Our Country

Welcome to my country! Bun venit! (boon veh-NEAT)

What happened? Did I blink and miss it? When did six weeks pass? Though we lived every day, time flew, moving from house to house, from tables laden with homemade traditional food to another one, from conversation to discussion and so forth.

Every day was a celebration!

Greece in Four Weeks

I never understood how Eol was such an important god, actually I didn't understand why he was a god at all. That is until now, when we left the island of Mykonos on a BlueStar Ferry. It is the biggest boat we've ever been on, but the wind is so strong that everything is trembling. Anna, the owner of our hotel, repeatedly told us over the last week that we are lucky, they didn't have one good day all summer. We had two or three days without wind, it was uncomfortably hot, but, when the wind blows, it is almost cold and it is certainly unpleasant.

Scrambled Foxtrot (2)

Cristina and I have been BFFs since 5th grade. No matter how much time passes from the last meeting, we talk and work together like we saw each other just yesterday. She takes the children fishing (Mihai, Ileana, and I are not fans) and then she shows them how to clean them.

Ready to eat grilled fish, hand caught crabs, tomato salad with feta cheese and many other goodies!

Is This Real?

We are in a tiny ancient car, zig-zagging slowly on the best parts of the road, almost stopping to cross potholes. The only light, coming from our head beams, illuminates towering gnarled trees. The air is heavy with a sweet smell. 

Tenga sua (ten-gah sue-ah) in Madagascar! Welcome in Madagascar.

We had one of the most pleasant flights, with large chairs and free leg space, a really tasty meal (with a choice of beer, wine and martini) and stewardesses who had a genuine smile. Ioan and myself are to be blamed for coming to this part of the world. He doesn’t remember why, maybe because of the Madagascar movies, but I wanted to see this “flora and fauna” gem. 

Lion City

Hello Singapore!

Orchids! Real, live, colorful, plentiful, perfect orchids! In the airport! It seems an extravagant gesture, but this is a special country. It is an island, with no water, no resources, and yet, they have more than enough for everybody. 



My curiosity is aroused: will it correspond to my image, formed through years of homeschooling books? Through them I learned about their love for gardens and flowers, about the economy of water (which they import from Malaysia, not to waste it and recycle it), about their serious fire drills. 

Our hotel is in Little India, a colorful neighborhood. The townhouses are painted in contrasting colors, the shops sell in close vicinity food, spare-parts, fabrics for saree, herbal remedies. In the middle of the street, behind a truck, a man seated on the tarmac is eating his lunch with his right hand, from a take away. It looks like India, but it is not. There are no cows and no garbage. It brings back memories, the nice ones at least. The people here still talk while moving their heads and I am happy to polish mine.

Beyond Fear

I fear water! 

It is a force of nature, untamable, uncontrollable.

 I don’t like to be in deep water, to not have the bottom in reach. If I have to, I will do it, but not for fun. It is a conscious decision. So how come I am taking a SCUBA diving open water course? We’re doing it as a family, we’re taking advantage of being in Thailand where the waters are warm, 28-30 ºC. There are a huge number of schools, that makes the prices lower and also you get to choose what kind of school you want. For us is a small group, just our family (we exceed the group limit by one) and it is made possible by New Way Dive School. Anna is going to be our instructor and Sarah will join us in the diving sessions.

Temples and School

As a parent who homeschools her children in New York State, I have to report four times a school year for each child about what they are learning. This is the law. How does a visit to the Angkor Wat Complex qualify as school? In my report I always start with Language Arts. For Reading they read the signs about the place,

 plus whatever their mom makes them read from a book. Add to this the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata because these are sculpted in bas reliefs around Angkor Wat Temple. For Writing they have to describe their experience in a blog post or a personal journal. Vocabulary is improved when they find words like apsara (that means dancer)

Things That Are Different

There are a number of things that we are doing nowadays that we don't normally do— things that we'd never be allowed to do at home.

It's an interesting juxtaposition— you take off for a year and suddenly you're doing all sorts of things you'd never be allowed to do because your parents look at you incredulously whenever you suggest it, then say a definite 'no,' or you would find it very important in the first place and now don't.

Number One: Nutella.

Nutella, when I was five years old, was the best chocolate around. (It still is). It was also a very rare treat, because Nutella used hydrogenated (or partially hydrogenated) oils— something our mother restricted. A lot.

As we got older, Nutella was turned into a 'birthday present' item. It was sufficiently rare enough to be able to ask Mom— "listen, since Ioan's birthday is coming up… can we have Nutella?"

And the answer would be "yes, I guess." But… and this is something I'm thinking of just now… we never actually thought to ask for it, so perhaps if we'd asked they would have said 'yes.' But that's not the point.

The point is… we are in Kathmandu, and we are eating a sandwich meal— the kind of dinner we always have at home— some bread, cheese, meat product (includes fish), and a knife. And then we make our sandwiches and don't have to worry about ordering the ravioli or the penne, the chicken tandoori or the grilled cheese sandwich. And it's heaven.

But… as we're eating (and it's seven pm— close enough to our 9:00 bedtime), Dad suggests leaving a piece of bread for Nutella.

Now, when we went shopping in Kathmandu, I found a jar of Nutella and held it up. "Yes?" I said,

Mom looked at it dubiously. "How much does it cost?" (Cost is important.)

I rattled off the number,

"You don't have anything to eat it with." Mom said (past forays into the world of nutella eating meant spreading it on bread or some other foodstuff and then eating.)

"We'll use our fingers." I say. I judged the situation, and then grinned. "Super." I said.

"What?" Ioan asks.

"We're getting Nutella." I said. The last time we had Nutella was… camp. In August. And that was a jar that a girl brought in… the girls in the cabin passed it around taking fingerfuls. Before that I think it was Ioan's eleventh birthday. But I'm not sure.

That was the first jar of Nutella this week. We're on the third. We eat it with spoons, taking one or two at a time (which means five to ten spoonfuls… which does not explain how one moment it's started and then it's finished— I certainly don't seek out the Nutella jar midday. And yet it seems everyone else is).

Reread that a moment. Spoonfuls of nutella. Plain nutella. Nothing else even close to it. AND… at 7 pm. A time when normally even orange juice would be frowned upon… and our parents are eating it with us, which is nearly as unheard of as eating nutella at 7 pm.

(It's 8 pm the next day… we're eating nutella.)

Number Two: Forget about the TV.

It's true.

When we first arrived at this hotel, we went and dumped our things wherever it is you normally dump things in a hotel room, plugged in our laptops, and started chugging away at whatever it is we normally chug away at.

When we left the hotel for Chitwan, after four days of living in the 'apartment', Dad peeked into the room I share with Ileana, and said, "Oh! You two have a TV too!"

"Really?" I peeked into the room myself and was surprised to find it was true, "Cool!" says I, picking up my backpack and slinging it over my shoulder.

Now, there are two options, one of which I like more than the other (I think you can guess which:)

1) That we have become so obsessed with laptops and iPod Touches that we don't notice TVs any more.

2) That we watch TV so rarely now that we don't notice TVs any more.

A third option, now I think of it is,

3) We're too lazy to channel surf for something 'cool' that we just ignore it.

I'm thinking that the third option is the most realistic, to be honest.

Number Three: Eating at an Italian Restaurant 4/5 times.

We live above a charming restaurant with nice Nepali people that smile very brightly whenever we come in.

It's called Alchemy, and it serves Italian food. REALLY GOOD Italian food.

Part of the reason we eat at Alchemy so often is because Nepali, Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan food has a high chance of being spicy/ distasteful to our palates.

(At home our diet is something like this: Salad, chicken cooked in the oven (perhaps pork, if we're lucky), rice, spaghetti… you know? Bland foods?  Things easy to cook within 30 minutes, usually 20?)

ALSO… because it's Italian… we know practically what everything on the menu is and whether we'll like it or not. Has mushrooms? Iffy. Anchovies? Definite no. Bacon? Maybe… Spaghetti with tomato sauce? Yes.

If it's Nepali… we have to figure out if we're going to like black bean and lentil curry or if it's going to make us cry from spiciness (it's good, by the way). In China, we have to look at the pictures very carefully to try and figure out if it's going to be so spicy we can't eat it.

In Japan… we have to learn to avoid anything that looks REMOTELY fishy.

In Tibet… well, Tibetans are not known for their cooking skills. We did find some nice restaurants, but I suspect it was because there were Nepali cooks making everything in the kitchen, not Tibetan ones. I think I remember Tsewang saying something about the differences between Nepali and Tibetan cooks, but I'm tired and I can't remember.

Another reason we eat at Alchemy is… yogurt.

Alchemy has REALLY GOOD organic yogurt— it's unsweetened, and is literally just plain white yogurt that you can find at WalMart… only ten bazilion times better. It's slightly sweet and slightly sour at the same time, and there's never quite enough yogurt to go around, to be honest. Also… it's good for your stomach! What could be better?

Number Four: Schoolwork for just two hours a day.

Yeah… It's a fantastic upside. Of course… the downside is that we didn't have summer vacation for 3 years beforehand, and that we've been working like dogs since we started planning the trip… but… really? It's two hours of school a day. It's ridiculous. It's amazing. It's heaven.

We'll get up in the morning, hang out till about eight or nine, then go upstairs and eat… and at about nine or ten we'll startt schoolwork, go for two hours or four (I usually go for four. I'm not sure why.), sightsee, and then come back home and hang out some more.

It's wonderful to be able to just go to Khan Academy and do a couple of problems, then switch to GIMP and draw a couple of lines before heading back to math.

I'm stuck on Rates problems, though. I got ALMOST to the end of the bar… and then I typoed a three instead of a four while calculating… and lost HALF the bar.

It's annoying. But… well, at least I'll know rate problems inside out from now on! I doubt I'm ever going to have a problem with the formulas of them again. Khan Academy is nice that way.

Number Five: No muse and no motivation.

This is kind of a bonus, since it's not exactly something that would never happen at home… but Muse is off somewhere… I'm not sure where. It seems she's decided to abandon me.

This is bad… since I've got at least four projects (not in order of importance— they're ALL important!) I need to work on in order to make my 4.5 words a day quota. (I haven't hit the quota in a while now… and I'm starting to get worried about my ability to catch up by the end of the year.)

The Blood Feud needs about ten thousand more words in order to be finished. After it's finished I'm going to finish uploading it to WeBook and then I am going to look away from it for the next six months. Then I'll see if it's worth tackling. These last ten thousand words mean that I have to wrap up all the loose ends— which means going back through the narrative and checking off which lines I've finished and which I haven't. It means work. I'm reeaaallly not in the mood for work right now.

NaNo Swap… the part where I plan a novel for someone else before December 19^th, isn't working out so well. Muse is gone, you see, and that means that any interest I had for any project is practically… nil. And yet I have to make character sheets and I have to figure out what the main character's house looks like… all in ten days. I'm seriously wondering what I was thinking when I agreed to a NaNo Swap.

The Blog. I think I'm about… one blog post behind on Noi6, and I need to upload dares to another blog, and I need to figure out what the next blog post is about. It's hard, see? You can only read so much about the elephant ride we had in Chitwan… or about the terracotta warriors we saw in China. Eventually you start to wonder if the Dascalus can think of anything besides the same old things they've seen. Also… we went, we did, we took pictures. WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY?, is kind of my outlook on our adventures. So I'm constantly searching for something to give a little personality to my experiences.

Riddle Rose. In November I came up, much to my chagrine at the time, with an idea for a Beauty and the Beast retelling, including riddles and a shapeshifting beast (which becomes everyone's worst nightmare, somewhat like JK Rowling's boggart… but different). This was bad because it distracted… heavily… from The Blood Feud. But now I'm sick of that and slogging on everything anyway, so I started Riddle Rose, which I posted on WeBook (http://webook.com/project/riddle-rose), and which I asked a couple of friends to take a look at. So far people like the premise, the writing, and the title. Except for the title, I don't quite understand any of the praise.

So… while all these projects are worthwhile and I reaaallly liked them when I started them… with Muse gone, they all seem somewhat colorless, except for Riddle Rose, which enough people have squeed about to make me excited about writing it. I mean… if you get adoration… might as well do the thing, right? (Not to mention that Ioan is hanging about me as I use the computer… asking me when I'm going to add Chapter 3.)

But, luckily, slogging has proved helpful during NaNoWriMo (I was slogging practically all the way through The Blood Feud— which proves I must have some version of self-control), and so I'll keep slogging through everything else until Muse comes back.

In other news, I need to read 13 books in the rest of December, including 85% of Middlemarch, by George Eliot, and 50% of Steve Jobs, in order to hit my book goal for the year and get a shiny badge on my GoodReads account. (I like badges). Other books on the list include Northanger Abbey, Adam's Tongue, Sense and Sensisbility, and some of Andrew Lang's fairy books. I don't know what I'm thinking reading Jane Austen at a time when I need quantity… but I've never read Northanger Abbey and the last time I read S&S I was twelve… so I'm going to read it and possibly even tackle Lady Susan.

And in 2012 I'll go back to Persuasion and reread it for fun. I like Persuasion… it's more… mature.

And because I could go on and on and on about the lovely books I've been reading and the lovely books I'm going to read… I'll stop here and just add that I love ABBA and their songs.

Perhaps the books will be a separate blog post, right?

Total words for MilHalfy Challenge: 283,157/1,600,000 (17.70%)

Forgetting to Shop

Dad asked me to sit down and write something that I'll be able to look back on in ten years or so, when I'm twenty six, and see what I was thinking like now, at sixteen. I imagine myself with slightly bigger hips and different clothing sitting and laughing fondly with people at the things I expected and thought and said when I was sixteen. 

I told someone at ATA on Tuesday that we had forty-seven days left, and she says, "For what?"

"We're going around the world." When I looked to see the woman's reaction her face was something like this: O_O

Whereupon I proceed with the general explanation: who is going, where we are going, and for how long. This takes two to five minutes and is generally greeted by "Oh my god," "That's so cool," "What a learning experience," or "OH MY GOD… TAKE ME TOO!" Sometimes one of the questions is a query as to my thoughts on the subject.

To be honest, it seems completely natural to go on a trip for fourteen months with only one backpack per person and no permanent residence. And actually, the non-permanent residence doesn't bother me as much as the backpack has. My logic six months ago for this was that the backpack is small, and I'll only have less than three shirts. Most girls at sixteen have thirty, it seems, so that's one of the absolute necessities I'll be missing while around the world.

While leaving with just three shirts seems very normal and natural to me, it's also a bit scary. What if one of the shirts rips or is lost? What if I stop liking it? What am I going to do when I come back and I need a completely new wardrobe? What if I forget how to shop?

(Translation of the above questions is: "What if something goes wrong? What if I stop liking to travel, or start hating people? How am I going to readjust to "real" life? What about COLLEGE?")

While absolutely every single one of those questions has a simpler or not-so-simple answer (you will not ever forget how to shop. Ever.), it's one of the things that is proccupying me.

Whereas Dad is focusing on finding transportation, location, or housing, and Mom is focusing on photography and phone calls and finishing up at home, and Ileana and Ioan are focusing on having fun and doing schoolwork (in that order), I have to focus on not only schoolwork, but life after, which is a scary prospect and is practically the only qualm I have about the trip. The other one is the basic repertoire of worries any basic traveler has: what if I get sick?

Speaking of schoolwork, I am my own teacher. Mom has tried, for both eleventh and twelfth grade, to give me a good, solid schedule for the fifty weeks or so we're doing schoolwork, but it tends to fall apart in about weeks five to ten. This is because of Standardized High School Tests, also known as the SAT and ACT. Studying for either of these two makes me drop everything else (especially math) and focus on just learning how to read again. I usually come back to schoolwork with about six weeks of back work and an increasingly shortening time frame, which after two to three weeks of inefficiency and an even SHORTER time frame, now requires a complete rethinking of how I'm going to do school.

Generally this results in learning on weekends, procrastination, and a change of location. For eleventh grade I moved from the kitchen table to a desk. For twelfth grade I moved up to sitting in my room on the floor, where I have two to three hour time blocks of one subject every day, plus Khan Academy, which is an online math course where you can win points and badges. These three to four hours of work don't sound like much, but when I'm finished with all that, I then start reading all the books I want to read before we leave. This includes The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Anne Frank, The Odyssey, and the complete works of Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway.

At the beginning of the year, I'd planned to read a hundred books in 2011, but as I caught up, I raised the bar to 150, and then to 175. I hope to read 200 by the time January 1^st, 2012 comes around.

While on the trip, I'll be reading classics like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mircea Eliade, etc. Before the trip, I am focusing on reading the books that I cannot read RTW.

And of course, besides all this, in order to keep myself busy enough not to be lazy, I also set writing goals— things like "get to 80 words per minute," or "type ten thousand words today," or "write a blog entry." This not only exercises my mind, but it prevents me from watching TV, surfing the internet, or otherwise doing unproductive things, because I get caught up in the story I am writing and feel more inclined to finish reading my book or keep writing rather than laze around and do nothing. It also provides incentive for writing a Language outline. (And, surprisingly enough, writing at large speeds does not make my writing better or worse. The only thing that happens is that it comes out better than I expected, which is a confidence booster.)

One of my other goals before we leave is to finish watching the Remington Steele series, which deserves a say in this blog because at twenty six this is probably what I'll be laughing about the most. And also because it's amaaaaaaazing.

The whiteboard that we see whenever we walk in through the back door now says forty five days… we're finishing the ordering of icebreakers, and we have to organize the iTunes library, and the days are steadily creeping down and down and down… I wonder if anyone outside of the family is nervous for us at all. Or are they just excited?