Humor is lost in translation

I had an epiphany today about humor. Whenever I have talked to someone who isn't a native English speaker, I have felt like we were lacking some fundamental connection. Today, I realize that it's because we can't joke with each other. I realized that humor is probably the most efficient way to really get to know someone, but when you don't speak the language, humor isn't an option because it often depends on either cultural understanding or word play. For me, sarcasm is my go-to mode of expression, but I don't know how to be sarcastic in Chinese. Because it's a tonal language, you don't seem to have much choice about how you emphasize words. For example, in English, I could say that the traffic was "just WONDERFUL" and everyone would know I meant it was awful. But here, if I put the wrong emphasis on the word, it means something else entirely. Instead of saying "just wonderful" I might end up saying "I saw your mom on the street corner yesterday"... So it's limiting.

I still haven't figured out how Chinese people are sarcastic, but they have had 5,000 years to figure it out, so I am sure they can do it just fine. But for me, it remains a mystery.

Ice ice baby

I was at Wal-Mart today looking for an ice cube tray, which I could not find. However, I did find toads, and not in the "pets" section, either. The toads were in the meat department, in a tank, looking forlorn in a way only a toad at Wal-Mart can. However, having been in China now for a week I find it not at all surprising that it is easier to buy edible toads than an ice cube tray.

It's too bad, because I really wanted an ice cube tray. In China, nothing is ever served cold. Most things are served hot (because it's better for the digestion) but things that would be served cold in the states (beer, milk) are room temperature at best. It's 90 degrees here, and I spend my day wanting nothing so much as a cold drink. So when I get home, I want ice. Sadly, no ice for me. However, I did get a toad. I think he'll make a great pet.

Death by buffet

If you ever go to China, there are a few things you can do to get ready for the trip. Good walking shoes are a must, a reliable guidebook is important, and it is helpful to know a few words of Chinese. However, the best advice I can give you is this - train yourself as if you were entering a competitive eating contest.

If you are fortunate enough to be a special guest in China (and Westerners are still enough of a rarity that you will be) you will likely find yourself invited to one, or several Chinese buffets. The word "buffet" has a casual connotation in America. In China, a buffet is much more of a high-class affair. Having just completed a gauntlet of four buffets in three days, I consider myself an expert and I'll give a quick rundown of what the buffetee can expect:

Part 1: The Entering of the Room
Restaurants in China (or at least the ones I've been to) are divided into small rooms, and each buffet party gets their own room.

As the honored guest, there is a specific place you should sit, which will be obvious to everyone in the room except you. There is definitely some complex hierarchy at work, but I was never sure what it was. The table is circular, and thus, all of the seats seemed to me to connote equal status, but apparently this was not the case. Wait to be directed to the proper chair. It is best to stand and grin while you do this. At least, it worked for me.

Part 2: The Ritual of Unwrapping the Dishes
Place settings in restaurants in China are shrink-wrapped. Each hygienic package contains a tea cup, a glass tumbler, a small plate, a soup bowl and a spoon. There will also be chopsticks, and, after some rapid-fire Chinese between the waitstaff and your host, someone will invariably bring you a fork and set it quietly next to your plate, but it is best not ask for a fork. You would be depriving your hosts of the distinct pleasure of watching you try to use chopsticks, which will delight them in the same way we find it enjoyable to watch bear in a tutu who has been trained to play a tune on the piano.

Use your chopsticks to puncture the wrapper and unwrap the place setting. Toss the wrapper over your shoulder onto the floor. Floor = trash can. If you don't follow this rule (which is hard to get used to at first) by the end of the meal you will have a pile of wrappers, napkins, and bones in front of you that will block your view of everyone else at the table.

Part 3: The Procession of the Food
At some point shortly after everyone is seated, waiters and waitresses will begin carrying in trays of food, and will continue to do this in a non-stop parade for the entire meal. The food will be placed on a rotating platter in the middle of the table which can be spun so that whatever dish you want can be accessed. As plates are emptied, new dishes are brought until you have consumed at least one serving of every dish on the menu.

As the guest, everyone will wait until you take the first taste of each new dish. While it is a charming custom it has a drawback, sense it is likely that you won't know how how to convey it to your mouth. Spoon? Chopsticks? Or it might be something that is supposed to be mixed with and or wrapped in something else. Sometimes it is something that is supposed to be mixed with AND wrapped in other separate things. Everyone will watch with great interest you try to figure things out.

Part 4: Ganbei!
Chinese people also love to toast their American guests. Often, the toast will include the word "ganbei" (dry glasses) which means what it sounds like it means. Bottoms up. If you are lucky, it will just be beer. If not, it will be maotai, a distilled rice wine with a high-octane proof. Seven Chinese people toasting one American = drunk American with chopsticks = fun for all. This is the ultimate calculus of the Chinese banquet.

In summary. Chinese hospitality is genuine. You will eat and drink with people who truly want you to have a good time, and no matter how badly you handle your chop sticks, your hosts will make you feel as though you can do no wrong.

Re-Entry

From Cusco to Lima to Atlanta to San Francisco then the airport shuttle back to San Jose and finally I'm home. The pets are not dead. The TV is not stolen. And I don't have a family of possums living in my dishwasher. However, something smells a little funky in the refrigerator. I should have thrown away that Brie before I left.

I'm sitting here at the computer, the dogs are asleep on the floor next to me and I'm drinking a beer. It's amazing how fast you settle back into your old routines. In a way it feels like I never left. But in another way, I can't believe I'm already home.

One of the strange things about travel is how it plays with your sense of time -- and not just through jet lag. Any trip I've ever taken of any appreciable length seems to fly past at high speed, but stretch out behind me in slow motion. This trip was no exception. I can't believe five weeks have gone by already, but when I look back, it seems like it's been a year since I left.

As I write this, I'm downloading 602 pictures from my digital camera to my computer. Like the camera, I still have a lot to process. It's beyond a cliche to say that travel changes you, but the reason it's become a cliche is because it's true, and so people say it a lot. It's only been five weeks but I do feel changed.

More important than anything else I've learned on this trip, I've learned that being born in a Westernized, first-world country is like winning a sort of Universal Lottery. I've seen enough shantytowns, one-armed children begging on street corners and open sewers for me to realize how good I really have it.

I read recently that 2% of the population of the world holds more than half its wealth, and that almost all of that 2% live in Europe and North America. Those numbers sound impressive but they start to hit home even more when a five-year-old kid rows up to your tour boat in a bowl and asks you for a dollar.

My trip was always fascinating, but really, it wasn't always fun. Sometimes, it was painful.

I had an amazing opportunity, and I was incredibly lucky to have the time and money to take a trip like this. I met wonderful people, ate some truly, truly disgusting food and saw more eye-popping wonders than one person has the right to expect to see in an entire lifetime. But I've come away from this experience with the realization that the world, while beautiful, is also an incredibly hard and unfair place.

Often on my trip, I felt like I was slumming. It's easy to take an air-conditioned cab to a spectacular temple ruin, snap a few photos, and then ride back to your air-conditioned hotel so you can take a nice shower and go have dinner. When you get tired of the heat and the bugs, when the government collapses in yet another coup, or when the monsoons flood the town, you can just go home. On the other hand, the kids who should be in school but instead spend their days trying to sell postcards to people like you are stuck there, and so are their families. And largely, nobody on the planet cares if they make it, or if they don't, because 98% of the planet is too busy themselves trying to survive.

Despite what I wrote before I left about happily embracing all the pre-packaged cleanliness of modern tourism, now I'm not so sure. I wonder if it's a good thing to travel to these places, happily snapping pictures and buying Angkor Wat paperweights, then flying away again, or if it's like going to some kind of zoo where the exhibits are people.

I can now see the appeal of eco-tourism, where before I felt like it was something hippie wannabes did. I think I would feel better about visiting a place if I were going to help dig a well or build a school in ADDITION to sightseeing and buying souvenirs. It's great to have come up a winner in the Universal Lottery, but I think there has got to be some responsibility that comes with it.

Still, another part of me thinks (hopes) that at least by visiting a place and spending some money there, I've at least done something positive. Maybe, in a teeny, tiny way, I've helped re-distribute the world's wealth just a little.

So, my trip is over, but the thinking has just started. I'm grateful to be home, I'm grateful to have a home to go back to in a country where stable (if inept) government, potable water and electricity are the norm, and I'm grateful to be among that vanishingly small percentage of the population of the world that has the luxury of engaging in tourism. I've learned something important. Now I just have to decide what to do with the information.

But no matter what I do, I know I need to do something differently.

So, it's true that travel changes a person. This trip has changed me. I'm just not sure how, yet.

Alive

Flying from Lima, Peru to Cusco - gateway to Machu Picchu - requires flying directly across the Andes. The Andes have a somewhat unfortunate reputation when it comes to air travel, and as soon as I got on the plane I started deciding which of my fellow passengers would taste the best. Just in case.

Fortunately, most of the people on the flight were college-age backpackers in their prime, and not many potentially stringy old people. Of course, happily, it didn´t come to that. We made it just fine, obviously, since if we had crashed on a mountain I probably wouldn´t be blogging right now, I´d be trying to figure out how to build a radio using rocks and frozen urine.

Still, I found the flight to Cusco a touch nerve-wracking. The approach to the airport requires flying down a valley that seemed at the time to be only slightly wider than the plane itself. I suspect, in fact, that they built the plane based on measurements of the valley. It was also in the back of my mind that Cusco is at approximately 11,000 feet above sea level, which means that there really aren´t even that many air molecules to hold the plane up in the first place. Also, Cusco airport (I made the mistake of reading before I got on board) is infamous for its wind shear. I don´t know what wind shear is, but I know I don´t want anything to do with it.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we landed safely, but since I was at 11,000 feet, all that came out was a tiny little puff, and then I got dizzy from the exertion. You might be surprised how much you really notice being 11,000 feet above sea level. Let me tell you, you notice. I bent down to get my luggage from under the seat and when I came back up, I almost blacked out. I´m fine if I lie completely prone and don´t move. But as soon as I do anything (sneeze, pick up a particularly heavy cup of coffee...) I need to stop and take a rest.

Thankfully, the Peruvians, after 400 million years (I made that number up) of living at these elevations have come up with a great way to combat altitude sickness. They call it Mate de Coca, but what it is, literally, is cocaine tea. Celestial Seasonings should grab onto this market, because trust me, it´s going places.

Now don´t get the wrong idea. You´d have to drink hundreds of gallons to get high. It´s very MILD cocaine tea. But I hope eBay doesn´t institute random drug testing any time soon, either. It does work wonders on the altitude sickness, though. Before you drink it, you are dizzy and lightheaded, and after you drink it, you are dizzy and lightheaded and you think you can walk through walls.

No really, it´s not like that. But it does seem to clear up those nagging headaches you get from the rarefied air. The interesting thing is (at least for someone from the United States) is that this beverage made from a Class IV Narcotic is available everywhere. They have a big carafe of it in the hotel lobby. They served it on the plane.

It doesn´t taste too bad, either. Never having tasted refined cocaine (really, Mom) I can´t compare, but if that´s how the street stuff tastes, I´m surprised the addicts don´t sprinkle it on ice cream.

But I digress. The main reason I came to Cusco wasn´t the cocaine, it was Machu Picchu. I went today, and really there´s no point in even trying to describe it. Suffice it to say that, without exaggeration, it is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my entire life. It beats the Pyramids, and it beats Angkor Wat. Don´t get me wrong, those places are also amazing, but this place doesn´t even seem REAL. You come through the entry and there it is, perched on a mountain, and you are so awestruck by the sight of it that you just stand there with your mouth hanging open, frozen to the spot.

In fact, later in the day, I entertained myself by standing near the entrance and watching other people come in. It didn´t matter what language they were speaking because I could tell from their expression that they were saying the exact same thing I said. ¨Holy shhh...¨

Those Incas had a real flair for the dramatic. It´s like they always say - location, location, location. If you can pick anywhere to build your temple complex, I say build it on the top of a mountain in the Andes. You can´t beat the view.

Machu Picchu was my last stop on my round-the-world trip, and I´m glad I ended here, because I can´t imagine anything else I could see that would compare.

Now I´m off to bed and tomorrow it´s back on the plane to Lima, then home. This time, I´m packing seasoning salt in my carry on.

Last Tangle in Aires

If you ever want to feel like a big, fat, un-coordinated, gigantic-footed, stumbling clod (and who doesn't?) try dancing tango with an Argentinian.

I have discovered on my visit to Buenos Aires that Argentinans are, almost invariably, lithe, attractive, graceful and could probably tango straight from the womb. I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite. I am not lithe, attractive or graceful, and I when I dance I look like a drunk Pillsbury Doughboy. For these EXACT reasons, I chose to see a tango SHOW, where I could sit unobtrusively in the audience and watch other people be graceful. If I had wanted to dance, I would have gone to one of the approximately 15.6 million tango dance halls in Buenos Aires. There's one in the bathroom of my hotel room. It's not as if I couldn't find one if I'd wanted.

But of course when I went into the bar where the tango show was taking place, I discovered it was the size of a shoebox and had three tables. (It was recommended by the couple running the hotel where I'm staying. They didn't mention the fact that you could have fit the entire dance floor onto a TV tray.)

As soon as I walked into the door, I felt an icy finger of terror run up my spine.

"Oh God," I thought to myself, "they are going to make us come up and dance with them." It was far, far too small for me to remain hidden and anonymous in the audience. But by then it was too late. I was already being led to my table. It was some comfort that I was seated next to a Korean man who, if anything, looked even more mortified than I was. He obviously knew what was awaiting him, too.

But it was supposed to be a SHOW. A SHOW. I looked at the little brochure I'd picked up in the lobby of my hotel. It even said "Tango Show" right on it. I had been led like a lamb to the slaughter.

Suddenly there appeared on the dance floor an (of course) impeccably dressed, lithe, attractive couple who, despite having four square feet of space to work with, were quickly flipping and twirling and writhing and doing other various tango-related things. Someone once called tango "the vertical expression of a horizontal desire." After watching these dancers, I think that's fairly accurate. In fact, there were moments when I felt somewhat uncomfortable to be watching them at all. "Do you two want some privacy?" I wanted to ask.

There were a few more dances, then some singing, and I started to relax. "Maybe I was wrong," I thought to myself. "Maybe they WON'T make us dance."

But just then, as I was fiddling with my camera, I saw out of the corner of my eye some legs next to my table, and attached to them, a woman from the tango show. I pretended to be intensely focused on my camera, but then she said, in an oh-so-charming accent, "would you like to dance with me?" I couldn't even pretend not to understand her, dammit. She spoke English.

"Um."

You can't very well say "no." Not to a woman dressed to dance the tango.

She smiled at me encouragingly.

"I don't know how," I said, hoping this would end the conversation. But of course, none of the tourists ever know how, do they? That is why they bought tickets to a SHOW. People buy tickets to watch people doing something they CAN'T do. Otherwise we'd have movies about cleaning the toilet, not about car chases going the wrong way down the interstate.

"Then you will learn with me," she said. Oh she just had an answer for everything. Damn her.

Well what can you do? I didn't want to hide in the bathroom for the rest of the evening, so I got up and tried to tango. But every time I took a step I had to look down and make sure I wasn't about to crush her tiny feet. I couldn't have danced less gracefully if I'd been wearing skis.

"You can look up," she said.

"I am afraid I am going to step on your toes," I said.

"Oh, that will not happen." And she said this with the confidence of a woman who makes a living dancing with un-coordinated tourists and has thereby gained a kind of preternatural, toe-related sixth sense. And she was right, I didn't step on her toes even once. However, that is really the only positive thing I can say about my dancing -- it caused no one any injuries.

I Fly to Thee, Argentina

Well, I'm back in the Southern Hemisphere again. These hemispheres, let me tell you, they are very far apart. I started out yesterday morning in Madrid and a short 15 hours later, I arrived in Buenos Aires. Fifteen hours on an airplane wouldn't be so bad, really, if, for example, you were dead. However, since I am not currently dead, I found it somewhat horrendous. Also, my seat was broken. And I flew Air France, so my "in-flight entertainment" consisted of three movie choices: 1) "Casino Royale" (dubbed in French), 2) "Monsters, Inc." (dubbed in French), and 3) some movie about Edith Piaf (originally in French, so no dubbing was necessary). My French isn't very good, so I thought for at least 20 minutes that I was watching a French movie about Judy Garland.

Turns out Edith Piaf had kind of a rough life, as far as I can tell. I don't know how to say "addicted to intravenous painkillers" in French, but I think that's what happened to poor Edith. I still don't like her singing, though.

Of course with these overnight flights, you always land the next morning at some ungodly hour and of course your hotel room isn't ready because sane people are still in bed at that hour, including the people who are currently occupying your hotel room. So I spent the morning wandering around Buenos Aires in a half-asleep stupor. I stumbled my way into some kind of flea market where I found what might possibly be the world's largest selection of t-shirts featuring Homer Simpson dressed like Che Guevara. I almost bought one, but then I decided I would wait to see if I cound find one with Homer dressed like Eva Peron. That strikes me as classier.

So it turns out that the thing to do in Buenos Aires (if you are a tourist) is to go see a tango show. Tango is very big here. People are always tangoing. I saw people tangoing on the street, including a woman who was apparently tangoing all by herself. I am not sure if "tangoing" is really a verb, but it is here. So tomorrow, I will set off in search of some tango-related entertainment.