months after I started the application process. Now that I've been accepted to the Universidad Pontificia de Valparaiso I'm waiting for my final documents so I can send them to the Chilean Embassy and book a visa appointment in D.C.

The student visa application required me to get an HIV test. After a few unanswered phone calls to local health departments, I made an appointment at a nearby family clinic. I showed up at 9:45 a.m. with my 40 bucks in hand, ready to be pricked. The check-in counter didn't have a sign-in sheet, so I told the receptionist my name and appointment time. "What are you here for today?" she asked.

I paused. "An HIV test." Her eyes grew wide and the blood drained from her face. The other women in scrubs behind the counter all froze and looked at each other. I think the entire waiting area silenced for a moment. Should I have whispered? Had I violated a confidentiality norm or HIPAA protocol? Did they expect me to write my reason for coming on a scrap sheet of paper rather than voicing those three letters aloud?

Coming from the College of Charleston where health services regularly advertised free AIDS/HIV testing events (a friend who I volunteered with in the Dominican Republic even organized one), and after reading interviews in women's magazines where Scarlett Johannsen and Natalie Portman reveal that they get annual HIV tests, and after seeing the horrifying images of the babies and children suffering from AIDS in Africa I wasn't prepared for the reaction I would get asking for an HIV test in Hurricane, W.Va. Now I know that H-I-V is a four-letter word around here.

Back at the clinic, my face flushed at the shocked reaction I'd elicited. I decided that I better explain myself because my dad works at that office part time. Plus I didn't want to put the nurse and myself through an uncomfortably graphic speech about safe sex practices and shared injection needles. So I clarified that I needed the test for a study abroad visa, and everyone relaxed.

Later this week we headed to Fayetteville for some hiking. We showed up for a haunted night hike led by a pair of park rangers who told 19th-century ghost stories about the surrounding woods and its now-disappeared mining towns and railroads. We ate dinner at Pies and Pints downtown, where I ordered Thai pizza - curry sauce, shrimp, and toasted coconut with fresh basil and cilantro. On our way out of town after a rainy morning in the woods, we stopped at the Cathedral Cafe, a hip and arty little place in an old church that serves dishes like carrot leek soup and spinach and hummus salad. I was so inspired by culinary small town West Virginia that I spent most of today making coconut curry butternut soup.

Bringin' home that fall bounty

2009-10-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon we went pumpkin picking. We drove up and down and around the rolling hills of Midway Hollow Road in Putnam County to a pumpkin patch on Gritts Farm. I pulled a red wagon through the grass, straining from its weight and squinting in the sun. When I spotted an especially round and orange pumpkin I stopped to rip it from the vine. After I'd picked my three pumpkins I got a red and gold apple for a snack, petted the farmers' giant English wolfhound and wandered through the miniature hay maze. On our way out we admired the mums and bought butternut squash for dinner.

That night I roasted pumpkin seeds with cinnamon and salt and baked a butternut squash pie. (Tonight I made butternut soup with the leftover squash. It was almost as good as roasted butternut with crushed coriander seeds, and I ate three bowls.) Then Dad cringed and provided commentary and criticism while I carved a kitty cat face on the smallest pumpkin. Evita found the jack 'o lantern carving fascinating. She sniffed the pumpkin, batted the pumpkin guts off my spoon and even licked the seeds. She should appreciate my creative efforts because so far I've carved two pumpkins with cat themes.

The pumpkin picking was part of a perfect autumn weekend -- Saturday we hiked around the fall foliage and natural bridges of Carter Caves in Kentucky. We slipped a few times on the wet leaves but managed not to bash our skulls on the steep stone stair cases down to the caves and up across the bridges. Near the end of the trail at dusk, we heard wolf howls and shrieks. But we didn't flee in panic thinking we might be torn to pieces. No, we weren't even scared. Okay, maybe we timid Wards suffered a few chills while walking through the forest, even if we were well aware that the spooky sounds were recordings for the park's Haunted Trail.

My new obsessions: Katie and Brandi

2009-10-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

"You just seemed so confident," Dad said to Mom, angry and tired after realizing she was leading us to a cafe far away from our rental SUV. The Fodor's recommended bistro we'd parked in front of was closed.

"I didn't know East Alameda Street was so far from West Alameda Street," she defended herself as we entered Old Town Santa Fe.

"What's today's date?" I asked after reading "Brandi Carlile Oct. 15" on the front of the Lensic Theatre across the street.

An hour later I made my way up the balcony of the art deco Southwestern theater, once called the most splendid theater in the West, still wearing my hiking boots and puffy vest from a day of hiking. I tried not to think about my windblown hair and rosy cheeks among the knee-high boots and smoky eyes. I am so glad I got over my unkempt appearance and bought a ticket at the door -- Up there with Patty Griffin in Charleston and The GoTan Project in the Palau de Musica in Barcelona, it was a surreal night that I didn't want to end.

The stage was a dreamy night sky with a paper lantern moon and branches, like a set for an Anthropologie catalog. A singer I'd never heard of, Katie Herzig, opened the show. I resisted the urge to hate her tall, skinny blond self and cute cowgirl boots before she opened her mouth and played her guitar. She started with the whimsical and catchy Apple Tree. Katie's girlish voice and quirky indie songs made me think of Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley with an earthy Patty Griffin streak and a bit of Madeleine Peyroux jazz in her husky tone. Halfway through her set I didn't think Brandi Carlile could match her in my book. (You can download her acoustic tracks performed with her cell0 and ukele-playing band mates free at katieherzig.com like I did.)

"I don't know if it's such a good thing," Herzig said about her niece and nephew knowing the words to her songs better than she does. "My nephew asked if this next song was about him. I had to explain that it wasn't." She said now he asks "Can we play Aunt Katie's song about her relationship issues?" from his car seat. No wonder he likes that song, Hologram, because Herzig really rocks it. It's my favorite too.

When Brandi Carlile took the stage it all escalated to a new level. She started out standing in a circle with her band, waling out an a capella number in her auditorium-commanding, country voice while the guys harmonized in falsetto. She blew us all away and didn't stop for nearly two hours. I feared her vocal chords would go out.

A friend who shares appreciates the sort of music I do (perhaps the only one) introduced me to Carlile two years ago after a rough summer when I looked for solace in music. I got an abbreviated copy of her album "The Story," but after a year I was burnt out on the six tracks. I have a new respect for her after that concert -- live performance is where she shines, baring everything in her powerful, emotive voice. The leggy singer/songwriter with shoulder-length mahogany waves spoke in a voice as deep and twangy as she sings. On stage she's flawless and funny to boot. She's no pop star but a female Johnny Cash, that is if he had a startling range and real guitar skills. She and her band even unplugged their instruments and stepped in front of their microphones to perform a song or two in the raw.

Carlile recalled singing back up for an Elvis impersonator at 15 and mentioned her country singer mother. "I grew up in the Grand Ole Opry culture," the Washington state singer said. "My aunt was a saloon-style, honky tonk piano player, but my real obsession was Elton John. I dressed up as him every year for Halloween." (Elton performs a duet on her new release.) The audience ate up her stage charisma, and she played five encore songs, one which compelled the entire theater to stand and stomp and clap along. Carlile's upbringing might be a world away from my experiences, but somehow her music makes me feel something. And that's the kind I like. She released a new CD this month, "Give up the Ghost," and I'm downloading it on iTunes now.

Accidentally on The Road

2009-10-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

In Albuquerque Dad said I was talking too much. He suggested I get a nice New Mexico-based novel to read and pulled over at Barnes and Noble. Whenever I walk into a bookstore an overwhelming wave quiets me -- so many books to read and things to learn and not enough life to take it all in. I'm so behind!

The nice woman at the customer service desk pointed me to a bin of local authors. She suggested "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. I ended up getting it because being a paperback it was the only one Dad would offer to buy me. And the cover said "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize."

I started reading, guessing that it might tell a story of the harsh realities of border crossings and the desperation of illegal immigration. A few pages in I realized it was a post-apocalyptic novel. New for me. Actually it turned out to be the bleakest and most brutal book I've ever read. But it read like poetry, like I thought Faulkner would. It made me never want to write another word because I could never construct such lyrical, abstract phrases.

I finished it in two days. It was the most hideous, hopeless story I'd ever read, and I couldn't stop thinking about it as I walked through the flaming golden Aspens in the Santa Fe Forest. But it was incredibly tender and touching in its rendering of a father and son relationship -- the love and the purity of it.

What if the world ended, but even a decade later some wretched souls survived? No trees. No birds. Nothing to eat or wear. Only dried corpses and ruined cities. Everywhere is cold and gray and the ashy air almost unbreathable. The blank-faced living envy the dead. "Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave," McCarthy writes.

The man tries to protect the boy from the deranged cults, violence and cannibalism that reign. "Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, dont you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget."

If you think you can handle it, read it. Somehow it's beautiful.

Please don't stop the music

2009-10-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

I bought tickets for another Mountain Stage concert to see Regina Spektor -- even though it was nearly three hours away in Morgantown, W.Va. A couple days earlier while listening to one of her new songs, Eet, I decided I'd regret missing the experience. I planned to spend the night with my gram and drive back in the morning. I headed up to the WVU campus, Google Map directions in hand. I made it downtown 30 minutes before the show, but I never came across the streets listed on my directions. I figured I'd find them if I drove around.

I didn't. Thirty minutes later, after nearly sliding back into the line of traffic behind me before I could switch from brake to gas at the stoplights perched on steep hilltops, I parked with hopes that I could ask directions and get there on foot. The first coed I solicited had no idea what the Creative Arts Center was. Of course only clueless freshmen would be roaming campus on a Sunday night. The next girl rambled on a five-minute list of muddled directions. She lost me after the third turn, when I noticed her tongue ring. Finally a guy with a backpack told me if I took a right and walked up the hill I'd come to the road listed on my map. I started up the hill. After 15 minutes of trekking, the sidewalk ended at a busy intersection.

By the time I made it back to my car it was dark. The concert had started 30 minutes earlier. I took out my contacts and put on my glasses. I thought about calling my parents and asking them to look up directions online, but they were at church. I drove back up the road I'd walked and found the road listed on my directions midway up the mountain. I turned onto the unlit gravel road and followed it deep into a hollow that dead ended by a trailer. By the time I managed to maneuver my Corolla around, I panicked when I saw that my gas gauge had dipped well below the E line. I was ready to call 911. Google had failed me. I'd even been extra responsible and called the venue before I left to get more specific directions because the website only listed a P.O. Box, but I only got a machine.

I made it down the hill to a BP, but I was sure I'd missed my show. I had to wait in line for a functioning pump and make an emergency run to the bathroom before I could ask the clerk for directions. How humiliating would it be to admit to my family that I'd driven three hours for a a concert and screwed it all up? I was disappointed to the point of tears. I knew the feeling well. Suddenly I was lost, frustrated and alone again in Europe.

I got back in my car in one last attempt to locate the building. I passed something big on the left and pulled in the lot. The doors were locked. I realized it was the stadium. A few minutes later I finally made it to The Creative Arts Center, more than an hour late. The box office was closed, but after 10 minutes a guy located my will-call tickets. I slipped in the doors and snagged one of the last open seats just before Regina Spektor took the stage.

And all my frustration was worth it. Soviet-born, Bronx transplant Spektor belted out the most gorgeous tracks from her new album, "Far." She's a classically trained pianist and singer who writes and arranges her own songs, all of which are distinctive with her pure, haunting voice and quirky lyrics that are both profound and funny. Some songs are abstract, and others tell stories. Sometimes she makes crazy noises with her mouth like buzzing or beatboxing and taps out rhythms on the piano. Her East Village-cultivated, alternative sound is far from the folk music I've heard on the Mountain Stage.

I was most looking forward to hearing Eet, "It’s like forgetting the words to your favorite song / You can’t believe it / You were always singing along." While she was on stage plinking the piano and belting into the attached microphone with her dark red curls and red lipstick, captivating the auditorium with her so-much-better-than-an-iTunes-track performance, I thought my favorite songs were Laughing With and Folding Chair. Sometimes a recording, no matter how professionally produced, pales after hearing a talented artist create it live. Listening to music like Spektor's gives me a particular sensation. I've read the quote "Good music makes people feel homesick for something they've never had." That statement is less inspirational than depressing, but it expresses exactly how I feel.

Shades of pumpkin

2009-10-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

My childhood dream of experiencing the Pumpkin Festival came true last week. As a Halloween-obsessed little girl who got excited just thinking about the pumpkins of October, I never got a chance to go to the annual festival in Milton. I would have gotten giddier about the event as a kid eligible for the pumpkin painting contest, but I still appreciated the hay bales, scarecrows and piles of warty, hooked gourds.

Throughout the afternoon I paused to inhale the apple butter, pumpkin rolls and spiced fudge but passed by the tractor salesman and gutter-guard displays. I snapped a photo of the festival's winning pumpkin that weighed in at 1,140 pounds and took a smaller one home.

The fall kick continued Saturday with roasted butternut squash coated in crushed coriander seeds (the secret is to boil the squash before you attempt peeling and cutting it) and a leaf-crunching hike through the Kanawha State Forest. I further embraced the autumn season and its warm hues by dying my hair red. Yes, I'm a redhead, a full-blown ginger, nothing auburn or reddish about it. I've secretly always wanted to try out red hair, having long admired the locks of Debra Messing, Kate Walsh (of Grey's Anatomy) and Julianne Moore. I decided to try out the head-turning shade as I'm approaching my 24th birthday. I'm seizing all risk-taking opportunities in the face of my fleeting youth. Let me know if you have any daring ideas ...

Before corn flakes

2009-10-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

I sat at a fold-out table holding a carton of vitamin D milk. I looked at my styrofoam plate stacked with buckwheat cakes, blackened sausage patties and a container of Motts apple sauce. The room had fluorescent lighting, tiled floors and a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. The crowd wore WVU sweatshirts and jeans. I hadn't seen so many perms, camo hats and suspenders in one room since I was a little girl living in Scott Depot during the '90s.

It was a rainy Saturday in September in the little town of Kingwood, W.Va. We'd driven an hour through winding hillsides tinged with red, orange and yellow leaves and dotted with horses, hay bales and trailers on our way to Preston County for the annual Buckwheat Festival. My dad and gram had wanted to go in memory of my granddad. I liked the idea of eating buckwheat cakes at a fall festival in small-town West Virginia.

After our $7 breakfast served by the Kingwood fire department, we went to the basement to check out the arts and crafts. I spotted a couple of stands selling exquisite painted pottery, but it was far out of my price range. I settled for a chunky, Peruvian-esque bracelet. The long-haired Lewisburg artist called the pattern on the polished, burgundy stones tiger's eye. Outside I read the signs hanging over a row of food vendors: "Hot Delicious Fried Dough. 'Mountain Ears' -- Fresh Buttery Corn on the Cob. Fresh Fried Pork Rinds." The three West Virginia food groups.

Luckily the night before we'd gone to the Provence Market Cafe in Bridgeport for casual French cuisine. Gram asked me if I was going to brush my hair before we left for dinner. She's from a better kempt generation unfamiliar with today's bed-head waves. She commented on the laurels and mums around the porch on our way into the restaurant. I think that skill's been lost on my generation. To start I ordered the soup du jour, butternut squash. It ended up being a bisque, something I'd never order as I'm unable to justify the drinking of cream. Thank goodness for my ignorance because the sweet and spicy recipe was to-die-for. I ordered one of the specials for my entree, fire-roasted red peppers and tomatoes with mushrooms over homemade linguini.

I shared a bed with Gram that night. She likes to talk to me in the middle of the night. When I'm asleep. "Don't you worry Rachel," she said at 2 a.m. "It will all work out. My mother asked me if I'd ever end up getting married, but when I met George it happened so fast."

The next evening we bought her a DVD player so we could watch "Mona Lisa Smile" (love the red lipstick, synchronized swimming and bicycles with baskets). She insisted we leave her handwritten instructions so she could turn it on once we left. That night she declared the television set broken several times and told us we better fix it before she had to call the cable company.

I remember my granddad exhibiting similar frustrations with electronics. I've never been mechanically inclined either -- I still struggle with my iPod wheel, and the real reason I don't watch TV is that I can't figure out all the remotes. I started thinking that if my academic grandfather and crossword-whiz grandmother had the same problem, maybe such skills (or the lack of) were hereditary. "Technology intimidates them," my dad said when I shared my observations. "It's a fear thing." I'll take that. So I'm not too slow to work a Playstation. I have a phobia.

Mountain Stage

2009-09-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I went downtown for the Mountain Stage, a live radio show aired on NPR. I drove the 25 minutes to see The Indigo Girls at the Clay Center hoping that I wouldn't regret parting with my $20. "One ticket please," I said at the box office.

"Someone left an extra ticket here," the woman at the counter said. "They told me to give it to the next person in line if the seat's okay with you."

I reveled in my luck as I walked toward the front of the auditorium to row A, seat six. I suffered a rush of empathetic stage fright for the host and performers when the "On Air" lights flickered on. Gary Jules opened the evening at 8 p.m., singing and strumming his high-strapped guitar alone on stage. The Asheville resident wore a fedora and cuffed jeans that revealed the red socks under his loafers. His songs were so simple yet lovely that I wished I had a smartphone so I could download them from iTunes on the spot. I'm a sucker for haunting melodies (and listening to my favorite, "Horses," on MySpace right now).

Billboard Magazine profiled Jules when his song "Falling Awake" broke the top 100 despite being only available on iTunes after it played during a dramatic episode of Grey's Anatomy. "I actually wrote it as a happy song about my son being born," Jules said of the tune, which played in a scene where doctors pulled the life-support plug on the father of one of the lead characters.

Then another lone guitarist named Chris Smither took the spotlight, looking like a '70s photograph with his shagged hair and button-up shirt tucked into slim-cut jeans. The story-telling musician has released 11 albums over the past 40 years. I liked his song about the constant questions his three-year-old adopted daughter from China asks. The audience laughed to lyrics like "Were you as big as you are now when I was born? I been this big a long time, that's why my face is worn / But were you ever little, and if so where was I? Yes I was, but you weren't anywhere or anywhy ..."

Next a woman with an actress-lithe body and toned arms stepped on stage carrying a guitar. Turns out she was Jill Hennessy, the eponymous lead of Crossing Jordan, a former Law and Order cast member and a Broadway veteran. So not only is she a beautiful TV star, but she also writes country songs that she sings with her deep, powerful voice. "I sang for money on the streets of Toronto 20 years ago," she said. "The Indigo Girls had a show one night. By the time I made enough money for a ticket, they wouldn't let me in."

After Hennessy came one of the world's best banjo pickers, Alison Brown. The Harvard grad said an astronaut took her new CD on a recent Hubble mission. He wanted to listen to it for the first time in space. I expected to see a woman rocking out bluegrass on the banjo, picking the life out of the strings and breaking into wild, spontaneous jigs. But Brown moved nothing besides her fingers as she played a set that reminded me of elevator music, making it look like she could strum in her sleep.

At 10 p.m. The Indigo Girls took the stage. Unlike most musicians I see in concert, I wasn't taken aback by how attractive, stylish and slim they were. But I couldn't get over their dream-like harmonies, solid acoustic talent and poetic songwriting. I wanted to call someone up and tell them to turn on their radio. I didn't want songs like "On the Way to Fine" and "Sugar Tongue" to end, but even when they did they kept replaying in my head the whole drive home.

So I guess you know you're from Appalachia when you're into folk music, even though you've never been able to develop a liking for country or Southern rock. Come to think of it, the Mountain Stage fit my mission of embracing my West Virginia roots while I'm stuck here. And I wouldn't have minded parting with my 20 bucks one bit.

Fall with it

2009-09-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

This is the first week of fall, my favorite season. There’s something about that smoky scent in the air, the crunch of leaves beneath your feet and the pumpkins on porches. I’m ready to pull on a pair of knee-high boots, wrap a scarf around my neck and zip up a jacket to head outside on a crisp evening. Oh, to live in a Land’s End catalog.

The season brought new beginnings when I was growing up. Fall meant first days of school with new classmates, teachers and locker numbers. It was a time for blank notebooks and sharp pencils stuffed in fresh backpacks. Back-to-school-shopping for corduroy and tights made me giddy.

My birthday comes in autumn, as does Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. I cut felt leaves and hot-glued them to myself then stuck a wreath on my head and called myself a tree when I was nine. Another year I hung a white box I’d painted with black dots over my shoulders. I tied fuzzy dice around my ponytail and convinced a friend to join in the project so we could be a pair of dice. The next Halloween I cut a picket fence out of a box and made construction paper flowers and a pipe-cleaner butterfly headband for a garden costume. My last year going door-to-door I painted my hair pink, dressed in black and pulled on a knit cap for an Alias spy inspired get-up.

Now that I’m graduated from school and trick-or-treating, fall makes me want to go pumpkin picking, carve a jack ‘o lantern and roast apples and squash. I have berry lip stain, September fashion issues and cozy sweaters on my mind. I want to drive down an interstate curving through hillsides igniting into oranges, reds and yellows.

If I weren’t all grown up I'd jump in a pile of leaves and knock on doors trimmed in scarecrows and skeletons, carrying a big bag and chanting “trick or treat.

On the Gauley: Braving my Mountain Roots

2009-09-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

My father handed his waiver to our whitewater rafting trip leader, a red-haired giant with waist-length braided pigtails and mutton chops that spread across his neck who referred to himself as Dougie-Doug. He paused, giving my dad a double take. “Hey bro,” he said, leaning in to whisper. “You got your wetsuit on backward.”

I came around the corner. “The knee pads go in front, Dad,” I said, pointing to the legs of my own Star Trek jumpsuit.

While he returned to the locker room, I explored our whitewater outfitter’s base camp in The New River Gorge of the Appalachian Highlands. The unfinished wood and vaulted ceilings made it feel like an oversized hunting lodge. I felt out of place among all the grizzly guys. The few other women on the campus were sinewy and makeup-free, sporting ball caps and Patagonia duds

Our trip marked the first day of Gauley season, the three weeks when the Summersville Dam releases a torrent of water that roars down nearly 700 feet of rugged canyon to create 28 miles of raging rapids. Whitewater enthusiasts from all over the world flock to West Virginia every fall to paddle the river. The rapids rank one-five on a scale determined by force and risk. A six indicates a 50 percent survival rate. A seven is suicidal.

As newbies, we’d be rafting the less intense Lower Gauley rather than the brutal Upper Gauley, which has five back-to-back class five rapids. If Dad had his way, we’d be going down the mild and scenic New River. However, we’d received an involuntarily upgrade when the company canceled the trip he originally signed us up for. The high school age limit for this more intense excursion explained why beer-guzzlers outnumbered the church youth groups.

After we buckled our helmets and life vests (which the staff referred to as pfd’s), we filed into a blue and white school bus for a one-hour ride to the Gauley River deep in the mountain gorge. Doug started the ride rattling off a stand up routine of farm animal jokes.

We stopped smiling when he transitioned to the safety lecture. He warned us of the importance of holding our paddle grips during even the most aggressive of rapids. “Let go for a second,” he said, “and that hard plastic handle will knock out your teeth or bash in your face.” I imagined my new braces lacerating my lips when we hit a violent wave.

Then he ordered us not to swim upright if knocked out of the raft. “The river’s 500 feet deep in some spots, but other times we’ll be grazing rocks,” he said. “Tread water, and your feet will hook between rocks or an ’86 Chevy. You’ll be snapped while we’re reeling ya in with the rope or the waves are pullin’ ya.”

If we fell out and our guide motioned us to come on but then turned away to lead the raft in the opposite direction, it would be because his responsibility was to pull the crew to safety first. “That’s when you do your best impression of an Olympic swimmer,” he said. “And remember, when you hit a rapid never stop paddling.” He closed his speech with an offer to bus any of us who’d changed our minds about the trip back to the parking lot.

I stared out the window the rest of the ride. I had begged for this trip, insisting that I couldn’t leave West Virginia without rafting its world-class rapids. Dad was quiet too, looking like a petrified, nerdy astronaut with his retired ‘90s eyeglasses and white helmet sitting high on top of his baseball cap. What had I gotten us into? It would be my fault if the rapids knocked one of us unconscious, pinned beneath an undercut boulder in what Doug referred to as the washing machine of a monster rapid. I pictured a split helmet and ripped life jacket spewing out four hours later.

We met our guide Ray when we arrived to the river. He’d waited in line at dawn in hopes of surfing on our trip. With hopeful guides from all over the world heading to the Gorge, snagging a gig can get competitive during the 20 days of Gauley season.

After we shoved our raft in the water, short, buff and bare-chested Ray told us get off the middle cushions, which he called ejector pads. Instead we had to sit balanced on the raft’s outer edges, bracing ourselves with our feet. “Three paddles forward. Break,” ordered Ray as we set off on the big-water river. “Now four paddles back.”

Before each rapid Ray instructed us where to swim if our brace failed and we fell out. “Don’t go left — there’s a gnarly rip current by that third rock over there,” he’d say. “But don’t veer too far right either or you’ll get caught in that twisting hydraulic.” Soon my calves cramped from the ferocity with which I sandwiched my feet in the crevices of the raft.

I sat behind Tim, staring at the XXL scrawled on the collar of his too-short wetsuit rental. Tim was about 6-foot-seven and provided commentary throughout the trip, with statements like “I learned to tell time with my thumb” and “When Ray says technical he means difficult.”

I clenched my paddle grip with white knuckles as we bounced through our first class five rapid. The rest of the group hooted while we pounded down the steep run. “Woohoo!” “Bring it on!” “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” they shouted. When the waves splashed my face I squinted, lips pursed in silence, paddling for dear life and squeezing my legs to the raft with all my might. “Stop hollering and start paddling!” I wanted to scream during the aquatic roller coaster. I kept rowing even when the water launched us so high that I paddled air. I remember my dad waling “Ride ‘em dogies!” when he surfed the waves on a boogie board during beach vacations. Not now. Not a peep out of him either.

We crashed and swirled through rapids dubbed Pure Screaming Hell (which included two deadly holes called Purgatory and Hell Hole), Heaven Help Us and BFR (an acronym standing for your first guess). When not maneuvering the torrential chutes and their ferocious waves, we coasted by waterfalls and boulders through a tunnel of rock wall and forest.

“Come on,” Dad said to me when we floated to a less turbulent pool that Ray declared safe to swim. Without thinking, we jumped overboard to flail down the Swimmer’s Rapids. I yelped as soon as I hit the 50-degree water. “It’s cold!” I shouted. I tried to keep my toes in view as I glided down the river. Dad fought to swim to our boat as the current swept him toward craggy ledges. He felt panicky and hypothermic, he later told me. Jim, one of our crewmates who’d also gone for a swim, suffered an asthma attack as the chilly waves pounded his face. That’s why Ray left me floating out there on my own. I feared he’d deserted me to body surf the next round of rapids.

When the boat made its way over to pick me up, Dad leaned overboard to thrust me up by the armpits with all his might. When that didn’t work, he held onto me and flopped himself backward. I shot into the air and slid across the floor of the raft to land on top of him.

Not long after our slapstick performance we parked ashore to end our 12-mile, five-hour run. I shivered in my soaked layers, dreading the hour-long bus trip back. I had jumped in the river wearing my jacket, wetsuit, long-sleeved Under Armour tee and swimsuit under my life jacket. I couldn’t imagine peeling all that off to use one of the portable toilets. I curled up in a cold, wet ball against a window in the middle of the bus. Sputter. The bus didn’t start.

Our bus arrived more than an hour later. Doug felt responsible for the holdup and entertained us on the way back with stories of the local Fayetteville police force, more Dukes of Hazzard than Mayberry according to him.

Back at base camp, Dad and I met outside the locker rooms ready to drive the 20 minutes to our campsite at Babcock State Park. He already had his headlamp strapped across his balding head. I wonder what Doug and Ray thought when he tipped him while wearing the contraption. That night we roasted hotdogs and then crawled straight in our sleeping bags.

After breaking camp the next morning we headed back to the whitewater outfitter for our Treetop Canopy Tour. Outside a group of tattooed guys in board shorts smoked cigarettes and spoke to a couple of park rangers holding clipboards. “Must have gotten busted for something,” Dad said. Then our zip line guide Heath informed us that their friend had died rafting the Upper Gauley an hour earlier. The 40-year-old man had fallen into the water and suffered cardiac arrest.

I couldn’t stop contemplating the sobering scenario as we geared up in our harnesses and helmets before hitting the new, state-of-the-art course. We began by perfecting our technique on a zip equivalent of a bunny slope. Then we moved up to the platforms built around Eastern Hemlocks and White Oaks connecting the network of cables. The real zips were long. And fast. And high. And as we proceeded they got longer and faster and higher.

We assumed the jokester guys in our group were ball players on a team-bonding trip with their coaches. Filming the perfect YouTube documentary interested them as much as the thrill of whizzing along at 30mph while hanging 110 feet in the air. They surprised us when they revealed they were a bowling team from Raleigh.

Our guide Heath the wild-haired mycologist and Dad the doctor bonded over Latin terminology. They pointed out the red fungi crawling across the trees and the lethal white Amanita Verosa Destroying Angel mushrooms sprouting below as we wobbled across Indiana Jones-style bridges. My apprehensions eased after getting double clipped to double steel cables. I focused on sitting back in my harness and tucking my legs into a cannonball to increase my speed like Heath suggested. Dad maintained a death grip on his trolley that slowed him down. His fear of heights kept him from appreciating the sweeping views of the rocky Mill Creek and rhododendron patches below the forest canopy. I found swinging my body around the platform edge to rappel to the ground at the end the most nerve-racking part of the three-hour tour.

That weekend Dad kept pretty quiet. I fretted that he regretted letting me drag him on the extreme adventure. But after he bought the DVD of our whitewater trip and compulsively checked to see if our zipping pictures had appeared online, I realized I was in the clear.

As for me, revealing I’m a West Virginian is easier now that I don’t have to sheepishly admit to incredulous audiences that I’ve never rafted my state’s world famous whitewater. After trekking the Andes, wandering Tuscan hillsides and hiking through Argentine rainforest, I’m getting around to conquering my own state.

On the way home from our weekend adventure we stopped at the Tamarack Best of West Virginia restaurant for pan-fried fillet of rainbow trout, kale and fried green tomatoes. I strutted in smelling of campfire, rocking river-water waved hair and wearing Vasque hiking boots. And for once, I felt like a native mountain woman.