c h a n g e

I was born into circumstances that I took to immediately: four devoted, attentive, almost doting adults, plus one older brother who cared significantly less for the spotlight than I. Growing up on the farm, it was just me, Adam, my mum, Kap and the grandparents. Though I was only my mother's second child, I was her last, and I took on the last-born mentality as easily as if there were a dozen ahead of me. My aunt didn't have any children, and I don't remember ever having to "share" any of my adults, so I learned to live as if I would always be the center of attention.

When I got a bit older, someone - probably my mum - told me "Everything changes." Such an absolute was lost on me at the time. Surely not everything changes, I reasoned. If there are no constants, how does anyone ever feel secure? I comforted myself by concluding that she must have meant other people's lives changed, perhaps because they didn't go to church, work hard enough or vote Republican, but I didn't believe any changes could really affect me very profoundly. We would all go on as we always had - Adam making C's and playing endless baseball games, Kap doing everything with painstaking correctness and being a lawyer, Grandma making cornbread and sweet tea, Mum being golden-haired, beautiful and spectacularly talented, Grandpa farming and working until he was filthy and not allowed in the house until he'd shed the soiled clothing in "the washroom."

I know better now, of course, though that knowledge is only in my head and not as yet absorbed by my very blood and bones. I haven't lost anyone I love; they all still seem immortal and as constant and immovable as Stone Mountain. But I fear that change more than anything else.

Grandma's brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer this week. He probably won't live to see next week. I barely know him and can't even recall what he looks like, but to her he's a baby brother she's known for 67 years. At 75, she's lost her parents and various family members. She knows well what that change feels like. And yet, when I called on Saturday to talk to her about it, her voice shook and cracked as if she were a young woman facing her first loss. She cried a little but tried not to, and I felt guilty because I knew she was trying to spare me, the petted, feted little farm girl, her grief. If she buckles under the weight of such terrible change and loss, what on earth will I - much weaker by all accounts - do when I have to face it?

The life I lead is all about change. I travel a lot. I change jobs, friends and locations without blinking an eye. I chase that kind of change. But until this week, it didn't occur to me that I'm chasing it in an attempt to keep it from catching me. If I can somehow become inured to the constant change, learn how to rely on nothing, avoid becoming comfortable with any circumstances, then maybe I can spare myself the awful pain of a change I didn't ask for and would die to avoid. Maybe I can adjust to the shock as quickly as I can shake the effects of jet lag and get on with things. In my head, I know that such change will find me and bring me to my knees. In my heart, that irrational organ, I still cling to the hope of being spared. 

musings

The Northampton suburbs look pretty much as you'd expect them to: tall brick homes with neatly trimmed front yards and driveways with Audis and BMWs, which aren't nearly as posh in Europe as they are back home. Everyone drives like an idiot on the nearby M1 and takes the innumerable roundabouts at fifty miles per hour. "Two cars passed me on the way to pick you up," Chris tells me on the ride back to his place, and I can't tell if he is proud or furious.

This is my first trip since moving back to Kyiv two weeks ago. A bit soon, I admit, but the freedom my job allows is better than any narcotic. If I can scrape together the fare, find a couch to surf and free wifi and get enough to eat, I can go anytime, to any place. Maybe I'll go and visit my cousin Matt in Germany after here, I muse. Maybe not. Dubrovnik looks nice. But then, I really want to take that trip with Jaemi at the end of July.

I applied to graduate school before leaving the States. I found a truly perfect Master's program at a university near my mum's house and put everything I had into the application. It was what I wanted. Maybe it still is. Hard to tell, with this singular high so freely available and so seductive and addicting. The more I see of the world, the more I want to see. Nothing is as beautiful as somewhere I've never been. It's like a perfectly intact, tantalizingly large Christmas gift that my very fingers ache to unwrap.

So are the people. There is always a woman more beautiful, a child more intelligent and precocious, a man stronger and more charming to be found. Out here, wherever that is, I can always find wonder. I never lack for breathless passion or stunning beauty. Every day is a new gift at which to marvel and to savor the coinciding joys of youth and freedom. I will never have them together again. What, indeed, is the sense of pouring my heart into textbooks and lecture notes when it longs so much for endless, exhilarating adventure - and can have it readily?

I even relish the fatigue of a long travel day, my passport newly stamped and my backpack getting heavier. Meeting the challenge of remembering enough of the local language, of getting a decent exchange rate, of managing to pack with impossible lightness is a CV-worthy accomplishment that makes me feel stronger and more confident every time I do it well. I never get tired of being happily weary from travel, with all I need on my back and the world at my feet.

Millay once exclaimed in verse, "Oh, world, I cannot hold thee close enough!" I know how she felt. I'll never live long enough to satisfy my appetite for exploration or find just the right words to describe all that fills my heart and mind. But that won't stop me from trying.

Leaving

I am not abroad. I am dressed in black from head to toe, hair in a ponytail, smoking a cigarette in a vain attempt to be cool with Brandon and Carrie on the back stoop at Gondolier. In a moment Aleka will come out and shout at us in her broken, heavily-accented Greeklish. We will stub out the cigarettes and go back inside to our tables, which may or may not tip us well. There is ash on my apron now. I leave to work at Chili's.

I'm in Brunswick, living with Jiri. Kitty Kitty is with me, the only familiar face for two hundred miles. I have a car. I work at a newspaper but don't make much. I meet Shane. I drink too much. Jiri's girlfriend does not like me and I don't like her either. I leave.

My apartment with Shane in Jacksonville is unnecessarily big, but he wants space. He tells me not to tell anyone we are dating. He works at a farm and I sit in the Sonic parking lot all day reading cheap paperbacks and waiting for his call. I work for a month at Applebee's, then leave him. I leave him for Georgia.

Fort Myers. I work as Director of Marketing at an Italian restaurant, where I flirt with the married bartender and make cold calls to potential catering clients. The GM hits on me, and I foolishly, albeit intentionally, wear too-short dresses to work. I almost cheat on Shane. The "almost" guy totals my car. I break my foot. I leave Fort Myers.

I think that living in Key West is living the dream. I struggle with Shane. I need to be thinner. He needs me to be quieter, prettier, better in general. I try to find a job. He prevents it. We argue all the time. I move out. We say it's a trial separation, but I glimpse freedom and know in my gut we're done. I leave him again.

Patti insists that I join MySpace. I meet Matt. That ends speedily. I work at FloridaKeys.com and relish the office-girl lifestyle despite not quite having the money to finance it. I grow restless. I remember Prague. I meet Alfredo. I fall in love. I listen to the same Bright Eyes song until I know every chord by heart. I leave him. I leave Key West.

I'm standing in Nove Mesto looking out over the Charles Bridge in Prague. It is snowing, but I don't notice that much. I'm wearing the wrong boots, but I didn't know any better. I meet Jaemi. I live with Monica, Keenan and Iona. We drink too much. I learn to hate teaching. I never pay for the tram. In February, I leave the winter wonderland. I leave Prague.

Key West is unchanged. I am not sure why I have come back. I live with Jess. We don't hang out much. I listen to Bon Iver on a loop and think endlessly of Alfredo. I leave his hat on the doorknob. He agrees to meet me. I fall in love again. I forget why I left him. I join Twitter. His job sends him to Atlanta. He leaves me. He leaves Key West.

Kyiv is lovely in the autumn. Jaemi meets me at the airport. Stephen is wonderful. David ties my heart in knots. I have one chance. I ruin it. Teaching doesn't suit me, but the nights after work sure do. I love Cathy. Janet is great. Brian makes me laugh. Jaemi is my rock. I meet Vadym, then Anya and Daryna. Jaemi introduces me to Anton, then Yashar. I go to Poland. I go back to Kyiv. I go to Hungary. I go back to Kyiv. I don't like working for AEC. So I leave. I leave Kyiv.

Alanya is a party town. Ishak is arrogant but entertaining. Antalya is better. I meet Soner. I go to Istanbul. I meet M. I stay in his apartment with he and Ferhat and Erol. Their sleeping arrangements are weird. Breakfast is always lots of bread and eggs with sugar. I learn to drink Turkish tea. I get the job in Lima. And leave. I leave Istanbul.

Lima is big and dirty. Courtney and I share a taxi to our new apartment. Ali is nice. Jonathan and Pat are weird. I like Courtney. Work is boring. I meet Sam. We drink Pisco Sours and laugh a lot. The second job is worse. I quit it. Buenos Aires is hot in January. I go to Plaza de Mayo and am not impressed. I go back to Lima and everything is worse. Sam asks me to stay. I do. Briefly. But eventually I leave. I leave Lima.

I am sitting in bed. My laptop is getting hot. Cartersville is a normal American city. I meet Alfredo for the third time. I fall in love for the third time within an hour. The last four years swirl in my brain. I buy a ticket. It will be nice to see Janet. It will be nice to see Jaemi. It will be nice to be in Europe. I think of what I am leaving. I see what leaving takes. I notice who gets left behind. I realize what I'll miss.

And don't know what to do.

how not to be a d-bag while traveling

If you don't follow these instructions while traveling, I hate you.

1. Don't bring so much shit. I would like to know the amount of time, which is doubtless measurable in months, that I have spent sitting on an airplane preflight, watching 100 passengers trying to cram 200 suitcases into the overhead bins. This used to evoke in me self-righteous rage. These days it's more incredulity and contempt. Seriously: why do you need to bring so much shit? Are you moving? Do you think there's no way to buy new clothes or launder those which you currently own? Americans in particular are notorious for overpacking. I think it's because in the States, you can pretty much not ever repeat an outfit without being labeled a freak. Food for thought, children of Uncle Sam: if you do this in Europe, your Caucasian-ness will no longer help you blend in. 

2. Don't bring huge, unwieldy shit. For the love of God, don't be that guy. You know, the one with the Connecticut-sized suitcase that he didn't check because, duh, what are overhead bins for? And isn't he gonna be the only one on the plane, anyway?

3. Don't dress like you're going clubbing. Admittedly, it's mostly women who are guilty of this. If I had a dollar for every time the security line has come to a halt because Shaniqua is struggling to undo the world's tiniest shoe buckle with her three-inch acrylic nails, I could afford approximately 17 first-class tickets to Asia. Ladies and gentlemen, the airport is not the place to make a fashion statement. Wear flip-flops or plain old sneakers, eschew all jewelry and belts and do not wear anything you can't bend over or sit down in. Please.

4. Pay attention. I cannot stress this enough. If the airline personnel are speaking, listen. Oh, I know, you've been flying for thirty years and all the emergency instructions are rubbish because if the plane crashes you're going to die no matter what. But the beginning of the flight is just that. There's still the "during" part, where flight attendants have to give the same directions (complicated stuff like "Sit down and fasten your seatbelt") 28 times because you're listening to your iPod at full volume, and the end of the flight, where "Return your seat to its upright position" must be repeated so many times it seems like a ritualistic chant to the few who actually are listening. These repetitions are followed by a walkthrough in which the flight attendants signal non-listeners to adjust their seat. "What? Oh." 

(Note: I also hate you if you ignore the dozen times a flight attendant walks down the aisle with an open trash bag and then leave your trash on board. If you do this - male or female - you are a dick.)

5. Follow directions. I don't know why this is so challenging, but it is. Example: You are in the waiting area when the airline personnel announce they're going to begin boarding zones one through three. This is a big-ass Airbus for a transcontinental flight, so you figure perhaps a third of the passengers will rise. Oh no. Everyone grabs their (huge, unwieldy) shit and makes a run for the check-in desk. I suspect that, despite their generally-unhelpful attitudes, airline personnel are some of the most patient people alive. 

6. Leave babies at home. Or put them in checked bags. Whatever, it's up to you. 

7. Be considerate. I'm really sorry you have to fly coach. I mean, I'm back here too, so I get it: no legroom, long lines at the lavatory, about as much chance of sleeping as Lindsay Lohan not doing coke anymore. But really, fellow travelers, it's just a few hours' mild discomfort. So before you slam your seat back into my knees or camp out on the toilet for a half hour, think of others. We're all suffering together. Let's just take advantage of the alcohol on board and get through it. 

8. Get the #$%& out of the way. I mean it. People have connecting flights, need to make meetings or just want to get away from the airport cacophony. I don't care if you're pushing a stroller, dragging a dozen suitcases and juggling a litter of puppies. If you can't walk briskly, walk to the far right and let others pass.  

buenos aires

It's been called the Paris of South America. Perhaps that's accurate; I've not yet seen Paris. But what film and popular culture lead me to believe about it is very different from the city in which I spent nine days earlier this month.

People keep asking me how it was, and no one will take “Fine” for an answer. I feel like I'm letting everyone down by coming back here without stories sprinkled liberally with dazzling romance and beauty. But that's what it was. Fine. It was no Prague, no Istanbul and certainly no Kyiv, but it was a perfectly fine city in its own right. That I don't have rave reviews for it is incidental.

That being said, it was indeed lovely in some ways. The Cementerio de la Recoleta was marvelous; the Cabildo is extraordinarily well preserved; the Block of Illumination (if you can find it) still stands in an almost tangible cloak of very great age and mystery. Downtown was a zoo, even though I purposely went on an early weekday morning in an attempt to avoid crowds. The Plaza de Mayo was undergoing construction and the high, ugly fence around the Casa Rosada prevented satisfactory picture-taking. I wandered down Calle Florida, the Centro's main shopping and dining street, for over two hours. The crowd was so thick it was nearly impossible to walk without touching others, and the humid summer air took on the smell of a locker room. Sweat, breath, bare feet. Bodies being used. Anything but a bad smell.

It took two days to explore Palermo and La Recoleta on foot. The unusually broad streets of Palermo, which my guidebook assured me was the “nice” part of town, were littered with debris and its air polluted with black bus fumes. The parks went untended (score one point for Miraflores) and the sidewalks unswept. I spent an hour in the late afternoon one day exploring the Cementerio de la Recoleta and marveling at the fantastically ornate statues and mausoleums. Only the wealthiest and most important (dead) Argentines find their way into a crypt in La Recoleta, which leads to me to suspect that the decorations there are mostly the result of an upper class desperate to show itself equal in some way to death. Yes, you may take our loved ones, but here on earth we have the power, see?

The Japanese Gardens (Jardines Japonesa) were well tended and colorful but too many visitors (and their awful screaming children) rather ruined what could have been a therapeutically tranquil experience. And the koi pond was packed so full I almost felt sorry for the fish, who must get not even a moment of privacy in their lives. The guidebook devoted an entire page to the wonders of the Museo de Arte de Latinoamericano, so I made that my next stop. After half an hour, however, I decided the page must have been written by either museum staff or an art fanatic and left.

I crammed San Telmo and part of La Boca into the last day and a half, and it was in the former that I began to really enjoy myself. Literally just a few blocks from the madness of the Centro, San Telmo more closely resembles a small town unto itself than a major distrito in a huge Latin American capital city. I liked it. San Telmo was colorful – splashily so. It was also hotter than the other distritos, maybe because there were fewer cars constantly whooshing by, but then there were also more trees and thus more natural shade. Despite having the personality of an outgoing seven-year-old child, however, San Telmo smelled inexplicably like an old, musty building. The smell was familiar, like the nearly 200-year-old college my mother and aunt attended in the 1970s. I tried to get lost on the million little streets intersecting the main avenues of Peru, Bolivar and Defensa, meandering through tiny shops and eventually happening upon both the Museo Historico Nacional and the Pasaje de la Defensa, its myriad internal courtyards packed full of whimsical and utterly delightful artwork.

My favorite part of San Telmo, though, were the sweating window units that kept me reasonably cool (and a little wet) in the suffocating heat. Every few feet, a small but telltale puddle would alert me to the presence of a unit overhead and I'd stand in anticipation until I felt the wonderfully cold drops in the part of my hair, running down the back of my head and onto my neck. That, I am slightly ashamed to say, was the only part of Buenos Aires that made me feel especially alive.

For lunch nearly every day, I ate three of the warm, flaky ham-and-cheese empanadas from Disco, a supermarket close to my hostel in Palermo. At dinner I tried my Spanish on waiters in various nearby cafes. I felt more acutely alone during this trip than I had on others, and I thought frequently of Sam – what would he think of his Argentine brethren and their dirty streets and sweating window units?

On the Sunday, I took the two-peso, two-hour bus ride from Avenida de Mayo to the international airport at Ezeiza. I watched the city become outskirts, then suburbs, then completely rural. We passed through several villages with alarmingly narrow streets. Dirty, wide-eyed children were gathered at each stop, not to get on, but to watch from a great metaphorical distance the very different lives of other people who were going to get on a airplane and go somewhere quite far away. I clutched my suitcase a little tighter. I was not like them. My passport says so. It says my opinions matter, that I am free to go and do as I wish, and need never fear being unwelcome virtually anywhere.

I've been a lot of places; Buenos Aires was just the latest. I'm back in Lima now. I had nearly forgotten that the world is big. And very strange.

the traveler's new year

I can't recall ever making even one official New Year's resolution. I think it's because I find them a bit arbitrary: if you want to change something, change it. It needn't be the first day of January. Today, in fact, happens to be the fifth day of January, and I am stuck in a suffocatingly hot, mosquito-infested four-bed dorm in a Buenos Aires hostel. It's well after midnight, my roommates are (somehow) asleep, and it occurs to me that, New Year's or not, it's time for me to make some changes regarding how I travel.

To that end, listed below are my 2011 Traveler's Resolutions.

1) No more hostels. Why? First and most obvious reason - at 26, I'm really a bit too old for the entire concept. Yes, I'm aware that there are 50-somethings slogging around Latin America in backpacks and bifocals, crashing in a $10-per-night bed in a 12-bunk coed dorm for weeks at a time. There's one in my dorm right now. Good for him. Second reason: I'm afflicted with a broad snobbish streak that now irresistibly compels me to forthwith seek out better accommodations. And by "better," I don't just mean bigger, cleaner or generally nicer. I refer to the clientele. Snobbish streak, like I said. Third reason: I forgot to pack flip-flops on this trip. Take a moment to let the blood-curdling grossness of a flip-flop-less hostel shower sink in.

2) Clearly define my goals. I identified long ago my tendency to run away and call it traveling - something I hope to eliminate or significantly decrease in the coming months. Being with Sam has helped with that. Peru has not been what I wanted or expected it to be, and if I hadn't met and started dating him, I'd be writing this from a flat in Eastern Europe.

3) No more comparing myself to other travelers. It didn't occur to me until tonight that traveling, like many other activities, has an element of competition and even skill. It's true that I can go through airport security with record-breaking speed and that I am completely, 100% fearless about dropping myself into a strange new place without so much as a CouchSurfing acquaintance to chat with, but I don't have a personality that enables me to make friends quickly and casually wherever I go. I wish I did. For years now, I've watched other travelers do this with enviable nimbleness. My friend Jaemi can make a stump laugh; my other friend, Keenan, can create a warm and cohesive social situation literally wherever he goes, whether it's a jam-packed nightclub or a remote Somalian farmhouse. Are they better travelers? In those ways, absolutely. But all of us do this because it feeds something inside. Regardless of our individual strengths, we are all travelers. We keep doing it because we love it, period.

4) Plan better (or at all). I tend toward impulsiveness when I'm on the road, resulting in split-second decisions that I frequently regret. Example: Having not bothered to plan in advance a trip for a one-week vacation when I was living in Ukraine, at the last second I bought a train ticket to Budapest. The result? Probably the worst travel experience of my life: a combined 54 hours in a claustrophobia-triggering train cabin, a horrifyingly bad stay in the only available hostel in the city, and a week of lonely, aimless wandering by day and wallowing in self-pity by night.

Happy 2011, everyone. Don't feel that you have to emulate my stupendously ambitious resolutions, by the way. Just lose some weight or something.

Something to write home about

A few days ago, I was invited to attend a small, private tasting at a Spanish restaurant here in Miraflores. The four of us - the editor, food critic, and photographer of a website for which I've written a couple of articles, plus me - sat down to taste and critique about one PM.

The editor was a multilingual Dane, the photographer an obscenely well-traveled American, and the English food critic the type of woman I might have loved if I hadn't immediately despised for her effortless stylishness and wit. Right away, I felt inexplicably as if my fingernails were dirty and I was terrified an “ain't” might slip out. When the food began arriving, that vague feeling of unsophisticated-ness morphed into full-on shame.

I'm not a big food person. I already knew that, but I didn't realize how limited were my powers of description when it comes to gastronomy until those three helpfully pointed it out to me. The first red flag leaped into view when the editor asked me what was my favorite Peruvian dish. The deer-in-headlights feeling that seized me pulled a foolish "Um, I like yucas" out of my mouth and brought a fleeting look of pity to the editor's face.

The rest of the tasting was no better. I listened to them swap unfamiliar adjectives about each dish and watched the food critic, Yvonne, take notes while the chef described their preparation. With every new taste, the exclamations of amazement became more frequent and pronounced. I tried everything that was offered and attempted to keep a pleasant expression on my face, but - due to both my inexperience and desperation to be gone - I really was not all that impressed with the food. Every time someone asked my opinion, I would fumble for a suitable response, give up, and resort to the stock response I learned in Ukraine that describes everything neither extraordinarily good nor outrageously bad: "It's as normal."

I kept thinking about my mom and my grandfather. Give my grandfather a pair of socks or a million-dollar check for Christmas, and his response is the same: "That's real good, doll." My mom's the same, only even less (if that's possible) loquacious in some ways. How was your day, Mom? "Fine." And that Everest trek/presidential debate you did? "OK." But the one thing my mom can and frequently does describe, with shudderingly vivid detail, is food. Usually things she doesn't like. A few scathing gems: "Looks like someone already ate it"; "Tastes like dog mess"; "Made me want to vomit". In some situations, these are funny; in others, exasperating. But everywhere outside of Georgia and family? Completely inappropriate.

In the midst of all the poshness, however, her breathtaking directness was all I could think of, and I decided to emulate her just in time for the chef to bring out a plate of squid - "cooked in its own ink!" The squid looked revoltingly like five leeches covered in thick, black tar. If there's anything more unappetizing this side of bodily excretions, I would like to see it. The others dug in enthusiastically, and I knew I had to do the same. The editor placed one of the fat, worm-like pieces on my plate and spooned extra ink over it, and I fought down a wave of nausea as I forced myself to cut a small chunk with my fork. Every cell of my being was shrieking in protest as I put the foul-looking stuff in my mouth and chewed once, twice, three times.

To my astonishment, it was good. Delicious, in fact. The flavor was so surprisingly appealing that I must have smiled, because the editor leaned over and said, "You like it, eh? How is it?" Here it was - my chance to offer some articulate commentary. I thought a moment, remembered my yuca gaffe, and decided to stay in character and channel my mum.

"It's great," I enthused. "Would make your tongue slap your brains out."