Saturday, September 17, 2016

Formosa - Beautiful Island


One of the main reasons I went to Taiwan (the week before school) was to see Milly, a pen-pal I first got connected to in my high school freshman Chinese class.  We've Skyped, sent emails, we chats, letters, and a couple packages over the past 6 years, but this was the first time meeting in person.  She was such a gracious host and had created an itinerary for us to see all her favorite sites in Taiwan.  It was really fun spending time with her and having her help me understand the culture better.

The National Palace Museum; fascinating because of the political importance of the imperial art collection originally taken to Taiwan when Chiang Kai-shek fled the Communists.  Beijing still believes it's rightfully theirs.  The owner has more of a claim as being the real China with this heritage from the imperial times.


My favorite day in Taiwan was when one of Milly's friends, Tracy, took me to 佛光山, which is a Buddhist mountain sanctuary in Kaohsiung (高雄).  The centerpiece was an enormous bronze Buddha and a tooth from the original enlightened Buddha.  It was incredibly peaceful, and there were tons of monks willing to show me around.  I learned a lot more about Buddhist theology and history.


"Think good thoughts, say good words, do good deeds"

Protests concerning cross-strait relations

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial in a huge plaza with other beautiful buildings

I climbed Elephant Mountain by myself and without a phone so here's a photo from the Internet;
the view was indeed very legit

Longshan Temple
Something totally unexpected about Taiwan is how religious it is (since I was used China).  It's religious in a very different sense than the West is though--with the exception of the evangelical churches set up by American missionaries.  As one of my friends told me, there are no official followers of the religions; everyone is welcome to come to any of the temples to pray.  The temples are a conglomeration of different spiritual traditions in Chinese history, from Buddhism and Daosim to Confucianism and ancestor worship.  Even at the Buddhist mountain sanctuary in Kaohsiung, besides the big Buddha there were also statues of Confucius, the Chinese goddess of kindness, and the god of war.  I loved having various Taiwanese friends show me around their temples and how to pray.  We would always start by picking up a package of incense, paper money, and snacks from beside the entrance.  We would leave the paper money and snacks on the altar to be blessed, and then we would walk around the whole temple with the incense praying to each of the various gods.  As the auntie of the house where I was staying told her nephew, "Tell the gods your name, where you go to school, your address, what's coming up in your life, and thank you for blessing you this past year."  They took me to the roof with another shrine which I would've never know existed otherwise.  In the temples, there's various different ways provided to communicate with the gods, like tossing tokens to see how they land or picking numbered sticks.  When we passed the shrine to Confucius, the mom turned to me and said, "Since you have the MCATs soon, you might want to have a little chat with him now."  Later we burned the paper money in a kiln outside.  Then we got to eat the food!!!! This was so unexpected.  In the house where I was staying there was fruit and cookies laid out on the little shrine in the corner of the family room, and when they told me I could take any of it to eat whenever, I was like like no way I'm stealing from the gods' offering, but they said the gods had just blessed it for us to eat.  I left the temple with my fingers dyed deep pink and my hair smelling of incense.




View directly across the street

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Why it would've been nice to have a phone for the past month of solo international travel

Waking up before noon: got around this by asking friends, hostel workers, grandmas of the house I slept in to wake me up;

Doing walking tours on my own: honestly, I get lost anyway;

Taking photos: although I really wanted a photo of the sign next to a toilet in Taiwan that said "don't litter in the stool," I've learned to live with a lot fewer pictures;

Translating things: I would have ordered a lot less of something I later found out to be fried pig skin;

Finding a place to sleep earlier than the day of and figuring out how to get there: eventually the stress became too much that I just completely stopped thinking about anything besides the very present and snacks.


Anyway, here's a video I made by compiling one second of footage from each day of my travels--it ends when the phone dies, :( before even leaving Nicaragua.


Thursday, August 25, 2016

YMUN China

The week before last, I was in Shanghai staying in a five-star hotel with a bunch of other Yalies hosting a Model United Nations conference for high schoolers.  Most of the high schoolers were Chinese, but some from all over the world.  While the days were incredibly busy, it was so fun chairing my own committee, the World Health Organization, debating the topics I chose.  One of my shy delegates told me she needed to get her heart checked after I made her speak in committee.  They later told me I looked like Taylor Swift.  The other Yalies there were really amazing and made the experience--so funny, smart, inclusive, and all interested in China!  We went to the Yu Gardens as a group afterwards (actually what I had done the most recent time I was in Shanghai), and then took the ferry across the river to go up the tallest tower in Shanghai, third tallest in the world.



Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Indonesia

Jakarta was a very relaxing week.  Staying in the Jordanian ambassador's residence (amazing!) with my friend from Yale and her family, I learned more about Arabic culture than Indonesia culture.  We ate feasts of homemade Jordanian food twice a day.  We got driven around daily by the chauffeurs (Jakarta traffic is ungodly), and I got clean laundry for the first time in forever thanks to the maids.  The best part was her 2-year-old brother who only spoke Arabic and feuded with Stella.

Visiting a park with replicas of houses from different Indonesia island communities



National Museum of Indonesia


Side note: on the way to Jakarta, I had a layover in the Tokyo Narita airport.  First time ever in Japan, and it was amazing. Airport stores were selling all these cute things, people dressed so fashionably, and the automated walkways were on the left side because Japan drives on the left side of the street (I’d never known this before!).  It felt like a parallel reality, as if this were China but with more money earlier on.

Traveling in a lot of different countries during the Olympics has been a neat experience.  Nicaragua only showed Hispanic athletes.  Japan showed a lot of Judo and gymnastics.  In Indonesia, my Jordan hosts only watched Al-Jazeera which mostly showed Muslim athletes.  China showed diving and speed-walking.  And Taiwan is represented as Chinese Taipei because China.

Monday, August 22, 2016

How to tell if you're in a developing country

If it's cheaper to buy Coke (bottle not included) than purified water

If crossing the street is one of the most dangerous things you'll do all day

If public buses are so full your feet sometimes don't touch the ground

If you've accidentally started hoarding water bottles because you never know when there will be potable water

If a common method of transportation is a pedicab/motocab/tuk-tuk/triciclo/sanluanche

If street vendors offer the best food around

If 4 people is the average number found on a moto-bike at any one time

If roads are a nightmare of traffic accidents

If toilet paper is rarely provided and always goes in the trash can afterwards

If ice cream is sold on any street corner for "cheap, cheap!"

Monday, August 8, 2016

Una despedida a los pinoleros

I'm writing this from the Aeropuerto Internacional Augusto C. Sandino in Managua--long story but let me tell you, nobody (and by that I mean me by myself) is getting mugged today.

Playing pickup on the basketball court near the cathedral, played a bit with some street
boys who had bottles tucked right under the collar of their shirts the entire time to sniff glue.
The court was the site of the 1959 student massacre


From a teeny museum of fallen revolutionary heroes originally run by their mothers

Our last week in Nicaragua, Sara, Hannah, and I went to the Thursday salsa night at La Olla Quemada one last time.  It was the perfect Latin American experience.  We officially became friends with our two Zumba instructors when they showed up to take turns dancing with us and showing us moves.  And then we learned that they were actually dating, and to no one's surprise they made an unbelievable dance pair!  I always love watching the dancer pairs at the club anyway because everyone is superb and so willing to dance with everyone else in the club.  About Zumba here: super fun, extremely sensual, learning of legitimate steps to different Latin dances.  I've never been in the U.S. so I can't really compare, but I can't imagine any American man's butt moving quite the way our instructor managed to move his.

Our very last night in León was equally wonderful. We spent all day with our Nicaraguan friends, and after dinner sat in the outdoor seating of a nice restaurant in the central plaza.  The cathedral was all lit up and the plaza was hoppin'.  So many families were out, as well as street vendors.  There was a small bouncy house, two trampolines, fire-throwers hordes of ice cream carts, and models dressed in amazing costumes for a fantasy contest that happened to be going on.  Street musicians had come up to perform for us, and at one point some high school kids jumped in and started freestyle rapping to the beat of the drum.  One of the musicians we recognized from Granada!  It would not have been a real Nicaraguan night without having fireworks go off way to close too to my person, so some neighborhood kids did us the favor on the other side of the street when we were walking home.  The morning we left, Nicaragua said its farewells via a scorpion in Sara and Hannah's bedroom.



I like Nicaragua because street vendors call you mi amor at first site.  They hop onto packed buses right as they are pulling out of the terminal in case any passengers had wanted to buy anything.  They walk the streets with tortillas, fruit, or Wii controls balanced on their heads yelling out whatever they are trying to sell, in the hopes that people will come out of their houses to buy.  That is why all ice cream carts, biked to the most rural corners of this country, have bells on them.

You don't hail taxis here; they hail you, chela.  So when I walk down the street I hear a cacophony of drivers honking at me, harmonized with men shouting rude things and making kissing noises at me.  And also the song "Eye of the Tiger" because it is BIZARRELY popular here.

Unexpectedly, I have seen so many men out and about dressed as womyn, or wearing makeup and gender ambiguous clothing.  Like, more than I see at Yale, and that's saying something.  It has been tough getting a clear understanding of the phenomenon, but a lot of my Nicaraguan friends just consider dressing feminine and wearing makeup to be something gay males do; it doesn't necessarily mean they are gender ambiguous or transgender.  Just like the U.S. gay community developed a unique tight-knit, flamboyancy after being underground for so long, I think the Nicaraguan gay community similarly has its own way of expressing itself amidst a society of opposition.  As of 2008, homosexuality is finally legal, but gay people can't get married or enjoy the same legal benefits.  They have no explicit protection from discrimination.
Latin America time is real.  Believe it!  I have to stop feeling disappointed in friends for showing up forty-five minutes late for a lunch date, professors for showing up two hours late for meetings, and nurses for showing up three hours late for work.  A friend of a friend was an American marrying a Nicaraguan and put two different times on the wedding invitations for each side of the family.
You know how people say you catch colds easily during the summer because you are constantly going from extreme heat to extreme air conditioning—yeah, Nicaragua doesn’t have that problem!  One of the perks of there never been air conditioning at all.

Nicaraguan grafitti is nice
Even through exploring just one small fraction of Nicaragua, I have found it is truly the poetry-obsessed land of volcanoes and lakes.  It is a place where horse-carts share the roads with trucks, and friendly faces are always willing to pick up hitchhikers.  It is a place where the people don't take themselves too seriously, and everyone knows how to salsa.  I have loved living in Spanish more than anything, and I am reaffirmed of my deep passion for foreign languages that I know will propel me peripatetically for the rest of my life.  However, because of how the culture treats womyn here, I don't feel like I'm leaving a piece of my heart in Nicaragua.

Sunday, August 7, 2016

La comida nicaragüense

Sweets at mercado central
(I was surrounded by doting old street vendor ladies when I paused near them long enough to take this picture)

Sopa de leche 10/10
What I will miss most about Nicaragua besides the language...
served nice and toasty from the metal bin on a womyn's head!


Nancita: fermented fruit 3/10

Polvorones: gingerbread-like cookie 5/10,
I was in scrubs loitering at an extraordinarily fragrant bakery when the vendor gave this too me for free,
saying something like it will make you give more vaccines! ...I think

Bogado: Nicaraguan cinnamon bun 7/10

Banana sticks covered in molasses 6/10

Guava 8/10
(Freshly cut and bagged mangoes with a dash of salt usually take preference for me)

Mamones, the Latin American lychee (but not quite as good): 7/10,
part of many sexual jokes because of how much sucking is needed to get the fruit out

Mamon juice: 9/10,
(don't be alarmed--this too came in a bag! but I transferred it to a cup to drink)

Nacatamale: the quintessential Nica food, loaded and pretty massive, sold only on the weekends

(underneath the banana leaf wrapping) 9/10

Gallo pinto: the other quintessential Nica food, served with basically every meal 9/10 (but not all created equal)

Churros Granada-style: small little nuggets reminiscent of blueberry bagels fried and covered in syrup 8/10

Churro León-style, with guava filling 8/10 (with creme de leche filling 10/10)

Banana chips 7/10
Everywhere on the streets, salty not sweet :(

Yucca chips 7/10
(Seeing as yucca is in the potato family, these predictably tasted a big like potato chips)

Manuelita: sweet crepe filled with the Nicaraguan cuajada cheese 9/10


I love my street vendors, and they love me

Saturday, August 6, 2016

La Ciudad de Iglesias

Just a sampling of the some of the Catholic churches of Leon -- in case you're my dad.

Iglesia de la Recolección

Iglesia el Calvario

Iglesia San Francisco



Iglesia San Juan de Dios

Iglesia de La Merced




Iglesia San Felipe


Iglesia San Juan

Iglesia San José

Iglesia de San Juan Bautista de Subtiava


Iglesia Zaragoza

La Basilica Catedral