Ich fahre nach Istanbul.

I am counting down the minutes until I have to leave for the bus station where I will be counting down the hours (18 to be exact) until I arrive in Istanbul. I took a little holiday from traveling and holed up for three days here in Lake Ohrid, Macedonia, or FYROM to those who would prefer to be politically correct. Lake Ohrid is one of the oldest lakes in the world, a claim that doesn't impress me much because to be honest, everywhere in Europe claims to have the 'oldest lake, castle, fortress, bridge, wedge of cheese, shoe, hat, hay bale, minibus, etc.' Even so, it is a pretty little holiday spot with loads of Slavs on vacation from work. It has a nice vibe and it is striking how much more Macedonia has been developed than Albania.

A curious thing happened yesterday. After a year of living in Switzerland (in 2003-2004) and trying to learn German, I don't remember a single instance where it was actually necessary to speak German to communicate; everybody spoke English. However, after I missed my Istanbul bus yesterday I needed to ask for directions concerning minibuses from Struga back to Ohrid, a kindly old man who had been on the Ohrid-Struga bus with me prior smiled at me in recognition. I said hello and then started to ask him about destinations in English to which he responded, "alskmhyrvjeoimv" and I didn't understand. Then he tried, "hyrjpvneolpplpkjajauvu" and I still didn't understand. Then he said, "Deutsch?" to which I responded (in German), "yes, a little." And thus commenced a grammatically imperfect German conversation in which he told me that he had lived and worked in Switzerland for 20 years and he goes back once a year for 2 weeks to visit and yes this was the bus to Ohrid and it costs 40 denars. Once of out his eyeline I did a little heel-click and then patted myself on the back for remembering enough words to sound like a 4-year old German with a speech impediment.

Here is my updated itinerary for those curious- I will spend a few days in Istanbul, hop down to Gallipoli, [perhaps] head out to mountainous Cappadocia then and make my way down the coast to my 3-week job at a yoga/art/trekking camp on the South Aegean coast in a town called Kas (note that the 's' is supposed to have a little tail on it but I don't know how to do that with this keyboard- apparently it makes big difference because when I was talking to a Turkish man at the hostel in Ohrid he had no idea what I was talking about until I mentioned the tail). And sorry, I still haven't figured out how to upload pictures.

ONE MONTH UNTIL I AM HOME!!!!!

Escape from Corfu

I have left Corfu. Yes, I am a quitter. In my defense I must say that the woman I worked for was a psycho and every time the hostel had a bad review she would do something ridiculous like blame us for missing money, makes us bleach dirty corners of the rooms, etc. I didn't even get to do any farming. No good. Hence, I've fled to Albania. I spent four days in Saranda, a curious little port city complete with communist-era bunkers, giant piles of garbage and stones, dilapidated skeleton buildings and cows roaming the streets feasting on the tasty trash. The coast was lovely though and I went with some other travelers to see some great ruins of an ancient city ruled at times by the Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans. There were remains of amphitheaters and Roman mosaics next to the bottoms of Byzantine columns and Ottoman mosques. Quite intriguing, really.

Now I am in Berat, Albania, which is about 170 km away but 6 hours by bus due to the poor road conditions. I will stay here for another day or so and then head to Macedonia to check out a giant lake that sounds pretty before making my way to Turkey. I have found a yoga/art camp on the Aegean coast where I can work for a couple weeks in August. Only a month or so left until I am home!

Mosquitos: 376, Tammy: 3

I am at war with the insect kingdom and I am losing famously. I've made it to Corfu and have discovered first hand what it actually means when you are on the Greek island with the most rainfall. It's like being a walking, bloody, dripping steak to those irreverent bastards. The bite me when I'm sleeping, when I'm peeling potatoes, when I'm washing dishes, when I'm walking about, when I'm washing dishes, when I'm getting hot water to wash dishes... did I mention that I wash dishes? Yeah, so I haven't done much farming to date, but I will be learning to make feta cheese later this week.

I made it to Athens a few days ago and spent one full day there checking out the Acropolis, eating Greek spinach pies and drinking mate with Uruguayans. It was pretty grand to tell the truth. Athens is a bit of a hot mess, thus warranting such a short visit.

The following day I took a 9 hour "Express" bus/ferry trip to arrive in Corfu. The views were quite enjoyable so it wasn't such a painful trip. I also met a new friend and some of the members of his band who live in the Corfu Town (the big city on the island with 40,000 people). Hopefully one night this month I'll make it over there to see them play.

I am living in Pelekas Beach, which is a pretty little beach on the west side of the island. For reference, it takes about 25 minutes to drive across the island east to west. North to south would be a few hours at least. So far I am not doing much farm work, as originally thought, but rather serving breakfast and cleaning around the hostel in the mornings. In the afternoon after 1pm I have free time and then I can go to the beach or hike around. The views are phenomenal and the company has been good. All of the food we cook comes from the farm so we have had a ton of fresh veggies, salads, and other delicious meals. Anyway, aside from being told to sleep under a hornets' nest, things have been pretty good here-anyway, I cried anaphylaxis.

Here's a pıc of the World Cup fınal... My roommate Anne Sophie gave me some face paint before I left Spaın, so naturally I painted everyone's face with it at the hostel.

6th Grade Graduation

School's out for summer! This year is over, I can hardly believe it! Here are some photos of the graduation we had last Friday.

6th Grade group photo:

Before:

After:

Muy fashion:

Some of my favorites:

Little sister taking pretend photos of her big brother:

The teachers I worked with in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades:

The kids did a little play about all of their years at the school. One of those years consisted of a rap in Spanish about farm animals. It's kind of difficult to hear at first, but gets a little better towards the middle:

"Pagatto duo notti, Angela"

For those of you who don't know, Italy is this mystical, charming country where everything is magical and there are unicorns and rainbows of gelato and pots of golden pasta... but sans the leprechauns because leprechauns are a bit creepy. Spending a weekend there has had me scheming on how soon I can get back ever since.

To start the adventure, Aaron, Ashley, Mike and I flew into Pisa and rented a car that I once again piloted. (sidenote- That makes three countries now- Spain, Portugal and Italy!) We drove around for a while trying to find the Leaning Tower of Pisa with our free rental car map that only had about 1/4 of the city's streets actually marked. Incidentally, during that search we accidentally found Galileo's birth home:
Question: How rad is Italy that you are driving around trying to find the Leaning Tower of Pisa and then you stumble upon Galileo's house? Answer: Pretty rad. Shortly thereafter we found the leaning tower and took a series of leaning photos. We also read up on the information about the tower and due to a series of complications and century-long breaks in construction, it turns out that they just built it that way. Those Italians...
Tourists lending a hand to help hold up the tower:
After the photo shoot we ate the most delicious pizza on the planet and then ditched Pisa for a drive through the Tuscan countryside:Our destination was the Cinque Terre, a spot on the Mediterranean where there are five little fishing villages with trails linking them. This was us on the side of the road above the first village:
We decided to visit the first two villages by car and then stay in the third village and hike around to the fourth and fifth the following day. That turned out to be the best decision ever. Here are some pictures of our village, Corniglia: When we got to Corniglia we met the village's mob boss, Angela, a 70-something year old lady who spoke only Italian, but was essential in finding us an apartment with a rooftop terrace. We mainly tried to communicate through Spanish with Italian intonation and the few Italian words we knew (mangiare, ciao, bella, arrivederci, pesto, formaggio etc.,) but really we just sounded ridiculous. Fortunately money is the universal language, so just enough communication happened for us to move in for two nights. Much to our delight, she paused to go buy a take-out foccacia pizza during our proceedings, saying something that we patched together as, "I'ma hungry, I'ma gonna eata pizza now." After we paid, she wrote a homemade receipt in Aaron's little notebook that said, "Pagatto duo notti, Angela." (Paid two nights, Angela) That wasn't the only thing that led us to believe that perhaps we were doing something off the books- She had us park the car at her own house and when we moved out two days later, she told us that if the police asked us where we stayed, not to tell them we stayed at her spot. And just like that, Angela reached legendary status in our minds.

Our apartment was on the third floor of the building to the left of the yellow building in this picture:The four of us on our terrace:Haha... Fanny Bazaar in Corniglia:
Photos from the hike:
Victory at the end of the hike:After two splendid days in the Cinque Terre we headed to Florence to visit the city for a day and then spend the evening with Mike's friend, Irene, at her birthday barbecue. Irene's house was lovely, located outside the city and you could even see a giant stone church atop one of the hills nearby. The people were friendly and the food was great. This was easily the best trip that any of us had ever been on.

Here's a shot of the famous church in Florence:
In short, Italy is magnificent. I can't believe it's taken me this long to get there, but I can say without a doubt that it will be significantly less time before I am back.

Crepes and sexual harrassment

I went to Paris this weekend to visit an old friend who relocated there. Having already been to Paris, I didn't have much of a touristic itinerary, which was nice considering that it was the start of the World Cup. Hence, shortly after my arrival on Friday we went to the Eiffel Tower where they had set up a giant screen, to watch Mexico vs. South Africa and then France vs. Uruguay. It was cool to watch the game with all the excited Frenchies and hear them all sing their national anthem at the beginning but unfortunately, the game was a real bore as not a single goal was scored. Thus, I amused myself by listening to the French announcers. A stark contrast to the animation of the Spanish-speaking world, French announcers are quite monotone. My favorite announcer moment was when one said, "Allez victorie, non?" (Go victory, no?) to which the other replied, "Ah, ouais." (Ah, yeah.)

Other weekend activities included wandering around Montmartre, dancing in a couple clubs, surviving the Paris metro, strolling down the Champs-Elysees, eating crepes and managing to get invited to a wedding. In the end, we decided not to go because we felt that it might be awkward explaining that we had met the groom at his bachelor party the night before...

All in all it was a pretty nice weekend. And while I won't go into extensive detail on why my blog is titled thus, let me just say that yes, there are plenty of Frenchmen who are complete gentlemen... however those were not the ones who flocked to me this weekend. Incidents throughout the weekend piled up and after enduring an hour and a half cab ride to the airport where I was propositioned for sex nearly the entire time (the driver did pause occasionally to change the music and think of words in the two languages I understand), my final straw was being told I had to take off my featherweight cotton cardigan at airport security so that the three young security guards could get a better look at my chest whilst scanning my bag and flirting with me. Flipping out in the security control certainly did pass through my mind, but I thought better and decided that getting to leave Paris without visiting a jail was reward enough for not decking one of them.


Other interesting Parisian sights...

The line to get in to shop at Louis Vuitton:

The mass of Algerian soccer fans who gathered at the top of the Champs Elyssees after the game. "One, two, three, Vive L'Algerie!" was their chant:

This little kid with a budding mohawk was pretty cute:
Princesse Tam-Tam:
At the crepe shop in Montmartre:
Tiny Eiffel Towers for sale at the Sacre Coeur:

Francisca and I at the Arc D'Triomphe:

Prom á la American

Super-hip chaperones and Organizer Extraordinaire Mike:

While I was busy planning a boring Science Fair, my amigo Mike, who is doing the same thing as I but in a high school here in Madrid, was in charge of throwing a Prom for his students. The evolution for how this became his responsibility went something like this... note that I took the liberty to paraphrase:

....First day of school in September....
Mike: Hello! I'm Mike from Tennessee and I'm looking forward to working with you!
Bilingual Coordinator (i.e. his boss): Hello! I'm your boss and last year's Fulbrighter organized a prom here and we want you to do the same thing. By the way, here is your class schedule for the year.
Mike: Oh. Ok, great. I'll see what I can do.

A bunch of kids and a teacher I don't know:

What followed next were a few months of planning, assorted props gathering (such as a tropical backdrop for pictures, streamers and balloons) and lectures to the female student body that boots and mini-skirts were not appropriate attire for a prom. He also managed to wrangle up some extra chaperones for prom night to pass out flowers and check tickets at the entrance. That was where I came in. I never thought I'd be on the adult end of prom and now that I have, I can sympathize with why some of my teachers looked bored out of their minds while the kids were busy humping like monkeys and trying to sneak out of the dance-hall to find the hidden flask in the bushes.

Insert awkward prom memory here:______________________

Really though, aside from being a grown-up (eek!) at a kid party, it was fun to see the different outfits the students chose (some were looking sharp while still others wore jeans and mini-skirts) and their excitement at the entrance of the prom court and subsequent crowning of the King and Queen. (I wonder if it meant more to them given that Spain is a Parliamentary Monarchy?) Anyway, they all seemed pretty happy with the results of the royalty picks.

Given that we even danced the Electric Slide to Billy Joel's Achy Breaky Heart, I'd have to say the only genuinely American things the prom was missing were the limos and the girls puking in the bathroom. However, as this was only the Second Annual Prom, I'm confident that within a few years it is bound to reach "Social Event of the Year" status among the high-schoolers... well that or maybe they just won't show up in jeans.

Prom court- the winners in blue just right of center