Flying Out: Lima

I am at DCA waiting for my flight to Houston.  In Houston I will connect to my flight to Lima.  It is pretty simple; I fly 3 hours to Houston, then 7 to Lima.  All told, it is a pretty easy flight route.  It certainly beats the 24 hour slog to East Africa, though I do miss the the frequent flier miles from those trips to Uganda and Kenya.  I also miss the chance to pop out of the airport in interesting and new places like Doha, Dubai, Amsterdam, among others.

I am headed to Lima for a week for work.  It is definitely going to be a busy trip.  There are a lot of important meetings, looking to move work forward for the next few years.  I am hopeful that my contributions this trip will amount to more than smiling and nodding.  I mean, I was brand new for the last trip, and would not have had much to add, but still.  I would like to speak.  Speaking is an attainable goal.

This morning I woke up at 7 to work out.  It was cold, grey and raining outside, but I did it anyway.  I felt like I was achieving something laudable by exercising this morning.  Just by getting out of bed I had basically patted myself on the back just for being awake.  I jogged a couple of miles in the rain, irritated that it was raining.  I came back and made a breakfast of toast and yogurt, then got ready.  Naturally, since it was 48 degrees outside, the heat in our apartment was auto-turned up to 80.  So I was sweating in the apartment after showering--probably more than when I was running in the cold rain.

I have come to accept that I will sweat when I get ready.  Even if I give myself 4 hours of leeway for getting to my destination, I will still sweat because I am alive and thinking.  That means that I just know I will sweat to the airport.  Every trip, pretty much ever.  So you are welcome future seatmates, I will be sweating next to you for a least the first 30 minutes of the flight.

Now I am here and I can hear the United staff trying to lure 11 people off this flight with $500 vouchers and a promise of a later flight out.  This always seems to happen when I cannot change my flight at all.  It is a total bummer.  But I am going to go see if there is anything they can do to still get me to Lima tonight and change my flight.  If they can guarantee that, I would for sure take $500.  We shall see!

Keep traveling!

Update and New Things

New job.  New jobs are tough.  I have only been at this one about 8 weeks, and I feel like I am just starting to know what questions to ask, when to ask them, and why I should ask them.  The next step is knowing what to do with the responses.  I catalog them in various ways.  I scribble them into a note pad, then I type them.  Then I look through them again.  They strain through my consciousness as though my brain were cheese cloth. I know I retain something but what is it that passes through the fine mesh?  That is the next next step--I need to figure out what I don't know I am not retaining.

Good people at this new job.  I love working with the Forest Service.  It is a totally different atmosphere than VE.  I miss my VE friends and family dearly, but I am excited to be in a new venture.  International Programs at the Forest Service sometimes has the feel of a start-up.  It is frenzied, fast-paced, high demand, and involves a lot of marketing and relationships.  Then sometimes you run into the standard government barriers: i.e. 3 weeks to get fingerprints to and from the FBI so I can get an ID badge with a chip that will allow me to log onto my computer outside the office.  There is a lot of papeleo that I am learning to process.  I have to be both flexible and detail oriented; I am standard form driven and able to improvise--or at least that is the goal I am shooting for.  In any case, it makes for an exciting work place.  Many of my colleagues are former PCVs and thus know the realities of living abroad for several years on end.  Many have lots of development experience, and love IP for its ability to eschew some of the rhetoric fatigue and get down to solid programming.  It is a very cool place.

I am loving living with Lee.  It has been the rightest move I have ever made.  I love to know what she thinks, what she does when she thinks she isn't doing anything at all.  I love the routines and the new types of adventures.  I love 9:00 pm after work when we decide to go to Mexico City for the hell of it.  We can, we do, we are learning together what works.  It is pretty remarkable.

All the while, DC is cooperating too.  The weather has not turned its back on us yet.  It is a bit of an Indian summer with warm temperatures, soft breezes and pleasant attitudes.  I love re-learning a place, and still having solid friends around with which to accomplish that task.

Certainly there are moments when I catch myself staring off and thinking of Uganda.  I miss it.  I miss the light there, I miss the smells.  I long for easy evenings on the porch with the dog and the donkey.  I even miss the loud neighboor up the street with his loud parties that I still was never invited too.  I miss the thrum of music, the whine of boda bodas, and the orchestrated semi functional calamity of the place.  Every day brought something unexpected and outside my frame of reference.  I think I feel that space in my day to day at times.  I don't need to go back right away, but it feels nice to think about it.

I was just in Chicago and New York, and I am headed to Peru at the end of this month.  I will certainly write between now and then.  And I hope to update from Peru this trip, too. The last trip was too busy to take time to write from there.

So, I guess all this is to say that I am happy and I am grateful.

More soon.

Keep Travelling.

Nashville

I am in the Nashville airport after 4 days of great food, good exploring, lovely weather, and some quality music.  I came down from DC with Evan for a couple of days.  I work remotely right now, and I can just as easily work from Nashville as I can from DC, so I figured I would try to see something new.

Nashville is a beautiful city.  It is green and lush.  The urban areas to not spoil the beauty of the setting.  That is partly because the urban areas are small, and fairly unobtrusive, and partly because there is a lot of open space around Nashville.  It is an interesting mix of southern hospitality, warm and welcome people, a modern urban food, art, and cocktail scene, honky-tonk and state capital.  It mixes all these things pretty well (I say as 4-day expert).  I enjoyed it very much.

We arrived on Sunday night and took a driving tour of Broadway and the downtown strip.  We went along 2nd street and the bars there, and then back through downtown.  We had dinner at a Tex-Mex place called El Chico.  It was not remarkable, but it was good.  I am not an aficionado of Tex-Mex, given that it is not so popular in the West.  It involves queso which is a definite Mexican tradition.  Check it out.  It is a funny cuisine.  It is like middle America ran headlong into Mexico.  After dinner we went to our hotel and then walked around the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.  We were staying next door to the Grand Old Opry concert hall.  It is an uninteresting brick building that is steeped in music history.  EVERYTHING around it is named Opry something rather.  The Gaylord Opryland Hotel is a massive hotel and conference center that is like Disneyland for southerners.  It is so strange and themed and landscaped and all indoors.  It smells like a casino and Disneyland were blended together with lots of southern accents.  After our walk we went to bed.

During the days we mostly would exercise in the morning, then have a delicious lunch, work more in the afternoons, then go out for excellent dinner food. On Monday we worked from the Dell offices on their sprawling compound by the airport.  We had massive burgers at Gabby's, worked more, then went for another walk prior to dinner at Peg Leg porker.  It was amazing bar-b-que.  The line at peg leg was long, but worth the wait.  We had bar b que nachos, and pulled pork.  The meat was so tender; sweet and savory with a delicious give to it.  It was almost buttery.  No one flavor dominated, not too seasoned or sauced, allowing the meat to speak for itself in concert with the other flavors.  IT was awesome.  I tried some local Yazoo beer, too.  It was crowded the whole time we were there, but there was space for seating and we never felt cramped.  It was in a cool part of town called The Gulch.  It was a great experience eating there.

From Peg Leg we went into downtown so I could see Broadway on foot, drink some beers and listen to music.  We walked out to the midway point of the foot bridge and we took some great photos of downtown.  We wandered into a bar and listen to Garth Brooks covers for a while.  Then we continued on to Mike's Ice Cream for delicious hand-made ice cream.  We walked out to the river and sat on benches along the river and ate our ice cream cones before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Tuesday I was able to hang out in East Nashville and go to Barista Parlor for incredible coffee and workspace.  I went into a shop called Fuselage where everything was expensive and too hip (4 sizes too small) for me.  It was a well-curated store though.  I just didn't need a $98 vintage union jack scarf, or $38 bespoke candles.  We stayed in East Nashville for dinner, drinks and trivia night at the Hop Stop where they had many many beers on tap, and great food.  It was a bar b cue centric menu with nouvelle takes on everything, but the food was still good.  I drank too many beers, but we took 3rd in trivia and had a great time while doing it.  My brother has some great friends and coworkers here.

Wednesday I was working out of the Dell offices all day again.  We took a trip back to East Nashville to eat incredibly delicious tacos at Mas Tacos Por Favor.  They are the best street tacos I have had outside of Mexico or Los Angeles.  I also had a rich and creamy cold-brewed iced coffee with horchata instead of milk.  It was fantastic.  I would say there are a few good cases of great coffee in Nashville, but overall the coffee game is lacking.  That evening I went for a run along the Cumberland river.  It was beautiful and green.  I got almost as many stares as in Africa (fitness must not be as common?  I had something on my face?  I don't know...)  But it was green and beautiful and the river made for a great backdrop.

That night we went to Bricktop's which was only okay.  But the best was having cocktails at Patterson house.  They make hand crafted cocktails that all include many expensive ingredients and liquers, and are generally cocktails dressed to impress.  The setting is a lovely old house with tin tile roofs inside, low dim lamps, ceiling fans, cozy booths, and hip people.  It was a chic spot to get to hang out with Evan and his friends.  We stayed for a couple of cocktails and then left before the place was too packed with well-heeled hipsters and Vanderbilt folks.  We cruised down music row and then headed back out to the hotel.

Now here I am at the airport, ready to fly back out.  It was a great trip!  I want to come back and dig in a little more.  I still can't get my head around the accents.  The southern drawl adds 3-7 extra syllables into everything and ranges from quaint to unintelligible.  I want to see more music and understand that scene a little better.   I would like to have hot chicken, which I missed this time.  I want to do a little more shopping and eating and drinking.  So, I am starting my next trip list now.  Hopefully Lee can be with me on the next one, too.

Nashville Note: In Photos

Nationals Baseball

Blossoms

Hitting the Gym...Sort Of

Since being back in DC, I have been so happy to get to go running a lot.  The weather has not always cooperated up to this point, but now as we move towards May, things are only looking up.  The trees are getting leafy, the flowers are out, the weather is consistently not angrily blowing sleet directly and personally at me while I run.

Running is lovely, and with Meridian Hill Park across the street, there are great stair sets I can run.  However, I have been wanting to find a gym where I can also lift weights.  I don't want to get ripped, just more fit and strong to help my running and tennis game.  I want something like this ideal body.  So, I have begun the gym hunt.  Fortunately for me there is a YMCA a 5 minute walk from our apartment.  It seemed like a good place to start.  I think of the Village People happily costumed and festooned in flamboyant sequined headdresses touting the benefits of such an affordable, supportive place.  This Y is a little different.

I walked in the Y in the brand new renovated building.  The lobby of the Y opens directly into Sweet Green.  For those of you who know DC, that should set off some warning bells.  For those of you who don't, click here.  It is a great place.  I was greeted by a woman who handed me a form to fill out.  She asked me why I had been so lazy and never showed up before.  Okay not really she asked if it was my first time in, and that she would set me up with a tour. 

After filling out the form, Chris, a young, fit black man came over to me and said "LOOK AT ALL MY MUSCLES! WHY DO YOU EAT SO MUCH CAKE? HAVE YOU CONSIDERED PROTEIN POWDER?" And after my brain's self judgement filter switched off, I realized he actually introduced himself and offered to show me around.  The gym was beautiful, not like any Y I had seen in the past.  It was full of young 20-somethings and early 30-ers, mostly white or ethnically ambiguous enough to be hip and nonthreatening to the general populous, and wearing designer workout clothes.

He showed me the ecomill treadmills that are powered just by running, no electricity (why not just run outside?) and the 4 types of elliptical machines and 3 types of stationary bikes.  It was all over whelming.  So many bodies moving in a poorly timed ballet, in sync but chaotic.  It was overwhelming.  Behind the cardio floor was the pool and the weights were below us.  It was new and clean and modern.  The locker rooms were spacious with nice showers, saunas, and steam rooms.  It was all very good.  At the end of the tour he said, "So I hope you feel pressured enough by all these young bodies to buy a membership immediately!  Thanks!"  Then he directed me to the same woman as before who asked about my laziness.  She smiled sweetly and explained membership options.  I told her I would have to talk to my girlfriend about it first.  She nodded her understanding and said, "alright then, enjoy quitting before you get started this evening!"  Then I used my free day to work out.

I think I will get used to all these things again.  But the gym just seemed like a lot.  And it seemed funny to walk outside to exercise inside after not doing that for two years.  And all those aggressively fit and nicely dressed young people were intimidating!  So many yoga pants!  But I can do it.  The gym search continues, and in the meantime, I will be out for a run.