Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

My lovely friends,

My apologies for the very long delay for this post. The first few weeks that I had spent in Montpellier I felt I hadn't done enough to justify writing a post, and then I got too busy living my life to find the energy to write about it. Life here has taken many interesting twists and turns these three months, and yet I can't say that I do THAT much here. The days float by one after the other and I often wonder about how I am using my time. One interesting thing that I discovered early on and that continues to amaze me is how easily everything has been coming to me here. The challenge I set for myself in coming to France was suppose to be the most difficult one yet: I arrived in a country where I didn't speak the language at all, in a city I had never been to, where I did not know a single person. And deciding somewhat last minute, I didn't have anything set up beforehand, just barely having a place to sleep for my first night in town. And yet somehow everything has worked out more easily here than it has in pretty much any other city I have visited. Prying into the details, as I will explain along the way, I think it demonstrates that at the end of the day, I understand, know how to work within the confines of, and really am looking for things offered by western culture. It's not something I'm happy to admit, but it's something I'm willing to accept.

Food Culture

One of the first questions people not from France ask me about my time here is what I have been eating. France is famous for its cuisine. My first time in France almost seven years ago, the main suggestions I got was to eat bread, cheese, and go to restaurants. I have not had too many story worthy food experiences though as far as French cuisine goes. After my first week where I west a little crazy and spent close to 7 euros on food, I have been able to avoid any food purchases for the purposes of feeding myself. That's not to say I haven't had some exposure. Many couchsurfing hosts have given me bread with an array of cheeses after a meal, I've had a bowl of chocolate milk in the morning, I had crepes several times (I even made a few myself) and recently I had a galette, which is a whole wheat crepe from Brittany (or Normandy depending on who you ask). And I've been promised a raclette experience soon. For the in between, I have been eating amazingly well, just not anything typically French.

I discovered a little less than a week after arriving here that there are many outdoor markets, many with fruit and vegetable stands, and that there is a culture of the recoup, or the collection of the fruits and vegetables that are getting thrown out at the end of the market. I spent a lot of time discovering which markets were best and on what days they operated, but pretty quickly settled on what I had been told early on; two markets that are close to each other, one that happens daily and one that happens twice a week. A typical pick up is of one large box of fruits and vegetable, easily enough for a big meal that feeds three or four people one or two times. I've been in veggie heaven.

The recoup is not always easy though. It's extremely time sensitive. The markets close around 1 pm, other people come to pick up food, and even if they leave anything, the garbage trucks come by and chuck anything that is left by 2 pm. To be guaranteed enough food for a meal, it's important to arrive around 1:20 or 1:30 and stick around until about 2. This is difficult, for example on days when I have my French class at 2 and I have to bike 3 kms to get there. As I mentioned there can also be competition, and trying to figure out the appropriate way to handle other people who are there to pick up food is interesting. Sometimes other people include Roma families or houseless folk, but often it's student or other young people looking for a free meal or to counter food waste and consumerist culture with their eating habits. One never knows exactly how much food or food access the other person has, and there is almost always enough for everyone to have as much as they need, though perhaps not of the best fruit, and perhaps not as much as they would like. It creates a tricky balance. The final difficulty is diversity. I've hardly ever had a problem quantity wise, but when you eat others' rejected food, you can't be too choosy. Once we picked up several kilos of tomatoes but hardly anything else, another time I had almost only eggplant the whole week, mushroom based meals for two to three days, radishes, pineapples, bananas, etc. I probably get a better diversity of fruits and veggies than the average person over the course of a month, but a single meal or a series of meals may be a little boring. One of the important solutions for the diversity problem is that when I come home to a couchsurfer with a box full of veggies and start coking they offer pasta, rice, garlic, spices, other veggies, and other foods in general to complete a good meal. And since I cook for them a good amount, there is usually an exchange where they cook for me once or twice.

Over all the market recoup has been a complete blessing. I eat more food, better, healthier, and more diversified that I did anywhere except for in Boston, I spend no money on it, and I can use it as a way to share with my hosts all the time and often open their eyes to new perspectives on food. The one thing that has been ruining the healthiness is that I found a good bread dumpster, and eating bread is easier than cooking veggies, but I'm trying. The recoup also has an amazing social scene. The daily market at Figuerolles is less exciting, although there were two students who started coming there regularly who I became friends with, and it has been a very interesting place for observation of race/immigrant interactions since most of the vendors are from the Magreb countries (North Africa formerly French colonized countries) and so many of those coming to recoup are Roma. The market on Tuesdays and Saturdays at Arceaux is much much larger and more closely resembles a US farmer's market as it provides mostly organic and expensive produce, artsy clothing, and yuppie clientele. There is a strong culture of the recoup there, and about 15-20 young folk turn out every Saturday to come pick up. There is a strong ethic of sharing, trading, and giving, and for a while there was a large redistribution of goods at the end of the recoup. The large number of people can make it difficult to walk away with a well laden basket, but the culture of sharing usually means it's possible to get enough, and a better diversity of foods, and I've met a number of really cool people at the market, so that now the hour of wandering around is also interrupted with stopping to say hello and chitchat.

I've certainly been exposed and absorbed into a food culture here, just perhaps not the one most people think of when they think of fine French cuisine.

Language

I think the one thing I can truly call an accomplishment for my time here is my advancement in French. I don't speak super well, I make many grammatical mistakes, and I have many problems with vocab and pronunciation, but I am pretty happy with my level for three months, especially after the relative failure of trying to learn Thai last spring. 

Observing the progress of my French from a step back, as a learning experience about learning, has been fascinating. I have never learned a language like this before. This is the first time I am learning a new language in six years, which made it interesting to reexperience the frustrations and difficulties of extremely minimal expression in a situation when I actually expect myself to be able to communicate. This is also the first time that I'm learning a language with almost no formal learning structure (except for when I learned Hebrew of course), and the first time I am throwing myself into such an immersive environment without having almost any base in the language. It means I got to see a fast paced language learning curve starting at 0.

When I first arrived I was completely unable to communicate in French. Within a little more than a week I was able to find some highly subsidized classes. I had French class 6 hours a week, but as to be expected with highly subsidized community center style classes, there are lots of students and only two levels, complete beginner and a little bit better. Anyone who speaks Spanish, and can say a handful of words in French is put straight into the higher level. There is therefore a wide range of skill in the little bit better class. And the teachers are volunteers who don't necessarily have any training in teaching French aside from being French themselves. Trying to teach over 20 students form different backgrounds who are at different levels and who are often straight up disrespectful and talk the entire class period is not easy to do without some solid experience and/or training. The class was extremely helpful at first, offering me the only opportunity to fully interact with French throughout the week, and since then it has continued to provide a certain backbone of some formal learning and a little bit of grammar, but it has become less and less useful over time. By the last few weeks I spent most of the time reading in the back. The class ended last week for the winter holidays.

The first few weeks I used a slew of websites and exercises to keep practicing French outside of class. Then a little less than a month after arriving in Montpellier I couchsurfed with a family with some people who were not very strong English speakers. I had had a few almost conversations through language exchanges and so decided to try to manage my stay entirely in French. It was very very difficult, especially for them, and did not always work, and I got a lot of help from those who could translate the occasional word I didn't know. It also meant I didn't talk with them that much. But I was having conversations not only about where I was from but also about the principles behind food not bombs and anti-capitalist activism. I had a week where I was counting conversations and level of complexity of conversations, but then I lost count. I kept couchsurfing with French people and speaking only in French, and noticed my ability getting higher and higher. I went form complicated conversations about subjects I know a lot about to complicated conversations about subjects I am not familiar with, to conversations with people who are not used to me, to even occasionally joining in on conversations between French people. There are of course the less pleasant bumps of thinking everything is going smoothly and running into someone who just doesn't understand me or who I just can't understand, of not knowing some very basic words or very basic conjugations all of the sudden, or just feeling far too tired to interact. But for several weeks now I have found myself spending most of my time with French folk listening or having conversations, which is both exciting as far as being able to do that after three months, and it's exciting because I have tons of opportunities to practice.

And I finished Harry Potter 1 in yet another language

Activism
Montpellier is a classic example of a student city, one where a quarter of the population is made up of students and it is their energy that keeps the strong beat and hum of activity going. As always happens in such high concentrations of young people and students, there are many various activist projects going on. I've found myself able to participate in many small projects here and there, though I have not found a group or organization to really dedicate myself to while I have been here.

Food not Bombs was a clear starting point. I came here to begin with because I knew about the Food not Bombs chapter, and I have found they are always a good launching  pad for me. There was an FNB meal one week after I arrived, it was the day before my birthday, so at the end I went around and thanked everyone for celebrating my birthday with me, even if they didn't know it. The organization had provided a lot for me, but it also has some serious limits. The chapter here has a lot of enthusiasm and eager volunteers, but very little structure and maintained support. Everything is thrown together and poorly expressed to everyone else. Also, despite the great number of interested people, they only do one meal a month. One meal a month means people don't set a side their x day of the week for FNB, they have to plan around it every time. It also means that building a community around FNB is very difficult, one meeting a month is not enough to really form connections. Part of why they do one meeting a month is because the cooking process is much more labor intensive, long, and complicated. Partially because picking up from the recoup means a lot of sorting through rotting food, and partially because they are committed to making more complicated foods like veggie pizzas and pies. They are really good, but require lots of materials and oven time for small dishes. In Boston, two to three volunteers could whip up a meal that would feed 100 people in less than three hours, and in Portland where we made more fruit salads, it was usually 3-5 for making a full meal in that time. Here we have ten volunteers around for one and a half days and we still end up finishing late. The focus here is also not as interesting for me. There is a very heavy emphasis of veganism and animal rights. I'm not at all opposed to that, but it is so focused so that the anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, gift economy, community building focus that I felt so strongly at other places is lacking. It's there, but it gets lost in the shuffle. And perhaps the biggest problem of all, I just haven't really clicked with the core group here. I've had great exchanges with some people, but I have not been able to develop the same type of connection with the people who are always there and who keep coming back, although they are very nice and friendly. In the past I always wanted to go to FNB meals because it felt like a party, and because I was happy to just hang out and chat. Between all of the problems above, and the fact that even now my French bars easy fluid communication, I don't feel the same excitement from doing meals.

Despite all of those negatives, I am still very thankful for the community here, first because I do still enjoy the meals and enjoy most of the people I meet through them, but also because I was able to find a few very important things through FNB. First, I met some great friends, although they were volunteers that did not come all the time, but these were people I was able to meet up and hang out with between meals as well. But also, through Food not Bombs I found about about something called Demosphere, a website that lists alternative and radical events. During the little interim when I was ready to explore but not yet consumed with my social life or other obligation, I was able to fill up my time with movie showings, protests, panels, and debates. It's through demosphere that I found out about the student strike that happened, and also how I got to a vegan picnic where I met some really great people.

I also tried becoming active with a bike collective here that has an open workshop three times a week for fixing bikes. But it's run far too much like a business and focuses far too little on helping people out, being flexible, and trying to building a community. I had things like the Community Spoke or the Boston Cyclist's Union farmers market stands in mind, but it is nothing like that. When I realized it required paid membership and that one had to pay for parts I was at least hoping for an atmosphere similar to Bike Farm (is that what it's called) in Portland. The one time I went there I had a pleasant interaction and the guy at the counter helped work around corners to make things work for me. But here, everything is so rigid. I went there a lot to work on my bike, which was a complete wreck when I bought it, and to work on my finally failed bike cart experiment, but I have been going less and less as I find the experience stressful rather than exciting and connective.

I still join in small projects here and there, but overall I feel fairly inactive on social and political issues. That will just have to wait.

Social Life
One of my favorite things here is how many people I met who I feel comfortable calling friends, who I want to call up and try to see and spend time with. Most of these people are couchsurfing hosts. I've been extremely lucky in that Montpellier has both an very welcoming and accepting couchsurfing culture so that I never had trouble finding a place to stay, and that the vast majority of my hosts have been amazingly friendly and fun (with the exception of the first guy who was awkward and kept grabbing my arms and legs while we talked). I think the proof for me of the social success of my time here in Montpellier is that a month ago when I had my Hannukah party, lots of people ended up not being able to come, and yet about 15 people arrived, all people who I invited and was happy to see there.

Another interesting social phenomenon is that I will often speak many languages in the course of a few hours or a few days. I have a few German friends here, all students who are studying. While some of them insist on speaking French, I met one before I could speak French and so we got used to speaking German together. Over half of my French class speaks Spanish and I've met a few Spanish speakers everywhere else I go, it comes with being less than 200 kms from the border. I also met an Israeli family here by complete accident and go to visit them on a regular basis. I spent a lot of time over there earlier when I was fixing all of their bikes and working on my bike cart there, but I spend less time there now. And I was hosted by a Chinese student, who introduced me to another Chinese friend of hers. It's provided a great opportunity to practice switching languages quickly. I've had days where I get to speak all six languages in one day, even if I only say a few sentences.

My social scene has shifted quite a bit in the last month or so. First, I have been on and off sick for a few weeks, draining my energy from most social interactions. Second, as the holidays got close, everyone here got busy and started leaving, making it even more difficult than usual to make plans. But the biggest change is that I started dating someone (her name is Laurene) and have more or less been living with her and her roommates for just about a month now. As a result I don't meet new people from couchsurfing, and I spend a lot of time hanging out with these folks so I don't feel as compelled to seek out others, especially when I'm sick and don't have much energy. The flip side is that I'm getting to develop those deeper relationships of seeing people and spending some time with them every day and that I get to relax a little bit as I stop moving around.

There is so much more to say after three months but I think I'll just wrap up and end here

Random Observations
French people are really into circus. So many people here spend a relatively large chuck of there time on circus type stuff, it's everywhere. I am sure it is more prevalent than in any other place I have been.

Next Steps
I've decided to extend my stay in Montpellier by a little, probably until the end of January. It's amazing to me how difficult the decision is because even though I was determined not to make plans, I had the beginning of January in my head and it is very difficult for me to make a change. Really enjoying my life here is one reason I made the change. Another is that the thought of starting all over again seems very daunting. I know I want a chance at a full 2-3 months in Germany, but the thought of going to a country where I don't speak the language or know anyone, and really trying to form community seemed and still seems way to tiring and daunting. Maybe I have been doing this for too long. But I still want another adventure. So I decided on a compromise. I am more or less set on going to Greece from here. Still not 100%, but that is the idea. If I were to spend 2-3 months in Greece, it would mean that big challenge of really trying to find community. It would mean a short time living there, exactly what I am not sure I am up for. So I've shortened it to a long visit of about a month and a half. Enough time to meet some people, delve a little deeper, but where I'll feel less obligation to work hard on making deeper connections. Right now, that seems a lot more appealing to me.

The title of this email comes from The Little Prince. It roughly translates into "one can't go very far walking straight ahead". I am trying to heed that advice, and to allow myself to veer away, to stop walking straight ahead.

And I leave for Berlin in two days to spend New Years there. That was Laurene's idea.

Happy New Years everyone

Disconnecting to Reconnect

Dear friends,

I am writing to you from a McDonald's in Montpellier, France. I've been in this city for almost three days and have spent much of that time in this McDonald's, since it is the only place with reliable internet that I have found so far. That's a long way away from the couch in Kalamazoo where I wrote the last update. Let me fill in the gaps.

Escape to a Small World
A month and a half ago I began my LandSea experience. There were many wonderful elements to the experience, and some that were challenging as well. One of my favorite elements of going on LandSea is the people I get to interact with. Even before leaving, I already knew all of the other people who were filling the same position as me, that of logistics leader. I also knew I liked all of those people, and one of the things I was most excited about in anticipation for LandSea was the prospect of working closely with all of them. I did not know most of the trip leaders going in but felt confident that I would get to spend time with many wonderful people, which proved right. The program creates an atmosphere that is very appealing to me, one that encourages reflection and introspection; intentional communication, interaction, and personal growth; overt displays of emotion, affection, and caring; and it encourages strength through vulnerability and independence through interdependence. I am a big proponent of all of these but often feel unable to act on them as much as I would like because of contrary pressures from other elements in society. Because LandSea breeds this atmosphere, it also attracts people who are appreciative of it, so we had a small community of people who espouse the above traits in a setting that encourages them.

I also had my fair share of challenges. In my role there was a lot of downtime. However, the program is designed to have endless tasks, and most people around me were busy round the clock. I felt that having downtime meant I was being lazy, and would look for tasks that I could not find. Much about the program was very new and very different from what I had known in the past. New policies, new park, new leadership team. There was a lot to learn and get used to. Somethings I understood well and just had to get accustomed, even if I didn't like them. Other things I did not understand and either had to try to figure out on my own, which only went well some of the time, or I would begin asking questions. Everyone on the logistics teams had a different level of experience and history with the program. Some had done the program in the Adirondacks before, had worked as logistics leaders before, had worked in the LandSea office for months or years, and/or had worked closely with the director. I didn't have any of those benefits. I was going in after three years of no interaction with LandSea, and two years of very brief and remote interaction with Kalamazoo College. As a result, our group was hardly ever on the same page, and had wildly varying levels of information. I felt like I knew less of what was going on then most, and so felt like I was always catching up. But also, I take a very critical view of things. When things didn't make sense to me, I would ask about them, try to understand them, or offer other solutions. Ultimately my frequent inquiries and critiques began annoying others and created some friction. But that too was an important learning experience. How to work with other leadership styles in another capacity, and starting from very different positions.

The best part of going out on LandSea is getting to take a break from the big world. Most of the time I want to do everything, everywhere, with everyone, all the time, and I often find myself disappointed when I come face to face with the impossibility of that desire. That was a reoccurring issue I encountered last year. Both in Israel and in Thailand, I was consistently plagued by a feeling of not doing enough, or not doing the right things. I was regularly restless because whenever I would start one thing I would think about how I should be doing another, or about the three other things that I know won't get done that day. LandSea is an opportunity to live in a very small world all of the sudden. In my position I actually had a decent amount of access to the outside world, but I made a conscious effort not to take those avenues, to concentrate only on what was directly around me. For a month I did not access the internet, did not read any books, did not put on any music, did not read or listen to news, did not make any contact with anyone I know who was not in the program. Instead I connected. I connected with the 90+ people who were on the program, and especially with the 20-30 who were in leadership roles. I connected with my surroundings, with the lakes, the trees, the earth. And I connected with myself, and spent lots of time listening to and learning from myself. Finally, I was not restless, I was at peace.

When I talk about this with some people, they ask me why I don't disconnect all the time, get off of facebook, stop checking my email, don't read the news. If I enjoy it so much, why not bring it into the front country? But I enjoy it as a respite, as a quick escape. I love the mashing together of so many people and so much information that makes up our social connections in the big world. I truly enjoy the connections that rely on these tools and the information I can get from the internet. I would be much less effective at what I am doing and not at all happier if I were to disengage form internet life entirely. I think the trick is to remember that the internet and digital communications are tools that can be useful but also harmful, and not diseases themselves. Refusing to use the tools because they drive me crazy sometimes is like refusing to use knives because I cut myself with them sometimes. The trick is not to remove myself completely but to learn how to carry the calm and the peace of the small world into the big world. I know it's possible, I've experienced it. I'm just not very good at it yet. And when I need a reminder, I can escape to a small world for a time, to remind myself and to recharge.

On the Road Again
I did not do the best job of bringing that balance with me right out of LandSea. The program ended in a confusing and exhausting swirl when B&W forgot to send a bus to the Adirondacks and I had to drive a van load of participants through the night along with most of the logistics team. Upon arriving in Kalamazoo, I was greeted with the usual front country shock of all of the digital communication that I had fallen behind on over the month added onto all of the things I didn't finish before leaving. On top of that, I had about 5 days to catch up while preparing for a European adventure and trying to see everyone to say goodbye. The days were hectic.

Upon landing in Europe I started off with travel adventures by choosing to hitchhike from the airport in Frankfurt to Aachen where my brother is studying. To keep things interesting, and because this was all happening around Yom Kippur, I had decided to fast and was starting to hitchhike after having fasted about 50 hours, with the airplane food stuffed into my bag just in case. Things were slow but I was feeling upbeat. I didn't make it all the way, primarily because a well intentioned man tried to drop me off in a good location and as a result drove me about 20 km in the wrong direction and dropped me off at a station where it was almost impossible to get picked up. It took me about 5 hours to get back to where the man could have dropped me off in the first place in Cologne, and since I was determined to get to Aachen that day and it was getting dark, I took the train for that last stretch. On the plus side, at the rest station where I spent over two hours waiting, I ran into some people who gave me a slice of cake (which I saved for later), tried to convince me to put my faith and Jesus, and prayed for me.

After a few days of hanging out with my brother in rainy Aachen and trying fervently to prepare as much as I could for my trip to and arrival in Montpellier, I departed on Friday morning. I did not get very far the first day because a Turkish truck driver who picked me up at the Belgian border took me 60 km in the wrong direction after having misunderstood where I was going to in France. It all turned out for the better though. I have this belief that when things go wrong they are all part of a greater conspiracy which is meant to lead me to particular things that will ultimately benefit me. I think I hold this belief more for entertainment purposes and to cheer myself up when things go wrong rather than truly believing it, but it provides wonderful fantasies about the chain reaction of things that will happen and how everything will turn out as best as it could. This time the conspiracy really worked. It took me about 5 hours to get back to where the truck driver could have left me, meaning that at 6:30 pm I was in Liege, a city in the French speaking part of Belgium that is only about 50 km from Aachen. I was not sitting at a very good spot and was already spending time looking at the map and planning where I would go to sleep in case no one picked me up. But I did get picked up, by someone who was only going 20 km farther, but who ended up offering to host me for the night. And so I got to spend the night with the Dembour family. Their house was gorgeous, parts of it were built in 1780, and it was in the small quaint town of Sprimont. The couple worked as a teacher and a physical therapist, and Bernard, the teacher, spoke excellent English and helped translate when I had a hard time communicating. I got to have a beautiful dinner and try new food (mussels) with their two younger children. Tom, their 22 year old son, took main responsibility for hosting me and we spent quite a while chatting. Instead of just driving through Belgium, I got to spend a night with a Belgian family, eat local food, try the renowned Belgian beer and chocolate, and meet some amazing people. Thank you Turkish truck driver.

This did mean that I was pretty far from Montpellier at the end of the first day. My second day was slightly less eventful. Highlights were gripping on to the car as some drivers took their vehicles up to 180 kmph (that a little over 110 mph for Americans), a long ride with a Polish guy who took back roads to avoid tolls but ended up getting a speeding ticket as he would go twice or more the speed limit whenever he could. And my last ride of the day, a strange older man who told me about traveling the world (he really had been in many parts of the world) by bicycle in order to study and spread knowledge about solar power. He spoke a lot about the 7 years he spent in Israel after biking there from France. When he dropped me off at the rest stop it was nearly 11 pm. I went to thumb near the exit and joined two folks headed to a rainbow festival. We chatted for a bit, but since they could speak French and were determined to keep going that night, they ended up going and speaking to drivers and found a ride. Meanwhile I was exhausted and nursing a headache, so I pulled out my sleeping bag and slept through the night behind a little wall. I was pretty far south at this point, near Lyon, so the weather was actually very nice for outdoor sleeping, nicer than it was in the Adirondacks on some nights.

Two rides brought me into Montpellier by about one the next day. Since the trip would not be interesting enough as it is, I managed to leave my wallet in my last ride's car. Luckily we had had a great conversation and he gave me his email, so I managed to contact him, and he was coming back through Montpellier later that day anyway, so I got my wallet by the evening. But I had a few hours of trying to figure out how I was going to manage on 7 Euro until I could get some new bank cards, since I had forgotten to move my emergency card to my money belt.

A New Chapter
And now I'm here. I realized on that first day, after walking around the city some and discovering McDonald's for internet and the train station for charging devices, that this is the first time since January when I can look forward to spending 2-3 months in the same place. The feeling is pleasant and welcome.

I have been doing a good job of maintaining the calm I spoke of earlier while I have been here. The mountain of things that there is to do continues to be daunting and never ending, but I am avoiding the anxious negative feedback loops that I fell into so regularly throughout the past year. I have so far been happy with whatever gets accomplished on a given day, and feel ready to tackle the next thing the next day. I think a part of the shift is also a result of reorienting priorities, guided mostly by my experience during the meditation retreats in Thailand and on LandSea. I wrote, a few updates ago, that while on the first meditation retreat I realized that what fulfills me most is commitment, and I decided to continue my nomadic lifestyle at least through the experience that I had promised myself in order to see through that commitment to myself and to the experience. While reflecting on that realization and on calmness vs. restlessness during LandSea, I realized that the restlessness comes from a preoccupation with small picture goals at the cost of the big picture experience. If I obsess over how many people I meet, which organizations I work with, how good I get at speaking the language, how many books I read, etc. then I become overwhelmed with everything I have to do. But once I release the attachment to all of those little goals and learn to accept however well I do or however far I go for any of those goals, I give myself the space to embrace my experience, whatever it maybe. I am able to stay true to my commitment. That's not an easy thing to remember, and it is much easier for me to write than it is for me to truly feel. But I'm pretty happy with the way things have been going these past three days. Things have been pretty slow so far, which sometimes makes it easier. They will start speeding up already later this week. Couchsurfing meeting on Thursday, Food not Bombs over the weekend, and my birthday on Sunday. I feel ready.

Future Destination
I am very excited to be in one place for the next few months. I will most likely stay in Montpellier until sometime in December, perhaps even through the new year, depending on how things go. From there I plan to go somewhere that is at least as warm, if not warmer than here. Morocco and Greece have been my two main contenders for a while, but Spain, Portugal, and Italy all remain possibilities, as well as something else that may pop up. In the spring I hope to go somewhere in southern Germany. And from there the path is truly unknown.

Drop me a line if you find yourself in Europe, perhaps we can meet. And I am always happy to receive updates about your lives, if you find yourself with the time and energy to write.

Have a wonderful time doing whatever you're doing wherever you are,

Leeor

Trip leaders getting ready for participants

View from one of the most gorgeous campsites I have ever been to

Our "private" beach at the campsite

Crisscrossing

Hello wonderful friends,

I'm writing to you mere hours before I embark on my third LandSea adventure, disappearing from internet life for a full month. Before the hiatus I'll fill you in on my adventures in the US since arriving in May, talking a lot about how others have labeled this portion of the trip for me, that is going "home".

Roadtrip North

I arrived in the US after nearly three days of bus rides, flights and hanging around airports and offices. Although I was tired and stinky, I was exhilarated to be back. I often poopoo the US, and I think there are many negative things to be said, both about the politics that the government engages in and the lifestyle that thrives here. But try as I might to come off as international and without a real home country, and even though the US does not officially recognize me as one of its own, there is no question that I understand how life works here better than anywhere else. I can easily communicate with people when I am confused about something, I can use public transit just by reading the signs, I know what type of store will sell what type of product and roughly how late it's likely to stay open. There is a huge burden when navigating a foreign country, one that is many times multiplied in a country like Thailand where I didn't speak the language and the basic logic was very new to me. There is, in response, a great relief I feel whenever I return to the US and find myself familiar with my surroundings once again.

Not that I was that familiar. I landed in LA and promptly went to Claremont to join in my sister's graduation festivities as she finished her time at Pomona College. My surroundings were new, different, and yet there was the comfort of understanding the system, understanding it subconsciously. The graduation festivities were actually a good transition for me. Lots of food everywhere, few responsibilities, and even though I had just come back from a long trip, the attention was not centered on me, which I appreciated.

I originally planned to hitchhike to Portland from Claremont but that plan was not meant to be for many reasons. Instead I tagged along a roadtrip my sister planned with one of her friends. We got along well, although there were some strained dynamics, which I recently traced to the fact that I have not traveled much with other people in the last two years. Our ideas of how to best maneuver the details - what to eat, how much to drive each day, when to get up, when to go to bed - were somewhat different. That in itself was not a problem, but we were all trying not to impose too greatly on the others, and I think that regularly created difficulties. But overall we all enjoyed the trip and the company, we hiked and camped and chatted while driving. I got to sleep on the picnic table every night because we didn't have enough room in the tent. Ultimately it was helpful for me to stretch this slow transition back into the US, although by the time we arrived, I was antsy to begin my stay in Portland.

Going "Home"
Going to Portland was very exciting for me, though I was unsure and intensely curious how the city would feel. Before arriving, I had not been in Portland for two and a half years, and had not come for more than a very quick visit in four years. Portland is a city that draws young people, especially young people with a hippie and/or alternative and/or radical mindset the way bananas draw fruit flies. In my short time in Portland I met at least four, and heard about other, young people who came to Portland because they visited and had a great experience or because they heard or knew it is the place to go. I liked Portland as a high school student but didn't have the freedom or the political inclination to explore the wealth of opportunities it offers. I was excited for what I might find. I was also going to live in my parents house. This inspired a varieties of reactions. I had not been there at all since graduating college, since two years of free flowing independence. Family home politics from this new position was both intriguing and frightening. I was excited but also concerned about the prospect of having food and lodging covered for me for over a month. Determining where I will sleep and how I will eat plays meaningfully into my life, and while removing that creates many opportunities to relax, it also severely shifts the modes of interaction with my surroundings. And I was really interested in how I would react to going and exploring a place that was so familiar, the house and the city. Many people my age, even those who have settled meaningfully in new places with long term partners, refer to visiting their parents as "going home". The H word is one I am very careful with, but I knew the experience would be emotional and thought provoking nonetheless.

My time in Portland was split between a ten day visit post road trip, and a month long visit after my stay in Michigan. The ten day visit provided an opportunity to lay the groundwork, make the connections, and as a result I hit the ground running when I came back for my month long stay. I quickly overloaded myself. My days consisted of trying to balance spending time with my family, working on various projects around the house, trying to cook and attend three food not bombs meals a week, reading ferociously to keep up with a few reading partnerships I joined, a short term relationship, hosting couchsurfers, working out logistics for my trip back to Michigan, working as a pedicab driver (picture below), doing various activities to prep my mom's birthday, and trying to be politically active where I could, be it attending meeting on alteration to a public park, a Mt. Tabor protest to save the water, or a protest in Vancouver to stop coal exports on the Columbia river. On top of it all, most of what I did was 4-6 miles from my parent's house, and coming back meant climbing a big hill, so I spent on average an hour and a half per day bike commuting. The mental chaos did not provide the relaxation piece I was hoping for, but it did provide the feeling of exploring a city, in the way that I explore a new city all the time. I would say more than half of any given day was spent engaging in activities I had not engaged in much or at all when I used to live in Portland and in parts of the city that were fairly unfamiliar to me.

Family relations were impressively smooth. There were the bumps and hiccups here and there, but overall, my parents are very relaxed and grant me a lot of freedom. Because they were very busy and I was keeping busy, I think we had enough space to not force too many unnecessary clashes onto ourselves. I got to spend a decent amount of time plotting with my dad and my siblings to orchestrate several birthday events for my mom, who had a milestone birthday this summer. It was pleasant, natural. I don't know that I really felt at home more than I do in many other places though. One thing Portland does not have for me is a wide, solid friend group. I have friends there that I was happy to see. I was even able to time my visit to coincide with one of my better friends' wedding. But I don't often have the connected moments that I experience with some of the friends I was able to visit, for example, in Michigan. I'll expand on that more after discussing my Michigan experiences.

My Last Anchor
For most of the month of June I was in Kalamazoo, with a little under a week spent in Ann Arbor. Kalamazoo is a place that is very exciting to go back to, to visit. It is one of the very few places where I know I can show up anytime, unannounced, and I will have a place to sleep and many people to visit that night. Compared with my time in Portland, in Kalamazoo I had few to no responsibilities. My days were still full though, spending hours rotating between the wonderful people that live here. I went to bed late every night, chatting about whatever seemed most fitting at the time. There were few lonely moments.

Kalamazoo inspired many moments of connectedness, those moments that arise when I think of the word home. I had the feeling repeatedly when I visited my friends, Margaux and Grace. The minute I entered their house, I felt able to let my guard down. I could relax, did not have to over think, did not have to plan and calculate. I could just be, a release I don't often have. But it's not just that. The house was also full of love. Perhaps this was particularly intense because I was in a house full of women who had just finished their time at a four year small liberal arts college. Regardless what the reason was, love and warm feelings were flowing in all directions all the time. I felt it directed at me as well, but just being in such a warm place allowed me to absorb and connect indirectly. One example stands out in particular. When the first housemate was leaving the house I happened to be present. All of the housemates converged into a massive group hug that went on and on, through tears and laughter and even song. I was not a part of the group hug, I was just sitting off to the the side on the couch, but that was part of what was magical in my experience. They were having an intense, mixed, emotional experience, and I was not intruding by being present there. Although I may not have been a part, I experienced an intense sensation of belonging, one that is closely associated with the idea of home of me.

Visiting Kalamazoo is fascinating for me because it is the last place where I had a "permanent" residence. The last place I had a room, a bed, housemates, a long term community. It was the last place where I anchored, and the place from which I launched into my wanderings. Although I have created much space between myself and my college experience, in terms of time and in terms of emotion, there is something about arriving in Kalamazoo that feels remarkably like coming home after a very very long trip.

Kalamazoo and Portland are the two geographical places that are easiest for me to associate with home, that I am most likely to give as the place where I am from if I am cornered into presenting a city name. Spending my summer between the two has offered me some time to reflect on the motif of home, one that follows my journeys wherever I go, but from a different perspective. Instead of trying to create a home in a "foreign" place, I am testing what it feels like to "come back home". There are so many idea that fit into the concept of "home". In a discussion with my mom this summer, she argued that one of the key parts of home is the place that always welcomes you, the place you can always go back. I respect the idea, and certainly my parents home presents that ease of access more than any other structure I can imagine. But thinking of a structure that I can enter seems limited. Even if I have few individual friends that have the resources to take me in were I to really need it, my network of friends and connections provides a support, a retreat, a safe place to turn whose availability I feel just as strongly as that of my parents' home. In the discussion, this concept was juxtaposed against the idea of home being defined by the amorphous feeling of connectedness. My mom argued that this feeling can arise under many circumstances and that many would be difficult to define as home. I agree with her there, and have experienced connectedness in situations that I would not call home. And yet I think the propensity of a place, community, situation, etc. to create connectedness does allow for a determiner of home. This is where the experience in Kalamazoo has an upper hand. The scene is set for me to feel deeper connectedness on a regular basis. Meanwhile at my parent's house, I have personal connections but feel in many ways out of sync with my parents' rhythms, often blocking the deeper, amorphous feeling. The intangible stirrings are just as critical as the tangible resources in understanding and conceptualizing home.

I also think this TED talk does a wonderful job of addressing many of the ideas I have of home and of the obsolete concept of having a geographical home or being "from" somewhere http://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home.html . These is an important concept of home that he tangentially mentions and addresses but does not fully tie together. Stillness. I think it is great for "home" to be a loving, warm, inspiring, motivating, challenging, expanding place. But I also think that a wonderful element of a place like home is that it is relaxed enough, that it is calm enough, that the mind can be still. This does not mean quiet, or neat, or inactive. This means a well synced, appropriate harmony, so that the energy of the home matches that of the self, and the mind can relax.

Crisscrossing the Inbetweens

A quick summary of my location over the summer. After arriving in Portland I road tripped to Kalamazoo in early June, biked to Ann Arbor in late June, road tripped to Seattle a few days later and then took the bus down to Portland, then road tripped back to Michigan in late July. As you can see this involved many road trips that you haven't yet heard anything about.

For my first adventure from Portland to Michigan I joined a couple that was conducting a long road trip around the country and were collecting passengers along the way for company and to help with gas. The trip became a cross between a road trip and an attempt to quickly cut across because they wanted to get to Chicago as quickly as possible but also wanted to stop often and see some things along the way. We didn't go to any attractions, but we took it easy, started days late, stopped for long stretch, bathroom, internet, and meal breaks, and we camped every night. The crew rotated throughout the trip. From Portland to Boise we were joined by a young man from South Africa doing his travels around the US, and a young woman who was working with an organization that does various national park services such as trail maintenance, building, and demolition. We dropped her off in Boise and went on to spend a night farther out in Idaho (actually a morning, by the time we arrived and unloaded some stuff the sun was beginning to rise). The next night we stayed at a campsite in Wyoming with a friend of the couple driving. When we arrived in Boulder, the South African man took off and we picked up two folks who had actually ridden out with the couple from the east coast when they first left the month before. That crew went all the way to Chicago where I got dropped of, spent the night with some friends whom I informed I was coming only earlier in the day, and then I headed to Gary, Indiana to try to hitchhike to Kalamazoo. I kept getting removed from my spots by the police, who were just hanging out in gas station convenience stores all day long. I gave up and headed for the Greyhound station, although I managed to find a ride to take me there, and actually had some lovely conversations with folks at the station, waiting for the bus. This journey was my first time ever using rideshare in the US and I loved it. The travelling style may have been different from mine, but it was much more interesting to meet people and make friends along the way, even more interesting than the random conversation likely to happen on a train and possible though less likely on a bus. One of the important lessons I learned on this trip was that eating only fiber for two days straight does a number on the digestive system. I packed a lot of food from my parents' house when I left, but I ran out in Boulder. We were at an expensive organic-local grocery store, so even oats were out of my price range. The only thing I felt comfortable buying was wheat bran. I had never had wheat bran before, but it turns out it's not meant to be eaten on its own, rather added to soup or sprinkled on top of baked goods. This may be because wheat bran is made of fiber and almost nothing else. But it was cheap, so for a day and a half, until I arrived in Chicago, I ate wheat bran and water flavored with sugar, honey, and jelly packets I picked up at a fast food place. I tried taco sauce once with disastrous results. When I arrived in Chicago my friends did offer me some food but I didn't end up taking too much. However, they did use a juicer and were going to throw out the pulp which I volunteered to eat instead, even though they warned it was pretty much all fiber. Everything was fine aside from some interesting and brand new experiences when the fiber was done inhabiting my body. I don't think I'll repeat that decision.

I was so excited to be reunited with my wonderful bicycle that had been sitting and patiently waiting for me in Kalamazoo for two years, that I decided to ride it to Ann Arbor. I have never ridden so far in one day, was struggling with a mild knee injury, and was later told temperatures neared a 100. Including breaks, I was there in less than 14 hours, so it worked out in the end. After a spectacular visit in Ann Arbor, I picked up a large yellow pick up that someone in Seattle bought in Detroit and wanted me to drive to them. A very different type of cross country trip. I was grateful for the pick up because I was transporting my bike back to Portland and was worried for a long time about how I would manage. This way I just threw it in the back of the truck and had plenty of space. I had two passengers with me for part of the way. I picked up one woman in Ann Arbor and we drove to Minneapolis the first day. In Minneapolis we spent the night with friends of our third passenger, and went off early in the morning in attempt to reach Montana that day. The pace was very different. These people were committed to movement, so generally we did 4 or so hour stretches, whatever we could manage until we had to fuel up again. We also had long days. Our day drive to Montana we spent nearly 24 hours driving before we arrived. The company was also quite different. These two women were rainbow kids, heading off to the rainbow gathering in Montana. If you have not heard of rainbow gathering, imagine the most hippie, sustainable, middle of the woods gathering/party that you can, and then understand that it is much more hippie than what you have in mind. Or read about it from rainbow kids themselves here: http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/ . You will notice that the URL and the heading say "welcome home", fitting for what I have already been discussing this email. Our arrival at Rainbow was a little rough. We arrived in the area around 1 am, started looking for signs that we were getting close once we were on dirt paths in the national park. Eventually, we almost go the car stuck on truly rugged terrain without any sign of the gathering being near by, so we decided to turn around and head for internet signal to recheck the location. Turns out the location was changed, and we had to double back and drive an extra 2-3 hours to get to the new location. We were finally parked and ready to sleep at the rainbow gathering at 4:30 am. I had never been to a rainbow, something I might actually like to do some day, but I wanted to reach Seattle and see friends that I discovered lived there before I took the bus to Portland. Only two hours later, I got up and began heading back toward the highway. I picked someone up on the way out of the gathering and gave her a ride to Missoula (my first hitchhiker), where I also stopped to nap for 2-3 hours. The last stretch I beelined for Seattle, stopping only for gas and to make myself oatmeal, the only car food I had left. One of the best parts of that trip: the man whose truck I was transporting paid me for gas and gave me some extra which covered the bus to Portland. Ann Arbor to Portland: $0.

My final trip across was my trip from Portland back to Michigan that I finished just last week. I was having a very difficult time finding rides across the country for whatever reason. I had planned to have a wide range of times and dates and somehow ended up with very few available options, so everyone who I did manage to contact and hear back from was leaving either too early or too late. Finally I found someone who wanted me to drive his Uhaul to the Denver area. I agreed and began searching for rides from Denver to the Midwest, having spotty luck finding those rides as well. The morning that I left, I found a ride to Chicago from Denver and simply took the bus from there. The ride to Fort Collins, an hour north of Denver, provided a slew of new experiences. I was driving a 16' box truck, larger and heavier than anything I have driven before, especially on a highway or up hills and mountains. There were two couchsurfers I was hosting toward the end of my stay in Portland who said they were headed to Denver and I offered to take them. A couple days after making the offer I realized the truck had two bucket seats instead of a bench seat. I warned them but they decided they still wanted to come. I imagined our gear would go in the back with the rest of the Uhaul contents, but I was wrong. When the truck arrived, the back was locked, and the guy claimed it was too full to open. He actually asked us to carry some plants for him in the cab. With some amazing maneuvering and tetris skills, we fit three plants, three large back packs, three small bags, a tent, and three people in a space meant for two people and no serious luggage (picture below). I had to drive the whole way so I had a decent amount of space, but my couchsurfers were squished. They did well though. We often did 4-5 hour stretches without stopping, and ultimately drove for 20 hours in a 26 hour period, stopping for only a few hours in the middle of the night to sleep on the floor of a rest area. I loved having the company, and they loved the experience and the free ride. Free because the guy paid all the gas (and a fair deal of extra) before we even left. The best part about the ride from Denver to Chicago is I convinced the guy to give me door to door service. He picked me up where I was in Fort Collins and we rode off. I got less rest than I was hoping because we traded off driving his large vehicle with a motorcycle on the back, but I slept as much as I could while he drove. Because of the motorcycle we were going 60 much of the way and I actually nearly missed my bus, but we picked up the pace for the second half of the journey and I made it to the station just in time. The bus dropped me off in Ann Arbor where I had another wonderful, albeit confusing visit, and after a complicated attempt at coordinating ride shares a few times, everything fell through and I took the bus back to Kalamazoo where I have been for the last few days, training for LandSea. This last trip was full of adventures, but I am also particularly proud of the numbers. I made it from Portland to Ann Arbor in just about 50 hours, and earned close to $130 in the process, thanks to the generous amount the Uhaul man gave me for gas and other expenses. Further more, I had never crossed the country on a highway before, but now I did it three times in one summer and spent an average of $0 doing so. When people ask me how I can afford to travel, this is the answer.

The Next Hour and Beyond
Once I am done with this update, I will disconnect from the internet for the upcoming month and embark on my LandSea journey in the Adirondacks (don't let that dissuade you from writing and responding, I would love to have word from you waiting for me in my inbox when I return). After a week of mixed Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor time, I will fly to Europe and make my way to France, leaving this leg of "home(s)" and beginning a leg ""somewhere else".

Good luck on your journeys,

awkward selfie in WY

Perhaps the coolest play structure of all time

Rock scrambling in WY

Pedicab driver (birthday present for my mom and sister)

squeezed in the cab of a Uhaul. We're smiling because this is before the drive.

Exploring the Puzzle Pieces

Hello wonderful friends,

It has no been three months since I last updated you. What a hectic three months it has been! Writing about everything that happened in this update would be both disjointed and far too long. Instead I will finish sharing my time in Thailand, talking about Songkran week and my two meditation retreats. The next time I find the energy to write again (hopefully sooner than later) I will fill you in on the rest.

Songkran and Friends
My last update was a bit of a downer. Nothing was clicking into place and I felt pulled in too many directions. I ended the update with two wishes for myself: to have fun and connect with friends during Songkran, and to have the time to look inside and learn about myself while at the temples. I'm glad to say both of these endeavors were fairly successful.

Songkran, for those who don't know or remember, is a giant new years water festival celebrated in Thailand. Chiang Mai is known for having some of the most intense Songkran festivities in the country. The entire inner part of the city shuts down and is filled with people who roam around and throw water at each other. Throughout the city the streets are lined with folks who will throw water on bicycles, motorbikes, and cars and they drive by, so one stays wet the entire week. It is one huge long party. Not exactly my scene, but I found my own way to have fun amid the chaos. I didn't take any pictures during Songkran because everything was so wet, but there are many on facebook.

More important for me than the actual Songkran celebration were the connections I was able to make that week. Everyone had time off of work, all normal schedules were off kilter, and I had just finished or given up on pretty much all projects that I had been working on up until then. All of the sudden I began connecting with a few people, all from the frisbee community, in a way that I hadn't succeeded in connecting before. I was developing meaningful relationships, ones that did not exist only on the basis of the circumstance of being in Chiang Mai at the same time, but which I could see myself carrying forward after neither of us were in Thailand. I also began to have much more meaningful and fulfilling conversations with these friends. Conversations that explored topics that interest me on a deeper level, that allowed me to open up, that allowed them to open up, to really share. These exchanges were aided by the fact that some of my friends were going through some emotional breakdowns, and on top of that most of their other friends left town. We all really needed each other. But the circumstances are ultimately somewhat irrelevant, because the authenticity of the bond formed was still genuine. I was also able to spend more time and reconnect with Ellen now that both of us had slightly clearer mental spaces. I felt a huge sense of relief at rediscovering intense interpersonal interactions after several months of semi-connected loneliness.

Doi Suthep
Just as I began having so much fun spending time with friends, I left for my first meditation retreat. This retreat was fairly typical as far as what one finds in Thailand, though I should note for you meditating folks that it was very different from a Goenka retreat. The vipassana retreat is advertised as a meditation course. I went up for ten days. In this course it is expected that one will not speak, read or listen to music. The vast majority of attendees are foreigners (I think about 20-30 people came through while I was there and two were Thai). The day consists of a morning Dharma talk, two meals, an evening chanting session, and a short daily meeting with the teacher to ask questions and receive further instruction. The rest of the day is for independent practice and taking care of other needs. The flexibility means that everyone is there on their own schedule. Most people come for only four days, a handful stay some number between 4-10, and a few do a full 21 day course which ends with a determination. Doi Suthep is a hill that over looks Chiang Mai and the Wat is built right on the hill, with beautiful forest and views all around (see pictures below).

I found the meditation fairly difficult. My greatest challenge was physical. I am not very flexible and have weak muscles for supporting my back so that sitting cross-legged for much of the day led to agonizing pain. The meditation exhausted me physically and mentally. I had not done much meditation in a long time so I found calming my mind very difficult. The teacher was not particularly helpful in answering questions or in providing anything but the most rudimentary instruction. Also his dharma talks were painfully uninspiring. But he was encouraging, and often I think that is the most important thing in a meditation context. My meditation did improve and I often found myself leaving a session with a mixture of calm and bliss that I do not often experience.

I spent time observing the ways my thoughts developed and the directions they took. I had nearly 10 days with almost no external stimuli. I was in a consistent familiar setting, no reading material, no interaction with other people. It led my thoughts to wander deeper and deeper into me. Although I would attempt to not attach myself to my thoughts during mediation, I often gave myself a break and let myself explore the thoughts in between practice sessions. Here are some of the things that came up for me.

Why Meditate?
There are many reasons to mediate, and there are many forms to meditation. During the first few days I asked myself several times why I was up at Doi Suthep and what was inspiring me to meditate in the first place. I also had some friends in Chiang Mai who had never meditated and could not understand the purpose, so I spent some time exploring this question. The teacher at Doi Suthep often referred to meditation as a process of cleaning the mind, and I really enjoyed this idea and began building on it with an analogy to cleaning dishes. Why do we clean dishes? If we are going to use them again, put food on them again, why bother cleaning them out every time? I think most people can answer that question easily. If dishes are not cleaned, food can build up, dry, and become difficult to remove. Certain food remnants can grow mold or rot, rendering other food that comes in contact with them unhealthy, and they can even begin eroding the pot they are attached to. Even if the remnants are still edible, reusing the plate without washing it can lead to all sorts of flavors mixed together which may not actually mix well.
All the same things could be said of our thoughts and emotions contained in our minds. If we simply let them sit and do not clean them up on occasion, they can become very difficult to remove. Certain thoughts and emotions, such as feelings of anger or grief, can taint others that may come in, so that we may be unable to enjoy positive experiences while they are festering in our minds. Even thoughts that are all positive and are not bad to entertain on their own, such as a bike trip I want to go on, a job I want to apply for, a friend I want to see, may develop in unsavory ways and be difficult to work with unless I can think through them one at a time. Unfortunately scrubbing the mind clean is not as straight forward or simple and scrubbing a pot clean, but the results are marvelous, so I am determined to continue to attempt to clear my mind on a regular basis.

Hunger and Fulfillment
I have very strange eating habits that border on disordered eating. I am willing to eat almost anything, I have an obsession with mitigating food waste, and I can eat massive quantities of food. The massive quantities is in part related to problems with stopping. I can be so full that I am in pain, but if there is still food on the table, I instinctively reach for more and have to consciously stop myself. The interesting thing is, I am not an abnormally hungry person. Most of the time, if there is not much food available, I am perfectly content. But if the food is there I don't stop eating it. I bring this up because I think it reflects a different hunger that I have regarding life in general. I am perfectly happy being alone, have spent long stretches of time alone without getting bored, and yet if there are people around who I would like to see I hunger for their company. I am perfectly happy with a small group of friends, and enjoying seeing them day after day, but if I meet new people I hunger for new friendships. I have been in many countries and would love to deepen my knowledge of the places I have already been, but I hunger for new places. I can speak five languages and want to improve my capability in those languages, and yet I hunger to learn more. The difference is, with food, I can usually consult my stomach and determine that the hunger is misplaced. In these other instances, determining the correct balance is more complicated.

I began having a strange phenomenon a few days after arriving at Doi Suthep. While doing my walking meditation, I would begin to shake, my skin would become flush and warm, my eyes would get wet. My body was reacting to fear. Fear? In the middle of a meditation hall, what was I afraid of? I ignored it at first but as it persisted I asked myself "What are you afraid of?" The response I got: "What do you want?" I thought a lot about that question. What do I want? The path and form of the answer which emerged went through many permutations, but eventually I came to a realization. I want fulfillment. I want something to dull the hunger I have for everything around me, to be driven by determination and not by desperation. The next logical question was, how do I achieve this? I spent a lot of time reflecting on my life, trying to pinpoint spans of time in the past when this hunger was less acute. I found a pattern. Whenever I was fully committed to something, fully invested, really loved whatever I was committed to, the hunger subsided. This does not mean I was not motivated to pursue other things, but I pursued them with determination and not desperation, metaphorically, I ate because I was hungry and not because the food was there. I have been able to commit in such a way in romantic relationships, while working with Food not Bombs in Boston, and working for theater when I first started high school, to give a few examples.

This seemed to solve all the problems. I just needed to pick something and commit to it! But two questions arose. The first, if the answer is so easy, why have I lived my life so spread out, across fields of interest, across space, between different people? And what should I chose to actually commit to if I only chose one thing? I realized that I am highly attracted to new and different. It is like the delicious cake with a serving of ice cream or some other delectable dessert. Committing to one thing is like a nutritious main course. The new activities tempt me constantly, but ultimately do not leave me full or feeling all that great, while the commitment may be less dazzling but leaves me feeling healthier and satisfied. As for what to commit to, I'm not in a rush to decide, I think simply focusing on deepening when the opportunity arises is enough. The second question that arose is what to do with my wanderings. In many ways I have my life trained on a path that does not allow for commitments, or at least makes them much more difficult. If I have discovered that commitment is the most important thing for me, why am I putting up as many blocks as possible against it? Should I simply abandon my wanderings and try to settle so that I can commit to something? In the close to two years of wandering, I don't think I have ever been closer to putting down the backpack. But upon further thought I decided that I had made a commitment to this adventure, that I had come up with some kind of minimum framework of what I want to accomplish, and that following through and respecting my commitments should begin with following through on my commitment to this adventure. Maybe, if I can view my wanderings as an experience that stands on its own, my full commitment to that experience can provide me the fulfillment I seek.

People in my Life
One of the wonderful effects of not having external stimuli is that I began going deeper into the past. Usually my thoughts are filled with the people and interactions I have had in the last chunk of time, but the time spent not interacting with people led me to explore my relationships stretching all the way back to early childhood. I was repeatedly overwhelmed with a warm feeling of love from the great friends I have been lucky to have throughout my life. It was a pleasant and consistent reminder of the beautiful interactions I have, and I resolved to be more aware when they happen, and to feel the love as it is being given.

Wat Pa Tam Wua
My second monastery experience was very different from the first. Whereas the meditation center at Wat Doi Suthep is set up with the intent of teaching mostly foreigners how to meditate, Wat Pa Tam Wua is a forest monastery that functions first and for most as a place for meditation and practice for the half dozen monks that live there. The abbot has decided to open it up to other practitioners, so there are usually anywhere from 15-30 people there practicing meditation. The majority are foreigners, but a fair number of Thais come through, and large groups of Thais come in on an irregular basis for a short stay. Life in the monastery does not follow that of a meditation course. We had two meals, two group meditation sessions, and an evening chanting that would be followed by a meditation session. We also had a designated work meditation time. We could chose to practice individually the rest of the time, but there were also many other things to do. Helping clean or work in the kitchen was not expected but highly appreciated, and while some meditators chose to observe silence during their stay or for parts of their stay, most did not and so there was almost always someone interesting to talk to. I frequently found that I was "busy". Because the environment created a much more easily adaptable lifestyle, many people who were there were staying long term. There were some who came in for only a few days, but most would stay at least a week, and about half a dozen were staying for a few months. The monastery had its own small community.

It was fascinating for me to observe the way interpersonal interaction stuck with me through the meditation sessions. The thoughts that would flow through me, whether I succeeded in letting them flow through or became attached to them, were often repetitions or interpretations of the interactions I had in the last few days. While in Doi Suthep I explored deep into myself and my past, in Wat Tam Wua I was steeped in the day to day and meaningless fantasy. And yet life was very pleasant and peaceful. One advantage of this experience is that I got to think more deeply about my social interactions. Having conversations that did not always go smoothly, that occasionally led to conflict, and being able to then spend hours clearing my mind, rinsing myself of the negative or hostile emotions that the interaction created, and evaluating it again, led to some new realizations. There were a number of times where someone was upset or dissatisfied at the end of a conversation I would have with her or him. In those situations, my first reaction was usually to think about how overly sensitive or emotionally immature this person was. After taking the time to meditate and then reflect back on the situation, it was always clear that I had acted inappropriately at some point in the interaction, that I was at least as responsible, if not chiefly responsible, for the negative outcomes. That maybe I am actually the least emotionally mature in the equation. While I have not had the same sort of time and space to analyze every interaction since leaving the Wat, this understanding has stuck with me, and I am much more careful in assessing conflicts with others, much quicker to observe my own actions and reactions.

Perhaps the most exciting moment happened on my way back to Chiang Mai. Wat Pa Tam Wua is 35 kms from Mae Hong Son, a 5-6 hours drive from Chiang Mai along a road that is infamous for its curves. On the way there, I got a seat on a small van as per the recommendation from a friend of mine. Luckily I am over the car sickness I used to suffer from as a kid and so I didn't have any problem on the road. Coming back, there is no station to buy a ticket for a van, so catching one is only possible if there is an open seat, which hardly ever happens. The options are hitchhiking or flagging down the chicken bus the comes by in the morning. I went an hour early before the bus was scheduled and tried to hitchhike but there were few cars and all were going somewhere close, so when the bus came by I hopped on. As I had been warned, the bus was so full that I did not have a seat, so I could alternate between standing and sitting on my bags that I laid down in the isles. The four fans on the bus would sometimes work, and sometimes not, as the temperatures crawled on past 90. While I still had no problems with the bends in the road, others did. There was one woman who managed to vomit for 4 hours straight! The stench of vomit mixed with the scent rising from dozens of tightly squeezed sweaty people, the fumes from the bus, and whatever sweet sticky food someone nearby was eating, combined to create a spectrum of peculiar and ever shifting odors. Occasionally I had to stand up and lift up my bags as some unidentified dark liquid would ooze down the isle from somewhere at the front of the bus.
I felt wonderful.
I was so filled with happiness that I could barely contain myself. Not everyone would picture this as the circumstance that would make one feel wonderful, but I was on an unbeatable high. And I finally realized why. I finally understood why I put myself through these grueling adventures again and again. I am young, I am healthy, I am strong, I am confident, and I want to push my limits. I am a wanderer, and I want to push my limits. I felt so great for the same reason that runners who finish a marathon may feel great, or why climbers who climb a mountain might feel great. There is an exhilaration in pushing oneself further, in trying something that should feel uncomfortable, and realizing that it is really ok. I am not a runner, I am not that interested in how far I can run. Even if I ran some impressive distance I would not feel that same sense of exhilaration. But right now I identify with wandering. As a result hitchhiking in a country where I don't speak the language when it's below freezing, or sleeping at a gas station, or standing on the chicken bus while the woman two seats up vomits for 4 hours straight  gives me that high of pushing my boundaries, of going further than I have before. I'm excited to see what sort of adventures I will find next.

What I Have Been and Will Be Doing
I will make an effort to catch up to the present soon, but so far I have not always been so good at that. Until then, here is a brief timeline of what I have done and what the near future looks like.
After coming back from Wat Pa Tam Wua I left Thailand. I landed in LA and roadtripped with my sister to Portland where I spent a week and a half. Then I caught a ride across the country and spent about three weeks in Michigan, after which I drove back to Portland where I am now.
I'll be here through July. August I will spend in the Adirondacks as a logistics leader for Kalamazoo College's LandSea program. Mid-September I will leave for Europe, first going to Germany and visiting my brother in Aachen, and then I'll head to southern France where I'll stay for a few months. Everything after is less certain.

Hope to see you along the way,

Doi Suthep - My room

Doi Suthep - Meditation hall

Doi Suthep - view of the retreat area

Wat Pa Tam Wua

Wat Pa Tam Wua - working meditation

Wat Pa Tam Wua - on the trail up the mountain

Recognizing My Limits

There is a line in a Nine Inch Nails song (slightly modified by me) that runs through my head a lot:

I want to go everywhere
I want to know everything
I want to love everyone in the world
I want to do something that matters

In many ways, those four sentences are my motivation for much of what I do in life. I also find them incredibly limiting and discouraging. Each one is independently impossible to achieve. If I go to Thailand, it means I didn't go to Kenya. I can't go everywhere. They also conflict with each other. If I spend my time in school to learn something, I'm not moving around and seeing new places. The main hope I hold is that from this jumbled mess I will nevertheless succeed in doing something that matters, once I figure out what that means to me.

I've been thinking about that little verse a lot in the recent weeks. My time in Thailand is been plagued by my desire to do and accomplish "everything", and while in many places this attempt results in some interesting balance that I find wholeheartedly satisfying, this time many of my projects fell through, leaving me feeling a little hollow about my time here. But there is a lot to learn from that as well. I'm still processing the lessons.

My Activities
Here is a brief description of what I've been doing with my time, what worked, what didn't and some of my thoughts about it.

Housing - I realized very early that Couchsurfing in Chiang Mai would be very difficult. The city is flooded with backpackers, the type who look for couches, and has only 200 or so people offering to host (for comparison, Munich has 14,000). Many of these people are foreigners living short term in cramped apartments and regularly going on trips, so even if I find someone who is not already hosting, they are often away or only available to host for a couple of nights. Also, the nature of Thailand is that nothing is fixed, plans, work schedules, trips, all change from day to day. I was very diligent and very lucky so that I was able to couchsurf for my entire stay in Chiang Mai, but I spent many many hours soliciting couches to achieve this, moved from house to house much more frequently than I have in other places, and often had to deal with last minute crises where someone who offered me a couch has to ask me to leave early or could no longer let me come because of one reason or another. As a result, much of my time and energy was spent on housing.

Work - I had a freelance editing job that I did while I was here. The job was great in that I was able to do the work from anywhere and got paid about double per hour of work compared with what I have ever been paid for any job I have done before. However, the work involved sitting alone in front of a computer and was in no way related to Thailand. Work that I had done before always allowed me to meet people, practice the local language, learn about elements of local culture, or at least get to know the city. This job afforded none of those benefits. The work was also mind-numbingly dull, so that I had a very difficult time sitting and being productive. The mix of not being productive and schedule mishaps that meant that this project that I was suppose to have 6 months to work on, or at least three months, had to get done in 5 weeks, meant that much of my mental and emotional energy was dedicated to this job.

Learning Thai - My attempt at learning Thai was a new challenge for me. Never before had I entered a country where I had no background in the language and spent enough time there so that I could try to learn the language, especially with little structure to support me. I signed up for Thai classes, but they were four hours a week of pretty pathetic teaching. Besides not having the Thai foundations so that I could not really attempt a conversation in Thai, the great number of foreigners in Chiang Mai resulted in that I spent much of my time with foreigners and that the Thai people I met did not always have the patience for my very broken attempts at conversation. I spent a lot of time and energy studying at the beginning, but was very ineffective at finding conversation partners. When the stress of work got to high and time started running out I cracked and gave up. I would say my survival Thai is pretty good. I can manage most store and market transactions in Thai with a few hand gestures and can occasionally throw in a fancy word they don't expect a foreigner with such weak language skills to know. But my ability to actually hold even the most basic conversation, to read anything besides a menu, or to write almost anything at all, are nearly non-existent.

Playing Frisbee - Frisbee has been the saving grace of my time in Chiang Mai. It's been a fun way to spend some time and meet people. I think everyone I spend time with is from Frisbee in some way or another. It's also one of the few things that I came into with almost no expectations but have experienced marked improvements in. While I never considered myself in shape or a decent runner, I have times when I am more or less capable, and I have returned to roughly the best running ability I have ever had. My general Frisbee skills have improved greatly, such that whereas before I would have rated myself as a bad player, I would now rate myself as high as below average.

Volunteering - Never really happened. I made a few half-hearted attempts at volunteering with a couple of different of organizations, but I started looking late, did not invest heavily in the search, and with Frisbee, Thai class, my job, and other personal projects, I never found myself able to really commit to anything even when I was presented with somewhat promising opportunities. The closest I got was with this place called the vegetarian society. It's a place that serves free and cheap vegetarian food on weekdays until the early afternoon. Everyone who works there is a volunteer, coming from some Buddhist organization. I found out they take volunteers, even foreigners, and applied. But because of Buddhist modesty, new volunteers could only be trained by members of the same sex, and there were no males who spoke English well enough to train me.

Otherwise I have spent my time on other random small projects, meeting up with people here and there, and devouring books. Nothing became a real focal point, and so nothing progressed beyond an initial stage.

Spread too Thin
With everything pulling at my energy, no single entity got enough of it. I tried too hard to go everywhere that I didn't go much of anywhere, tired so hard to know everything that I didn't learn much of anything, and tried so hard to do something that mattered that I didn't do much at all. In my mind the most unfortunate is that I have been so scatter-brained that I haven't had the opportunity to connect very deeply with people, or with communities  These are not particularly new sensations for me. I've spent the last 10 year of my life trying to take on more than I can and coming to grips with reality, but every time the context is different and the lesson is new.

It's difficult for me to describe my emotional reaction to this reality. I don't feel sad or depressed, and I certainly would not say that my time here has been wasted. I think unaccomplished is the best adjective I can find. What I am working on now is next steps. I'm not a big believer in regrets. I try to sped very little time thinking about what could have happened, because it didn't. I am more interested in honestly recognizing what did happen and using that knowledge to better understand what is happening right now and what I should do in the future.

One of my techniques is to reflect on my experiences and think of the moments that stand out. When did I feel particularly connected, accomplished, joyful, at home? I held a Seder at a friend's house, which was fantastic; a wonderful night of singing, socializing, and drinking wine.  I had several moments when I had small breakthroughs in my Thai and I felt extremely accomplished. I discovered a cycling group and had a few great moments chatting and cycling with them. This past week I've been house sitting for friends, which meant full access to a functioning kitchen, and some of my cooking experiments were very gratifying. When I handed in my application at the vegetarian society I felt eager and excited.

Finding the common threads or meaningful threads in these is more difficult, and I know that no guesses will hit the mark exactly, but it's worth the attempt. My conclusions rehash ideas and reemphasize ideas and thought I have discussed before, but apparently I have to realize these ideas many times before they sink in. I should invest in people, the people around me, the people I care about. I should invest in the communities around me and work to enrich them and to connect with them in that way. I should invest in tools and methods that bring me in touch with the culture and the people around me. I should spend less energy, and in fact spend energy avoiding situations that isolate me or that lead me to do things alone. Any sort of study or self enhancement I should try to integrate with interactions with others. I have this upcoming week to practice. I have no commitments and Sognkran is being celebrating here, the crazy new year water festival. No one has work and it's a perfect opportunity for me to try to spend time with others.

The alternative direction is to look at those moments, see what connects them, and then determine what I need to work on so that I can get the same sense of fulfillment and enjoy myself during other moment. Instead of focusing on bringing about moments that feel inspired, learn to be inspired at all moment. People and community seem to be a big theme. I've said since I began wandering that I have a general aim of exploring communities and interpersonal relationships, but that I also want to explore being with me and being ok with being alone when the connections to the communities are less fruitful. It looks like I still have a long way to progress in the second objective. Feeling alone does not stir up the same negative feelings of loneliness that it used to, but it appears I still lack fulfillment and am not content without connections to other around me. The month after Songkran will present me with a good opportunity o cultivate that capability. I'll be spending 10 days at Wat Doi Suthep practicing Vipasana meditation, and after a two day break, I will go to a forest monastery for an additional two weeks. Among many other things that the experience will bring, I am hoping it will offer me some time for reflection and for learning to be comfortable with myself.

Travel Itinerary
For the next week I will be in Chiang Mai
April 19th - May 13th I will be practicing meditation at the two temples. I will not have phone/internet access for almost the entire time.
May 17th I arrive in Los Angeles. I will be in Portland until early June when I will leave for Michigan. how long I spend in Michigan depends on a pending job application, but I will likely return to Portland in late June and stay there for the remained of July. August and onward depends entirely on various applications and opportunities as they pan out, so I'll keep you informed.

I probably won't speak with most of you until I'm back in the US. Enjoy the coming of spring and best of luck on your journeys.