I came to Kenya because the wilderness called- and i wasn't disappointed. In addition to the great wilderness, i also encountered some Kenyans as courageous as their lions are and as inspiring as their great plains are.
I was picked up at the Nairobi airport by a family friend (actually he was gone so the friend's friend took care of me) who had started a clinic and school in a Masai village close to Tanzania border thirteen years ago, and it was great to hear about all the work he had done from scratch to build up the community. The fact that his official profession is a Christian missionary had made me slightly uneasy as i did not know how respectful of the local customs he had been, but he had done so much development work for the community including starting a primary school, a medical clinic and building a long water pipe that stretched over 10 km from one side of the mountain to the other. And I was told that to save money, he did not hire outside contractors and did everything himself- It seemed like one man was doing a NGO's work. He was also working on teaching the Masai people how to live as an agricultural community, and this was interesting as the Masai have traditionally been cattle nomads but he said it was no longer economically feasible for them to live as cattle breeders and they needed to learn agriculture to survive in today’s market economy.
I had time to wander around the Masai village and even the way their houses are built represents the significance of cattle for them. They build their houses with cow dung and their fences with sticks, and as the Masai practice polygamy, they have cattle pen in the middle surrounded by each wife's house. At the physical level, having more cattle allows men to have more wives (my eighteen year old Masai friend told me the richest guy in town owns 1000 cows and has 20 wives- my friend had 12 and once the number of his cows reached 15, he would get married! :) At the spiritual level, some Masai think that having more cattle will lead to better afterlife, so my guide told me he converts all the money he earns to cows, and i could often see a huge line of cows led by the Masai people.
Masai people, with their colorful decorative beads, are probably one of the most famous out of Kenya's 42 tribes, and they certainly do have some interesting customs. At the age of 14, boys are circumcised and embark on a three months stay in the forest to learn the skills to become a warrior man, and they can only come back to the community if they catch a lion- which they do in a group of 15 or so. My guide showed me the tooth of the lion that supposedly he caught, and also a little hammer-like weapon he caught the lion with. And the boys put on red for the first time when they go hunting to scare the lion, and wear the red for the rest of their lives in adulthood.
Girls also get circumcised, but as i found out from talking to NGO workers, this is not as easy as the male circumcision. Often girls get their entire genital parts removed and whereas for men it hurts once, for women it hurts for the rest of their lives. I've even heard that some people stitch close female's private parts to ensure that she does not have sex before marriage. Another sad thing i encountered was meeting several Masai boys and girls my age who could not afford to go to college- they realize the importance of education but unfortunately have to take time off school to make money.
After leaving my family friend's Elim Christian community i came into Nairobi planning to do a Safari- but it was too expensive and I ended up in a hostel not having anything to do for the next couple of days. I've been so fortunate with the people i meet on the road, and after my German boy Martin came into my room looking for toothpaste, i gave him some delicious toothpaste and we started chatting. It turns out he was visiting Sub-Saharan Africa's biggest slum area called Kibera and learning more about a microfinance organization there, and i asked if i could tag along and he gladly accepted.
We bought a soccer ball each (mine was just $4) and took a bus to go to Kibera and meet a tall guy named Andrew, and he showed Martin & i around Kibera. The living conditions were quite poor and there were trash and sewage everywhere- most people were living under $1 a day and we visited a widow's house who lived in a shack around 5m by 10m with her ten kids. Nevertheless, she was a strong woman who had took a loan from the microfinance organization called 'Jami Bora' and started her life anew selling coal in the community. Jami Bora, which roughly translates to 'Good Family,' started out several years ago as a small microfinance organization that lent money to 50 families, and now there were over 220,000 members who were using micro-credit to climb out of poverty and make a healthy contribution to the community. Unfortunately, the 2-week business training session led by a UNC MBA grad had ended a day before i got there, and i would have loved to have learned more about their entrepreneurship training.
And perhaps the most amazing experience there was meeting John, a former rebel-commander of 230 people who was leading a fight against the government and was now living a changed life building locker boxes for Kibera community. Last year when the former president of Kenya refused to step down despite losing in an official democratic election, members of the N*** tribe whose new president had been elected democratically started a genocide against the Kikuru tribe of the president and the whole country fell into chaos. (it was amazing to me how strong the tribal affiliations are for these Kenyans that they massacre innocent fellow citizens just because of a stupid greedy president). John was a member of the N*** tribe, and he confessed he had killed and maimed countless people in Kibera and also lost a lot of his own men.
Then John met Andrew, who told John that John is going to be killed soon if he keeps living the way he does and urged him to join the Kibera community as a member of the Jami Bora. As Andrew was generous towards John's gang, who initially tried to kill Andrew, many of them joined the community and were now making healthy contributions to the community. And John, a former gang leader who caused so much destruction, was now channeling his energy into soccer as he started a soccer club with his club members that was to 'win Kenya premier league in two years.' As of now the team didn't have a uniform and had only four balls and were not too good, but John is optimistic about the future of his team and it was great to see his enthusiasm.
Although the living conditions were harsh, people certainly more than made up for the place. We also visited a community radio station that was playing some chill African reggae and hip-hop that was not gangsta but was putting positive energy into the community, John and Andrew invited us to a local bar/ club to dance with the Kenyans, and on Sunday we went to a church service with them. Oh, and i also should not forget to mention a great African dish (a huge steak with some vegetables and ugali (corn-based nan like thing) we had.
After visiting countless tour companies, i finally found an affordable low budget safari and embarked on a great African adventure. i had expected to be bored riding in a van all day, but it was wonderful seeing lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, gazelles, cheetahs, hippos and so on...Some of the things i wish i had not seen- such as maggots and flies swarming on a rotting buffalo that the lion and the hyenas were also eating- but it was so wonderful to see a family of elephants crossing the road (the baby elephants are so adorable) and zebras and gazelles hanging out together and hippos enjoying their bath. It's also wild to think that these steppes are probably where the humans originated and our ancestors probably roamed these vast African plains with these animals.
I also met a Canadian girl at the hostel who took me to a huge Masai market on Saturday and i bought some cool cheap African art to sell at festivals in Europe this summer. (i've obviously mastered the art of bargaining by now... :) Luckily, the Korean guy i was hanging out with (Suny) turned out to be an artist, and he was a big help in giving tips on buying & selling art. And I also met another Korean girl (nuna) randomly at the National museum, and we had great dinner with another Kenyan professor. Although my first impression of Nairobi really was its nickname Nairobery full of crime and danger, once I unveiled the surface and met the locals, I realized there’s so much light and hope here.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Kibbutz- Neot Samader
My introduction to kibbutz came through my guidebook and a pastor family friend who told me that if i want to understand Israel, i should spend some time in the kibbutz. In addition to my interest in sustainable organic agriculture, i was fascinated by their communal living in which they share their work, meals and leisure with everybody else. Although i wasnt sure about the Zionist aspect of kibbutzim after meeting a Palestine guy who told me about all the injustices done by the state of Israel, most of the people i met at my kibbutz Neot Samader were kind and sympathetic people and I had great two and half weeks in the middle of the Negev Desert in southern Israel.
After flying to Cairo from Berlin via London, I spent a day in Cairo and took a night bus to Taba crossing to get to Eilat, Israel’s southern resort town embracing the Red Sea. Then I had to take another bus to where my kibbutz is and i was a little surprised when the bus driver dropped me off in the middle of a desert. Like the Dutch who have created land out of the sea, Israelis tamed nature and created fertile green pastures from inhospitable desert and I was really impressed by this transformation. (Israelis have one of the best irrigation technologies in the world and China is trying to replicate Israel’s battle against desertification at home albeit without much success.) Although this kibbutz was only twenty years old, they had achieved so much most notably a gracefully towering arts and crafts center that just opened a few years ago (even the president of Israel had paid a visit to this arts center and praised it).
I was incredibly tired as i had spent the last two nights on the airplane and then on the bus, and I was free to roam by myself on my first day and just observe the various works going on in the kibbutz. My roommate turned out to be a Jewish guy from Uruguay who did not like claiming his Jewish identity (it doesn't mean he was uncomfortable with his Jewishness- he just didn't like labels- "I’m Jewish for politicians sake" he would say- and he also had healthy disrespect for the government-established holidays). Matillas was also an incredible musician and composer, and we had great time together.
As my work started the next day, I began to form an interesting relationship with work. I had not worked since I left the Mother Teresa House in India about three months ago, and my initial reaction to hard manual labor was close to repulsion. Our work would start at 6am, and we worked till 8am breakfast, and then again from 9am-1pm till lunch and in the afternoon from 2-5pm. (For the residents, the hours would be longer as there are a lot of meetings that the residents of the kibbutz have to attend as all kibbutz decisions are made unanimously- it's a very full time job living in a kibbutz) The hours felt long and for the first few days, it was the company of others that kept me going. Fortunately, there were five nineteen year old guys (two girls from Germany, three guy from the US, the UK, and Israel) whom I could hang out with. There were also other volunteers I could talk to and most residents were gregarious and spoke very good English. There were about 200 people in the kibbutz- around 100 residents, 60 kids and 40 volunteers- although sometimes the line between residents and volunteers was not very clear (if you had been there for over 3 months, should you count as a volunteer or a resident?)
When volunteers first arrive at a kibbutz, they rotate work for the first couple of days and i did everything from picking nectarines, sorting them sout (it felt interesting to be part of a chain of the huge capitalist economic system as the goods from Neot Samader were sold in organic markets all across Israel and Europe), cleaning the wine machines, putting stickers on the organic yogurt bottles and expiration dates on apricot sweets, cutting garlic and putting them in bundles, cutting pumpkin and other vegetables for 200 people, cleaning metal works (I polished a tiny bronze thing with sandpaper for two hours which was a little frustrating), and doing dishes at the restaurant (again sometimes for 2 hours straight- but I wouldn’t complain as I got free date ice cream and cake at the restaurant.)
One of the guys said all the work is meditative, but for me, it was more mind-numbing. I knew human mind is an amazing machine and we can train our attitudes (St. Paul taught to be content regardless of the condition one is in, and Buddha spent his lifetime refining his attitude to reach peace and equanimity) but is it really possible to be content doing the same manual work over and over again? I was only there for little over two weeks but what about the guys who had been there for twenty years since the beginning- these people were educated intelligent people too and some of them seemed to genuinely enjoy manual work. For me, i saw myself as a Greek guy who has to push something up a hill every day but fortunately there weren’t anybody undoing my work.
Nevertheless, around the third day, I began to grow more fond of the work. Perhaps doing more outdoorsy work helped- as I felt really cool climbing date trees that were about 10 meters high (they are palm trees and you can easily step on their bark) and work on date trees (trimming fruits & sawing off branches to use in building huts). It was certainly a lot more adrenaline and it made me feel pretty virile. I no longer wanted my i-pod during work (they didn’t let me have my best friend during my work anyways), and began to enjoy labor for its own sake. But soon this state turned into cycles of enjoying and not enjoying work, and i guess training one's mind is not easy…) I was also reminded of the Marxian critic of capitalism that in today's society with so much specialization, we no longer feel whole as a human being as our work is no longer whole- we are only cogs in a giant machine of production and we often work in isolation. But my work at kibbutz felt wholesome as I rotated every work, particpated in every step of production, and almost always worked socially with others in equal footing.
There are some jobs that were inaccessible to me because of the language barrier. I'd love to have spent some time at the kids center (school) but couldn’t because i don't speak Hebrew, and i think being a waiter would also have been fun too but i needed to be able to speak Hebrew in order to be a waiter. I also wanted to spend some time milking the goats but never got around to doing that. And as all the meetings were conducted in Hebrew, i definitely felt like an outsider as i had no idea what was going on in everyday lunch meetings.
Outside of work, most socializing was done outside in front of the dining hall.
Meals were eaten in silence- although I was never directly told why, I think they want you to figure out why for yourself. (Some said the idea was being one with the food you're consuming and be more in tune with your tastebuds etc- very hippie yes :)- or it’s just more relaxing to eat in silence as everyday work is so arduous. Initially it was awkward as i didn't know where to look while eating- and meals felt really depressing as meals are usually social times in most of the world- but i quickly grew accustomed to the tradition and as the vegetarian food was superb, fresh and healthy, (i espeically enjoyed the fresh goat cheese every morning)- i don’t complain.
Every Friday night before the Shabbat dinner (it wasn’t religious but Shabbat was still a big deal and it was the only meal in which socializing and wine were allowed) - btw, I really wanted to be in Israel during Purim festival- apparently God commanded Jews to drink till they drop during this festival.. :). Before Shabbat, there was a huge dance ceremony in which everyone dressed in white and danced free style to new age trance music. Any adult could partake in the ceremony, and the dance consisted of lot of turning, whirling and dancing in circles. Despite my sprained ankle, I had fun limp-dancing on my last Friday (the first Friday I just watched).
I hurt my foot playing soccer and i was on crutches for the first time in my life. Not being able to run and play sports was a little frustrating (now I understand how the injured athletes feel so it was a good lesson in sympathy), but I found creative ways around it such as going for an awesome long bike ride over a desert mountain.
I should also mention going out with my room mate Matillas & some other friends as one of the most memorable- I don’t remember what we did but it was great time. There was a huge jam session and then we walked around at night looking at the stars and making animal noises in search of camp fire that we never found, and Matillas with his genius musical talents made amazing percussion music on discarded cans and various things.
Will this kibbutz still be around in the years to come? Many kibbutz are dying out or becoming privatized- and I heard this ones was also not doing terribly great economically- but there didn't seem to be much social tension that plagues some kibbutz, and there was a large group of a new generation of kibbutz kids who grew up there all their life and were about to go out into the real world- some to the army, some to the university etc- (and they were preparing a puppet play as sort of a 'farewell gift' to the community:) I’d love to visit again and be part of the evolution of this wonderful community.
After flying to Cairo from Berlin via London, I spent a day in Cairo and took a night bus to Taba crossing to get to Eilat, Israel’s southern resort town embracing the Red Sea. Then I had to take another bus to where my kibbutz is and i was a little surprised when the bus driver dropped me off in the middle of a desert. Like the Dutch who have created land out of the sea, Israelis tamed nature and created fertile green pastures from inhospitable desert and I was really impressed by this transformation. (Israelis have one of the best irrigation technologies in the world and China is trying to replicate Israel’s battle against desertification at home albeit without much success.) Although this kibbutz was only twenty years old, they had achieved so much most notably a gracefully towering arts and crafts center that just opened a few years ago (even the president of Israel had paid a visit to this arts center and praised it).
I was incredibly tired as i had spent the last two nights on the airplane and then on the bus, and I was free to roam by myself on my first day and just observe the various works going on in the kibbutz. My roommate turned out to be a Jewish guy from Uruguay who did not like claiming his Jewish identity (it doesn't mean he was uncomfortable with his Jewishness- he just didn't like labels- "I’m Jewish for politicians sake" he would say- and he also had healthy disrespect for the government-established holidays). Matillas was also an incredible musician and composer, and we had great time together.
As my work started the next day, I began to form an interesting relationship with work. I had not worked since I left the Mother Teresa House in India about three months ago, and my initial reaction to hard manual labor was close to repulsion. Our work would start at 6am, and we worked till 8am breakfast, and then again from 9am-1pm till lunch and in the afternoon from 2-5pm. (For the residents, the hours would be longer as there are a lot of meetings that the residents of the kibbutz have to attend as all kibbutz decisions are made unanimously- it's a very full time job living in a kibbutz) The hours felt long and for the first few days, it was the company of others that kept me going. Fortunately, there were five nineteen year old guys (two girls from Germany, three guy from the US, the UK, and Israel) whom I could hang out with. There were also other volunteers I could talk to and most residents were gregarious and spoke very good English. There were about 200 people in the kibbutz- around 100 residents, 60 kids and 40 volunteers- although sometimes the line between residents and volunteers was not very clear (if you had been there for over 3 months, should you count as a volunteer or a resident?)
When volunteers first arrive at a kibbutz, they rotate work for the first couple of days and i did everything from picking nectarines, sorting them sout (it felt interesting to be part of a chain of the huge capitalist economic system as the goods from Neot Samader were sold in organic markets all across Israel and Europe), cleaning the wine machines, putting stickers on the organic yogurt bottles and expiration dates on apricot sweets, cutting garlic and putting them in bundles, cutting pumpkin and other vegetables for 200 people, cleaning metal works (I polished a tiny bronze thing with sandpaper for two hours which was a little frustrating), and doing dishes at the restaurant (again sometimes for 2 hours straight- but I wouldn’t complain as I got free date ice cream and cake at the restaurant.)
One of the guys said all the work is meditative, but for me, it was more mind-numbing. I knew human mind is an amazing machine and we can train our attitudes (St. Paul taught to be content regardless of the condition one is in, and Buddha spent his lifetime refining his attitude to reach peace and equanimity) but is it really possible to be content doing the same manual work over and over again? I was only there for little over two weeks but what about the guys who had been there for twenty years since the beginning- these people were educated intelligent people too and some of them seemed to genuinely enjoy manual work. For me, i saw myself as a Greek guy who has to push something up a hill every day but fortunately there weren’t anybody undoing my work.
Nevertheless, around the third day, I began to grow more fond of the work. Perhaps doing more outdoorsy work helped- as I felt really cool climbing date trees that were about 10 meters high (they are palm trees and you can easily step on their bark) and work on date trees (trimming fruits & sawing off branches to use in building huts). It was certainly a lot more adrenaline and it made me feel pretty virile. I no longer wanted my i-pod during work (they didn’t let me have my best friend during my work anyways), and began to enjoy labor for its own sake. But soon this state turned into cycles of enjoying and not enjoying work, and i guess training one's mind is not easy…) I was also reminded of the Marxian critic of capitalism that in today's society with so much specialization, we no longer feel whole as a human being as our work is no longer whole- we are only cogs in a giant machine of production and we often work in isolation. But my work at kibbutz felt wholesome as I rotated every work, particpated in every step of production, and almost always worked socially with others in equal footing.
There are some jobs that were inaccessible to me because of the language barrier. I'd love to have spent some time at the kids center (school) but couldn’t because i don't speak Hebrew, and i think being a waiter would also have been fun too but i needed to be able to speak Hebrew in order to be a waiter. I also wanted to spend some time milking the goats but never got around to doing that. And as all the meetings were conducted in Hebrew, i definitely felt like an outsider as i had no idea what was going on in everyday lunch meetings.
Outside of work, most socializing was done outside in front of the dining hall.
Meals were eaten in silence- although I was never directly told why, I think they want you to figure out why for yourself. (Some said the idea was being one with the food you're consuming and be more in tune with your tastebuds etc- very hippie yes :)- or it’s just more relaxing to eat in silence as everyday work is so arduous. Initially it was awkward as i didn't know where to look while eating- and meals felt really depressing as meals are usually social times in most of the world- but i quickly grew accustomed to the tradition and as the vegetarian food was superb, fresh and healthy, (i espeically enjoyed the fresh goat cheese every morning)- i don’t complain.
Every Friday night before the Shabbat dinner (it wasn’t religious but Shabbat was still a big deal and it was the only meal in which socializing and wine were allowed) - btw, I really wanted to be in Israel during Purim festival- apparently God commanded Jews to drink till they drop during this festival.. :). Before Shabbat, there was a huge dance ceremony in which everyone dressed in white and danced free style to new age trance music. Any adult could partake in the ceremony, and the dance consisted of lot of turning, whirling and dancing in circles. Despite my sprained ankle, I had fun limp-dancing on my last Friday (the first Friday I just watched).
I hurt my foot playing soccer and i was on crutches for the first time in my life. Not being able to run and play sports was a little frustrating (now I understand how the injured athletes feel so it was a good lesson in sympathy), but I found creative ways around it such as going for an awesome long bike ride over a desert mountain.
I should also mention going out with my room mate Matillas & some other friends as one of the most memorable- I don’t remember what we did but it was great time. There was a huge jam session and then we walked around at night looking at the stars and making animal noises in search of camp fire that we never found, and Matillas with his genius musical talents made amazing percussion music on discarded cans and various things.
Will this kibbutz still be around in the years to come? Many kibbutz are dying out or becoming privatized- and I heard this ones was also not doing terribly great economically- but there didn't seem to be much social tension that plagues some kibbutz, and there was a large group of a new generation of kibbutz kids who grew up there all their life and were about to go out into the real world- some to the army, some to the university etc- (and they were preparing a puppet play as sort of a 'farewell gift' to the community:) I’d love to visit again and be part of the evolution of this wonderful community.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Euro trip part II
The second part of my European journey, which i shared with Emily, was also full of adventure and despite the differences across the borders, it felt like the Western Europe as a whole forms a coherent unity in a lot of ways (which made me wonder how stupid it is that there have been so much war in this continent through the course of history and the EU really makes a lot of sense). Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin were therefore a continuation of my previous European travels- a lot of art galleries, museums and eating baguette, cheese and drinking cheap but good wine (esp. heavily in Paris), but each of these cities also has unique charms and each couchsurfing host we stayed with also made the place special. Paris really is a romantic city, while Amsterdam has a funky feel and Berlin i don't know how to describe but for me it had macho imperial feel.
PARIS
Although i was looking forward to taking the underwater train from London to Paris, the train turned out to be really expensive and the only option i had was taking a bus- which was a grueling 8.5 hour ride including 2 hours on the boat... Then i was picked up by my host Cecile and Emily, and the first place she took us was a birthday party at a squatter. I had read about squatters (abandoned buildings inhabited by outsiders) a while ago but it was my first time seeing them in person- and it was fascinating to hear about their legal battles as the law states that if the inhabitants sufficiently improve the condition of the abandoned building, they are allowed to stay in the building.
And the group was not one i was used to meeting but am fascinated by- trans-genders and the birthday girl who worked part time as a porn star- and although i could not chat with them much about these issues because of the language barrier in addition to the fact I just met them, there were some Americans around and it was fun chatting with them- and this was only the first of the many parties and picnics that Cecile would take us to. That night, i was tired from my trip and after drinking a little more than i thought, I slept through a fire drill in the middle of the night and although Em claims she dragged me down outside the building, i have no recollection of the event.
The next morning we got an early start and i just followed Em into Paris. As she has been learning French for the past couple of years and was familiar with many things in Paris, all i had to do was sit back and follow her wherever she went. We started along probably the most famous street in Paris leading from the Arc de Triomphe to the Obelisk and the Louvre, and it was amazing to get an aerial view of Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe as i was standing in the middle of probably one of the largest round-abouts in the world and could see the roads stretch out all around me.
Then we headed to the Eiffel Tower to meet Cecile and her friends for another birthday picnic. I loved the way the tourist sites like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower blend seamlessly into the lives of Parisians as a lot of people picnic at these places- (i also played soccer with some French guys on the lawn in front of the Louvre). Paris has a lot of green space which probably adds a lot to the romance of the city, then we walked along the Siene River (also a very romantic river) and fortunately we found a museum with history of jazz exhibition and free jazz concert which got me very excited- and jazz as often a language-less form of art I think is as universal as soccer. Then we kept on walking and passed the Louvre, Notre Dame, and ended up at the Pompidou Center. On the way we got locked inside a park so had to climb fences- which felt a little cool- and Em was surprisingly good at climbing fences despite her injured ankle. Walking through the heart of the city, i loved the architectural unity in the city as well as the harmony between the traditional buildings and the more modern additions like the Pompidou Center and I.M.Pei's famous Louvre pyramid. And also loved the way all the lights in the city came on together at the sun set.
That night, we headed for another party despite our fatigue around midnight and after Cecile told us we had missed the last metro at 2:30am, we were stuck at the party till the first metro at 5:30am... (Paris was not as convenient for night life as Berlin- which has 24 hour buses and metros on weekends for partying yeah!) But it was another amazing party and met some hilarious guys like an Italian Cal-Tech physicist who works in predicting earthquakes and tsunamis and hid a naked guy's clothes- and the naked guy who likes to take off his clothes at parties turned out to be a very nice high school literature teacher. And also met a French girl who has lived in the US and told me the French only talk about sex but don't do it much- according to her it's the Germans who really act more than they talk.
As the next morning was the first Sunday of the month which meant free museums, Em and i were intending on getting an early start but having partied till sunrise that did not quite work out. But we did go to the Louvre and i did see some amazing paintings, sculptures and other pieces of art. The Louvre was also interesting in that it contained not only conventional forms of art but also everyday French objects from bygone eras and some artifacts from the Middle East that the French probably pillaged on their conquests. I did see the Mona Lisa and although i did stare at it for fifteen minutes, there were too many people to enjoy the art seriously and i actually liked a lot of other paintings in the museum more. Then we went to the Pompidou Center- or the inside-out-pipe-center- which contained more modern and contemporary art and after the Louvre, Musee D'Orsay (which has a lot impressionist paintings) and the Pompidou Center, i felt like i got a pretty good introduction to the history of the Western art. I should also add that these places are all huge (esp. the Louvre) and am looking forward to another visit to these places.
During the weekdays, there thankfully weren't so many parties so our lives calmed down a little and we moved around for other gems of Paris. One of the most memorable places for me was the Church of Sacred Heart- which was not far from the 17th zone of Paris we lived in and was surrounded by cool cafe area that a lot of famous artists lived in. After a little praying/ meditating/ thinking inside, i felt so full of love somehow and i wondered why we could not love universally but preferred our family and friends more than the person sitting in front of me. Evolution probably provides the answer for family (genes) and friends who are often more likely to reciprocate and help us. But love is probably the purest and best when it is unconditional and do we only love our acquaintances because we want to be loved? But then soon after i realized it was much easier said than done because even just traveling with Em i could have been a lot more self-less and loving but wasn't willing to compromise and give up what i wanted to do a lot of times.
We also visited the Versailles and a lot of other tourist places and stayed with another CS host Emmanuel for two nights but enough on Paris... :) oh, and one more thing- crepes. I ate so many crepes in France- mostly chocolate (nutella), cheese, jam, egg, ham- but was also a little sad that there weren't many gourmet crepes in Paris- the best one i had was Boston, which had some African name and had lamb, feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach- absolutely delicious. Although I enjoy crepes, I ate so many than I would because I thought i) I will be selling crepes this summer with Hanna and ii) other European cities won’t have as many crepes but neither turned out to be true so excessive crepe eating was quite unnecessary…
And lastly we were also invited by Cecile to come swim at a naked swimming pool but unfortunately (or fortunately) we missed the train stop so oh well… Em and I also got caught by the police free riding on a bus and I learned that fees are negotiable as Cecile somehow brought down the price from 40 euros to 20. When the police came into the bus to check tickets, it was like seeing a bear and after debating whether we should run out of the bus or pretend to sleep, we decided to pretend to sleep but that turned out to be not a good idea as the police woke us up anyways to check for our ticket.
AMSTERDAM
As it was the Easter weekend, all the hostels were full in Amsterdam and despite having sent many many couchsurfing requests, it seemed like all the Couch hosts were booked out too. But then Hannah saved me, as she had a friend Sergio from Barcelona in Amsterdam and he led us to a squatter under the bridge which was a convenient 10-minute walk away from the center of the city. Compared to the squatter in Paris which was a house, this one was huge as the space was originally built as an exhibition hall. And there were lot more people living inside as well- they had renovated the space so it contained the kitchen, and they were also working on getting a shower (so for the three days i was there i could not take a shower unfortunately...)
The squatter was a very interesting place for me- most people living them identified themselves as anarchists (although this is an umbrella term with many many colors), and although i always thought anarchists to be anti-government people, most seemed to be more dissatisfied economically with the state of today's capitalism.
But it was also ironic to me that they are living off the excess of the capitalist system that they criticize so much- People build too much and therefore have unused buildings so the anarchists live in them- people produce & waste too much goods & food so the anarchists take them- they get most of their food and clothes, furniture etc from dumps and supermarkets- and I would like to have been on one of these scavenge hunts but didn’t get a chance.
And i was not sure how much work they are doing towards building an alternative, more just system- people whom i met in the kibbutz (more on kibbutz soon in Israel part) were working hard to be self-sufficient and provide for themselves, but how much were these squatter residents working? Some of them i talked to told me they don't really do anything and i was reminded of my friend who loves the idealism of hippies but is disappointed by their lack of action... Many had outside jobs but some of them seemed like they drink and smoke pot all day. But there definitely was a lot of artistic talent- a lot of cool graffiti, live music and DJ action- and they were also working on turning the building into a multi-media center and some i heard are genius programmers and hackers.
The people i met there were all definitely lovely people though- i met a Palestine guy and a Romanian girl couple who had moved there from London, and they are people with really bright and beautiful minds and hearts but didn’t know what is going to happen to them/ the squatter in a couple of years. They were very interested in creating a more just society and although I got the impression they felt powerless, they somehow saw a revolution coming…
In the squatter, i learned to sleep with the music blasting (music often played till 4am and even later on weekends but i'd learn to go to sleep with the help of some alcohol). Although most people I met were friendly and kind, i did have a negative experience in the squatter as well- which was getting all my valuables (wallet, camera & laptop) stolen- Fortunately, i had a little bag with emergency cash and credit card so i wasn't in that bad position- but the camera and the laptop have not only financial but a lot of emotional value and i was very depressed to see all my writings, music and photos (photos of Paris & Amsterdam- two cities i loved) go. My camera had also been with me everywhere and it had been such a loyal camera, and losing my wallet also sucked a lot because i had a lot of people's contacts from all over the world. I was pretty seriously distraught after all my stuff disappeared and the first thing i wanted to do was pack up and go home, but talking to my family helped and they were really supportive so on and on i continued with my journey.
If there is a modern day equivalent of Sodom and Gomora, perhaps Amsterdam will be the most likely candidate- and i didn't like the Red District vibe. Amsterdam is a beautiful city architecturally and naturally with all the canals (loved biking through it), but i hated being able to smell weed and see drunk people in the middle of the street and look at countless scantily dressed prostitutes street after street in the Red Light District. Ironically, we found a Christian hostel in the middle of the Red light district and i had some nice chat with the girl working there- i love talking to (non-evangelizing) religious people... :) but i have to admit that i did go to the sex museum though- and although it was interesting for a little bit, it was too much (btw, I feel like the sex museum is for people who are a little too timid to go to a prostitute or a live sex show )... and in the central Dam Square they had also installed a glitzy little amusement park which i also did not like too much as it just seemed commercial and overwhelm the subtle natural charm of the city.
Basically Anne Frank memorial house seemed really out of place in this crazy city. I had also read Anne Frank’s diary when I was little, and it was quite a powerful experience visiting the actual place where she lived.
Along with the paintings of genius Dutch artists such as Rembrandt and Verneer, the main museum in Amsterdam also boasted fascinating items from the Dutch Golden Age- when the tiny Netherlands was one of the world's dominant powers. I've heard the theory that Jews were a big help as tolerance in the Netherlands attracted a lot of rich Jews fleeing from persecution around Europe (lesson here: tolerances brings prosperity? :) but no matter how they did it, i'm really impressed by power & determination of the Dutch people- despite their meager population of sixteen million (this is today), they have conquered the sea worldwide and more than half of Holland was reclaimed from the sea. They have also built mega corporations like the Royal Dutch Shell and Phillips (incidentally the Dutch were the first to conceive the notion of a corporation), have produced unearthly soccer players, amazing painters, rich culture, Heineken and marvelous botanical techniques which were in good display at the Kukenhof gardens. The sight of rows and rows of tulips under a windmill was such a typical Dutch sight, and they had produced some wonderful hybrids of the flowers.
PARIS
Although i was looking forward to taking the underwater train from London to Paris, the train turned out to be really expensive and the only option i had was taking a bus- which was a grueling 8.5 hour ride including 2 hours on the boat... Then i was picked up by my host Cecile and Emily, and the first place she took us was a birthday party at a squatter. I had read about squatters (abandoned buildings inhabited by outsiders) a while ago but it was my first time seeing them in person- and it was fascinating to hear about their legal battles as the law states that if the inhabitants sufficiently improve the condition of the abandoned building, they are allowed to stay in the building.
And the group was not one i was used to meeting but am fascinated by- trans-genders and the birthday girl who worked part time as a porn star- and although i could not chat with them much about these issues because of the language barrier in addition to the fact I just met them, there were some Americans around and it was fun chatting with them- and this was only the first of the many parties and picnics that Cecile would take us to. That night, i was tired from my trip and after drinking a little more than i thought, I slept through a fire drill in the middle of the night and although Em claims she dragged me down outside the building, i have no recollection of the event.
The next morning we got an early start and i just followed Em into Paris. As she has been learning French for the past couple of years and was familiar with many things in Paris, all i had to do was sit back and follow her wherever she went. We started along probably the most famous street in Paris leading from the Arc de Triomphe to the Obelisk and the Louvre, and it was amazing to get an aerial view of Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe as i was standing in the middle of probably one of the largest round-abouts in the world and could see the roads stretch out all around me.
Then we headed to the Eiffel Tower to meet Cecile and her friends for another birthday picnic. I loved the way the tourist sites like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower blend seamlessly into the lives of Parisians as a lot of people picnic at these places- (i also played soccer with some French guys on the lawn in front of the Louvre). Paris has a lot of green space which probably adds a lot to the romance of the city, then we walked along the Siene River (also a very romantic river) and fortunately we found a museum with history of jazz exhibition and free jazz concert which got me very excited- and jazz as often a language-less form of art I think is as universal as soccer. Then we kept on walking and passed the Louvre, Notre Dame, and ended up at the Pompidou Center. On the way we got locked inside a park so had to climb fences- which felt a little cool- and Em was surprisingly good at climbing fences despite her injured ankle. Walking through the heart of the city, i loved the architectural unity in the city as well as the harmony between the traditional buildings and the more modern additions like the Pompidou Center and I.M.Pei's famous Louvre pyramid. And also loved the way all the lights in the city came on together at the sun set.
That night, we headed for another party despite our fatigue around midnight and after Cecile told us we had missed the last metro at 2:30am, we were stuck at the party till the first metro at 5:30am... (Paris was not as convenient for night life as Berlin- which has 24 hour buses and metros on weekends for partying yeah!) But it was another amazing party and met some hilarious guys like an Italian Cal-Tech physicist who works in predicting earthquakes and tsunamis and hid a naked guy's clothes- and the naked guy who likes to take off his clothes at parties turned out to be a very nice high school literature teacher. And also met a French girl who has lived in the US and told me the French only talk about sex but don't do it much- according to her it's the Germans who really act more than they talk.
As the next morning was the first Sunday of the month which meant free museums, Em and i were intending on getting an early start but having partied till sunrise that did not quite work out. But we did go to the Louvre and i did see some amazing paintings, sculptures and other pieces of art. The Louvre was also interesting in that it contained not only conventional forms of art but also everyday French objects from bygone eras and some artifacts from the Middle East that the French probably pillaged on their conquests. I did see the Mona Lisa and although i did stare at it for fifteen minutes, there were too many people to enjoy the art seriously and i actually liked a lot of other paintings in the museum more. Then we went to the Pompidou Center- or the inside-out-pipe-center- which contained more modern and contemporary art and after the Louvre, Musee D'Orsay (which has a lot impressionist paintings) and the Pompidou Center, i felt like i got a pretty good introduction to the history of the Western art. I should also add that these places are all huge (esp. the Louvre) and am looking forward to another visit to these places.
During the weekdays, there thankfully weren't so many parties so our lives calmed down a little and we moved around for other gems of Paris. One of the most memorable places for me was the Church of Sacred Heart- which was not far from the 17th zone of Paris we lived in and was surrounded by cool cafe area that a lot of famous artists lived in. After a little praying/ meditating/ thinking inside, i felt so full of love somehow and i wondered why we could not love universally but preferred our family and friends more than the person sitting in front of me. Evolution probably provides the answer for family (genes) and friends who are often more likely to reciprocate and help us. But love is probably the purest and best when it is unconditional and do we only love our acquaintances because we want to be loved? But then soon after i realized it was much easier said than done because even just traveling with Em i could have been a lot more self-less and loving but wasn't willing to compromise and give up what i wanted to do a lot of times.
We also visited the Versailles and a lot of other tourist places and stayed with another CS host Emmanuel for two nights but enough on Paris... :) oh, and one more thing- crepes. I ate so many crepes in France- mostly chocolate (nutella), cheese, jam, egg, ham- but was also a little sad that there weren't many gourmet crepes in Paris- the best one i had was Boston, which had some African name and had lamb, feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach- absolutely delicious. Although I enjoy crepes, I ate so many than I would because I thought i) I will be selling crepes this summer with Hanna and ii) other European cities won’t have as many crepes but neither turned out to be true so excessive crepe eating was quite unnecessary…
And lastly we were also invited by Cecile to come swim at a naked swimming pool but unfortunately (or fortunately) we missed the train stop so oh well… Em and I also got caught by the police free riding on a bus and I learned that fees are negotiable as Cecile somehow brought down the price from 40 euros to 20. When the police came into the bus to check tickets, it was like seeing a bear and after debating whether we should run out of the bus or pretend to sleep, we decided to pretend to sleep but that turned out to be not a good idea as the police woke us up anyways to check for our ticket.
AMSTERDAM
As it was the Easter weekend, all the hostels were full in Amsterdam and despite having sent many many couchsurfing requests, it seemed like all the Couch hosts were booked out too. But then Hannah saved me, as she had a friend Sergio from Barcelona in Amsterdam and he led us to a squatter under the bridge which was a convenient 10-minute walk away from the center of the city. Compared to the squatter in Paris which was a house, this one was huge as the space was originally built as an exhibition hall. And there were lot more people living inside as well- they had renovated the space so it contained the kitchen, and they were also working on getting a shower (so for the three days i was there i could not take a shower unfortunately...)
The squatter was a very interesting place for me- most people living them identified themselves as anarchists (although this is an umbrella term with many many colors), and although i always thought anarchists to be anti-government people, most seemed to be more dissatisfied economically with the state of today's capitalism.
But it was also ironic to me that they are living off the excess of the capitalist system that they criticize so much- People build too much and therefore have unused buildings so the anarchists live in them- people produce & waste too much goods & food so the anarchists take them- they get most of their food and clothes, furniture etc from dumps and supermarkets- and I would like to have been on one of these scavenge hunts but didn’t get a chance.
And i was not sure how much work they are doing towards building an alternative, more just system- people whom i met in the kibbutz (more on kibbutz soon in Israel part) were working hard to be self-sufficient and provide for themselves, but how much were these squatter residents working? Some of them i talked to told me they don't really do anything and i was reminded of my friend who loves the idealism of hippies but is disappointed by their lack of action... Many had outside jobs but some of them seemed like they drink and smoke pot all day. But there definitely was a lot of artistic talent- a lot of cool graffiti, live music and DJ action- and they were also working on turning the building into a multi-media center and some i heard are genius programmers and hackers.
The people i met there were all definitely lovely people though- i met a Palestine guy and a Romanian girl couple who had moved there from London, and they are people with really bright and beautiful minds and hearts but didn’t know what is going to happen to them/ the squatter in a couple of years. They were very interested in creating a more just society and although I got the impression they felt powerless, they somehow saw a revolution coming…
In the squatter, i learned to sleep with the music blasting (music often played till 4am and even later on weekends but i'd learn to go to sleep with the help of some alcohol). Although most people I met were friendly and kind, i did have a negative experience in the squatter as well- which was getting all my valuables (wallet, camera & laptop) stolen- Fortunately, i had a little bag with emergency cash and credit card so i wasn't in that bad position- but the camera and the laptop have not only financial but a lot of emotional value and i was very depressed to see all my writings, music and photos (photos of Paris & Amsterdam- two cities i loved) go. My camera had also been with me everywhere and it had been such a loyal camera, and losing my wallet also sucked a lot because i had a lot of people's contacts from all over the world. I was pretty seriously distraught after all my stuff disappeared and the first thing i wanted to do was pack up and go home, but talking to my family helped and they were really supportive so on and on i continued with my journey.
If there is a modern day equivalent of Sodom and Gomora, perhaps Amsterdam will be the most likely candidate- and i didn't like the Red District vibe. Amsterdam is a beautiful city architecturally and naturally with all the canals (loved biking through it), but i hated being able to smell weed and see drunk people in the middle of the street and look at countless scantily dressed prostitutes street after street in the Red Light District. Ironically, we found a Christian hostel in the middle of the Red light district and i had some nice chat with the girl working there- i love talking to (non-evangelizing) religious people... :) but i have to admit that i did go to the sex museum though- and although it was interesting for a little bit, it was too much (btw, I feel like the sex museum is for people who are a little too timid to go to a prostitute or a live sex show )... and in the central Dam Square they had also installed a glitzy little amusement park which i also did not like too much as it just seemed commercial and overwhelm the subtle natural charm of the city.
Basically Anne Frank memorial house seemed really out of place in this crazy city. I had also read Anne Frank’s diary when I was little, and it was quite a powerful experience visiting the actual place where she lived.
Along with the paintings of genius Dutch artists such as Rembrandt and Verneer, the main museum in Amsterdam also boasted fascinating items from the Dutch Golden Age- when the tiny Netherlands was one of the world's dominant powers. I've heard the theory that Jews were a big help as tolerance in the Netherlands attracted a lot of rich Jews fleeing from persecution around Europe (lesson here: tolerances brings prosperity? :) but no matter how they did it, i'm really impressed by power & determination of the Dutch people- despite their meager population of sixteen million (this is today), they have conquered the sea worldwide and more than half of Holland was reclaimed from the sea. They have also built mega corporations like the Royal Dutch Shell and Phillips (incidentally the Dutch were the first to conceive the notion of a corporation), have produced unearthly soccer players, amazing painters, rich culture, Heineken and marvelous botanical techniques which were in good display at the Kukenhof gardens. The sight of rows and rows of tulips under a windmill was such a typical Dutch sight, and they had produced some wonderful hybrids of the flowers.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Europe Part I (Italy, Spain, the UK) Mar 10- Apr 3
Where should i start? So much to write about... Although i had been to this continent three times and have lived in Prague for three months, i was not really self-conscious in my earlier trips (my first time here in second grade i logged over 50 hours on my gameboy- Pokemon was cool then...) and now after this trip i feel much more cultured and even jealous of the Europeans, who have inherited such rich and fascinating culture, history, and romance... My five weeks in Western Europe visiting six countries have been simply amazing and too short, and despite the killer prices and getting valuables stolen in a squatter in Amsterdam, i'm in love with Europe and will probably be back soon.
ITALY
I started my trip in Rome with my family, making a round the globe journey from New Zealand via Hong Kong and London. And the first thing that struck me in Rome was what a small and young world i had been living in. In Christchurch (the second biggest city in NZ) there is a cathedral in the center of the city which is the city's most famous landmark and Seoul also has a landmark cathedral while Exeter has few tiny (but cosy) churches. But in Rome, there are cathedrals that are a lot bigger than the one in NZ and Korea every block. And visiting the Vatican City was simply jaw dropping... After getting over the initial unease at the godly wealth of the church (the argument i heard was that grand magnificent catherals instill sense of awe for common people and great paintings serve educational purpose as most of the people were illiterate), i really felt overwhelmed and in awe by the grandeur of the church. (Just how rich are these guys?) i think churches and religious groups should have to report financial statements just like the NGOs and private companies- i mean the religious leaders should lead the way on financial transparency no?)
But the highlight of the Vatican tour was meeting the geniuses- mainly Da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. Da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man who dabbled in everything and was brilliant at everything, while Raphael was a cunning playboy who knew how to win the pope and other powerful aristocrats' favor but died of STDs in his thirties (but a briliant painter nonetheless), and Michelangelo was a lonely old man whose specialty was sculputures but could paint damn good too (btw, i think Sculpture may be one of the highest echelons of art- it's so much like the act of God's creation that one is breathing life into a rock- and his Pieta is...(undescribable)). Dante or Goethe or some poetic guy said one cannot know what a man is capable of achieving until you visit the Sistine Chapel, which is a masterpiece of Michelangelo with two large paintings on the ceiling and on the wall (the most famous one perhaps being Adam doing the ET thing with God), and i certainly developed reverence for this great painter who devoted 14 years of his life and a lot of his health (he became quite crippled and blind after working in an uncomfortable position with toxic chemicals for so long) to create this masterpiece. Your neck becomes quite sore after you stare at the ceiling though... And one depressing thing about some of the Christian symbolisms in the Renaissance paintings- St. Paul's symbol is a knife as he had his head beheaded, and St. someone's symbol is arrows as he died from being shot with arrows so these poor guys always appear in painting with weapons with which they were killed... :(
(Btw, St Paul's Cathedral was sort of disappointing compared to St. Peter's... Paul was probably just as important for the spreading of Christianity as Peter was (and Karen Armstrong even argues that St. Paul founded Christianity not Jesus) and i don't think he's getting enough credit for his work... but then there's a passage in the Bible in which Jesus says to Peter upon your rock or tomb i'll build my kingdom or something so that may be why...)
I also had a chance to see the Pope on a Sunday briefly, as he showed himself out of a window up high on one of the buildigns to a mass of crowd packed in the St. Peter's Square. I felt like the Pope was like the biggest rock star ever, as he gave a brief prayer (i didn't get blessed btw... blessings are apparently another time) and was met with thunderous applause and cheer from the crowd. And although i attended a little quieter service inside St. Peter's afterwards, it was very hard to concentrate on the service when you had such fancy gleaming decorations all around you and tourists move around so much. But visiting the Vatican was certainly a testament to how much power the Church holds across the globe.
And for the record, i ran around a country (Vatican) under 20 minutes and got a stamp from the Vatican for my letter (oops i forgot to get my passport stamped- i don't know if i can)- and maybe i should have tried one year of Latin i've learned but didn't get to boast my Latin skills... :)
I also visited the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Catacombs, the Pantheon and many beautiful squares in Rome, as well as Pompeii and briefly Sorento but don't have much to comment about these touristy places...(actually unfortunately don't remember much as i'm writing a month and half later... :(
Outside of Rome, i visited Assisi to get away from the city- and it was a nice break staying overnight at a monastery on top of a beautiful hill where the medieval village was very well preserved. I felt like I could meditate, pray and read the Bible all day in this lovely little village. And St. Francesco, the star of the town and founder of the Franciscan Order, is super cool also- he received Jesus' bloodmark signs on his body and could talk to the birds.
My Italy trip concluded in Florence & Pisa- a scenic Renaissance town boating a grand Domed Cathedral with the biggest fresco in the world and the Uffizi Museum. Although Renaissance art is incredible, my only thing against it is that as the subject matter shifts from religious didactic scenes to classical scenes, normal people who are not very well-versed in the classics (like me) start to not understand the paintings but art back then was a priviledge of the rich and i guess if they want to be elitist, can't do anything about that.. :) i should also mention that these Italian art survived and remained in Florence thanks to wisdom of a wise woman of the once mighty Medici family. When Florence was invaded by the Austrians, she donated all the great art the Medici family owned with the condition that the artworks remain in Florence... :)
Although i do not remember much of touristy spots, i do remember meeting some great Romans (modern ones). I went to my first house party in Europe in Rome and drank not cheap beer but Shanglia (spelling? - mix of wine and fruits), and i also learned to greet with European kisses (i like kissing so totally approve of this custom- a little different in each European country though some are two and others three). I also walked around a cool hang out area in Rome (i love European cafe areas with narrow streets at night- so romantic.. :) and visited a Caesar museum (there are a ton of museums in Rome) with my archeology couchsurfing host.
My mom, my brother and I had a little family trip for the first time in a few years and although there were some little conflicts amongst generally good time, arguments are how love is displayed in my family so it was all cool.
SPAIN
Barcelona was a cool funky place where i met more geniuses and my favorite couchsurfing host Hanna. The first genius i met here was Gaudi, a crazy dude who lived in the early 20th century and designed some wacky colorful undulating buildings (he was workaholic and didn't even marry to focus on his work). Sangria Famila (excuse my spelling), which is being built for over a century and is still being built, may be the most famous of his work, but his other works such as Park Goel and other houses he designed were also amazing. I love how the two biggest inspirations for his work were his Catholic faith and nature (well... a guy from Barcelona i met at the squatter in Amsterdam told me drugs also played a big role in his innovative design but yeah so much great came out of alcohol and drugs and maybe great architecture needs a little bit of smoking as well...:). Park Goel has unforgetable houses that seem to be the model for the chocolate and snack houses from the story of Handel and Gretel (excuse my spelling again), and one of his villas has alien like structures on top that was also quite memorable. (Of course the inside and outsides of Sangria Familia is the best...- inside he tried to build a forest.. just google image it..:)
Other geniuses i ran into into were Pablo Piccaso (i went to the Piccaso museum)- and it was really cool to see some of his not-so-famous paintings from his youth and his evolution as an artist- i saw a painting from when he was fourteen and boy he is a genius... i'd like to see more of how his cubism technique came about but there was a gap of 10 years between his blue period and cubism period in the museum unfortunately- the emergence of cubism was not very thoroughly explained... and i also went to free Richard something exhibition and he's the guy who designed the Pompidou Center (amazing building with the brilliant idea of showing the insides of the building outside) as well as parts of Heathrow Airport and many many other things (he also has an ongoing project in Korea)- Architecture is so so so cool.. :)
Hanna & Rulfo (her dog) were quite lovely... i got sick of staying at Korean hostels which gave me two Korean meals a day so i couchsearched and found Hanna (or she found me). She lived in the heart of Barcelona close to Las Rambla (a really cool street with the pedestrian paths in the middle and cars going on the side- i appreciated being considered more important than cars.. :) and i had wonderful time with her & Marley (another Canadian couchsurfer who spent few days with us) cooking pizza, Spanish tortilla, going to a Spanish market, a naked beach (unfortunately the only person naked were old couple and really old man playing with himself), flamenco show (i love flamenco- so much passion & energy- i love guitar & i love tap dancing so it's perfect for me), and exploring other parts of Barcelona. I also enjoyed going for runs on the beach with Rulfo and hopefully i'll have a dog to run with again soon- or maybe i'll start dog-work-out business. (When i went to Zoe's i'd find out not all dogs like to run though... )
Thanks to Josh, i went to go watch FC Barcelona play and they are unbeatable... they played Malaga which is a pretty good team and crushed them 6-0 ( i think it was like 5-0 by half time...) Henry-Eto-Messi attacking line is simply marvelous (probably one of the best strikers from each continent) and Messi really does play with a lot of style- sort of like Maradona. But i also felt a little sorry for Malaga who had no chance against the superstars... sports is a big part of the morale for many people and i don't know- people in the urban areas tend to be richer and if these rich soccer clubs (i.e Chelsea, Real Madrid, AC/Inter Milan, Man Utd, Arsenal, Barca the list goes on) in cities keep beating small clubs not by hard work but simply by purchasing expensive super stars, is it really fair sportsmanship? :(
Lastly, Spanish Paella is delicious (esp. eaten at Spanish dinner time of 10, 11pm) and i did do siesta s few times and that is a quite good idea as well.. :) Too bad the world does not have time for siestas any more...
Oh, and Spanish is gonna be JY's fourth language and i've started taking lessons on my i-pod- no offence but it may not sound as mellifluous and sing-songy as Italian and as posh as French but it has its own thing and i love the idea of covering a sexy European country plus an entire continent with just one language (well mius Brazil but then plus Mexico so that makes a continent- and Portguese is similar enough) and they have lot of political/ economic/ enviornmental problems so maybe i can do some good there- i should visit my Korean- peace-corp-ing cousin in Peru soon... and even just in the US Hispanics are just getting bigger and bigger so doing some Spanish wouldn[t hurt... also definitely wanna see more of Spain - i was fascinated to learn that even within Spain there are few differnet languages (Barcelona for example speaks Catalan) and i wanna go south to see Spain's Islamic heritage and the Alambra Palace (excuse my spelling)- it comes up in one of my faovrite classical guitar songs i played :) Also yet to check out bull fighting although i don't know i thought i love animals but sometimes i feel a little bloodthirsty- and i love cultures and this is definitely a big part of Spanish culture.. i don't know how to reconcile my creative and destructive impulses within me as i was very happy destorying forest of weed with my spade this morning (in a kibbutz in Israel right now but more on this later...)
ENGLAND
My trip in England started in Oxford, where i had a few friends from Exeter and also family friends such as Dr Kang who was doing his research on Oriental Medical history and Prof Shu- a mecical anthropologist who stayed at my house last summer as she was doing research in Korea. (unfortunately i was in the US... :( )As it was spring break at Oxford, I did not get to meet Prof Shu and the two Exonians but i had great time staying with Dr Kang, who showed me around Oxford's numerous colleges.
The sense of history and tradition at the place was quite astounding- to see a college that was founded in the 12th cenutry- And it was really amazing to hear about how the superstars of the Western World- the Clintons and Mr Blair to more old school Mr Locke and many many others- spent their time here... And Dr. Kang told me about running into Richard Dawkins at a supermarket and meeting with Jared Diamond and other intellectual stars (when i was there his daughter went to meet with one of the most famous picture book writers in the English speaking world) so it seems like it's a pretty big intellectual feast there...
I also visited the meeting places of the 'Inklings' - Lewis and Tolkien's favorite pub "Eagle and Child" and it was entertaining to learn that they had met there every Tuesday MORNING to discuss their writings and drink beer. Pretty intense people drinking in the morning... but then Dr Kang said some of his professors even offer drinks in class so i guess drinking's pretty norm for the Brits. (He explained that back in the old days professors were not allowed to get married as being a professor was a sacred calling like being a priest so the only friend they had might have been alcohol...) i also heard many interesting things about Oxford such as the tutorial system and the college system and he told me some interesting things about the North Koreans living in Japan still without basic human rights and stories of his friend professor who decided to go into Iraq just to see what a war is like first hand among many other things.. (for Koreans he's friends with Choate Hong btw- we had an interesting convo about him as well... :)
Then i moved to London where i stayed at Zoe's cosy house near the Regent's Park (beautiful park to run in), and London may just as well be one of the most exciting cosmopolitan cities in the world. There was just so much culture there including top-notch art galleries and musuems (which are free! :), good theater- i went to a 10 pound Ibsen play which was quite excellent i thought (Zoe didn't agree...guess my tastes arent that refined but perhaps it's better this way... :), and although i didn't get a chance to check them out, i'm sure London has amazing nigth life and music scene as well.
I met Zoe at the Britsih Museum and although i could feel the power of the bygone British Empire, it was also a little depressing to see all the national munuments (probably) stolen from their original homes. The Greeks want their Pantheon back and the Egyptians want their Rosetta Stone back, but no chance the Brits are giving up all they've pillaged and accumulated over the years. The argument is that it's better for all the treasures of the world to be at one place because these monuments advertise their home nations but i don't know- that kind of seems like Brits' excuse... and the Korean Hall was interesting but not exactly exciting... (thought the Japanese and the Chinese did much better job- ok maybe there comes my 'Korea-is-the-most- boring-country-in East Asia-complex again, but i guess i should be proud of the fact that Koreans have our own space unlike Africans who are just clumped together as 'Africa' and many other nations who don't have their own home in this museum.
The time i was in London happened to coincide with the G-20 conference, and i basically took a 'financial tour' of London visiting the RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), Canary Wharf, and the London Stock exchange to check out the protests, giant monopolgy game and a massive ice cube but unfortunately, i somehowed missed all the protests and the only one i ended up going to was the biggest one in front of the RBS. I got there around 11:45am, and although it was festive mood and fun for the first hour, the police penned in the protesters in the square and that became not so fun as i had to go to the bathroom and there wasn't one and i was thirsty but there were no shops to buy water from. The protesters started to get angry too and some threw bottles and food at the police- i really don't understand why the police would lock people in like this- peaceful people who would otherwise just stay at the protest for an hour or so and then go home are caged in which just makes them bored and angry. Maybe the police thinks that once you lock up people, they will not come to more protests in the future but as citizens in a democratic society i thought we had rights to protest... it was also striking to see an effigy of a banker hung on a tree and it was a little scary as i'm going to a big finance school (although i'm not that interested in finance). And i also wondered about the efficacy of these protests- although it's nice that these causes get some media attention, do the people in power actually care? i don't know if there is any other better way but thought protests may not be the most effective way to do things... plus although most people seemed pretty chill and hippie (the group was a mix of anti- (excessive & greedy) capitalists, environmentalists and anti-nuclear ists), some were just angry people (perhaps they have been treated unjustly and have rights to be angry) and when one is in state of anger it is difficult to think rationally and resolve the problem. i also saw the V (V for Vendetta) and some anarchists but disappointingly nothing was set on fire -but more on anarchists under the Netherlands section.
There was also the Oxford-Cambridge crew race in London when i was there and Zoe and i met Robert (Canadian 08) to go see the race. There was a lot of hype before and during the race and although it was nice to see Robert, the race itself wasn't that cool but i'm also not a rower so may be a little biased... it was funny to see how none of the athletes were undergrads and many were MBA students who had been recruited from an ivy in the US. (In the US undergrad sports are big with NCAA but in the UK it seemed like grad students are bigger part of sports scene). I got to watch the very beginning of the race along the Thames (well, not really as there was a barrier of people in front of me) but this was the first crew race i watched in my life and i guess it's a pretty good one. Also seems a little elitists that the river is closed for only the boats of two universities to compete and wondered if Ox-bridge has this many graduates as there were apparently 250,000 people watching the race.
And the Kew Garden- probably one of the most important botanical gardens in the world- was good too despite the fact that it was a little before the full bloom season- gardening is Brits' favorite past time and Kew certainly does have a really interesting collection. And they are engaged in a project that tries to preserve seeds of all the endangered plants around the world so yeah! (hmm, come to think about it maybe i should preserve my sperms and perhaps somebody in the future would want some of my genes... anyways, yeah i wonder if they collect genes and sperms/eggs for endangered animals and if bringing back animals from DNA will be possible some time soon...(don't remember Jurassic Park exactly) And also funny that the symbol of the Kew Garden is a Chinese pagoda...
Other touristy things i did include going to the London Tower where the tour guide talked a lot about executions, and reproduced version of Shakespeare's Globe (funny an American started a fund-raising campagin for this), St. Paul's Cathedral & Westminster Abbey (went inside neither places though bc they made me pay and after the Vatican's St Peter's, Florence's Duoma and the Sangria Familia (and Notre Dame later), i didn't feel a need to see more Cathedrals, and also saw the London Eye and the Buckingham Palace from the outside- oh, and did i mention the Tate modern and National Gallery- i love art and can look at them all day... :) i also visited the Sherlock Holmes museum and wanted to go to the Freud and Benjamin Franklin museums as well (founder of my uni yeah!) but didn't have time so maybe next time.. :)
And another thanks to Zoe and her family although she's probably not gonna read this- i visited during a busy time for her when she had only a week off between just having finished her teaching English course and preparing to go to the US and plan the rest of her gap year and she had other stuff during the week such as meeting with friends and giving a presentation at her school but she was still a great host (she certainly seemed a lot better than she did in China...) She also made me some pancakes, salad and pies (for my birthday) all of which i love so it was all good.. and her parents were super generous too. Also interesting for me to see how her parents were more involved in the kids' lives than my parents were- don't know if this is good or bad as i know my parents love me very dearly, but my parents and i grew up in very different environments so it is what is is i guess... :)
Lastly, Zoe and i watched 'Vicki and Christina in Barcelona' and loved that movie for many many reasons... :)
ITALY
I started my trip in Rome with my family, making a round the globe journey from New Zealand via Hong Kong and London. And the first thing that struck me in Rome was what a small and young world i had been living in. In Christchurch (the second biggest city in NZ) there is a cathedral in the center of the city which is the city's most famous landmark and Seoul also has a landmark cathedral while Exeter has few tiny (but cosy) churches. But in Rome, there are cathedrals that are a lot bigger than the one in NZ and Korea every block. And visiting the Vatican City was simply jaw dropping... After getting over the initial unease at the godly wealth of the church (the argument i heard was that grand magnificent catherals instill sense of awe for common people and great paintings serve educational purpose as most of the people were illiterate), i really felt overwhelmed and in awe by the grandeur of the church. (Just how rich are these guys?) i think churches and religious groups should have to report financial statements just like the NGOs and private companies- i mean the religious leaders should lead the way on financial transparency no?)
But the highlight of the Vatican tour was meeting the geniuses- mainly Da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. Da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man who dabbled in everything and was brilliant at everything, while Raphael was a cunning playboy who knew how to win the pope and other powerful aristocrats' favor but died of STDs in his thirties (but a briliant painter nonetheless), and Michelangelo was a lonely old man whose specialty was sculputures but could paint damn good too (btw, i think Sculpture may be one of the highest echelons of art- it's so much like the act of God's creation that one is breathing life into a rock- and his Pieta is...(undescribable)). Dante or Goethe or some poetic guy said one cannot know what a man is capable of achieving until you visit the Sistine Chapel, which is a masterpiece of Michelangelo with two large paintings on the ceiling and on the wall (the most famous one perhaps being Adam doing the ET thing with God), and i certainly developed reverence for this great painter who devoted 14 years of his life and a lot of his health (he became quite crippled and blind after working in an uncomfortable position with toxic chemicals for so long) to create this masterpiece. Your neck becomes quite sore after you stare at the ceiling though... And one depressing thing about some of the Christian symbolisms in the Renaissance paintings- St. Paul's symbol is a knife as he had his head beheaded, and St. someone's symbol is arrows as he died from being shot with arrows so these poor guys always appear in painting with weapons with which they were killed... :(
(Btw, St Paul's Cathedral was sort of disappointing compared to St. Peter's... Paul was probably just as important for the spreading of Christianity as Peter was (and Karen Armstrong even argues that St. Paul founded Christianity not Jesus) and i don't think he's getting enough credit for his work... but then there's a passage in the Bible in which Jesus says to Peter upon your rock or tomb i'll build my kingdom or something so that may be why...)
I also had a chance to see the Pope on a Sunday briefly, as he showed himself out of a window up high on one of the buildigns to a mass of crowd packed in the St. Peter's Square. I felt like the Pope was like the biggest rock star ever, as he gave a brief prayer (i didn't get blessed btw... blessings are apparently another time) and was met with thunderous applause and cheer from the crowd. And although i attended a little quieter service inside St. Peter's afterwards, it was very hard to concentrate on the service when you had such fancy gleaming decorations all around you and tourists move around so much. But visiting the Vatican was certainly a testament to how much power the Church holds across the globe.
And for the record, i ran around a country (Vatican) under 20 minutes and got a stamp from the Vatican for my letter (oops i forgot to get my passport stamped- i don't know if i can)- and maybe i should have tried one year of Latin i've learned but didn't get to boast my Latin skills... :)
I also visited the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Catacombs, the Pantheon and many beautiful squares in Rome, as well as Pompeii and briefly Sorento but don't have much to comment about these touristy places...(actually unfortunately don't remember much as i'm writing a month and half later... :(
Outside of Rome, i visited Assisi to get away from the city- and it was a nice break staying overnight at a monastery on top of a beautiful hill where the medieval village was very well preserved. I felt like I could meditate, pray and read the Bible all day in this lovely little village. And St. Francesco, the star of the town and founder of the Franciscan Order, is super cool also- he received Jesus' bloodmark signs on his body and could talk to the birds.
My Italy trip concluded in Florence & Pisa- a scenic Renaissance town boating a grand Domed Cathedral with the biggest fresco in the world and the Uffizi Museum. Although Renaissance art is incredible, my only thing against it is that as the subject matter shifts from religious didactic scenes to classical scenes, normal people who are not very well-versed in the classics (like me) start to not understand the paintings but art back then was a priviledge of the rich and i guess if they want to be elitist, can't do anything about that.. :) i should also mention that these Italian art survived and remained in Florence thanks to wisdom of a wise woman of the once mighty Medici family. When Florence was invaded by the Austrians, she donated all the great art the Medici family owned with the condition that the artworks remain in Florence... :)
Although i do not remember much of touristy spots, i do remember meeting some great Romans (modern ones). I went to my first house party in Europe in Rome and drank not cheap beer but Shanglia (spelling? - mix of wine and fruits), and i also learned to greet with European kisses (i like kissing so totally approve of this custom- a little different in each European country though some are two and others three). I also walked around a cool hang out area in Rome (i love European cafe areas with narrow streets at night- so romantic.. :) and visited a Caesar museum (there are a ton of museums in Rome) with my archeology couchsurfing host.
My mom, my brother and I had a little family trip for the first time in a few years and although there were some little conflicts amongst generally good time, arguments are how love is displayed in my family so it was all cool.
SPAIN
Barcelona was a cool funky place where i met more geniuses and my favorite couchsurfing host Hanna. The first genius i met here was Gaudi, a crazy dude who lived in the early 20th century and designed some wacky colorful undulating buildings (he was workaholic and didn't even marry to focus on his work). Sangria Famila (excuse my spelling), which is being built for over a century and is still being built, may be the most famous of his work, but his other works such as Park Goel and other houses he designed were also amazing. I love how the two biggest inspirations for his work were his Catholic faith and nature (well... a guy from Barcelona i met at the squatter in Amsterdam told me drugs also played a big role in his innovative design but yeah so much great came out of alcohol and drugs and maybe great architecture needs a little bit of smoking as well...:). Park Goel has unforgetable houses that seem to be the model for the chocolate and snack houses from the story of Handel and Gretel (excuse my spelling again), and one of his villas has alien like structures on top that was also quite memorable. (Of course the inside and outsides of Sangria Familia is the best...- inside he tried to build a forest.. just google image it..:)
Other geniuses i ran into into were Pablo Piccaso (i went to the Piccaso museum)- and it was really cool to see some of his not-so-famous paintings from his youth and his evolution as an artist- i saw a painting from when he was fourteen and boy he is a genius... i'd like to see more of how his cubism technique came about but there was a gap of 10 years between his blue period and cubism period in the museum unfortunately- the emergence of cubism was not very thoroughly explained... and i also went to free Richard something exhibition and he's the guy who designed the Pompidou Center (amazing building with the brilliant idea of showing the insides of the building outside) as well as parts of Heathrow Airport and many many other things (he also has an ongoing project in Korea)- Architecture is so so so cool.. :)
Hanna & Rulfo (her dog) were quite lovely... i got sick of staying at Korean hostels which gave me two Korean meals a day so i couchsearched and found Hanna (or she found me). She lived in the heart of Barcelona close to Las Rambla (a really cool street with the pedestrian paths in the middle and cars going on the side- i appreciated being considered more important than cars.. :) and i had wonderful time with her & Marley (another Canadian couchsurfer who spent few days with us) cooking pizza, Spanish tortilla, going to a Spanish market, a naked beach (unfortunately the only person naked were old couple and really old man playing with himself), flamenco show (i love flamenco- so much passion & energy- i love guitar & i love tap dancing so it's perfect for me), and exploring other parts of Barcelona. I also enjoyed going for runs on the beach with Rulfo and hopefully i'll have a dog to run with again soon- or maybe i'll start dog-work-out business. (When i went to Zoe's i'd find out not all dogs like to run though... )
Thanks to Josh, i went to go watch FC Barcelona play and they are unbeatable... they played Malaga which is a pretty good team and crushed them 6-0 ( i think it was like 5-0 by half time...) Henry-Eto-Messi attacking line is simply marvelous (probably one of the best strikers from each continent) and Messi really does play with a lot of style- sort of like Maradona. But i also felt a little sorry for Malaga who had no chance against the superstars... sports is a big part of the morale for many people and i don't know- people in the urban areas tend to be richer and if these rich soccer clubs (i.e Chelsea, Real Madrid, AC/Inter Milan, Man Utd, Arsenal, Barca the list goes on) in cities keep beating small clubs not by hard work but simply by purchasing expensive super stars, is it really fair sportsmanship? :(
Lastly, Spanish Paella is delicious (esp. eaten at Spanish dinner time of 10, 11pm) and i did do siesta s few times and that is a quite good idea as well.. :) Too bad the world does not have time for siestas any more...
Oh, and Spanish is gonna be JY's fourth language and i've started taking lessons on my i-pod- no offence but it may not sound as mellifluous and sing-songy as Italian and as posh as French but it has its own thing and i love the idea of covering a sexy European country plus an entire continent with just one language (well mius Brazil but then plus Mexico so that makes a continent- and Portguese is similar enough) and they have lot of political/ economic/ enviornmental problems so maybe i can do some good there- i should visit my Korean- peace-corp-ing cousin in Peru soon... and even just in the US Hispanics are just getting bigger and bigger so doing some Spanish wouldn[t hurt... also definitely wanna see more of Spain - i was fascinated to learn that even within Spain there are few differnet languages (Barcelona for example speaks Catalan) and i wanna go south to see Spain's Islamic heritage and the Alambra Palace (excuse my spelling)- it comes up in one of my faovrite classical guitar songs i played :) Also yet to check out bull fighting although i don't know i thought i love animals but sometimes i feel a little bloodthirsty- and i love cultures and this is definitely a big part of Spanish culture.. i don't know how to reconcile my creative and destructive impulses within me as i was very happy destorying forest of weed with my spade this morning (in a kibbutz in Israel right now but more on this later...)
ENGLAND
My trip in England started in Oxford, where i had a few friends from Exeter and also family friends such as Dr Kang who was doing his research on Oriental Medical history and Prof Shu- a mecical anthropologist who stayed at my house last summer as she was doing research in Korea. (unfortunately i was in the US... :( )As it was spring break at Oxford, I did not get to meet Prof Shu and the two Exonians but i had great time staying with Dr Kang, who showed me around Oxford's numerous colleges.
The sense of history and tradition at the place was quite astounding- to see a college that was founded in the 12th cenutry- And it was really amazing to hear about how the superstars of the Western World- the Clintons and Mr Blair to more old school Mr Locke and many many others- spent their time here... And Dr. Kang told me about running into Richard Dawkins at a supermarket and meeting with Jared Diamond and other intellectual stars (when i was there his daughter went to meet with one of the most famous picture book writers in the English speaking world) so it seems like it's a pretty big intellectual feast there...
I also visited the meeting places of the 'Inklings' - Lewis and Tolkien's favorite pub "Eagle and Child" and it was entertaining to learn that they had met there every Tuesday MORNING to discuss their writings and drink beer. Pretty intense people drinking in the morning... but then Dr Kang said some of his professors even offer drinks in class so i guess drinking's pretty norm for the Brits. (He explained that back in the old days professors were not allowed to get married as being a professor was a sacred calling like being a priest so the only friend they had might have been alcohol...) i also heard many interesting things about Oxford such as the tutorial system and the college system and he told me some interesting things about the North Koreans living in Japan still without basic human rights and stories of his friend professor who decided to go into Iraq just to see what a war is like first hand among many other things.. (for Koreans he's friends with Choate Hong btw- we had an interesting convo about him as well... :)
Then i moved to London where i stayed at Zoe's cosy house near the Regent's Park (beautiful park to run in), and London may just as well be one of the most exciting cosmopolitan cities in the world. There was just so much culture there including top-notch art galleries and musuems (which are free! :), good theater- i went to a 10 pound Ibsen play which was quite excellent i thought (Zoe didn't agree...guess my tastes arent that refined but perhaps it's better this way... :), and although i didn't get a chance to check them out, i'm sure London has amazing nigth life and music scene as well.
I met Zoe at the Britsih Museum and although i could feel the power of the bygone British Empire, it was also a little depressing to see all the national munuments (probably) stolen from their original homes. The Greeks want their Pantheon back and the Egyptians want their Rosetta Stone back, but no chance the Brits are giving up all they've pillaged and accumulated over the years. The argument is that it's better for all the treasures of the world to be at one place because these monuments advertise their home nations but i don't know- that kind of seems like Brits' excuse... and the Korean Hall was interesting but not exactly exciting... (thought the Japanese and the Chinese did much better job- ok maybe there comes my 'Korea-is-the-most- boring-country-in East Asia-complex again, but i guess i should be proud of the fact that Koreans have our own space unlike Africans who are just clumped together as 'Africa' and many other nations who don't have their own home in this museum.
The time i was in London happened to coincide with the G-20 conference, and i basically took a 'financial tour' of London visiting the RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), Canary Wharf, and the London Stock exchange to check out the protests, giant monopolgy game and a massive ice cube but unfortunately, i somehowed missed all the protests and the only one i ended up going to was the biggest one in front of the RBS. I got there around 11:45am, and although it was festive mood and fun for the first hour, the police penned in the protesters in the square and that became not so fun as i had to go to the bathroom and there wasn't one and i was thirsty but there were no shops to buy water from. The protesters started to get angry too and some threw bottles and food at the police- i really don't understand why the police would lock people in like this- peaceful people who would otherwise just stay at the protest for an hour or so and then go home are caged in which just makes them bored and angry. Maybe the police thinks that once you lock up people, they will not come to more protests in the future but as citizens in a democratic society i thought we had rights to protest... it was also striking to see an effigy of a banker hung on a tree and it was a little scary as i'm going to a big finance school (although i'm not that interested in finance). And i also wondered about the efficacy of these protests- although it's nice that these causes get some media attention, do the people in power actually care? i don't know if there is any other better way but thought protests may not be the most effective way to do things... plus although most people seemed pretty chill and hippie (the group was a mix of anti- (excessive & greedy) capitalists, environmentalists and anti-nuclear ists), some were just angry people (perhaps they have been treated unjustly and have rights to be angry) and when one is in state of anger it is difficult to think rationally and resolve the problem. i also saw the V (V for Vendetta) and some anarchists but disappointingly nothing was set on fire -but more on anarchists under the Netherlands section.
There was also the Oxford-Cambridge crew race in London when i was there and Zoe and i met Robert (Canadian 08) to go see the race. There was a lot of hype before and during the race and although it was nice to see Robert, the race itself wasn't that cool but i'm also not a rower so may be a little biased... it was funny to see how none of the athletes were undergrads and many were MBA students who had been recruited from an ivy in the US. (In the US undergrad sports are big with NCAA but in the UK it seemed like grad students are bigger part of sports scene). I got to watch the very beginning of the race along the Thames (well, not really as there was a barrier of people in front of me) but this was the first crew race i watched in my life and i guess it's a pretty good one. Also seems a little elitists that the river is closed for only the boats of two universities to compete and wondered if Ox-bridge has this many graduates as there were apparently 250,000 people watching the race.
And the Kew Garden- probably one of the most important botanical gardens in the world- was good too despite the fact that it was a little before the full bloom season- gardening is Brits' favorite past time and Kew certainly does have a really interesting collection. And they are engaged in a project that tries to preserve seeds of all the endangered plants around the world so yeah! (hmm, come to think about it maybe i should preserve my sperms and perhaps somebody in the future would want some of my genes... anyways, yeah i wonder if they collect genes and sperms/eggs for endangered animals and if bringing back animals from DNA will be possible some time soon...(don't remember Jurassic Park exactly) And also funny that the symbol of the Kew Garden is a Chinese pagoda...
Other touristy things i did include going to the London Tower where the tour guide talked a lot about executions, and reproduced version of Shakespeare's Globe (funny an American started a fund-raising campagin for this), St. Paul's Cathedral & Westminster Abbey (went inside neither places though bc they made me pay and after the Vatican's St Peter's, Florence's Duoma and the Sangria Familia (and Notre Dame later), i didn't feel a need to see more Cathedrals, and also saw the London Eye and the Buckingham Palace from the outside- oh, and did i mention the Tate modern and National Gallery- i love art and can look at them all day... :) i also visited the Sherlock Holmes museum and wanted to go to the Freud and Benjamin Franklin museums as well (founder of my uni yeah!) but didn't have time so maybe next time.. :)
And another thanks to Zoe and her family although she's probably not gonna read this- i visited during a busy time for her when she had only a week off between just having finished her teaching English course and preparing to go to the US and plan the rest of her gap year and she had other stuff during the week such as meeting with friends and giving a presentation at her school but she was still a great host (she certainly seemed a lot better than she did in China...) She also made me some pancakes, salad and pies (for my birthday) all of which i love so it was all good.. and her parents were super generous too. Also interesting for me to see how her parents were more involved in the kids' lives than my parents were- don't know if this is good or bad as i know my parents love me very dearly, but my parents and i grew up in very different environments so it is what is is i guess... :)
Lastly, Zoe and i watched 'Vicki and Christina in Barcelona' and loved that movie for many many reasons... :)
Thursday, March 12, 2009
New Zealand (Aotearoa) my home
I’ve been lazy about updating my travel-blog. Not only because i was busy chilling in NZ, but also because i’ve had a lot more difficult time writing about my time in New Zealand. it was easy to write about my experiences in China and india, because my experiences there were so different and i felt like i was learning so much. But here in New Zealand, i don’t know how to put it but i’m not as challenged as i was in india and for the first few days i missed india, which is ironic as my last few days there i couldn’t wait to get out. But after a little time i got into the Kiwi groove and on my last day here, i am sad to leave behind this beautiful land that is such a large part of who i am today.
i frequently get asked where i am from when i am traveling, and although i say i’m from Korea for simplicity’s sake, i see myself as more of a product of New Zealand and Exeter (i don’t want to say i’m from the US because boarding school Exeter bubble is pretty much the only US i know), and i definitely learned more about what it means to be a Kiwi during my month here. My mom once told me how basically i sucked (i was shy and somewhat timid) in Korea and NZ made me lot more confident and adventurous. (i don’t know if this is true, but i do remember on my birthday party in Korea my mom invited my friends without telling me and i didn’t want them around for some reason so i locked myself up in a room and read while my friends played on MY birthday). My early memories of Korea consist of playing soccer and videogames with my friends (i don’t think i was that anti-social but not sureJ, but i was also somewhat or a nerd who loved to play Go (Badook- roughly Chinese/Korean chess) all day (i read big Go books and watched GO TV) and read.
it’s so interesting to try to think back to the first time i set foot on this Land of Long white clouds (Aotearoa= Maori name for NZ), which was roughly 9 years ago, and compare that little boy to who i am today. i didn’t speak much English then- i only started paying attention in my English class after three months of being a mute person in my friend’s British international School in Prague, and i was still pretty mute when i arrived in NZ as well. i think sports was one of the only ways to be somewhat cool and fit in with my friends then, and although i loved sports before going to NZ, the fact i was mute and that NZ is such a sporty outdoorsy country probably intensified my love of sports/ outdoors. i also suspect that i did a lot of math and was good at it as that required least English (or i thought i was good at it until i met US math Olympiad friends in my T3x Mr Feng class), and my love of jazz may also have stemmed from the fact i didn’t understand pop, rock or hip-hop lyrics and jazz is usually word-less. i think i also began to develop appreciation for nature in NZ and living in such beautiful unspoiled country definitely fostered eco-consciousness.
When i arrived on Feb 7 in Auckland after close to 48 hours of flying & airport time via Tokyo and Brisbane from Delhi, it had been more than 5 years since i had left the country, and i was looking forward to seeing how the country and my friends have changed. I hadn’t even given my Kiwi friends a proper farewell- i was supposed to come back here after my winter break in Korea for my high school that i had received merit scholarship from but had decided to go to a school in the US last minute. i had lost touch with them but thanks to the advent of Facebook, i had re-connected with many of my friends and i was looking forward to catching up with my old friends as well. Interestingly, though, i ended up spending more time with my new American Exeter friends as i spent about 1.5 weeks with Marc and 4 days with Nick (yeah Knight House). Most of my old Kiwi friends i just hung out like half-a-day and one overnight, and it’s interesting how as they start university, how much they look/ feel the same but our lives have diverged.
Many of my friends were also no longer in Christchurch, my old town- there were still some left in Christchurch but i met some in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland, and even my teachers had moved as i had to catch up with some of them in Wellington and my other one had moved school twice after i left and i couldn’t track him down. My school (Medbury) had also changed quite a bit since I had left- most of the teachers were gone, the school got a little bigger with 300 boys, and they had built a new gym with an indoor climbing wall and updated the computers with the newest apple. But the spirit of the school seemed to be the same- still Episcopalian and devoted to educating good boys J I also reactivated my alumni account (they call alumni Old Boy btw.) and was excited to be able to hear from my alma mater later.
As i found out, my friends at Medbury turned out to be amazingly athletic bunch. Some of the guys I was playing cricket and rugby during lunch time with had become NZ cross country champion and ran in the World junior cross country championship in Italy (Nick - i was proud of myself for being a high school captain but not really now…), another was a javelin thrower for NZ in junior Olympics in Malaysia (Guy), one was the captain of varsity cricket team in Christ’s College (the oldest high school in New Zealand) and was thinking about maybe going pro (Crinky), and another the captain of the varsity rugby team there (Guy again.. J. In contrast, most of my Korean-kiwi friends had turned out to be extremely bright bunch- most were studying at University of Auckland, NZ’s premier university, and one had graduated university (he’s 19) and had started on his masters program in neuroscience (Steve).
Talking of sports, i certainly did my share of sports here in NZ. I went to the India vs. New Zealand Black Caps 20/20 cricket game in Christchurch, which was a great experience as i love cricket. I enjoy cricket so much more than baseball- which shows that for some things i’m more British than American. Cricket is the more strategic game I believe and it’s a little bit more meritocratic as if you’re good you get to bat forever. I wanted to watch the master Indian Batsman Sachin Tendulkar- who is 5’5 (smaller than me yeah!) but kicks ass averaging 40-50 runs per game. As I had just come from India, I felt like the Indian cricket team was stalking me (or maybe it’s vice versa) btw, cricket is huge in India- all the TVs were on cricket on game days when I was there and they’re creating an all star international cricket league after the European club soccer model. I also watched the Crusaders get crushed by the Hurricanes in Super 14 rugby game, and it was interesting to see the German girls i went with get excited although they didn’t’ have a clue how the game worked. It was also sort of sad that most of my friends have grown out of watching rugby games- they’d rather do something else or just watch it at a bar.
Outside of watching, i did a lot of mountain biking (in Nelson, Rotorua and Christchurch). I love mountain biking because it’s carbon-free and you have to sweat for your fun biking uphill- which sometimes sucks, a lot and I sometimes have to walk my bike up). I started mountain-biking when i was in NZ but was a real bad biker and now that i can get some descent air and have reasonable fitness to climb uphill, it was really fun coming down NZ’s great trails (except when you crash and fall on your balls). (I started this art project where I take photos with my bike at beautiful places I pass by) I also had stints surfing (the water was freezing even with wetsuit- i could stand for a little bit but the waves sucked (or maybe i’m just blaming the water for my poor skills), rock climbing outdoors (i had rock climbed indoors but first time outdoors and i absolutely loved it- I love climbing trees as well and did a lot of that in NZ), luge-ing (which felt like i was playing Mario cart- a great cheap thrill), zorb-ing (crazy Kiwi invention- you get in a big ball and roll down a hill- there’s water inside so it feels like coming down a crazy water slide that goes everywhere), and river-surfing (you come down rapids on a tiny surf board- also a crazy kiwi invention- mad fun but i drank a lot of water- the guide had to save me quite a few times as I always ended up in whirlpools). i also did more chill mini golf and Frisbee golf, as well as walking in the Abel Tasman National Park which was beautiful. And i can’t leave out sky-diving- i had bungied down the biggest bungy jump in the world in Macau last spring so didn’t feel a need to jump with a rope but wanted to jump off the plane. Like bungy-jumping, for the first few micro-seconds i was like F*** F*** F***, but then was in total bliss.
But I did have to pay for every drop of that adrenaline and i had overspent my mom’s pretty generous allotted budget. Perhaps i can argue that i’m helping the world overcome recession with my spending and i’m learning about NZ eco-adventure industry? But Korean currency is toilet paper right now so spending all that money is not cool but this year’s the last year i’m gonna be financially dependent for my entertainment so hopefully my parents would forgive me when i see them? (i really hope i’m not getting anybody mad traveling and bleeding money during this world-wide recession period).
But couchsurfing helped keep my costs down- i started couchsurfing here in NZ and i had wonderful experiences staying with four different hosts all across NZ.
with Tamsin in Nelson (she lived in a cool house that used to be a hostel and we had a nice house party- her house also had a cool tree house and big swing and i decided that i want a tree house and a swing in my house later on), and we danced and spa-ed late into the night.
with Ian in Christchurch (a 21-year old guy who lives with his flatmate Dave who was 19- i stayed with them over the weekend and it was fun to hang out with them, their Kiwi friends, and other couchsurfers who happened to be staying at ian’s house (i met a Chilean, an Ecuadorian, a Czech, two Germans, two israelites & one Ukraine (Nick Devonshire). Ian was like the most generous guy ever, as his house was always crowded with couchsurfers and he lived close to the city so it was convenient to visit the art gallery, botanical garden etc and get around. Dave was also cool and I went to the cricket game with him. He was a dual philosophy/ comp sci major who dropped out for now and was learning to be a DJ. He had a DJ equipment at home so I learned to play with it a little and as I ran into a Swedish guy who works as a DJ on the bus and he said it was a good job, perhaps I should learn to DJ as I love music (I doubt they dance to much jazz though…J )
I ended up overstaying at his house (i said 3 but ended up staying 5), and also unexpectedly brought along my Knight House friend Nick Devonshire who wrote on my facebook wall the morning he was coming up but he was cool with us staying. Nick was originally only planning on staying for two days in Christchurch, but he couldn’t get over how cool Christchurch is and ended up staying for like 4, during which time we did a wine tour (I got into wine in NZ- read an introductory book on it and like tea, it’s fascinating), biked around to a beach, went to the cathedral and the botanical garden, hung out, and drunk more beer & wine (we also went to an Irish bar and listened to some live Celtic music which was sweet as).
With Alison in Dunedin (she wrote on her couchsurfing profile that she lived with 5 international students, but they all turned out to be Americans…) but they were still cool and i had great time staying with them. We went to the botanical garden together, played some beer pong, and i ran to the steepest street in the world from there. Alison was also extremely kind with me as i got back to the house at 2:30am after hanging out (well sort of…) with my friend Guy. I went to go meet him at a bar at midnight (i was in Dunedin during Dunedin’s famous O (orientation) week, which is a week of serious drinking & partying before University of Otago starts. Dunedin is a huge college town and my friends told me stories of having to streak through a street (and they proudly did it) and having tomatoes, S***, vomit and everything else thrown at them as they streaked). Guy told me I could come sleep over at his place so i went back to my house to pick up my stuff. But by the time i got back to the bar, he was so wasted that he didn’t recognize me. So i tried to de-drunk him but it didn’t work out so i had to walk back to Alison’s place in pouring rain. Lucky Alison and her friends were still up so i could go back into the house ok but otherwise i would have had to sleep outside in rain. The same thing happened with a German girl Isi in Queenstown as we said we’d meet at a bar later but she sounded like she was a little too drunk and gave me wrong directions… (or maybe she doesn’t like me… J Having stayed at flats/ apartments in Christchurch and Dunedin i felt less uneasy about having to move out after my freshman/ sophomore year at Penn as off campus housing seemed more fun than i had thought.
With Lorraine & Jack in Rotorua and it was great staying at a farm house with an old couple. They had some cute sheep and horses on their property and i just chilled out watching the silly ‘Dance with the Stars’ on TV with them. Rotorua was a cool town in so many ways. They had thermal geysers that couldn’t stop spewing out hot water from the ground and one of the world’s top 10 spas, one of NZ’s best mountain biking trails, and awesome Maori culture. I walked to an old Maori gathering place on the tip of the Rotorua Lake facing an Anglican church on a misty, windy day and that was quite a mystical experience as there was a cemetery for WW I and II casualties. It was amazing to see how many Maoris had fought and died for the Europeans who in a way stole their land (Europeans (aka Pakehas in NZ), signed a treaty with Maoris but the problem was that the English and the Maori copies were different), and I felt like I could almost feel their spirits flying about in the wind. Hopefully the similar red and white pattern on both the Anglican church and the Maori meeting place symbolized coexistence, and I wanted to attend the Sunday worship service which was offered in both English and Maori, but unfortunately slept in…
During my trip, i ran into a lot of Europeans (esp. Germans and Brits) and most were either old people looking forward to retiring here or young people who wanted to check out this young sexy land. I never realized that NZ received this many tourists from Europe when i lived here, but now i realize that Europeans come here looking for a sort of pure Europe unscathed by the two world wars and long history of bloody fighting. NZ is a youthful society just over 150 years old and although they may not have long history, they’re certainly fun & innovative. Wellington, the capital’s Te Papa museum captures this Kiwi spirit pretty well, as despite the fact that NZ has one of the shortest recorded history (Maoris, who came to NZ around 1200 AD, had no written record and Europeans only settled here beginning mid nineteenth century), the museum was built really informative, fun and interactive. Few things I remember include the fact there were no mammals before human settlement which allowed bird life to flourish (such as moas and kiwis), how much of the original forest had been cut down since the arrival of the Maoris and the Europeans, how quickly the Maori land had been lost to the Europeans, some cool NZ art that incorporates Maori themes, and the fact that Maoris ate dogs just like Koreans and although they brought some dogs to NZ from their Pacific island to grow and eat, the dogs unfortunately didn’t adapt too well to NZ life and died.
Not only did the Kiwis invent bungy jumping, luge-ing, zorbing, and all the crazy air/ land and water crazy sports all across NZ and especially in Queenstown, the Kiwis made up their own Ebay website Trademe that is doing much better than Ebay in NZ. I also went to the WOW (World of Wearable arts) museum in Nelson that was simply quite amazing- anybody can enter and they have submissions from all over the world- and they have a huge concert in Wellington once a year where they have choreographed dance, and NZ also has world-class movie scene as well as cool arts/ music scene speareheaded by Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings movies (btw, Narnia was partly filmed in NZ as well in addition to the LoTR- NZ is such a fantasy land :). Marc & I visited the WETA museum in Wellington where all the tools and the computer graphics for these fantasy movies were done. I was also surprised that during the WW I and WW II, NZ sent 10-20% of their entire population to the war so although they may be peace-lovers, they definitely know that their peaceful NZ is not an isolated small bubble and contribute to the world. NZ’s other claim to fame may be the fact that this was the first country that gave women suffrage (voting rights), and Sir Rutherford split the atom that eventually led to nuclear bomb, while Sir Hillary was the first man to conquer the Everest (he also did a lot of good work in Nepal setting up schools etc.)
Overall, i’ll miss my dear NZ. The Kiwis, kiwi-Koreans, Kiwi-Americans, Medbury School, breathtaking landscape that i never got sick of taking photos of (i wish i had a chance to revisit Milford Sound and walk along the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers once gain but never got around to it this time), the clear blue sky, the mountain i biked on, the water i swam & surfed in, the city i ran in (Auckland was especially fun to run as i could explore anywhere with the sky tower as my landmark so not get lost), my Kiwi lingo (mate, bro, sweet as, … yeah? Fush & chops etc… . NZ will always be my home and asylum (I hope NZ thinks so as well), and i hope to come back home soon.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sikhs & Indian Border @ Amritsar
Luckily, i did get up at 4am and caught my taxi by 4:30am. When i arrived at the bus station, i was delighted to find that i had friends for my bus ride- Australian Derek and Kiwi Scott. They made what turned out to be the 5 hour bus ridea lot shorter (it was supposed to be 7 hours but miraculously we arrived 2 hours earlier- which never happens in india- it's always late. Derek had travelled extensively and it was interesting to hear him say that when he went to Lhasa several years ago, the Tibetans didn't seem to mind the Chinese too much and they were living harmoniously, and that the Tibetan museum in Dharamsala had exaggerated the Sino-Tibetan relationship. i still thought that the Chinese had done Tibetans a lot of harm but i have never been to Lhasa and it was interesting to hear opposing view. The bus ride passed by a lot faster thanks to Scott and Derek, and when i arrived at the Golden Temple's free guest house (hospitality is a big part of Sikhism and Sikhs let everybody who wants get free housing and food), i met two 18-year-old Mexicans Alan and Dexter. Alan was staying in India for a year and Derek three months, and they were both amazing musicians with some middle eastern drums so we jammed together me playing the harmonica. Alan said he was spending his gap year learning various musical traditions in india, sort of what i wanted to set up, and they were both kind and cool to hang out with. We visited the famous Golden temple, Sikhism's holiest pilgrimage site, and it was certainly very beautiful, the golden temple surrounded by the cleanest pool of azure water i've seen in India and white architecture. There was a service and chanting going on inside the golden temple almost 24/7 it seemed like (i had visited there 10pm and 4:30am, and there were a lot of people worshipping at both times). Their chanting was quite trance-like, especially with their use of tabla and harmonium. The Lonely Planet said that some compare the Golden Temple to the Taj Mahal, and although i think the comparison is a little stretched, the Golden Temple was certainly beautiful and it was more beautiful at night tand in the morning when lights shone against it. in the afternoon, Scott, Derek, Damian, Lucy, Alice and i (all Aussies except Scott and me) got a taxi down to the Pakistani/ Indian border where they were holding a marching ceremony. it was pretty hilarious to see the soldiers from the two countries try to march better than the other country and there was a huge crowd cheering on both sides. The soldiers were incredibly tall (i don't know naturally or they were wearing something at the bottom of their feet), and walked swinging their arms and legs 90 degrees. I didn't think it was that great but the crowd went hysterical. I wondered if it was good to foster such raw nationalism like this, but it was entertaining and it was probably better to have some humor than South Korea and North Korea where everything was so serious. Once we got back to the Golden Temple in the evening, we walked a long way to the city in search of Amritsar specialty fried fish and i had a chance to talk with Damian, who had biked from Malaysia through Southeast Asia and was now in india en route to Europe. He had quit his job as an engineer and had been on the road for a year and half, and he said he will probably take another two years or so to bike all the way to Europe and across North America before going back home. He was also a vipassana alum, and he told me during one of his meditations it occurred to him that he wanted to be a teacher when he got back home. He certainly had the vipassana vibe- he was very relaxed, exuded peace and compassion, and was very gentle. As i am sick & tired of riding buses and trains, i wish i could bike to Delhi like Damian does but i also did not have several years unfortunately. But i'd definitely like to bike across something some time. Although we ultimately found the fish restaurant that the Lonely Planet recommended, it was ridiculously expensive at 180 rupees/ 300g so we could only eat a little bit. So i just filled my stomach with some cheap street food on my walk back. Once we got back to the temple, Damian and i went back into the temple and we ran into a Sikh person who was very well educated and spoke fluent English. He explained to us basic tenets and doctrines of Sikhism, and contrary to its militaristic and imposing appearance with swords, turbans and long beards, they were very pro-peace and accepting of all religions, and he said Sikhism emphasized faith not rituals, sort of like Protestant Christians. The Holy Book was written in Punjabi, and most believers lived in Punjab (which was 90% Sikh) but as the richest state in india, there were also Sikhs who emigrated to Western countries as well. (Current Indian PM Dr Singh's a Sikh btw) As i left the Golden Temple for the train station the next morning, i could not get over Sikh's sick hospitality- free housing & food even for non believers? i hoped Catholic and Protestant churches who would not lose to Sikhs in terms of financial and political clout could do the same. And it was also a shame to hear that although Damian had stayed at a lot of Sikh and Buddhist temples for free, the priests at churches and monasteries did not allow guests to camp out at their places. What happened to Jesus' love and charity? But I have to admit that on my train-ride back to Delhi I did meet a Sikh person who offered me his lunch- curry with nan which was extremely good.
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