In Which Amalia And Her Friend Chelsea Arrive In Costa Rica

Our flight was at 5:15 am. WHO DOES THAT? And in Chicago, renowned mass transit mecca, that means the trip starts at 2:30. AM.

There was a terrible storm the night before and we hoped our flight would be delayed, but it wasn't, and we are ladies outside of time, so 45 minutes after we HAD TO LEAVE, we called an Uber (basically an underground cab service).

The driver of our heavily perfumed motor coach was named Raoof. Raoof was pleasant and competent, and he'd been driving all night, through the terrible storm, in his sweet little Altima.

We were making decent time and chatting pleasantly until Meechum, near the River Road exit. Then traffic stopped because the road was flooded. We started panicking as the minutes crept by, and I started using bike logic to find alternate routes, and ultimately we were proclaiming our doomed trip, but Raoof stayed calm and rational.

No, ladies. Do not worry. You will fly today.

 

And that magnificent man was right. We forded the huge pond and were golden.

Eight stiff, tense, weary hours later, we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica, greeted by yelling cabbies and thick, rich winds from the mountainous rainforest. 

Our hangriness almost got the best of us, but I, personally, was shocked into silence by the landscape. And after we got some gallos pintos y huevos con tomate and agua frescas in our bellies, everything seemed manageable.

We've basically spent the day walking around, drinking and eating all kinds of fruit, accosting people with broken Spanish, and I think I bought a bottle of pure DEET? Woof. Raoof. 

Tomorrow brings Liberia and the start of our tour. 

OUR MONKEY TOUR.

An Appalachian Popsicle

Sunday, March 3rd.
11 p.m.

I am inside a shelter. Aside from my sleeping bag, I am wearing a coat and two jackets, three pairs of wool socks and two pairs of sock liners, two long-sleeved shirts, two pairs of leggings, sweatpants and heavy duty rain pants, two pair gloves, a balaclava and a ski cap. I am utterly freezing and recently realized I need to urinate.

It begins.

Appalachian Details

This all gets real Sunday, March 4th. My itinerary puts me on Baxter Peak (Northern terminus of the trail) on August 21st. Send me unlimited bug-repelling thoughts, please.



Who's okay with dreadlocks? Can I still come to Christmas?

One Month out from thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail

Dear friends and family,

Here follows my official will. The last time I wrote a will, I was drunkenly throwing up at my first college party. I may be even more serious about this one.

Honestly, this is a very difficult thing to write, because I actually don't have anything of value. But I figure Margie gets my money because I probably owe it to her anyway, and my friends and family get first dibs on my stuff. The rest gets taken to the Salvo on Devon street, because good people shop there. DO NOT leave it in Springfield. Pearls before swine.

Now. I don't want a funeral, and ideally, I'd like to be either dropped whole in the ocean or in the woods somewhere close-ish to humanity so that I can freak out a morning jogger and inspire a huge investigation/investigation movie/spin-off series, hopefully ending with me having some cool nickname like, "The Grey Dahlia" or the... some pun on The Black Dahlia. So be sure to leave, like, a dog-eared copy of Hamlet beside me. If not that, cremation and everyone has to wear the ashes in a vial around their neck forever.

In terms of remembrance, there should be a big memorial tea party on each coast and a fund should be set up for struggling actresses in their 20's. We're seriously underfunded.

The nitty gritty.

If I:

Am poisoned by something I eat - NO FOOD is to be served at the memorial.

Contract a terrible disease:
               From the water - My water filter is to be burned and thrown off a cliff.
               From a bug bite - Everyone at the memorial receives citronella plants and is urged to just eat some with every meal.

Am eaten by a(n):

      Bear - Ironic, since bears are my favorite animal. Also extremely likely. A campaign against bears is to be started. Not pro-bear awareness. Against bears.

       Mountain lion - See above. Minus the part about my favorite animal, swapping word "bear" with "lion."

       Other- If it's a person, they should be forced to regurgitate me. If it's a moose or something that's            never eaten anyone before, that's actually pretty cool. No repercussions against animal.

Am killed by a serial killer - Hm. This is a tricky one. I guess I want unbridled vengeance... I think you all can work together on that, or hire someone. Up to you. Then, once the person IS caught and the gruesome details released, I want a few people to write touching memoirs and then we're back to the movie/spin-off series.

Die of hypothermia - Sue Marmot, everyone at memorial gets extremely warm blanket.

Die of heat stroke -   Memorial is REALLY WARM. Because this would be the worst way to go. Cold is terrible, but heat stroke? No mercy. Crank the thermostat.


Get hit by lightning - A lot of very bad puns.

Am smashed by cascading rocks - Everyone... gets... a pillow? An ICEPACACK. Everyone gets icepacks in the memorial gift bag.

Fall off a mountain - Campaign against mountains.

Break one/all limbs and slowly starve to death - Memorial service feast!

Die of dehydration - Memorial service in a swimming pool, ashes sprinkled in water fountain.


If my death is caused by something else,  just make sure I don't have a stupid memorial service. That's the bottom line.

All we are saaaayyyiiiiing....

Home now, but I'll leave you with this:

I'm not a particularly patriotic person, and if pressed to define myself, nationality wouldn't come into the picture for a very long time. However, because of the sheer amount of "in America" questions I received while living in Great Britain, I was forced to think more deeply about why I feel the way I feel about my country of origin. I tried to be fair in my responses, and I tried to be an ambassador, but it's very hard. Here's what I ended up saying:
America is very big. America is so, so, so much bigger than the UK. It's bigger than any single country in Europe and most of them combined. It's bigger than New Zealand, and it's bigger than most places I'll travel to before I die. It is therefore impossible for me to say that "people in America always" or "people in America never," just as it would be hard for someone living in Bristol to accurately describe what a family in Dundee feels and thinks on a day-to-day basis.

The UK gets an ugly picture of the states from their media and from the parts of our culture that reach them (Jersey Shore, Tea Party conventions, McDonalds). While every accusation I heard was, in some capacity, true of the US, there's a lot more going on here. We need to go there and they need to come here and everyone needs to go everywhere and just stay for a while, trying to understand the many different ways people live. THAT'S how to really prove to ourselves that other countries are made up of more than their traditions, their governments, and their media - bottom line, they're made up of individuals who eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and appreciate a clever product like The Slanket (Sleeved blanket. How did it take 2000 years?).

Maybe I'm being sentimental, and maybe I just saw a staged version of To Kill a Mockingbird last night, but I don't think we're that different. Especially not from England.

(Speaking of sentimental - it has come to my attention that the last post read a bit sappy. I assure you it was tongue in cheek. If in doubt, please read the title of the linked youtube video.)

(air violin)

Before you read this, can you pull up another window and paste this link into it? Just start playing the video, then come back to this page and read on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNvFPKujc5w

You were in love. When it ended, you knew you couldn't ever return, not really. As you left, a part of you that felt fulfilled and actualized somehow got ripped open. You grieved, you wallowed. After a while, you got better. You even started seeing others, recklessly at first, then with more and more control. You had just begun to feel your feet again when BAM. There they are, somewhere you didn't expect. They are just as amazing as you remember, but there's something else - there's a distinctive scent, a color, a tone; you didn't notice it before, but now it knocks you off your feet with memories. And you just want to go home and eat a hole in your wall.

Okay, stop the video.

Krymov's show was achingly, painfully wonderful. It made me miss Tverskaya, walking to school on the high street, Red Square, live theater four nights a week, but mostly, learning. Feeling like I had purpose, like I was getting better at something.

The show was very different and very similar to everything else I've seen of his, and I loved it. I think I over-talked him to Vicky, though, because she ended up not enjoying it very much.

The production was a Krymov-tastic adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He chose to focus on the Mechanicals (the group of players) because he, as a visual artist and carpenter, felt most kinship with them. Makers, not talkers.
Anyway, in Midsummer, as you may remember, the Mechanicals are rehearsing a production of Pyramus and Thisbe. Krymov's show was the staging of that production, but set in the here and now. It was very funny and self-deprecating.
 Pyramus and Thisbe were played by two enormous puppets, controlled by the actors. The staged audience kept interrupting the performance to say, "What did he say?" "I don't know, it's avant-garde," and things like that. There was musical humor, physical humor, potty humor, body humor... something for everyone. Maybe it didn't have the meat of Opus 7 (the first production of his I saw that left me speechless and drew me back two more times on my own dime), but it was charming and reminded me of what I love in theater. It reminded me of what kind of theater I want to make. Mostly, though, it just reminded me of Moscow.

Oh, Moscow. My first love. I will always, always miss you.
London for the rebound tomorrow!

Cornwall

Vicky's family has been surrogate to me this trip, from post-surgical care to family vacations. We went to Cornwall over the weekend to visit Vicky's dad's brother and that side of the extended family.

Cornwall's trade was mining. It was settled by a celtic tribe, so the accent has a little Irish twang around the "r's". Cornwall, apparently, is in strict competition with nearby Devon. I do not understand why. I guess Devon steals all Cornwall's traditions and pretends to have invented them.

Vick's cousin-in-law comes from a long line of Cornish miners. It's hard to imagine the sense of belonging he must feel, since he can trace his ancestry back literally thousands of years and never leave a twenty-mile radius.

My experience of traditional Cornwall revolved around meals. I had:

Item One - A Cornish pasty. These taste like a blend of spanakopita and pot pies. They're sort of oval... I guess more like a football shape than anything... hold on, I'm just going to link you. (Pasty) Can you all see it? If not, I just googled "cornish pasty," so it's not hard info to come by. Anyway, see the braided crust on the outside edge? Back in the day, miners used to make that inedibly thick. Then they'd hold the pasty by the crust with their dirty hands, eat the rich insides, and throw the crust to the birds. It was impractical to carry silverware, I guess. Also, there used to be a second, smaller pasty connected to the main one, but filled with jam. So their dessert and their main were all in one.

Item Two - Cornish ice cream (it's pretty much just frozen custard). The cows in Cornwall are proudly grass-fed, so they produce really thick, fatty cream. Of course it's delicious.

Item Three (associated with Item Two) - A flake. Oh you guys, FLAKES. This belongs in my food rant. Flakes are... what are they? They... you know shaved chocolate? Like, little chocolate curls that go on cakes or cupcakes? It's like a whoooole compact stick of them. You bury it in your ice cream, and then as you're eating along, you take a bite of the flake and suddenly, it's like your mouth was sprinkled with chocolate shavings, but UNLIKE with chocolate shavings or sprinkles, they aren't just there for round one of scoop-licking. They're in for the long-haul. In fact, you have to eat part of the cone, ladies and gentlemen THE CONE I SAY, before you get to the bottom of the flake. Since we're having a linky day today, I shall tempt you visually:  The Flake

Item Four - Cream tea. Finally got to the bottom of the clotted cream mystery! It's a butter/whipping cream hybrid. My poor arteries.
Cream tea is firstly a cup of tea, in whatever fashion you prefer it (plain, with milk, with milk and sugar, NO OTHER OPTIONS. Put that lemon away) and then a scone, and here's the important bit: on top of the scone goes jam and clotted cream (served in dollops), but in which order? This is a big deal. It's an intra-family debate, too... I saw a mom and son get pretty heated about it earlier in the month. To me, it's obvious... jam first, spread with a knife, and then a swap of clotted cream. But in some cases, there is no knife! So what do you do???? You can't dollop BOTH of them, or can you? Only you can be the judge.

I also had meringue and raspberries, which is pretty straightforward, but a favorite dessert of the English.

We went to Tintagel (tin-TAA-jel), the supposed castle of Arturian legend. It's in ruins and was beautiful. It's on an enormous, craggy cliff that overlooks the Irish Sea - the water is the same turquoise you get after rinsing a blue and green paintbrush in the same glass. There were patches of orange flowers scattered around, and from a distance, it looked like the mountain was rusting.
We couldn't stay for too long, because Cousin Allington has two little kids, but it was gorgeous.

The family leaves tomorrow, and I'm gutted (great expression, right? Really good image). I've had a wonderful time with them and don't know when I'll see them again.

But...

KRYMOV SATURDAY.