Do Dogs Have Breasts?

Thanksgiving 2015, Western MA

This is the question my dad somehow ended up asking at the recent wedding tasting at the Inn of Essex on my Thanksgiving break home in Vermont. By this point, although self-evident, I should point out just how typical it is that things get off topic with my dad. The question came about because one of our wedding planners had a dog who died several years earlier of breast cancer that we discussed sometime between the appetizers and the main portions. At this point I can’t even remember how dogs came up but I can always count on Herb for at least momentarily keeping things interesting.

My trip home to Vermont was, as it usually is, a rejuvenating experience. Although as I get older it becomes harder to remember one trip apart from another it seems as good as any way to spend time off. I hiked up Philo solo this time which I don’t normally do and although it was cold and windy at the top, it was beautiful and tranquil. I looked out across the sunset sprayed Champlain Valley at the top of Philo as my eyes watered from the cold and snot poured out of my nose. This type of Vermont experience makes me smile. I must have hiked Philo over 100 times now in my life.

There’s something about doing what’s incredibly familiar that is surprisingly not boring. Part of why I think it’s becoming harder to remember one trip home from another is that I don’t really have “fun” in the same way I did when I was younger. Maybe I’m just older and remembering things is harder or my concept of time has changed. Or maybe it just seems like I had more fun when I was younger, I can’t even remember that. While I know you come home to see family and friends, spending the night out at a restaurant or a couple of hours catching up with a friend is nice but often sadly unremarkable. Even Thanksgiving kind of feels that way. It’s a strange thing that feels uneasy.

I wonder if my expectations are out of whack – am I expecting some sort of life changing event or conversation when I come home? Almost all of my friends, like me, are now hitched and usually come as a package deal when it comes to hanging out. I feel like this can “tame” our interactions, put more of a time limit and consistent format to the hangout, and potentially interrupt more meaningful conversation. I sometimes feel like a caricature of a millennial. Now, the conversation topics have so predictably changed to what, as a 20-year-old I would have called boring: personal finances and investment, Netflix and the Serial podcast discussions, cooking ideas, complaints (half serious half joke) about our significant others, career, career, and more career, vacation plans, mortgage and property debates, home security, and other topics I also gravitate towards even without meaning to.    

On the whole though, life is good and I should not complain. At this point last year, I felt like I was drowning as a new teacher. In my blog around this same time last year I wrote: "Sleep is one of the most exciting things to look forward to these days." Even though I’m still a relatively new teacher, at a new school, teaching a new subject, getting certified to teach gifted students, playing music again in a band (first time since college), and I’m in the early stages of wedding planning, my life is pretty balanced. Busy, but balanced. The gifted course is the same sort of mumbo jumbo I dealt with last year doing the EdTPA and getting certified as a teacher. Hardly any of it makes you a better teacher but at least we can all check off some more boxes so it looks like we are doing our jobs. Yes, less than two years in and I’m already this jaded. The band has been fun, we’ve just played one gig (at the GlenwoodPub) and we usually don’t practice more than once a week. I get anxiety about having to learn new music because it’s not just for fun, we eventually are trying to perform and this takes discipline. Moreover, as an generally anxious person, it’s probably a good thing that I’m pushing myself and still trying to learn new things and grow.

CNN News room on the tour with Mom and Dad in ATL, Oct. 2015

Urban hiking @ "Waterworks" w/friends Ben and Marie-Ann

Maya's father Solomon visits ATL before her boards @ Polaris #spinning

Mount Yonah in North GA hike with new teacher friends + dogs

Camels Hump from the airplane, flying into Vermont

A New Day

It's been a long time since I've written in this blog. I'm in a very different place this year than I was last year. I have a more sustainable job and life at Dunwoody highschool. I'm teaching French 2 this semester and 1 and 3 next semester. It's like night and day from what I experienced last year at Hapeville. I have a third of the number of students (although I think this is abnormally low and we are on a block schedule so it's not an exact comparison to my previous count) and about an hour and a half less work time everyday. Some of this is unfortunately offset by the horrible commute home which often takes an hour. But overall there's no question that it's worth it. 

The students are also very different and much better behaved. I'm finally getting to experience what teaching actually feels like and it's a pretty decent career when you are at a good place like Dunwoody. Students come to class, listen, and can't be on their phones all class like at Hapeville as we don't have any reception or Wi-Fi (even teachers which is sometimes frustrating). On one of my first days, one of my students waited for me to finish my sentence before sharpening his pencil. There were times when I was bringing something up on my computer in a moment of transition and the room would be just eerily silent. I knew very quickly this would be different from last year when I once had to grade students on their ability to watch a movie. While I'm a floating teacher and now have hall duty every day for 30 minutes, things are just so much better. One administrator actually came to my room early on and said, "wow, you are a floater, you have a homeroom on a different floor than where you teach, and you have third period (lunch time) planning, you get a gold star." The fact that an administrator would recognize something like that blew my mind. 

So far I think I can keep doing the commute and get more into teaching French. It's a very different subject obviously than History and it's taking me time to figure out what the best way is to teach it.

In general the school is also much different than Hapeville. The environment feels positive, orderly, and organized. I've been amazed to learn about all of the things public schools, and especially one like Dunwoody which have some resources, can do. We have a fencing club, swim team, Jewish club, U.N. Club, entrepreneurship club, ping pong club, JV and varsity everything, and much much more. The student body is very diverse - something like 25% African American, 25% hispanic, and 50% white. 

This is a big high school and I see a very tiny part of it. Besides playing tennis with some co-workers and attending a few social functions, I've got a lot more to learn there.

Some pictures from recent trips and happenings below.

Cousin Steve and Peg come for a nice Shabbas meal at our new house

A reunion hike of some sorts at Acadia at the Beehive over Labor Day weekend

Jose Gongalez comes to Atlanta

Unit 3: Healthy Living - students work on their graphic organizers in class

Welcome to the Jungle

To finish our trip Maya and I spent three nights and four days in the jungle of the Orient provence of Ecuador. We actually learned that orient, like 'oriental,' is short for orientation which all come from the fact that the sun rises in the East (see map below). We took the local route, bus to taxi to boat, to get to the lodge in about 6-7 hours or so from Quito. It was a perfect finish to our trip as we knew we were coming back to overly plugged-in America shortly. It's also strange though to go a couple of days now without Wifi, computers, and/or any other modern form of entertainment. It takes awhile for your mind to slow down and enjoy the type of tranquility you really have to search for these days if you want it (and put those distractions away)!

The true map of the world

Our stay at the jungle lodge was pleasant. The steady sound of the river always in the background could easily be confused for rain. At night you especially knew you were in the jungle with all of the noisy frogs, crickets, and other creatures coming out. We actually went for a great night hike as well as several other jungle treks. No large animal sightings sadly but we did see some monkeys, birds, and lots of interesting flora and got to put on huge boots all of the time (see picture from previous blog post).

Another activity we did was a visit to a local Quechua community. I've now been on several trips from Guatemala to Tanzania where there has been some component of "indigenous village visit" and it continues to seem like a very awkward form of tourism. I can try to imagine some foreigners coming into my community looking very different from me with a totally different set of customs, languages, and traditions, but it doesn't really put me in the shoes of the people I've visited. I can't imagine what it must really feel like to have tourists coming, paying you money (usually very little from our standpoint), and like they use to say in the Wild West: "Dance." Like "show us your culture" on command in 5 minute dance, 10 minute presentation/discussion, and maybe some display of a local craft or building skill. I don't know that paying more or less money would make it any better?

On the hand this seems like a good thing in that ignorant foreigners can gain access to new cultures that they might otherwise flip the National Geographic channel on if they were sitting comfortably back home in America. And maybe the people enjoy the visitors, although I've always had a tough time of gaging this. If I were to imagine people coming to my community and giving the "dance" command, maybe I'd enjoy it a few times, but over an over it would get tiring and potentially annoying. But they might not care if they are making money, especially in very remote villages where there aren't a whole lot of viable ways to make money. More likely I am projecting my Western bias with this.

On the other hand, it seems like this could at best be classified as an appropriation of culture and at worse as a weird form of neocolonialism. How could you possibly claim to get to know an entirely different group of people in a few hour visit (or even the overnight home stays I've done which can be even more awkward)? Is a little something better than nothing? Are the super generic (often older) Americans in their big tour groups giving a weird representation of who we are when they visit? Think of my parents with this sort of thing and imagining a very paternalistic type exchange with local people makes me cringe. But maybe I'm being self righteous?  Not all of us, in fact most of us, are not going to go overseas for 2.5 years with the Peace Corps to learn the indigenous language and "go native" as people say. I don't know if this activity feels as awkward to other people as it does to me when I am in another country.

Despite my hesitations I guess I usually do enjoy these visits and I learn something. But as a form of (eco) tourism it feels misplaced, like you are going to a zoo for human beings. I'd much rather be doing business, volunteering, or working on some sort of purposeful project when getting to learn about indigenous people.

Finally, while there are usually translators present with this sort of thing, it seems like most often neither side has any idea what the other is saying. And it's rare to see any sort of true exchange happen; it's not like the community people normally ask the foreigners about where they are coming from and what type of lives they have. I asked the people on our visit in Ecuador if they had any questions for us and they looked at me very strangely as if no one had asked this before and they didn't know what I was even asking. It would be interesting to go to a local community on one of these visits for example and do a hip hop dance (although of course I'm not Black) so maybe a line dance or something? For me it could be doing the Horah). That would at least elicit some sort of reaction and maybe start more of a dialogue.

Awkward dance with forced child labor dance during our community visit (or maybe they get some compensation?). Despite my sweet dance moves I could not elicit one single smile from these kids. Is smiling not part of their customs?

After a hard day of tourism with jungle treks, dirty, and poor local community visits, we thankfully made it back to the comfort of our luxury resort jungle lodge 

Our trip in pictures

Krys, my old friend from Boston, and impetus for Machu Piccu hike, also becomes my impetus to try "cuy" - or the Peruvian speciality guinea pig (I did not like it all that much)

The infamous andean alpaca 

The natural dies used to make traditional Peruvian clothing

crazy salt mines in the sacred valley

Beautiful lake on day 1 of Salkantay Trail - well worth the exhausting 2 hour steep hike

Our hiking group on the glacier near the top of day 1 with load carrying donkey

Frequent switchbacks hiking to the cloud forest

Classic Maccu Pichu shot with one of Krys' friends - Stephanie

We tried to do an "Adam" and "Eve" type shot at the top of Macchu Pichu mountain but we got in trouble from one of the park workers

Bike trip with Ecuador Pure Life at one of our first lodges

Lunch break

The terrain was incredibly varied depending on the day as well as the weather and temperature conditions

Maya mountain biking down a hill

Overlooking a lake near Imbabura volcano

Otavalo town - this place was famous for it's market

And meanwhile back home...Havi taking Sherlock for a walk (my brother dog sat while we were away)

Maya preparing for 'superman' zipline

Go-Pro on the zip line

Traveling to our jungle lodge Ithamandi - only accessible by boat

Ithamandi Jungle Lodge

Lunch break during one of our Amazon treks 

Monkeys have overtaken the town of Misahualli, fun for tourists, a nuance for locals

And the day after we came back to Boston my friend Pam got married - our first gay wedding!

Going for a walk with Sherlock and my friend Ben we stumbled upon my cousin Rachel's wedding beautiful site the Codman estate in Lincoln, MA

South America

This blog used to be mostly about travel and when I look back to my first entry---- I see a lot of evolution. Travel is still my Passion and the nice thing about becoming a teacher is having summers again.

Maya and decided to go to South America for a three week trip since neither of us had been to the continent before. We made a last minute decision to join some old Boston friends on a Machu Piccu trip in Peru first. We hiked the Salkantay trail for five days and some beautiful landscapes. Peru seems like an awesome place to travel and probably most popular tourist destination as well in South America. They've got every micro climate in Latin America in Peru and even though our hike took us through jungle, mountain, glacier, cloud forest, rain forest, meatball forest

- ok well all of those except the last one -there were plenty of others we didn't see. 

The food in Peru was great (better than Ecuador I'd say). I love the "soup" course and tried many delicious varieties. I also tried cuy, which is guinea pig, and found it to be very strong and greasy in taste. It was not my favorite, especially at the expensive price here of $20-$30. Alpaca on the other hand was delicious. Both Ecuador and Peru seem like they have more variety than Guatemala with their rice, beans, and tortillas at every meal. But really I spent a few weeks here, I really don't know what I'm talking about.

Back in Peru, I got a little altitude sickness at about 15,000 ft at the top of our mountain/glacier component of our hike but it was worth it for the views (coming soon). Being on a glacier was probably the most different thing of the whole trip. Machu Piccu was certainly impressive but I have a hard time when I'm doing things that seem so utterly un-special or rather over frequented by tourists. Which is ironic since I bet MP is on a lot of peoples' bucket lists. This is probably a reflection of my privilege and experience with global travel. 

The next component of our trip consisted of one week cycling in Ecuador with a group of 6 American gringos (well one was of Hispanic American origin). Our trek was also all american. The landscapes were also quite varied and beautiful. We did a great chocolate tour (plantation and manufacturer bean to bar) in beautiful Mindo. After a short bird watching experience we climbed about 8,000 ft on mountain bikes one day. This was the most exhausting day. 

We've been also cycling around volcanos and moving between asphalt, cobblestone, dirt, grass, and rock surfaces keeping things interesting. We made a quick visit to the equator line as I did in Uganda so now I just need to get there on the Eastern Hemisphere line (so I think Jakarta ish area?). Next up, Prime Meridian? Poles? 

Overall my impression of this one part of south America has been favorable and it's a relatively comfortable poverty tourism experience. Things just seem to be going a little better, they are slightly more organized, than in the African countries I've visited. The hotels have big jugs of free mineral water. You don't see quite as many street vendors and random piles of trash. Locals take out money from ATMs, not just the foreigners, more people have cars but yet public transportation like buses is still very functional - because it has to be for a majority (whereas it doesn't work great in Atlanta and doesn't have to since it's not a majority population base of users - although I wish that would change). 

Even though Ecuador is similar to the size of Colorado, two weeks was not enough time to see that much. The terrain is so mountain-e that you have to fly places to really move around efficiently. Cuenca in the south is over 7 hours from Quito driving. We really wanted to do the Galapagos but it takes a surprising amount of time to do it.  So instead we take off for the jungle tomorrow. 4 days at a remote lodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon, will report back soon.

Savannah Memorial Day 2015

My friend Thomas came to visit for the long Memorial Day weekend along with Maya’s friend Noga from Chicago. I hadn’t checked out Savannah since going there with the Macalester tennis team before I was of age and had been meaning to get out there since we moved to ATL. I wasn’t sure we could top off the New Orleans jazz festival trip from a few weeks ago but we made a good effort.

Our trip’s theme song was Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown Funk You Up’ and we listened to it at least 4 times a day. We stayed at the Thunderbird Inn (amazing retro. place) and enjoyed popcorn and lemonade upon arrival along with 1960’s-70’s soul music playing in the background. Besides Krispy Donuts for breakfast both mornings, we also enjoyed a short 10-minute walk or so to River Street and the nightlife.

The nightlife is surprisingly vibrant in Savannah. It’s a very good place to barhop. We started at Dubs, which had ping pong, and nice cheap beer, moved on the Smiles Dueling Piano Bar. I’ve heard of other piano bars and kind of doubted how much fun they would be with all of the bros and annoying sing alongs. But this place was fun and had a good vibe with some talented piano players. I also am sick and tired of getting a hard time from Thomas about drinking these girly drinks like the frozen strawberry daiquiris I ordered. I really don’t care about assigning gender roles to drinks and/or conforming to norms. If I like the drink than that’s all that matters right?

So we moved on from there to a cool dance club 500 feet away and then Chuck’s, a gay bar with $1 jello shots. We sang a horrible karaoke rendition of the horrible Meatloaf song: “I would do anything for love.” Our delusional friends thought it went pretty well though (I am pretty sure the DJ laughed us off) but that’s sort of the point of karaoke I think. We ended up a noodle bar with $1 drafts at about 2 in the morning, which was great. The nice thing about all of the nightlife in Savannah is that it keeps the prices down and if you know were to look you can find lots of great deals. By choosing to go on Memorial Day weekend though we also had to contend with 8 million bachelorette party’s: They all looked illegal.

We enjoyed Tybee island the next day and a day at the beach. We also checked out Skid-a-way Island which has a really cool little park with marshes and lots of overhanging Spanish moss trees. Along with our friend and dog who live in Savannah, we had our dog Sherlock who loved the park. They ran and played together and made all of the tiny little low-tide crabs scatter.

After a day at the beach with surprisingly warm water I think we had our Savannah trip down pat. It also reminded me that school is finally out. Let summer begin!

Photo Booth with Lola on previous trip to Minnesota

Historic Savannah with friends all in green

Skid-a-way Park

BBQ on Tybee

Maya and her friend Noga in Old 4th Ward Historic parc on our Friday night out