Going on a pilgrimage

Hi all,
This will be the last post until May, as I'm going to be away from internet and nearly all worldly possessions during the month of April.
I'm going to be hiking through the north of Spain, from the French Spanish border down of Roncesvalles all the way to Santiago de Compostela, a city almost all the way across the country on Spain's Atlantic coast.
It's a pilgrimage, although I'm not doing it for the religious reasons. I'm doing it perhaps for the spiritual power of a walk like this one, for the draw of the history, to meet people on the way, for the fun of hiking, and above all to explore Spain.
The story that began the pilgrimage is hilariously extravagant in the way of most religious myths. Saint James (Santiago) had supposedly once preached in Spain. When he died, back in the middle east, two of his followers took a stone boat through the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, out into the Atlantic (!), up Spain's Atlantic Coast, and onto modern day Galicia in Spain. They converted a pagan queen there, but not many others, buried the body, and peaced. A few centuries later, a hermit living in the area found Santiago's "bones." The burial spot was conveniently located in the tiny Northern strip of Iberia not under Muslim rule.
We laugh at the story today, but pilgrims flocked to the site -- and they played an important role in Spain's history. The pilgrims reinvigorated the Christian part of Spain, giving force that would be key for the Christian reconquest of Iberia. Some played an even more direct role, becoming soldiers who fought the Muslims; around this time, Santiago got the epithet "Matamoros" (Moor-killer), explicitly linking the pilgrimage and the fight against the Moors. And beyond the pilgrimage's significance to Spain, many say that the walk played a key role in developing the idea of a Europe above the bickering states within it.
All of the Camino's historical significance is especially zany considering that it turns out Santiago never actually preached in Spain. A monk mis-copied Jerusalem (something like "Herusaliem") as Spain (something like "Hispania"). A fateful little mix-up.
So, hasta mayo -- wish me luck -- I'm off to visit an apostle's bones.

A reflection at the start of the fourth quarter

This post is a bit personal, but I think it will help anyone who’s thinking about a gap year of their own.

***

Holly Bull, the president of a company that organizes gap-year programs abroad, said in the New York Times Article on gap years I recently posted that “More than an alternative to burnout, a rugged gap year spent working on a sustainable farm in Costa Rica can provide a means to building self-confidence in students who might otherwise “get munched up by academic process.’”

I expected my gap year to give me this confidence, the sort of confidence that can’t be hurt by the ups and downs of collegiate jostling. And I expected this fortified confidence to rest on the solid foundation of a crowning victory from the gap year.

I didn’t have a clear idea what form this victory would take. Generously, you could say I was intellectually flexible about it. Perhaps it would take the form of hitchhiking across Spain, or Europe. Perhaps I would learn some incredible new skill, like break-dancing, and I would return to the United States to spend the summer entertaining in various nightclubs. Perhaps I would find some whacky and glorious job like writing for the National Geographic for a piece they were doing on a tribe in Morocco.

The gap year gave me a constant source of temporary self-esteem. Leaving the Harvard-Westlake crowd and entering a truer-to-life slice of society almost always put me at the top of any group in terms of quickness, knowledge about history and current events, and, to my surprise, confidence and gregariousness. But that kind of ego boost will mostly go away when I reenter places where everyone’s a big shot, as I will do in September.

So what about the big achievement?

Well, I plan on doing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, which is a bit of an adventure. It’s true, I’ll have a path to follow, so it’s a bit different than hitchhiking through a country. I rode my skateboard as transportation when I wasn’t taking the metro, so I’ve learned how to ride passably after not really being able to ride at all. True, that’s not going to get me any glorious summer gigs. I worked as an English teacher of small classes, and I found I was pretty good at it, developing a solid, personal relationship with every one of my students, getting along wonderfully with almost every one of them, and even becoming friends outside of class with a few. True, that’s not National Geographic in Africa.

I am proud of those accomplishments, though, especially the last one. I compare myself to some break-dancing hitch-hiking National Geographic-writing gap-year superhero, but fuck it, if someone can build confidence on a farm in Costa Rica than I’m going to let myself acknowledge the confidence gained by teaching English in Spain.

***

But even if I didn’t have these “confidence-building” activities, I would consider the gap year worth it for three lessons I’ve learned, all of which required time off from school.

During the school year, my father sent me an important email talking about his competitive drive, how he had let it take control of him for the first part of his life and how he had mostly mastered and restrained it for the second. It planted the seeds of an idea that needed some time off to flower. In England, around people with whom I felt comfortable being myself, I saw my competitiveness when we played games like Scrabble together. Then, in Spain, playing basketball with my host father against two neighborhood kids, I took over and won the game Kobe-style, but I came home with a blister that had blown up so badly that the next day my host mother had to help me stick a needle through it. Looking at these occasions, and even more so, looking back at occasions from before the gap year, I saw for the first time: I am competitive.

The second lesson I learned was that my competitiveness could be dangerous. This lesson had even less than the first one to do with events going on in the gap year; it came from events from before the gap year being replayed in my head now that I had time to ponder. In school, one doesn’t have as much time to ponder. We’re faced with high stakes decisions and deadlines daily. Now, I could contemplate, and I realized that my competitiveness had led to my most stressful and my saddest moments, and, after more contemplation, that it had also led to my greatest successes. I became conscious that my competitiveness was both valuable and dangerous. I saw I would need to watch it carefully, in college and forward.

The third lesson was the realization that college is for finding out what’s fun and doing it. I had gone through high school with this purpose in mind, but also with the idea of excelling. To me, excelling was rising above others. I didn’t need others to notice – I solely needed to know for myself that I had “excelled” – but it was still a dangerous if not downright unhealthy aim. In college, I decided, I would try to find out what gave me joy, and I would do it. I would allow myself to be competitive with myself to do the best job I could do, but I would avoid the comparisons to others. I saw that this was the route I needed to take.

These three lessons needed the time off. For them alone, the gap year would have been worth it.

***

And, beyond these three lessons, I have learned more broadly and deeply about myself.

I have learned that, if I feel I have to, I can hold a room. I have been living outside of my comfort zone, both in terms of living within a slightly different etiquette and being with totally new people, not even part of some shared program. This newness forced me to reach back and grab all the sociability I could muster. I drew on Scene Monkeys, sometimes, but more often I drew on a calm, centered personality I hardly knew I possessed.

I have learned about classical liberal economics! With a lot of free time when I was in Santander, I read Free to Choose, a “personal statement” by Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman and his wife. It has changed my life. I imagine my personal views differ widely from those of Friedman’s followers, but they have nonetheless been significantly influenced by his ideas, ideas I hadn’t been able to explore before.

I have learned to embrace my self-doubt. I mean self-doubt in an intellectual sense – not the self-doubt that shackles someone to small ideas and small ambitions, not the self-doubt that keeps someone from dreaming big – I mean the self-doubt that makes someone constantly question the arguments he or she puts forth. I used to resent my self-doubt, feeling that if I could bull-rush ahead, my arguing style would be stronger. I feel the opposite now: That the self-doubt makes me a better debater by leading me to consider arguments against my ideas even before others present those arguments to me; that it makes me a better thinker by forcing me to embrace nuance; and that it makes me a better listener by making me aware that I will never be able to connect the dots alone. I’ve interacted with so many different people on this gap year, from such a variety of cultures. It has become clear to me that a person’s eloquence and concision, his or her appreciation of complexity, and his or her flexibility of mind all rest and fall on that person’s ability to doubt him or herself. Crude anecdotal evidence for this connection comes from the American who insults the Spanish culture as superficial, or dirty, or wrapped up in partying, and from the Brazilian who charges that Americans don’t know anything about the world beyond their 50 states. Each should literally think twice.

Before I took the gap year, though, I didn’t know I’d learn the lessons I’ve learned or gain the insights about myself that I’ve gained. So why did I do it? At first, I wasn’t sure, and even after I had started I wasn’t really sure. I gave two chief reasons: I said I wanted to learn Spanish, and I said I wanted an adventure. Both were true and good reasons, but they didn’t make up the whole picture.

Years back, the daughter of my Mom’s best friend visited Los Angeles. (This year, when I visited London, we became close friends.) In Los Angeles, she described the idea of a gap year, which she said was very popular in England. I was enchanted, and I kept the idea in the back of my mind all through high school.

Halfway through senior year, I floored my parents by telling them I intended to take the next year off. My Mom was against the idea but not strident. My Dad was open. At Stanford’s admit weekend, I spoke to a dean who dealt with gap years. I asked him whether I could inform Stanford of my decision to defer at the end of July. He said that the late date would be okay. Two of my best friends and I were going on a Eurotrip in July, and my plan was to see whether I liked Europe then. If I did, I’d pull the trigger on the gap year.

As I had expected, I did like Europe, and I pulled the trigger. I sent a letter to Stanford explaining what I would be doing and why I was taking the year off. My four reasons, in highly formal language that hid the reality that I didn’t really know why I was doing what I was doing, were to learn Spanish (“a very important skill in an increasingly globalized society”), to gain teaching skills, to see the world, and to go on an adventure.

I have gotten all four of those things out of the gap year, but there were other important reasons too. Someone who wants to go through college trying to beat others is someone who needs to take a gap year. I didn’t have that insight, though, nor did I even know that I was dangerously competitive. But there was some instinct that pointed me in the right direction, something that murmured, “A pause would be a good idea” even as logic screamed that I had not planned nor thought the gap year through.

I must stress to anyone considering a gap year the importance of this point. If you’re already considering it, the likelihood is that something instinctual is murmuring that a pause would be a good idea. Maybe there’s a lesson you need to learn. Maybe there’s an insight you need to gain. Maybe there’s something else entirely. For some reason, a pause would be a good idea.

For those reading this blog with an eye to a gap year of their own

Check this New York Times article out.

The important issues of work, where I go out at night, and other mundane trivialities

Two Fridays ago I dined with my ex-family,

And despite the fact that I’m now standing free,

Our natural, liquid chemistry

Came back even pre-wine, quite immediately.

Next night, bar-hopped at the Plaza de Santa Ana

With Austrians, the Venezuelan brothers, and a South Africana.

Chugging calimochos (a mix of red wine, coke, and a

Swab of the sweat of Erica Bana).

Sunday I saw “There will be blood”

With a student who’s become an out-of-class bud.

The following week I worked like a stud.

I’m collecting money like earthworm researchers collect mud.

See, I’m saving for a sensual saunter to Santiago,

A one-month pilgrimage through Northern Spain’s montaña, campo, and lago

An experience on the spiritual level of eating Ikura and Tamago,

Or, hell, just finding a nice table at Spago.

Anyway, I work hard, I play hard, and the weekends are good,

Especially Thursday night in Chueca, the gay neighborhood!

Although even that night we started at a Basque bar in La Latina, where wine tastes like wine should.

And ended in Tribunal, at La Via Lactea, my best discovery since earthworm cages of wood.

On Friday, Santa Ana, in a discoteca playing oldies songs,

With my Austrian and Venezuelan friends, dancing the whole night long.

Next night some Spanish buds and I watched Real Madrid whack around its opponent like ping-pong

Then, out from the sports bar, we hit “Moby Dick,” a club near the soccer stadium.*

Sunday night I returned to my old host family’s house,

To watch the second Spanish Presidential debate, a true verbal boxing bout.

Today, ETA killed a Socialist ex-councilman: Spain mourns…and wonders which side the attack will help out.

Two days from now, after Sunday’s elections, we’ll have an account.

*Just work with me on this one. Pronounce “stadium” like “stadi-ong.”

A run-down to make up for my copious amounts of not updating

A lot has gone on
since I last posted, weeks back.
Chronologic'ly:

Cold, crisp enero
saw visits from Alex, and,
later on, Adam.

Alex took quite well
to the Madrid nightlife, and
to Toledo, too.

Adam and I hit
beautiful Salamanca.
Both left way too soon.


Febrero started
with an Independence Day,
a move to a flat

right in the center,
shared with two Madrileños,
close to the nightlife.

Skateboarding 'round town --
dodging old ladies, cars, kids;
wind blowing through me --

completes the image
of my newfound liberty.
Ellis Island rocks.

Leaving my family
made victory bittersweet,
but we'll still meet up.


By day, I tutor,
giving English lessons to
the upper classes:

teens with rich parents,
execs, lawyers, researchers.
Often, they teach me

of law, linguistics,
culture, and clean energy.
(They also pay well.)

By night, I explore
a town with a severe case
of insomnia.


Two weekends ago,
I visited London for
Naomi's birthday.

Last weekend, I met
my uncle Ken in Paris
for sights, food, and wine.

This particular
fin de semana I'm back
in Madrid, chilling,

teaching and billing,
and writing haikus in the
subway to fill time...

I be time-filling!
...Like, um, petals of a leaf.
On calm, still waters.

Hilary and McCain win New Hampshire

I would have liked to see the Democrats wrap the contest up quickly. I would have liked to see the Republicans spend the next month or two bloodying each other while whichever Democrat had won Iowa, NH, and Nevada sat pretty. And most of all, I would have liked Obama, who has the best chance of winning the general election, to have been that Democrat. (No, it´s not knee-jerk partisanship. The Democrats take global warming more seriously across-the-board than the Republicans. Of the Republican candidates, only John McCain, and, to a lesser extent, Mike Huckabee, speak about climate change with the urgency that it deserves. The Democrats are also the party in which every major candidate has put forward a universal healthcare plan to fulfill the government´s basic duty to help the helpless.)
Despite Obama´s loss, seeing Iowa´s choice rejected by New Hampshire was nice. Iowa´s caucuses are a joke, if what you´re looking for is democracy. And Iowa´s outsize influence in choosing winners and losers perverts policy in Iowa´s favor - "If they held the first caucuses in Idaho," someone once said, "we'd be subsidizing gasoline made out of potatoes." NH sends a valuable message that Iowa isn´t the decider.
And Hillary is not bad at all. Obama talks about change, but many of the most important changes from the George W Bush years would be returns to the Bill Clinton mode of operation: international cooperation in fighting wars, fewer unnecessary hot-button choices that hurt America´s image in other countries (I speak of keeping Guantanamo open), and spending that doesn´t sprint past the government´s ability to pay for it. Those changes, plus moving full-speed-ahead to limit CO2 emissions and working towards healthcare reform, will leave America much better off. And we could reasonably expect all of the above from Hillary. But only if she won the general election, a big enough "if" for me to throw my support behind Obama (on policy, very similar) instead.

McCain´s win in New Hampshire gives me mixed feelings. He used to be a force for campaign finance reform, although who knows whether that´s still true. Quite recently, he tried to pass immigration reform legislation, but failing might have left him once burned, twice shy, and unwilling to try again. He has been a vehement supporter of the Iraq war from the beginning; the initial support is worrying, but the continued support is obvious, as Iraq is not ready for us to leave. And then, of all the Republicans, he seems most serious about fighting climate change. I´m hesistantly hopeful he´ll be the Republican candidate; I´ll root against him but the prospect of him winning won´t be so bad.

Obama wins Iowa!

Walking along the Paseo de Prado, I thought of the nuances of Spanish culture, and how the discovery of America sparked a golden age but later hobbled Spain with crippling inflation. Christopher Col --
Just kidding. I´m way too obsessed with what´s going on back home to be thinking about anything else.
Obama won Iowa! This is huge!
Okay, it´s a win in a tiny state. With a victory based on a voting system in which two pillars of democracy, the secret ballot and one person one vote, are missing.
But even non-Obama supporters have to get excited about a half-black candidate´s ability to win a state that is 90% white. And for Obama supporters, winning the first contest takes some of the bite out of Hillary´s asburd claim that she´s more electable. And then there´s the strange but reliable tendency for voters in other states to imitate Iowa (Obama is suddenly up in NH by 12 points).
I´ve been a hesitant Obama supporter ever since I faced the music and admitted Bill Richardson wasn´t going anywhere.
For me, this election comes down to climate change. It is the single biggest threat to our national welfare, with the single greatest ability to lower the living standard of every American (and human being).
Across the board, the Democrats take climate change more seriously than the Republicans (for a good comparison of the candidates, click here). Combined with the Democrats´ big advantage on proposals for universal health care, I´m pretty partisan this election cycle: I want a Democrat in the White House in 2008.
And Barrack Obama, with his ability to cross party lines to pick up votes, with his ability to attract independents, with his impressive oratory skills, and with his early opposition to the Iraq war, is the most electable Democrat. (Early opposition to the war doesn´t help solve the mess, but this war is hugely unpopular, and I´m looking for a winning Democrat, and those against the war from the start have the best chance at winning.)
New Hampshire should be interesting. I predict and hope Obama keeps rolling.

Happy New Years!

My German friend Steffen and I decided to go to Lisbon the Wednesday before last weekend, Two days later, we were on a nightbus heading east.

We slept on the bus, came into the Portugese capital at 7am, and headed to the hostel to drop off our stuff. A young lady greeted us and sent us to the kitchen where we got a free breakfast of crepes.
From there, we took a trolly tour around Lisbon and saw what I think was the Lisbon Cathedral:

We visited the Muslim (and later Chriatian) castle:

Then, we went to Lisbon´s ancient district, Belém, and visited the Tower of Belém (the name could have used a little more originality). Of all the castles and palaces I´ve been to in Europe (and at this point I´m starting to take them for granted), this little fortress on the sea was the best thing I´ve seen. From the outside, it was intimidating, but on the inside it was breathtakingly beautiful.

In this picture, the tower in the front is the bronze model of the tower, and the real tower is in the background:

It had a dungeon downstairs. I´m crying because I´m a prsioner who got stuck trying to escape:

Lord of the Rings inspired interior decoration: A view from (near) the top of the ocean:

And looking in the other direction, the city of Lisbon:

I found zen in the meditation turret:

Tired from walking up all those steps, we took a short swimming break:

From the tower, we went to the largest stone statue of a ship I have ever seen and predict I will ever see again. Steffen, the red dot just a bit to the right of the white car, gives some perspective.

We took a trolly back to the hostel to shower and unwind before dinner. There, we met a Portugese guy named Marco who invited us to his birthday party, which he happened to be holding that night at a Fado club. Fado is Portugese folk music, invented, I was told, by melancholy Portugese sailors at sea. Here´s a sample.

We went with Marco and some Chinese and Brazilian people from the hostel. I had "bacalhau" -- salted cod, a Portugese speciality -- and Steffen had octopus, the other dish that you´re supposed to get when you go to Portugal. Both were ridiculously good.

As we ate, two guitarists tuned. Then, the lights dimmed, and the waitress herself sang, backed up by the guitarist. We literally had a private show; for reasons totally unknown, perhaps because of Marco´s birthday, we were the only group let into the restaurant. Soon, the waitress took a break, and the owner sang, and the owner´s wife sang, and the guitarist sang. Everyone pitched in to give us a shot of spectacle.

Here´s a picture of the guitarists. It´s bad quaility, but it gives a feel for how up-close we were. If the guitarist had scratched his neck, he would have knocked over the wine:

We finished dinner around 12:30 and had a drink in Lisbon´s nightlife area, el Barrio Alto. We headed back to the hostel, climbed into our beds, and were asleep in minutes.

The next day, we breakfasted on homemade eggs (this hostel was incredible). We rode the gondola near the Vasco de Gama tower:

After the expo, we saw the naval museum, which might have been more rewarding had I known anything about boats. We also stumbled upon a celebration of the newly signed Treaty of Lisbon:




Near dinnertime, we took a ferry to the other side of Lisbon, and saw the city at sunset. "If you were a girl," I told Steffen, "this ferry would be our first kiss."


Nicely sums up the trip:

We took a night bus back to Madrid on Sunday night, and I had my first Christmas. Two huge meals, one a dinner that lasted until 2am and another a lunch that started at five in the afternoon. (Quite Spanish.) I gave Hector and Dario a stegasauras and a something-else-sauras, respectively, my host parents Ozomatli and Yes CDs, and Margie (the babysitter and housekeeper) a stuffed animal dog for her daughter. My host parents gave me an awesome shirt and a striped sweater (which I´ve needed for teaching at risk of showing my students that I only have one nice outfit in my whole wardrobe).

Last night, I ticked down 2007 at Sol, Madrid´s version of Times Square, with Steffen, the friend with whom I´d gone to Lisbon. There had to tens of thousands of people. We met up with my friend Sophie, also from Germany (but whereas Steffen´s from the part near Austria, she´s from the part near France), and met two British girls who had come to Madrid for just one night (weirdos!). We went bar-hopping, then went back to Steffen´s apartment to unwind watching Scrubs. I left at 6am, and due to major horrible disasterous outrageous ridiculous public transportation woes, I got home a few minutes before 9am. I suddenly realized that everyone on the west coast was celebrating midnight, and I felt nostalgic for LA -- Happy New Years!. Seconds later, my head was on the pillow and I was asleep, a wonderful Christmas break behind me and thoughts of going to Sevilla soon swirling in my head.