Living Spontaneously

A mini Stadium reunion occurred this past weekend on the beautiful islands of St. Thomas and St. John in the Caribbean. This was an impromptu reunion, an exercise in living spontaneously, what with Saturday morning flights purchased two days prior. Let me just say: live spontaneously, we did. Elliot and his friend Nick ("Nasty Nick"), who turns out to be a pretty cool dude, came down for a visit. These are [our] stories (I hope someone gets that reference):

Day 1:

Elliot and Nick woke up at 4:00am to begin their journey to the Caribbean. Arriving at 11:40am, I met them outside Cyril E. King International Airport and we had hugs all around. Elliot and Nick were the first people to visit me on The Rock and so I was, admittedly, rather excited to show outsiders around the crazy place (unofficial motto of the island: Welcome to St. Thomas, You Can't Make This Shit Up.)

From the airport, we drove immediately to my one room bungalow to drop some shit off. Here are pictures of Elliot on my patio:



After we were done, we hopped into the trusty Ford Fiesta and drove the windy roads across the island to Red Hook on the east end of the island where we planned to catch the ferry to St. John. We hopped on the 1 o'clock ferry and took the twenty minute ride to St. John. Here's a picture from the ferry:




Once we got to St. John, we rented some snorkel equipment and made the twenty minute walk to Honeymoon Beach. Honeymoon Beach is in the middle of Virgin Islands National Park, and is located such that it's remote enough that it's never crowded, but close enough that it's not a problem to get to. At Honeymoon Beach, we snorkeled, chilled, walked the sand, and generally did "the beach thing". This is what I'm talking about:





Honeymoon Beach is gorgeous. Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of the cool sea-life we saw, but I will tell you we saw sea turtles, two types of rays, lots of fish and coral, and there were rumors on the beach of a nurse shark (but we didn't get to peep it).

So, we left Honeymoon beach and we went to an aweosme bar called Iguana Grill. Iguana grill opened right across from Wet Woody's, which is a St. John institution famous for it's excellent happy hour deals, awesome atmosphere, sweet name, and strong pours. Iguana Grill opened a few months back, made their happy hour an hour longer, had the same deals, and offered more seating. Excellent business plan. Excellent way to piss off the other bar. Here's a picture of Woody's (you can't beat the ambience):



And here are some pics of us at Iguana Grill:





I'm not going to mince words: we're equal opportunity drinkers, and we're going where we can drink the longest, for the cheapest, and actually be able to sit down. So we went to Iguana. We still grabbed a brew from Woody's Express Window to drink on the street, just so we could tell our grandchildren about it.

After Iguana (18 beers, 18 bucks, bitches!), we loitered for a bit:



And then we went to Rhumb Lines. Rhumb Lines is a fantastic place. They serve Asian/Caribbean fusion and awesome drinks. They have fabulous servers that act like they like me, and they have begun to give me free drinks as a result. The bar at Rhumb Lines has swings for seats (if you want them), serves Fernet-Branca (delicious), and has a live guitarist who puts up with my drunken requests. I can't ask for more. Here's a picture of us at Rhumb Lines:



And one with our bartender:



After Rhumb Lines, we hung out on the beach for a while, had a pretty strange experience with some strung out locals (ask Elliot), met a man named Whisky (!), and then took the ferry back to St. Thomas.

I have no more pictures from Saturday, but just because I know you're all so curious to hear what we did, we went back to Red Hook, met up with some friends of mine at an Irish bar (St. Patrick's Day, after all), and then went home to sleep.

Day 2:

We woke up (early!), and ventured back to Molly Malone's for brunch. Highlights of our hungover morning were the pancake wraps (sausage, egg, cheese, wrapped in pancake) and grilled cheese with egg (Nasty Nick's a vegetarian - what a bitch).

After breakfast, we had made plans with a friend of mine to go back to St. John and rent a dinghy for the day! This meant that we got to take a little Zodiac with a 15hp motor and cruise around the north shore of the island, stopping as we pleased to go to beaches, snorkel, etc. And this, my friends, is where the pictures get EPIC!

Nasty Nick drivin' the yacht:



And Elliot straddling the boat:



But wait, what's that I spot? A jolly roger on the high seas? Where real pirates like Captain Kidd and Blackbeard actually roamed?







And lastly, Pajo and Nasty Nick posing with the flag:



While this only brings us through Sunday afternoon, I have no more pictures to share. I can assure you all, however, that the rest of Elliot and Nasty Nick's visit involved pools, beaches, beer, urchin spines in the foot, and Elliot passing a fart so smelly it made me vomit.

Yes, that actually happened.

Culture Shock

Life in Siberia is like a Mario Kart race. When I arrived, I was a little nervous, but things got started off perfectly. I hit the accelarator at just the right second, and was quickly out in front. I can usually handle all of the curves that life here throws at me, and oftentimes, afterwards I enjoy the difficulties, just like you can get a speedboost on turns in Mario Kart. But there are still those completely random, unavoidable moments, when a blue shell comes from no where and stops me dead in my tracks. Blue shells can come from anywhere, even places that I've been to many times, but for some reason, this time that item box turned up blue. Other days it's just lonely as hell out here. It was definitely worse in the dead of winter. But the great melt has some unintended consequences. For example, I'm not sure if it's expanding metal or trees, but fairly loud explosiony sounds are becoming a daily occurrence. This can be fairly unsettling. Also, now that it isn't so cold, more and more of the people that I should avoid at all costs are on the street, in between me and the university. Paranoid? Maybe. But a tourist did get beaten nearly to death, you guessed it, where I walk everyday to get to and from the university. Exploding sounds in such environs does tend to stress me out a little, especially if I have my computer or other valuables with me.

The melt also can be fairly funny. Each day, a little more of a beer bottle that has been trapped in the cement-hard ice/snow mixture that has covered the ground since December is revealed. Although they're dangerous, the icicles falling from the tops of buildings onto walkways are comical, at least to me. Ancient vomit piles are revealed, and new ones are created at an increasing rate.

But this year isn't just about the cold and darkness. It's about transitioning from being surrounded by friends at all times to being alone in Siberia for an entire year. It's almost like exile, but I chose it. And fortunately, I don't have to do hard labor. My circumstances are, at an entirely superficial level, similar to the tsarist political exiles sent to populate Siberia. And more than anything, it's completely awesome.

I still sometimes feel like I'm in a dream. The other day I was sitting and eating lunch, and for some reason I began to think about the LDC. There is absolutely no similarity between my lunches here and the lunches I ate at Carleton, except for the tray. No fountain drinks. No different stations. No different kinds of bread. I had a drink that consisted of crushed Siberian berries and honey, a salad (there is no lettuce here, btw), and a pastry stuffed with meat. And of course, I rarely know anyone as I gave around the cafeteria. This is my lunch here. But I never feel culture shock because of lunch.

I met an American woman a few days ago. She is actually helping to organize a school to train tour-guides methodically. Her focus is mainly ecotourism. I got to speak with her a little bit. I hadn't talked face to face with an American in two months. I was depressed and lonely for the rest of the day. I wanted to go home.

Maybe culture shock happens when you find unexpectedly find familiar things in unfamiliar places. In Russia, that happens all too often. This is actually much better expressed in Russian. In Russian, things are divided in svoi and chuzhoi. Svoi is yours, chuzhoi is the opposite. But even though the mix of the two can make me feel culture shock, it also makes for some of my best moments here.

The sky is the most familiar thing here. I look up at night and see Orien. In the day, the sky is blue and there are clouds. But the weather here is different. It changes faster than you can imagine. One moment, there's not a cloud in the sky, the next it's snowing. This happened today as I was walking home. I walked outside and it was sunny, but snowing heavily. There were clouds near where the sun was setting over the mountains. Everything was orange and red and snowy. It looked like a filter on a camera for a Eurotrash action film. It was unbelievable. There are moments when you feel far away and its frightening, and moments when you feel far away and it's entirely liberating.

There are so many familiar feelings as spring arrives. The temperature, the birds beginning to sing, the wind begins to blow, the mud everywhere. But it's the lack of Easter, Rottblatt, Spring Concert, and general mayhem that will make this spring difficult. On the other hand, I have several upcoming trips that I can't wait for that have nothing to do with what spring meant to me for the last several years. I get to go ice fishing on Baikal. I get to go mountain climbing. And the Carleton study abroad group will even be arriving in a few months. So maybe culture shock is just struggling to move forward in life. I want to go back to the institutionalized days of assignments and weekends, but I'm stuck in this world of undefined deadlines and responsibilities. So what can I do? Well, for now, I just wait for my kart to stop smoking and get back into the lead to wait for the next blue shell. Because as far as I can tell, life is still stuck in Mario Kart 64, you can't do this. And while this race might end in a mere three months, the next one begins immediately after this.

gif of the week

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