It's the simple stuff

After a considerable amount of time hanging out in Mexico over the last fifteen years, two January's ago - 2004, my husband Michael and I decided to buy a house. It's not a condo in a gated community, it's a real concrete house, in a real neighborhood, across the street from a school, and 4 blocks from a stunningly beautiful Caribbean beach.

It was the quickest decision we had made in our married life. We'd traveled all over Mexico - thanks to seasonal jobs, I had spent some or most of three winters before I met Michael going to language schools and traveling by bus pretty much across the whole country - and then after we hooked up, his flight benefits (he's a flight attendant) have allowed us to do Mexican trips a few times a year. We loved the country, we loved the people, we loved the climate. So in Nov. of 2003, after visiting Playa del Carmen a few times we thought, yep, this is the place, let's make this more permanent. Let's not be tourists anymore. Let's become a part of this community as well as the one we're a part of in Montana.

But we weren't the only ones thinking that. (the part about buying property, that is.) Playa was experiencing rapid growth. And the cheap places, what we could afford, were going fast. So we came to Playa for a week the following January, and by the 5th day, we bought a house. Two days later we flew back to the states as owners of Mexican property. We glowed, we gleamed, we patted ourselves on the back. "Job well done", we said. Now we will really be able to relax in Mexico. We'll even have time to volunteer when we're there. Give back to the country we had enjoyed for so many years.

Fast forward to today, April 26, 2006. The only 'volunteering' we've done so far is our own - kind of a Habitat for Humanity sort of deal but in our own house. I suppose that doesn't really count, does it? We've gotten to know the local hardware store guys by name. The paint store guys know our favorite colors. My vocabulary has grown to include words like water pump - la bomba - and rebar - varillas. And, a line I already knew, but never had to use - "Can you please, PLEASE come and fix..." (fill in whatever you like here.)

But here's the deal. I am SO not complaining. One of my favorite lines from a Bob Dylan song "Things never turn out the way we had 'em planned" comes to mind here. The experiences we had envisioned are not quite the experiences we're having, but I wouldn't trade a single one of them. (Alright, maybe the whole cockroach thing.)We HAVE become a part of the community here, not just in the way I'd imagined. I mean, we are giving back - so far it's mostly with pesos and thank you's - but that's a start.

As I sit here working, at my Playa desk, I can hear the sounds of Mexico. The water guy on his three wheel bicycle, loaded with 5 gallon jugs of water, rides by and squeaks his horn. The kids at the school across the street are talking and laughing, a teacher says "Callese, por favor!" (Quiet down please!) Someone walks by on the street and sneezes and I yell out, "Salud!" and he returns with,"Gracias!"

It's the simple stuff. You know?

Dentists around the world

I think my teeth are the only part of my body, which causes me to visit doctors frequently. The reason for this is, most probably, my passion for sweets and cakes.

In the last few years I have been at dentists in 6 different countries: Lithuania, Denmark, Germany, Ethiopia, Mexico and Belize. Tooth treatment in the last 2 countries I got just recently, few months ago. As it often happens in the beginning of longer trips, I got toothache not long after the start of Katja's and mine journey in Central America this year. However, the most interesting and the most exciting experience I have made 2 years ago in Ethiopia (Africa).

I had just a few days left before my departure from Germany to Ethiopia, where I started my hitch-hiking trip through East Africa. A huge tooth filling would fall out and I would urgently need to visit a dentist in Berlin. In about a week, when I would already be in Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia), the small piece of another tooth would fall out. I was ready to face African dentist experience. My local friend would not be able to advice which dentist to go to, as he had never got much of teeth problems (he does not like sweets :).

I would choose the first dentist in town I have seen that day. My friends would explain that the dentists are facing tough competition these days, so their equipment is for sure more or less modern. The place I went did not seem to participate in the overall competition. I would come inside and ask directly: "Is the equipment you have in the office modern enough? The doctor would have no doubt: "yes, yes, it is one of the newest..." he would reply. When I entered the room, I understood - the modernity there was at least 10 years old. I got a little bit nervous. I would think his tooth drill will make all my teeth to fall out of the mouth. But (!), surprisingly, the doctor has never touched the drill during the treatment. He would grab a pencil-like tool and scratch the broken part of my tooth. Then he would place a bunch of ordinary loosen absorbent cotton into my mouth (I had difficulties to clean my mouth from it afterwards). Next, the dentist would blow cold air, in order to make the tooth surface dry. He would ask his assistant to prepare the filling, and would chuck it with a single throw on my broken tooth, fix a little bit the shape and use a special device (ultraviolet light, I guess) to make the filling solid. The doctor would ask if my bite is more or less comfortable, and after my positive answer he would announce: "the treatment is finished!" Suddenly, the dentist and the assistant would disappear, leaving me sitting on the chair. In few moments the assistant would bring a cracked mirror, where I could look at the result of the treatment. I would have no other choice as to make them happy by a big artificial smile.

Before I paid the service fee, the dentist would call me from the other room: "come on here!" I would accept his invitation and enter a room with a computer and an x-ray camera. The doctor was ready to make me a surprise: "I will show your tooth on my computer, for free", he explained. I would guess in 30 years of working experience, he had never had a white man as a client. Finally, this would be the Day, and he has a chance to show how cool is he. I suppose, not using a drill for preparing tooth fillings, is also kind of a prove of being cool and professional :)

At the end, after 2 tries he would get the right x-ray of my tooth, which we would observe together on the monitor. To tell the truth I was really amazed. It was the first dentist in my life, which would not use film and chemicals for producing an x-ray picture.

My one-time visit to this doctor ended paying about $22 for the whole service. I wish to reduce my passion for sweets and avoid frequent treatments of my teeth, even though it sometimes gives nice experiences.

Augustas

Leaving Bethel Behind...

Last weekend I sat behind a table at the Saturday flea market with a sign that read "VISTA Moving Sale...Help Me Get Home! I'm not sure if that "Pity me, I'm a volunteer" approach was entirely responsible for most of my stuff being sold that day, but it definitely helped. I've accumulated so much stuff since I've been here, and I need to get rid of it before I take off this weekend. I always feel good about giving people a bargain, so I didn't walk away rich, but I made enough to make a car payment. So all in all, it was a success. I think I'm still in denial about leaving though. As much as I complain about the weather here (it was -2 this morning, AND it snowed sideways all day on Easter!) I'm really going to miss it. It's amazing when you move to a place where people depend so much on each other for basic things (i.e. sanity,) and you grow super close to so many people.
I think if I stayed one more year and had a job that paid really good, I would probably better understand how so many people come here and end up staying 5 or 10 years. But for me, one year is plenty. My boxes are almost all packed and ready to be mailed. My thick wool socks are still on my feet and SO ready to come off! And my day pack is stuffed with power bars and ready for a new adventure.
So in three days I leave Bethel. I decided to take a couple weeks to travel and visit friends and family out west, before heading back to the east coast. So I'm spending a week in Eugene, Oregon with my bro, and then a week in Salt Lake to visit lots of family members and a few friends. I can't wait to be around family. I can't wait to go to Taco Bell. And even more than that, I can't wait to drive a longer distance than a ten mile loop. Living here can be so dissatisfying if you like to drive. Especially this time of year. It's breakup season, which means pot-hole and flood season for Bethel. It gets so bad that most people don't drive faster than 20 mph in a lot of areas. It definitely makes your days feel like they're in slow motion. So that definitely won't be missed.
But I'm really going to miss the Yup'ik culture. Last week I went to the annual Dance Festival here in Bethel, Camai, (pronounced Chuh-My) which means hello in Yup'ik. Typically dance troups from all over the world come to Bethel each spring for a 3 day intensive dance event. This year it was almost completely canceled due to unfinished construction in the high school, where it has always been held. But instead of completely canceling the event, the Camai committee decided to have one dance day for local dance troups to perform. So all day I sat in the bleachers watching dances with my friends. Their dances tell stories through movement and drum beats, such as hunting for seal. My favorite part is when the drum beats go from being soft and slow, to fast and loud, which is the part of the story where the hunter is catching the seal. It's such a beautiful thing to watch, especially when the little kids are up there dancing in full Yup'ik Eskimo gear. It almost made me want to stay for another year just to learn more about the culture and traditions. I feel like I've learned so much in such a short amount of time, but I know there is still so much more I have yet to learn about the culture. Yup'ik people are so strong, yet humble. The culture teaches patience, giving and appreciation. They don't think twice before giving to their neighbor. Which is quite refreshing since I'm used to dealing with people who won't think twice before stealing from their neighbor. I'm definitely going to leave Bethel with a new appreciation for life (and indoor plumbing.)

Old Faithful

We--two adults and one seven-year-old boy--carried the following through three airports: Graco Pack 'n' Play playpen, which is not quite four feet long when packed up in its carrying case for travel. Weighs a bunch. Umbrella stroller with Winnie the Pooh theme, not quite four feet long, not too complicated. Weighs, not so much. Tough Traveler child carrier, not anywhere near four feet long, and my personal favorite. Weighs, still, a sum worth considering. Evenflo car seat the size of a small refrigerator. Doesn't fit through the airport security machines no matter which way you turn it. Weighs quite a lot.

In addition, the regular luggage: our seven-year-old's carry-on, filled with extra clothes and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and who knows what else. There was some food in there, yes, a fair amount of it, not fresh and mostly atomized. My wife's carry-on, a backpack that, made of a hundred pockets that accordion out to alarming size, holds the baby stuff. My carry-on, a briefcase, nearly full before I put the laptop in it, entirely full after, more than full when I remembered that the laptop would only work a few hours without the power supply. My wife's suitcase, a standard large suitcase, full but not overdone. Finally, my suitcase. I stood alone on the bathroom scale, then stood with the suitcase, to make sure that it was under fifty pounds. It was forty-nine. The Tough Traveler child carrier fit into my suitcase, just barely, making the suitcase look from the side a little like a case for a French horn. My carry-on looked similarly lopsided when I wedged in the coffee and coffee cup. I wedged those items in at about ten the night before we left, deciding that, even though I had cut back on coffee almost to the vanishing point, I might need it the next day the way an accident victim needs plasma. I had cut back on coffee because it makes me too irritated.

In addition to the two adults and the seven-year-old boy, Dustin, we were carrying a ten-month-old baby, Lewis. This would be his first visit to Yellowstone National Park.

We got up at 4:30 in the morning at our home in California and, about twelve hours later, we drove into the park. This was last summer, on a day when the airports were all busy. When we arrived, I was in such bad shape that little stars and birds may have been spinning around my head, tweeting and making cuckoo sounds. The best thing we could think to do was to get into our hotel. Maybe some light activity would present itself later, but right now, I wanted badly to lie down.

That attitude violated my old Yellowstone ethic. I had lived and worked here for five years, and had thought it a moral imperative to live every minute of the summer to the fullest. But everything about me now violates my old Yellowstone ethic, in its earliest, purest form. I had been the freest of free spirits, and now was the opposite of unencumbered. Would Yellowstone fit into this new arrangement? Was it big enough to keep me in its orbit, now that I had so many satellites?

And will our hero survive? It seemed unlikely for a while, that evening. Taking advantage of the late sunset in this northern latitude, Dustin and I walked through the Upper Geyser Basin while mom and baby rested. We climbed up to Observation Point, looked out over the steaming valley, then descended and walked through the woods and out into the geyser field beyond. The hour was late enough that we had the place mostly to ourselves.

To the south was the historic core of the "development," the human part of Old Faithful: the majestic Old Faithful Inn, the rustic and rather handsome general store, and the elongated shack that served, and had for decades, as a gas station. On a chess board, the inn would be king, the store a knight, and the gas station a pawn. The pawn sat closest to the entrance road, its face turned with suicidal braveness toward the general public. In this gas station, I had spent some of the best days of my life. I had worked there for all or part of three seasons. Perched over there, on the far side of the Firehole River, it seemed kind of distant behind the steam, and no longer a part of me. When I worked there, we mostly ignored the geysers. Strange but true, and commonplace: this seething spectacle was just a backdrop to daily life, like the sound of freeways and aircraft in a city.

"What is this place called?" Dustin asked. Good at math, good at English, good at baseball, he is kind of a Renaissance kid. He was, I noticed, not bored yet.

"They call it Old Faithful. Also the Upper Geyser Basin."

"The Upper Geyser Base."

"Basin."

"Baste-in?"

"Basin."

We came upon Grand Geyser. This, I explained, was one of the big ones. Did I ever see it erupt in the old days, before I met his mom? Certainly. "That's an advantage to living here. This one only goes off once or twice while the sun is up, and people wait for hours. But a couple of times, I was just wandering around out here, and it went off right when I arrived."

For days to come, he would be expecting Grand to go off the instant we passed it. We walked on, crossing the Firehole River and pausing, as I did in the old days, to look for trout. We found two, one the size of a loaf of bread, a big animated loaf of French bread down there in the lee of the bridge pile. We came to Grotto Geyser. How did it get that strange shape? I explained to the best of my limited ability: when the geyser first appeared, it came up among some lodgepole pines, and it killed them and coated them with sinter and turned the area of the vent into a sculpture.

We looked at Giant and Riverside geysers, and finished with Morning Glory Pool. We returned to see Tardy Geyser erupt, just in time (hyor hyor: people have no doubt been making that joke for well over a century. Ulysses S. Grant was president the first time that joke was told. Someone told Ulysses S. Grant that joke, and he had some more to drink). We watched Sawmill Geyser erupt, too, and I noticed--a little late--what I had failed to notice throughout this little journey around the geysers: Dustin found them absolutely fascinating. We spent much of the rest of the trip on them, and he never did get enough.

On the way back, we passed my gas station. Except for the pumps, it has not changed since I worked there. I once saw an aerial photograph of inn, store, and station taken in the 1920s, and all three seem pretty much the same today. I had been a free spirit when I worked here, yes; I thought nothing of dropping everything and driving across the country. I once drove from Old Faithful to Florida to Los Angeles almost on a whim. I drove in part because I couldn't afford to fly. Free though I may have been, I was also in a state of almost constant anxiety about the future. I was worried about what would happen after the end of the present season. I was worried about what would happen forevermore. I worried about it every single day. In part, I was afraid that if I got too encumbered, in one way or another, I would never see the park again.

It was nice to actually be in that future and discover that it was better than I could have hoped. We had started coming to Yellowstone--which I hadn't seen since the old days--three years ago; we came because it made a good family vacation. If I weren't encumbered, I wouldn't be here.