Animals in SoCal, ranked

The scope: Southern California, specifically the Santa Monica region, specifically in the months of April and May, specifically on the hikes we went on post-Laguna-beach-wedding (congrats Abram) and specifically as captured by our (at least in my case) crappy phone cameras. 

Working from home in California was no walk in the park by the time the second week rolled around, and also we failed to feed ourselves an adequate amount on this trip (think: Romaine lettuce with some olives and feta for two whole dinners), but despite all that the hikes at 3 pm after work were spectacular. 

Also full disclosure the title is a bit click-baity in that you will have to suffer through some nice landscape photos to beef out this post because I don't have too many actual animal photos. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, away we go! 

There Were Bad Days, Too

I wrote this funny little piece during a particularly bad mediocre day in February 2019, and publish it now because why not. 

I learned an important lesson about the limits of frugality today. It involves makeshift refrigerators, imaginary food poisoning, and a thousand calories of trail mix-intake.

Today was a beautiful day in Budapest. In the few short weeks since I’ve been here, I’ve quickly learned that the city’s most prevalent face is the steel-grey sky, where I’m convulsing with cold even with three long-sleeved layers and a coat. But today—the sky was blue, the sun was shining— the somewhat smoggy haze of this beautiful city looked romantic with the bright light filtering through it.

I saw none of it. I was at home, fretting about the rice.

I made rice yesterday in a fit of being sick of bread (that is, before getting sick for real). I didn’t realize until after the rice was done that, without a refrigerator, I had nowhere to store the leftovers. No matter. When my roommate and I found out that the fridge in our new apartment was utterly broken, I had come up with an elegant and somewhat workable solution in which I stored all foods that needed to be refrigerated in the narrow windowsill between our inner and outer windows, where the mingling of the subzero temperatures outside and the heated interior mimicked admirably the effect of a refrigerator. Clever me!

My oh-so-clever solution when the outside was bitterly cold.

It’s really too bad that all the Tupperware I have with me is too wide to fit on the windowsill. In frustration, I had just put the leftover rice on the windowsill anyway, leaving the inner window open and hoping that the outside would be cold enough to compensate.

Of course, the next day I woke up and it was forty degrees and sunny, my rice lukewarm to the touch.

It was ten in the morning though, and I was starving with a stuffy nose, a raging headache, and a conviction that my bank account couldn’t afford the loss of these precious cups of rice. Despite the horror stories about reheating rice and sudden death, I decided to eat the rice anyway. So, coughing lightly, I waited for my rice to get piping hot in the microwave, put some scrambled eggs on it, and ate it with some sun-warmed sauerkraut on the side while surfing the Internet on my phone and realizing that reheating lukewarm rice in the microwave is the best way to get Bacillus cereus-induced diarrhea.

Too late. The rice and eggs were down the hatch. And so I waited the nerve-racking requisite five hours (wondering if my stomach gurgling was an indication of impending death) before realizing that I probably didn’t have food poisoning after all.

Huzzah! And, to celebrate, I decided to reheat some of the now-lukewarm lentil stew.

And here’s where I snapped. I was starving. And I needed bread to go with my bacteria-laden stew. So, armed with a few thousand forints, my pajamas, and a face of grim determination, I left my dim, warm house for the first time that day and ventured into the sun to buy some bread and a lemon for the throat.

I got to the store, carefully scoped out one decent lemon and a loaf of bread that was a good mix of cheap and tasty-looking. I also chose one tomato, which was also rather expensive but, I rationalized, filled with vitamins, so it was okay.

And right before the checkout line, I stopped in front of the nut shelves.

Friends, I normally consume at least a handful of nuts a day. Since coming to Hungary, however, my nut consumption has dropped to nearly zero (save the few nuts I can scrounge from my generous friends). My reasoning: nuts are (relatively) expensive and I am too poor to shell out a couple dollars extra for something I really love.

But, with a sore throat, a gurgling stomach I was trying to forget about, and a persistent eye-twitch, I snatched the first bag of trail mix from the shelf, marched to the register, and bought it. It cost double my other purchases combined

A true milestone. I bought the nuts for myself, damn it.

And, out of pure spite (I’m not sure towards whom, possibly towards the fridge and this awful head-cold). I marched home and methodically ate the entire loaf of bread and all 200 grams of those lovely, lovely nuts and dried fruits.

Now my stomach was really hurting, and it sure as hell wasn’t from the food poisoning. But somewhere between the bites of gluten and the crunch of peanuts I realized that maybe it’s not totally necessary to pinch my pennies on the things that truly make me Happy in life. Like nuts. When you’re having a bad day, maybe shelling a few extra dollars (for nuts) is worth it.

And who am I kidding, food is cheap here. Saving a couple hundred forints won’t matter that much in the long run.

Anyway, the lesson here is when you’re frustrated and sick and stressed, it’s important to treat yourself with things that you’ve been depriving yourself of. Maybe, if you read really deep, the lesson is that you should deprive yourself of things so that it feels nicer when you treat yourself to them.

All I know is that man oh man, downing that bag of nuts felt good.  

Gargantua: The Battle for the Shoe Box

This summer, our apartment has apparently become the Boss Level for the biggest, baddest flies around -- the ultimate challenge for these vile little hand-rubbing beasts to see if they can be the ones to best us for our apartment, affectionately known as the Shoe Box. Perhaps it's because Doga has proven himself to be deadly accurate with the heavy-duty rubber oven mitt, arcing it like a deadly missile and smooshing flies like they were never meant to be born in the first place.

Whatever the case, at least once every 48 hours or so a new fly comes to test their merit. 

And I want to take an aside here to clarify -- when I say big, I mean enormous. These things are, I exaggerate not, the size of dimes. They buzz like they're taking steroids-- it's Vin Diesel's guttural mumble coming from a little black bug. It's terrifying.

And today, I almost met my match. 

To clarify, Doga was in Arizona, so it was just me in the Shoe Box. I was sweaty. I was tired. I had just lugged up three bags' worth of laundry five floors from the laundromat, and closed the door (which was wide open while I lugged in the laundry) when I heard the roar. The bugle horn of battle in the Shoe Box. Another fly had come to challenge us. And he had come at our weakest, when the Shoe Box's champion Doga was gone. 

Dutifully, I donned the oven mitt and began stalking my prey.  It was huge, one of the biggest I'd seen, but it was lethargic, nothing like the quick flies that had sped around dizzily, evading our gazes for hours. I thought it would be an easy conquest. The fly alighted on the wall. A perfect shot.

I was nervous. The sheer size of the Gargantua terrified me. In my moment of indecision, the oven mitt arced and missed. Gargantua, now alerted to my presence and aware that a being in the Shoe Box was actively trying to murder him, flew away. With power I knew not that he possessed, he began flying in dizzy, panicked, tremendously fast circles. I tried to ignore it and fold laundry. It was nearly impossible to kill flies when they were panicked.

But Gargantua would not be ignored. Brazenly, he flew in front of my face, his buzzing droning constantly. He was teasing me. He aligned on the laundry. He aligned on the wall behind me. The window, The bed. He was asking for me to engage. 

So I did. In a wild frenzy I began slapping the walls, the laundry, the bed, the window, each time the satisfying thunk missing its mark. Breaking the cardinal rule of fly catching, I desperately starting swinging the oven mitt in the air, hoping to smack it down from the sky.

A word of advice, folks: that never works.

Gargantua was making a fool of me. Twice he alighted within my raincoat, which was hanging on the door. Loath as I was to have a dead fly in my raincoat, I was desperate. I swung once-- and again. And, buzzing laughter, each time Gargantua emerged unfazed. He really liked my raincoat. 

The third time he landed in my coat, with everything I had, I slammed the mitt against the door.

And the buzzing stopped.

I let my breath out in relief. It was over. Gingerly, I took the raincoat from the hook and shook it out, expecting a corpse to tumble out. But nothing. Now slightly more alarmed, I checked the pocket and sleeves. Still nothing. The floor, too, was bare. Had Gargantua landed somewhere I hadn't seen? I was Achilles without the body of Hector. I had nothing to tie to my chariot to humiliate. 

Was Gargantua still alive? 

Unnerved, I went back to folding laundry.

And not five minutes later, the deep droning buzz again. He was alive. He was mocking me, taunting me. He landed on the wall behind me, as if his very life had not just been in danger of being cut short. I donned the oven mitt again, and again we jousted. 

I was desperate. I was angry. I was cheated of victory. I needed a new weapon. 

In a red blur of battle haze, I rummaged through the bathroom cabinet to find something that might kill a fly more effectively than an oven mitt. An aerosol of some sort, perhaps.

I found the spray-on sunscreen that Doga had purchased just before leaving for Arizona (which he had presumably left behind). It was unopened. I twisted the cap, and went hunting. 

Gargantua was on the floor between the head of the bed and the wall, and in a crazed frenzy like some sort of unhinged exterminator I began spraying sunscreen trying to knock him out. The room began to smell of coconut and chemicals. I got dizzy. Gargantua evaded the aerosol with the grace of the ballerina. I gave up and opened the window. 

Both of my weapons had not worked. I didn't know what else to do. Gargantua had won. Exhausted, spent, close to tears, I went to return the oven mitt to the kitchen.

But then, he made his first big mistake. Flying in front of me as innocently and delicately as a baby rabbit nibbling grass in front of a lion -- Gargantua landed on the window of the kitchen. Just within arm's reach.

I would not miss again.

Out flew the oven mitt. With a resounding crash it made contact with the window. I saw a flash of black, falling. His body had fallen behind the radiator, just out of reach.

I had won. The Shoe Box was mine again, and mine alone. 

It was almost too much to believe. It didn't feel like victory. I could feel the exhaustion of war filling my limbs. As the adrenaline began to seep out of my body, I realized that I was starving. 

I went to the window sill, where my glass nut jars sat, to eat a few walnuts in victory. And there, between the walnut and hazelnut jars, was him.

Gargantua, rubbing his little hands together smugly. 

He had survived. He was hiding. The corpse that I thought I had seen behind the radiator, in that conveniently unreachable spot, was a fly that Doga must have killed ages ago. A decoy. 

But Gargantua miscalculated. The same disgust, the distaste for killing such an enormous insect that had protected him in those first few minutes of battle -- the first moment when the oven mitt missed him against the wall -- was gone. It had burned away in the fire of war. I was battle-hardened. 

Coldly, mercilessly, deliberately -- I pushed the glass jar against the window and crushed him. He was still alive for moments after I removed the jar. I ripped off a paper towel and crushed him again. Still, his little legs moved. Finally, with my fingers, I ended his life.

Some part of me screamed at the murder, at the life that was ending at my fingertips. But I shoved that feeling down. I allowed myself a groan of agony at the sheer monstrosity of the situation. But I would not allow myself to stop killing. 

The battle with Gargantua had forged a monster. But that monster had won.

The site of death

I deposited Gargantua's body in the trash can. He had fought gloriously -- he was the best of his kind, but he had been bested. 

So now I declare: flies of the world, come. Come to the Shoe Box to avenge your brethren, if you dare.

I will be waiting.

P.S. My bed still smells like sunscreen. 

Battle instruments

Pomegranates

 My younger self was quite ambivalent about pomegranates. My dad (ever industrious) would break into the pomegranate and methodically rip out the seeds, as quickly as possible, depositing them into a bowl for my family to consume, which I did half heartedly. The little seeds were unpleasant and stuck in my teeth, and the juicy flesh was pretty to look at and tasty enough, but nothing special really.

It turns out the problem wasn’t the pomegranate. The problem was me. I had been doing it wrong. 

As an adult, I had the opportunity to buy and consume my own pomegranates. Dear reader, I will tell you what I learned about the perfect (and as far as I am concerned the only) way to eat pomegranate.

Rather than sawing it in half, as my dad had done for us, use a paring knife to make a shallow cut into the fruit, just through the pith but no further, all the way around, and then into sections.

Then, using your fingers, penetrate through the loamy white flesh with your fingers, extracting a segment of pomegranate studded with scarlet arils dripping juice, and exposing the cavernous inside, with fruit glistening like so many garnets in a pithy cave. Take a moment to appreciate the beauty. Glorious. 

Reader, when you attempt this yourself be sure to do it over a large plate or a cutting board. The mess is important here. Give yourself permission to make one.

Continue to use your fingers to extract sections of the fruit, roughly if necessary. Delicately tease the pith away from the arils with the tips of your fingers, lick the scarlet juice that accumulates on your fingertips and suck the fruit away from the pith in large luscious gulps. 

Juice and pith and peel and arils are everywhere, but it is the pure unadulterated pleasure that is key now, the rhythmic prying and sucking and hits of sugar, and penetrating still deeper into fruit yet unclaimed, the rapture, oh the rapture…

Phew. It’s intense. 

While I was staying with my parents I mentioned this newfound love of pomegranate and my mother bought me a package of pre-peeled pomegranate, to my disappointment. As you may have guessed, the pleasure in eating pomegranate comes from the chase, the challenge, the conquest of penetrating to the interior and extracting the fruit myself. Take that away, and all you have are seedy arils and the lackluster pomegranate experience of my childhood. 

At some point in my pomegranate guzzling, it occurred to me (who could’ve seen it coming) that this must be what men feel like when they — ahem — “take” — a woman’s virginity.

I am referring here to, of course, The Myth of Female Virginity, this idea that women have interior treasures that can be penetrated and taken by men, the myth of the youthful and blushing bride, dressed in white, endless comparisons to fruit and flowers and whatnot expounded in length in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. 

Here, with only a pomegranate, I am able to at least partially recreate the myth. Of course, with none of the institutional power or historical relevance that The Myth of the Virgin has enjoyed, but as I am sating myself with my pom conquest, I get it. I can feel it too.

And for perhaps the first time in my (albeit extremely privileged life) I feel myself to be the Beauvoirian Subject in a sensual encounter, acting upon an Other (my pom) to transcend my emptiness and find at least for the moment a fickle reason for existing. 

Fighting words for the existentialist. Beauvoir’s entire argument in The Second Sex hinges upon the idea that existents in general are empty— without an inherent being or meaning, and defined only by their choices. Men, like all humans, must define themselves by making authentic choices for themselves, but have instead historically opted for the easier route of striving towards meaning by subjugating, controlling, conquering, an Other— a passive person who, like a child, allows all her decisions to be made for her. As she meticulously argues, women are historically and socially primed for that role. In other words, our cultural and social institutions have led us to internalize that it’s a man’s world, and we’re just existing in it for their benefit. 

She argues that the Myth of Virginity (and other myths) are essential to keeping women in the place of Other, as existential fodder for the male gaze. By ingraining in us that women have something that can be taken, or corrupted, some idea of innocence or purity, society prevents women from being adventurous enough, bold enough to assert her own independence and live authentically as a human, not an idea or an Other. “The myth of Woman substitutes for an authentic relationship with an autonomous existent the immobile contemplation of a mirage.” She says.

The whole first half of her book is devoted to understanding such myths, picking them apart and where they may have come from. Because it’s only by understanding them that we can reject them and claim our place as existents with just as much a right to meaning as men.

I have been lucky to live a few years beyond Beauvoir, in a world where a woman not being able to vote is scandalous and where sex happens between two consenting adults who should have equal amounts of agency, not a dude deflowering some fruit or flower metaphor. 

In existential terms, I have very rarely felt being the Other as viscerally or as ardently as Beauvoir must have felt, or countless women during and before her time. But I have also never felt the privilege of being a Subject dominating an Other. 

Until I ate pomegranate.

Maybe that’s why Persephone did it and doomed us to winter (or maybe that’s why the men who invented the myth made such a big deal out of a woman eating three measly pomegranate seeds). If we’re feeling generous, eating a pomegranate in its own small way is an expression of sexual and feminine freedom. 

As a final caveat, you don't have to be a woman to enjoy the sensation of objectifying something. Anyone who has also never experienced the dominant end of the Myth of Virginity who would also find a pomegranate experience enlightening. For that matter, it doesn't even have to be a pomegranate. Grapefruit, peaches (though overdone), even concord grapes might do the trick for you. The trick is to feel entitled to take the literal fruits of your labor with whatever you do eat.

So, in conclusion: buy a pomegranate. Eat it the right way. Learn about and engage in a myth that has subjugated women for eons, without repercussions (because this is an actual object). And have fun :) 

Why I'm done with Murakami

I recently finished reading Kafka on the Shore and was deeply disappointed by it. I wrote a review on Goodreads which ended up being long enough and comprehensive enough that I thought I would post it here, too -- the reason I don't plan on reading any more books by Haruki Murakami. So, here we go: 

This is not my first Murakami rodeo. I've read 1Q84, Wind-Up Bird, and several short story anthologies before Kafka on the Shore. And from my first few encounters, I too was blown away by the worlds the he creates, the stories unlike any that I’d read before - captivating, metaphorical, surreal, the whole gamut. But Kafka on the Shore is the Murakami that finally triggered my utter disillusionment with Murakami. The straw that broke the camel's (cat's?) proverbial back. 

Of course, the book has many good points - like its companions, it's famous because of its compelling magical realism, flowing descriptions/details, delicate narrative, etc., etc. His vivid writing is what propelled me to finish all five-hundred or so pages, and not regret doing so. I won't spend any time discussing this because other readers have done so at great lengths. 

The reason for my disillusionment: I am sick and tired of the strange, sexual trends that crop up in Murakami books that lead me to believe that we are actually reading - not some deep metaphor - but sick fantasies of his that he dresses up in literary tulle to justify, well, their sickness. Let me explain the trend I see: 

In every work of Murakami's that I have read, we have our Typical Murakami Lead: a precocious "gentle giant"-type young man who, according to the narrator, lacks any sort of agency and just sort of “floats along” in life. Here, it is Kafka Tamura, a jacked 15 year old boy who runs away from home.

In addition to the Murakami Lead, we have the supporting cast of Murakami Women who are all beautiful, slim, small, eat very little if at all, and seem to know more about things than the Lead. There are two main women who play this role in this book: Sakura and Miss Saeki.

And in every work that I have read, there is inevitably at least one scene where one of the Murakami Women engage in strange sexual activity with the Lead for reasons he can’t understand. Now, here’s the subtle point: because Murakami writes these leads in the position of “I don’t know what’s going on” and “I can’t control my body or this situation” in a fantastical setting where even we don’t understand all the rules, and because these Murakami Women seem to know more about the strange situation than the Leads, any sexual gratification that happens for the Leads is written up as something that’s out of their control, no matter how problematic the actual acts are. 

I can swallow this (and I have! In other works) if it happens infrequently, and the sexual activity actually means something in the broader scheme of the narrative. But with Murakami, these scenes are such a staple in his work that, when I found them again in this book, I finally listened to that uncomfortable angry feeling inside. 

And it’s particularly bad in Kafka on the Shore, partly because Miss Saeki (a fifty year old woman) and Sakura are heavily hinted to be Kafka’s mother and sister, respectively. In one memorable scene, Miss Saeki sleepwalks to Kafka’s room and initiates sex with him. “I figure I’d better wake her up. She’s making a big mistake, and I have to let her know… But everything’s happening so fast, and I don’t have the strength to resist,” Kafka thinks, as this little sleepwalking lady essentially “forces” him to have sex. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” we read when he penetrates her. 

Sure, you can chalk this up to narrative demand and say something like, “but Kafka actually didn’t have the strength to resist, it’s magical realism!” But narrative demand or not, this is rape, and it’s rape that has been written to absolve the male characters of any culpability. 

Something similar happens between Kafka and Sakura. While she is sleeping he undresses her and penetrates her, and thinks to himself, “No, actually I haven’t made up my mind about anything. Making up your mind means you have a choice, and I don’t.” Meanwhile, Sakura verbally tells him not to do it. “Stop already. Get out of me.” She says. Yes, this is a dream and technically not “real,” but in a book where “reality” doesn’t really mean anything, it’s a significant action that Murakami chose to write into the book. And he chose to write a scene where the Lead, again, absolves himself from any culpability because of the situation he’s in (it’s just a dream!) and proceeds with violating a woman who cries, and herself calls it rape. 

Why were these sex/rape scenes necessary? The book tells us to fit into some Oedipal trope, a “prophesy” that Kafka receives but is never fully fleshed out. An explanation that is not only unsatisfying, but also downright inexplicable. Oedipus continuously fought against his prophesy. He struggled his entire life against it, and at the end fulfilled it because of that very struggle. That’s why he’s sympathetic. Kafka on the other hand, I don’t sympathize with. Where is the struggle? Where is the grappling with the truth of his actions? There are no repercussions, no reckoning. 

It’s fine to write about rape, or sexual deviance. But Murakami protects his characters (who are aware of their actions) from facing any sort of moral quandary using the very medium of magic realism itself. And this happens so consistently, across multiple books, that I’ve reached my breaking point. I’m done with it.

Just to give a third example, there’s the scene between Hoshino (not Kafka, but the example is illustrative nevertheless) and an unnamed female college philosophy major. Hoshino is told that he must have sex with the philosophy major in order to get the information he needs. So he shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to have mind-blowingly good sex with a crazy hot philosophy major, all while ignoring her philosophical commentary. And we have no idea at the end of this why it was necessary. It just was. Again, same tropes: a Murakami Man, written to have no agency or culpability, having strange sex with a Murakami Woman for no good reason. 

It gets to the point where I wonder whether these situations were written as an outlet for some kind of rape/sexual fantasy - because this theme of a man saying, “oh no, but I have no control, you have all the control,” happens so frequently across all of his works. 

All I want are female characters in Murakami’s books to have real agency and emotions, not to be instruments in fulfilling male sexual fantasies. Aomame in 1Q84 is probably the closest example of a satisfying Murakami Woman that I can think of, and even she was implicated in all sorts of weirdness. And in Kafka on the Shore, God forbid, that strange scene with the caricatured “feminists” entering the library, well, doesn’t cut it. 

There’s a lot to love in Murakami’s work, but at this point, all of it is overshadowed by my constant fear that I will stumble across a strange sexual encounter that will leave me uncomfortable and angry. This book marks the peak of my disillusionment, and it will take a lot to get me to read another Murakami.

I changed my mind about rain

I used to hate rain. Until recently, I've worn glasses all my life, and to me rain was the inconvenience of not being able to see on top of gloominess and the relentless feeling of pent-up melancholy. At least on a cloudy day I could still go outside without drops splattering my vision. I had conditioned myself, through years of feeling bad on rainy days, to feel a knee-jerk depression reaction when I woke up and heard drops on my window. Rain meant cancelled picnics, ruined beach days. It meant the impossibility of bright shining skin-warming runs.

I suspect I'm not the only one who has felt this way. That's why people move to California, or so I hear. And when I Zoom my friend in LA and his outline is crisp against the cerulean sky that is his background, yup, I understand even more.

I will caveat this poor opinion of rain by saying that when one is prepared for the rain-- i.e., without important papers or electronics, or perhaps with clothes that can whether the weather-- sudden heavy rain can be enjoyable in the cathartic sense that you just don't care anymore because everything is just so damn wet anyway. I've been caught in the rain enough times in office clothes in NYC-- somehow it never makes the forecast-- to appreciate the "singing in the rain" aesthetic. But sudden throw-your-cares away rain aside, I'm focusing now on the drizzly dampening creeping kind of rain that covers the sky all day like a weighted blanket.

My opinion of the rain began to change, maybe oddly, when my opinion of sunny days began to change. Spring in Virginia is at its best a mild breath before humidity's exhalation over the state, and on the sunniest, brightest, bluest days of the season I began to feel stressed and wary. For two months I had scrupulously avoided human contact, crossing streets preemptively to maintain six feet, six feet at all times, hissing at passing runners and bikers for no other reason than they were on the street to begin with and ruining my outside time, how dare they.

There is a wooded trail behind my parents' house that I began to avoid because it is narrow and on nice days there were so many people walking the trail that even if I hugged the other edge of it, perilously close to what I thought might be poison ivy, I still felt like I was inhaling virus. On nice days, entire families went on trail walks together, little kids and tired grandparents, and groups of five became groups of, alas, six when I joined the party for those brief passing moments.

And I was angry, because the wooded trails are infinitely better than roaming the sidewalks of our cul-de-sac'ed neighborhood (even if crossing the street facilitates social distancing), and these people were running me off the most beautiful thing about my parents' home. But then, I reminded myself, they were doing nothing more than what I wanted to do, which was to be outside and do something rather than staying inside and staring at a screen. So when my rational mind took over, I directed my anger and frustration instead at the logical enemy, the sun.

The sun. Damn the sun, bringing everyone outside, exiling me from my own walks.

And so, unbeknownst to me, the pendulum of my conditioning swung to the opposite end, and when I woke up today and saw the kind of drizzling damp day that before had been anathema, the killer of dreams, today I saw promise, an opportunity.

So I dressed in the most adventure-like of the few clothes I had bothered unpacking (exclusively things made of sweatpants material and nylon), put on a thick pair of crew socks, armed myself with a rainbow-colored umbrella and ventured into the morning drizzle (morning, because for the same reason that I had begun to hate the rain I had also begun to hate the afternoons and evenings, for bringing the after-work flock with them).

And it was like I had never seen the trail before. I'm probably late to the party on this particular observation, but hot diggety dog if things don't look green in the rain. I was dumbfounded by the sheer lushness of the forest as drops of water drummed on the surface of my huge umbrella. From house windows it looked damp and grey and dreary, so there was not a soul out there in the woods. I felt like Dobby who had just grasped a sock. My crew socks made me feel like an adventurer, my umbrella made me feel like a kid in a fantasy claymation feature.

I hopped across stones to cross the creek, which had not risen too dramatically, and watched the water flow alongside the path, colors magnified, somehow, like they had never been when the world was dry and dusty.

And I saw turtles! Two little guys with yellow and brown backs whose heads popped into their shells as I stooped to take a picture.

I'm inside now, and I can hear the rain undulate, intensifying and becoming gentler in a steady rhythm against my window, and for the first time in my life that I can remember I'm happy to be inside with the rain outside, maybe because I no longer feel trapped. I can go outside, and the world will not be depressing and inconvenient, in fact it will be lovely in my own company. A safe distance away from people, the drum drum against my umbrella marking the seconds that go by until life returns to normal.

And when that day comes, maybe I'll still be an all-weather kind of gal.

Belize! (and sand fleas)

In general, if your parents ever plan a trip to a tropical country which promises sunshine, sand, and surf instead of bitter winter break blues, it's best to ask no questions and go along for the ride.

So begins the tale of our family's lovely trip to Belize this winter break, a trip which was all of our Christmas presents combined and prompted by a mix of an empty-nester impulse from my parents and our general wanderlust. 

Belize is a small country on the coast of the Caribbean bordering Guatemala, as the signs on the highway proclaiming "leave us alone, Guatemala," never failed to remind us. 

A bit of context.

After a long flight and layover in Houston, we landed in Belize City, the capital, and rented a sturdy Jeep. The plan, per my dad's extensive research, was to drive directly from the airport to Placencia, a small city by the coast, spend four days there, then drive to San Ignacio in the interior of the country to explore the jungles and Mayan ruins before driving back to Belize City for the journey back. 

More context.

The three-hour journey from Belize City to Placencia took us on one of the country's only highways, a two-lane road which is shown in yellow on the map winding through the middle of the country, called Hummingbird Highway. There's not much going on in the way of skyscrapers or city lights. For the most part, we drove through mountainous jungle and rust red soil until we finally reached the ocean, a thinnish strip of pale sand and beautiful, endless surf. 

Sunrise over the water. 

We stayed in one of the many condo-like residences along the beach, a mere minute's walk from the ocean, whiling away our hours sitting on hammocks or deck chairs by the water, taking long walks on the sand, and trying to swim in the somewhat chilly water (winter in Belize is a relatively cool 70-80 degree range). 

Probably the long morning and evening walks are what did it. The sand fleas, I mean. To skip ahead a bit, a few days after arriving back home, all four of us erupted in red itchy bumps all over our legs - itchy bumps incomparable to mosquito bites, which had been our primary concern. Unfortunately for us, we thought that there wouldn't be any mosquitoes along the coast and failed to use any sort of bug spray on the sand. We were right about the mosquitos, but also spent the week after our vacation suffering from our breezy attitudes, sporting legs that looked like they needed a touch from Jesus himself to heal. But at this point of the trip, we were still blissfully unaware of all the trouble these little bugs were going to give us down the road.

Sand fleas are most active at dusk, which is why I'm probably being bitten in this very photo. 

Moral of the story - don't underestimate bugs in a foreign country. Wear long pants at the beach at dusk and dawn, as a couple from Colorado who had been living in Belize for a few months advised. And bring witch hazel.

Another highlight of our few days by the beach: going into Placencia and eating Christmas dinner on the town.

The water in downtown Placencia, the day after Christmas. 

While in Placencia, we also took the opportunity to drive up to the Cockscomb Basin Forest Reserve, where thirty minutes of jungle hiking rewarded us with a fantastic view of the basin and also, undoubtedly the highlight of the hike, a welcome dip in a cool, clear, waterfall. We washed off our sweaty bodies and liters of bug spray (remember the days when we thought mosquitoes were going to be our biggest problems...) in the water while feasting on ham sandwiches.

Grant, my dad, and I elected to take a dip while my mom took pictures. 

The second part of our journey took us to San Ignacio, a pleasant city near the border of Guatemala, from which we could explore some of the Mayan ruins and nature spots in the country's interior. We stayed right outside the city, but ventured in occasionally for some of the best meals of the vacation.

Tacos from Ko-Ox Han Nah, which means "Let's Go Eat!" We went here twice it was so delicious.

Over two days we saw two different Mayan ruins: Xunantunich and Cahal Pech, both very close to San Ignacio. We went to Xunantunich first. I don't know what exactly I was expecting - something like the Parthenon, maybe, where you walk around the structure but God forbid you step on it. Surprisingly, Xunantunich was beautifully preserved and visitors had the freedom to climb all over the steep steps and presumably ancient stones. Climbing up the tall pyramid was honestly exhilarating.

My parents at Xunantunich. Grant and I are climbing up the steep stairs in the back.

I personally preferred Cahal Pech. When we went there was virtually no one else there and roaming among the tunnels and nooks and crannies of the sprawling palace complex was ridiculously fun. We didn't hire a guide, so I'm not sure how much of the site is original (especially because here, as in Xunantunich, no one stopped us from climbing all over anything) but it's incredible to think that we can still see ruins from thousands of years ago.

My dad posing at the end of a tunnel in Cahal Pech.

While in San Ignacio, we also took a day to explore the Mountain Pine Ridge forest reserve. We explored the Rio Frio caves, the Rio On pools, and a beautiful waterfall pool where we let little Doctor Fish nibble on our toes. Apart from a memorable wrong turn which got our poor Jeep rattling along a non-existent dirt road (we had vivid premonitions of flipping over when we started driving over deep gorges in the road), it was a very relaxing day in nature.

Rio On Pools

What kind of wildflower is this? 

Waterfall swimming and fish nibbling.

As for the rest of the trip, well, we stayed in a small hotel run by that couple from Colorado right outside of Belize City, and in the layover in Houston ran into an old couple from Texas (also coming back to Belize) who were most likely our second or third cousins. They had the same last name, after all.

And that was the trip!