The Trip

On our last night in Mexico this summer I passed Hubby my traveling notebook and asked him to write down his thoughts on the trip while we waited for our dinner. I thought he'd protest and whine about the request, but instead he looked at me for a second or two, silently took my notebook and started scribbling away.

20 minutes later he was still scribbling. I started to worry that he would finish all my blank pages and not leave me any room for our coming trip to India this fall when he suddenly stopped, closed the notebook and handed it back to me asking me to promise not to read what he'd written until we'd gotten back to London.

Well, we're back in London and I've read what he wrote. And now I wish to make sure his words are forever cemented somewhere where I and all who recognize themselves in The Trip will always remember what he meant.


August 5th 2011 -- Cancun, Mexico.

Fifth trip to Mexico for me and third traveling across the country along the Mexican highways, from Puebla to the Sureste (south-east). The trip is still as incredible as ever with its unchangeable routines: the departure at dawn (always running late), the descent at Orizaba in the early hours of the morning where we go from the high fresh mountains in to the Veracruz fertile jungle while saying goodbye to the Popo, the heat and the sun of Veracruz, the chaos of Villahermosa, the straight highway on our way out of Ciudad del Carmen, the bridges over the Golfo de Mexico, the pit stop for fresh shrimp cocktails at Champoton, the Yucatan dry jungle, the rest while soaking in the warm summer night and the lights of Merida, the dry concrete highway until Tulum, and then.... at last .... the Caribbean beach and the feeling of having arrived to the end of the world, of reaching Paradise, after all that effort.

Like each trip, this one came with its surprises: the mechanical malfunction under the pouring rain, the overnight stop at a "dubious" hotel in Frontera, the Yucatean policeman more than a little curious about our quirky setup....

Not everyone was able to come on this occasion, some are no longer with us, others joined along the trip. And even though things are no longer the same as before, probably never will be, what matters most is to continue to make The Trip, continue to keep the dream alive and share it with those who count, continue to transmit this passion and this desire to throw oneself in the direction of the Caribe and travel all across Mexico to get there.

Photo by Hubby: Combi Paradise

Fned.

The coincidence factor

Do you ever think about the coincidence of being born where you are? I find it mind boggling how something so accidental, over which you have absolutely no control over whatsoever, such as the place you are born in, can play such a significant part in one’s life and what it turns out to be.

Why is it that I was lucky enough to be born into a loving family where I was taught the values I was taught, provided with an education and a passion for traveling, given two mother languages and a multicultural background?

Or I could also ask it this way: Why is it that I wasn’t lucky enough to be born into the Hilton family, jet-set around the world by the time I was 12, had a personal translator so that I never had to learn an additional language, be introduced to international cuisine and local customs first hand?

Or I could ask it this way: How is it that I was fortunate enough to not be born in Darfour, becoming someone who’d only ever known a refugee camp, never set foot in a school room or learned to read or write my own language or heard about foreign countries or learned about distant lands?

I’m not talking about the political or economical injustice of it all. It’s just that the more I travel and see the world, the more I realize how, beyond the obvious economical or social reasons, traveling and seeing the world is not something everyone has the opportunity of doing in great part because of, and this is what I find so extraordinary, a simple twist of fate that nobody can control.

This thought came to me when I was walking in the rice paddies in Ubud during our trip to Bali in 2009. We came across a woman who was harvesting rice and it got me thinking of what her life must be like. I don’t want to sound condescending or anything, perhaps I’m completely off in assuming all of this, but it got me wondering if she’d ever heard of my country and made her want to visit it as I had heard about hers which in turn had lead me there. It made me wonder what her weekends or free time were spent on. Did she dream of traveling abroad every free moment she got as I did? Did she imagine tasting strange foods or hearing foreign languages? Would this be something that interested her? And if didn’t, was it simply because she had never had a chance to experiment it in the first place or because her interests were of a different nature (which is also a valid explanation for people choosing not to travel)? Had she ever even left her town? Her village? Her Island?

It hit me how some parts of the world are so secluded, so isolated, be it geographically, politically, economically, socially or even mentally that its population probably doesn’t even ponder on this. And it made me realize how by a simple question of chance I was not born in one of those places.

There I was, on the other side of the world, walking in the middle of a rice field in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, a place where up until a few months ago I’d never in my dreams thought I’d be likely to ever set foot, thousands of kilometers away from home, and all of this because of chance in the universe that had me be born in the place I’d been born in which in turn provided me with chances and opportunities which they in turn provided me with the means and the resources to find myself in Ubud at that very instant in time.

And there she was, by the same chance in the universe that had her be born in that remote place, in the middle of kilometers and kilometers of rice fields, which provided her with chances and opportunities different to mine (not saying better or worse, just different) that put her in that place, in that moment in time.

And how neither of us had been able to control that coincidence factor which, it, in turn had dictated and controlled our lives.

Now, for those born in the US, this perhaps will all sound like a bunch of baloney. After all, Americans are brought up thinking that life is what you make of it and everything is possible if you set your mind to it. And that is probably one of the reasons I am who I am today, because I had the chance of being born into a family that taught me this way of thinking. But what would have happened if I’d been born into a family that taught me I should strive to be married by the time I was 16? Or a family that taught me that I should focus on becoming a lawyer? Or a family that taught me that religion should be my first priority in life? Or a family that taught me that the most important thing in life was finding a well with drinkable water?

Perhaps the woman in the rice fields has had the same opportunities I’ve had (after all, what makes being born in Mexico much better –or worse– off than being born in Indonesia or elsewhere for that matter?) and other factors in life had resulted in her being in that place in that moment in time (again, not going into the politics of the issue itself).

Photo by Hubby: In the rice fields

But the fact that boggles my mind remains the same: how amazing that the first steps in our existence (which in turn influences us in great measure to become who we are) are controlled by a random factor.



Fned.

Per aspera ad astra

Hubby and I visited Oxford this weekend. The university town in the English countryside, not the shopping street in the city center of London.

Oxford is only an hour and a half train away from London but once you step off that train platform and walk into the university's sprawling campus, which actually is the town of Oxford, you suddenly realize you are in a whole different world. Everywhere you look medieval buildings older that my country are sprinkled around town. The Mayans were still climbing up the steps of Chichen-Itza to pray to the gods of Sun and already students at Oxford were taking lectures in Theology.

The university is over 800 years old and as I walked along the streets, in and out of ancestral college courtyards, medieval chapels and century-old libraries, I wondered what it must feel like for the students currently enrolled to know that within these same very walls Einstein studied science, Halley discovered a comet, Carrol dreamt up an Alice and a white rabbit, Smith toyed with Economics...... that through these walls future Nobel Peace winners and Presidents and award winning writers and poets probably complained about the cafeteria's menu....

I doubt a lot of them studied much History though... what could they have possibly learned back then? History wasn't even written yet !!

I was both fascinated and intimidated by the sheer power and magnificence of those buildings and what they represented, what secrets and stories their walls held, what illustrious names were associated to every possible bench, garden, table, court, window on those grounds...

When I finished high school I didn't really know what I wanted to study nor where I wanted to go so I took a year off to make up my mind. During that year we traveled to Texas to visit my family and during our time there one day my mom drove us to Austin and took us to visit her old alma mater, UT (University of Texas). I remember feeling exactly the same: fascinated, intimidated and fairly certain I did not belong in something so big, so imposing, so huge. I didn't even bother entertaining the idea of applying to UT.

In the end I signed up to and graduated from a University in my hometown with a little over 1,200 enrolled students and a grand total of 17 years of history. And never looked back. I had a grand time there, learned lots, made great friends and still hold that school in a special place in my heart.

But walking in the Bodleian library at Oxford knowing such unique items like the Magna Carta or the Gutenberg Bible were safely kept within those very same walls, and that students holding an Oxford student card had the right to access such treasures, well, I have to admit I did feel a ting of regret... not because I feel I belonged at Oxford (as if!) but mainly because I wondered what it must feel like to know that 800 generation of students probably crossed the same threshold to your dorm room (then again...... eiwww).

I mean, think about it. It must do something to a person's incentive to learn to go do your homework in sixteen-century Radcliff Camera ....

.... or to look out of your dorm room and see the Magdalen Tower, where students were already taking classes in 1264 ....

.... or to take a coffee break in the "vaults" (which probably are real vaults) ....

.... or get from classroom L208 to classroom H204 by crossing the "Bridge of Sighs" .....


.... or to take a short cut through a fifteen-century alley to make it to class in time ....

.... or stay up late at night chatting away with your roommate in your Tudor residence hall ....


.... or work in a science lab that looks something like this .....



As we boarded the train back to London I wondered if my old self, the one who shrank back at the sight of The Tower back in 1997, might have thought differently if she'd know that one day she would go live in a different continent, learn a new language, have the incredible opportunity to travel the globe and see four out of the seven wonders of the world...


... I guess I'll never know.....


Fned.

The image of us

If you read my blog you know that I often mention my good friend Kyle. For those of you who don't know Kyle, she's a blogging wedding photographer living in Chile and she and her hubby Seba are awesome people and dear friends of ours.

Back in 2009 Kyle and Seba came to stay with us in Paris for a few days and graciously accepted to do a photo shoot of us. We were both pretty nervous and didn't really know what to expect being as how we'd never posed for a photo shoot in our life (even our wedding album is a painful thing to see). But Kyle and Seba did a great job at getting us to relax and, mainly thanks to their talent and great eye, got some amazing shots where we actually look pretty good despite the fact that I vividly recall feeling extremely self conscious the entire time.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from that shoot:

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when again, Kyle and Seba met up with us here in London and again agreed to do a shoot for us. Again, we were feeling pretty nervous and self conscious the entire time and again, the photos came out really great, (this is Kyle and Seba after all). See below:

Since neither Hubby nor I have consciously changed anything in our appearance or lifestyles between the shoots I guess I wasn't expecting to be so shocked and surprised at how different we look this time around.

I can't put my finger exactly on what it is exactly that feels and looks different to me but something does. At first I thought it was just that we must look older in the 2011 pictures, after all 2 years have gone by. But the more I look at them the more I think it's not exactly that.

It's like I can actually see the time that has passed between the shoots but not necessarily because there are gray hairs or eye wrinkles to show for it. It's more as if I can feel what Hubby and I have lived through between the shoots. The experiences we've shared, the trips we've taken, the things we've seen, the mistakes we've made, the highs and lows we've weathered through hand in hand, the ups and downs of our life together.

When I look at both sets of pictures I can very vividly see the Fned and Hubby of 2009 and remember their dreams and goals shining through their eyes and reflecting back at me. And then I look at the Fned and Hubby of 2011 and see the effect that those dreams coming true (or not) has had on us since then. I can see how some of those old 2009 dreams have shifted and become something new, something changed, something different that now shines back from a new set of eyes that are so familiar and yet so different, somewhat wiser, from those of 2009. It's like they no longer reflect the same things but are instead looking at a different horizon, planning a new direction, gazing through a different perspective of things.

I find it very interesting that thanks to Kyle and Seba's magical talent I am able to compare these two slices of our life and it makes me wonder what will the slice look and feel like a few years from now.

After all, this is now starting to feel like a tradition Kyle... you know you'll have to come and photograph us when we move on to our next country, right ?? :-)

Fned.

Invasion

Hubby and I have only moved apartments a few times in our life, but every time we've each had one non-negotiable request for deciding on a place to live.

Hubby's condition is that the apartment has to have good natural light. Mine is that it has to have a guest bedroom.

When I came to grips with the reality that I was going to settle down on the other side of the world, I knew that I would always want, nay, need, a place where my family, friends and loved ones could come visit and stay for as long as they wished without feeling uncomfortable. Over the years countless of our friends and family have accepted our invitation to come visit and this has brought us so much joy and happiness that I have never regretted the fact that we pay a little extra rent each month for the luxury of being able to provide them with their own space during their stay.

Until now.

Last Sunday we got a call from a friend of a friend in Paris asking us for a favor: the son of another friend had just arrived in London to do a 6 month internship and had discovered upon arrival that the apartment he'd thought he'd rented through an online agency, was actually a scam and nothing was in fact reserved or available. Our friend said that this kid (22 years) was basically out in the cold with his suitcases and without a place to go for the night and since she knew we had an extra bedroom she asked us if, as a special favor, we could put him up for a night or two while he found a new place.

I have to admit the request annoyed us a little bit as we'd never met this person (or his mother or her friend!) and we were already running late to meet our good friends Tara and Stuart for one last dinner before their move to Australia..... but of course we said yes. We waited for the kid to arrive (I'm just going to go ahead and call him the kid for the rest of the post if you don't mind), gave him a copy of our key, showed him where everything was, told him to feel at home and jumped in a cab to make it in time for dessert.

In retrospective we probably shouldn't have told him to feel at home.

Our understanding was that the kid only needed a night or two because he was in a hurry to find his own digs. However, almost immediately we realized that he was in fact in no hurry at all. Monday night we came back from work to find him lazily browsing the online adds to help him make up his mind on the neighborhoods he wanted to explore before he committed to looking there for a flat. Hubby told him that it was no use to look at online adds in London since most of the advertised places are already rented anyway and that his best option for finding something quick was to call an agency the next morning and set up a half day of apartment visits that afternoon which is the way things are done here (for the record, Hubby found our current place during the first half of the first day he started looking).

Tuesday we came home to find that he'd settled on a couple of agencies he was going to call the next day. Wednesday he'd found a place and was going to think about it for the night, Thursday the place of course had been rented out and he had to start from scratch again.

By this time, our patience had grown really weary. It wasn't only that we felt he was taking advantage of the free boarding and food he was getting from us, but mostly the fact that he was taking for granted that he could stay here for as long as he wished, without even bothering to ask us if we minded and in essence, he didn't need to pressure himself to find something quick. Each night we'd come home to hear a new excuse of why he hadn't found something yet ("the agency got our rdv times mixed up", "the place that the agent had set aside for me to visit was actually already rented out by another agency", "I had too much work today and couldn't step out to visit anything", "a friend of mine heard of something so we're going to go check it out tomorrow", "I'm thinking of checking out the student residences down the road tomorrow on my way to work"....etc).

I have to say that I would have tolerated all of this and much more if at least the kid had showed a little consideration towards this "invasion" of our home, but it was all the contrary! We had a couple of previous dinner engagements during the week and each time, we'd come home in the evening to find he'd randomly gone through our pantry, made himself dinner and left the pots in the sink. On the nights that Hubby cooked for us he didn't even offer to help wash up afterwards. And during his stay he kept the door to the bedroom closed without ever asking us if we needed anything from the room (which would have been nice considering Hubby's computer and all our books and DVDs are in there).

It's not like he was ever impolite or obnoxious, quite the contrary. On the whole he's a nice kid. He just seemed to assume that living with us was the same as living with his parents and that it was our duty to take care of him for as much and as long as he needed it. And that's what killed us.

By Wednesday we'd already told him that we were leaving to Mexico this weekend so he had to find something by Friday or else he'd have to go to a hotel. He kept saying "yeah, yeah, of course, don't worry, I'm doing [insert bogus excuse here] tomorrow and it's almost sure I'll have a signed lease by the end of the day"... by the time Friday morning came (this morning), we just rolled our eyes when he said he would keep us informed of how his apartment hunt went.

Sure enough, Hubby got a text this afternoon asking us if he could stay at our place while we were away ("he'd found something but wasn't getting the keys until late next week").... when Hubby said no he asked if he could at least leave his suitcases at our place (and therefore keep our key). Again Hubby firmly said that wasn't going to work out (we have friends coming to stay in our flat while we're away so we need the extra key). When Hubby got home after work, the kid hadn't yet packed and once again asked if we it really wasn't at all possible!

Fortunately for the kid I wasn't there when all this was going on.

Hubby kept a firm no and the kid finally admitted that he had a friend who'd offered to put him up while he waited for the apartment to be free.

When I got Hubby's text telling me he'd just put the kid in a cab and sent him on his way to his friend's house, I have to admit I let out a loud "Whooopeeee!!"

Now, the hard part. What would you have done in our place?

You see, despite this situation getting on our nerves in a gradually increasing level, every night Hubby and I would lie in bed and ask ourselves if we weren't being too harsh, or mean or non-understanding. We felt it was our duty to help him out, after all, I still remember how hard it was to find a place when I first arrived in Paris, (although the housing situation in London is waaaaaay more easier than Paris) but at the same time we felt he was openly taking advantage of us with no sign on his side of gratefulness or even realization of what he was asking from us. At times, we were even sure he was out right lying to us and that made us even more mad and indisposed to help him out.

I've thought long and hard if we would have reacted in this same way if this had happened to us 5 years ago. The thought has crossed my mind that maybe our cranky, inpatient and inflexible behavior is because we're slowly forgetting what it's like to be young and stupid and selfish and self-absorbed.

But at the same time, a part of me tells me that if you've got the guts to go out into the world and move to a foreign country you have to be mature and intelligent and strong enough to be able to take it when someone closes a door in your face, right?

What do you think ? Were we too harsh?

Photo: "San Francisco" by Hubby

Fned.

Greetings!

One thing I love about moving to the UK is that I finally have access again to a never ending selection of Greeting Cards!

I know, stupid, right? I don't know what it is about them, but I've always loved Greeting Cards. Like post cards, I guess I have a very strong attachment for these simple straightforward pretty pieces of cardboard that convey a message, be it of love, warm wishes, congratulations, sorrow, etc., but that in any case, lets you tell someone you are thinking about them.

I remember in my early days of moving to France I once went looking to buy a nice greeting card for a friend (can't exactly remember what the occasion was, but I'm pretty sure something standard like a birthday). I went to my trustworthy Monoprix and was appalled when I came across the "greeting cards" section. It was more like a standalone booth wedged between the stationary aisle and the pharmacy counter!! There couldn't have been more than 20 different cards, all themes included!!! There I was, coming from the land of Hallmark, suddenly facing a crummy selection of plain, somewhat ugly and completely unoriginal "Heureux Anniversaire" cards!

When I went home (empty handed) I asked Hubby about this. He just shrugged and said that French people don't really seem to give much importance to sending out or receiving greeting cards all together. I couldn't believe it! I've always felt that sending a card sends the message that you care to someone, but according to Hubby, it seemed the French don't really see it that way and instead see greeting cards (the standard, industry made kind) as simply that: an industry made item that conveys no feeling or personal thoughts to the recipient - you buy a card that says what you otherwise wouldn't have thought of saying yourself.

Needless to say, I was very skeptic of this explanation and went out in search for cards in more upscale stores. However, even though I eventually did come upon a wider selection, it never really compared to what you can find in the states. Eventually I came to terms with the truth: in all my time living in France, the only time we really did receive proper and systematic Greeting Cards (and had access to a pretty respectable selection of them ourselves) was during the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Over the years I came to understand what the French meant: if there is one event where a standardized copy-cat message can be used without reserve each year when sending your "Happy New Year" wishes to all the contacts in your address book, that occasion is New Year's Eve (and even then, I had to practically twist Hubby's arm to write something on the cards to personalize them an itsy bit!).

By the time I left Paris I was so used to the lack of greeting-card use or expectations that when my friends and colleagues sent me off with the traditional pot and wrote on blank sheets of paper stapled together their good luck wishes for our new life in London I didn't even think twice about it. And to be honest, I still love and treasure those pages so much that I probably take more care of them than I would have if they'd presented me with a Good Luck greeting card.

So, understandably, I thought I'd been desensitized to the whole Greeting Card thing by the time we moved to London.

Except I wasn't.

In my department there seems to always be an occasion to go greeting-card shopping. Be it a birthday, a leaving party, a maternity announcement, a job promotion, any occasion really, there is always an envelope passed around to raise money for a card (and eventually a gift).

The first few times I ducked the responsibility of actually going out and choosing the card myself being as how I didn't want to be trusted with that delicate task if the offer of choices out there was going to be as meager, limited and quite frankly depressing as it'd been in France. But once I realized that there is actually a never ending selection of cards out there, I instantly reconnected with my long lost love for Greeting Cards.

I once again enjoy being able to go to a greeting card store and spend hours browsing the funny ones, admiring the beautifully decorated ones, memorizing the poems in the traditional ones, imagining where I could use the really wacky or funky ones, matching styles to personalities, finding the right text to go with the right occasion, etc. I love the envelopes too, sometimes shiny, sometimes matching the design of the card, sometimes having a design of their own.

I'm a dork, I know, but I really am glad I live in the UK. This way I get to once again send cards to all my loved ones to let them know I'm thinking about them, be it because they have a new fish pet, or have decided to leave their job to go travel the world, or because it's the Queen's Birthday.

Just because.


With love,
Fned.

Mi ciudad ya no es mi ciudad?

- My city is no longer my city? -

So Hubby and I went back to Paris last weekend to meet up with potential tenants for our apartment. Because Hubby had to be in Paris before me for work, I traveled alone.

The minute I stepped off the train at Gare du Nord station, I felt like all this time I'd been running an errand and I was now on my way back home. The feeling of familiarity was so powerful and overwhelming I had to look for things that had changed in the station since we've been gone to remind myself that we left over 9 months ago. And came up with nothing. It was still the stinky, dirty, crowded, buzzing-with-energy, grandiose train station it had been all those months ago when I got on the Eurostar with the last of our stuff on my way to permanently settling down with Hubby in London.

As it's only a short walk away and the weather was nice, I decided to walk to our apartment from Gare du Nord as I would in the old days instead of taking the metro. I was back in our old neighborhood in no time and the feeling of belonging there only got stronger and stronger. I passed the street I used to walk every night to visit Hubby at his apartment when we first started dating, I passed the old boulangerie we went to when we'd wake up on Sunday mornings and go buy freshly baked butter croissants, I passed the police station we went to when our credit card was illegally used online for gambling, I passed my old hairdresser with his obnoxious attitude and magic hands, I passed our old apartment building and the Canal St Martin on which I used to jog every morning. Every single building and place had a story, a memory - the road I had walked on hundreds, thousands of times, had not changed one bit.

I was feeling so at home that when I came upon it I had to stop and double check that I was still on the right street.

But I was and there it was: an empty ground slot that had not been there before. It was sitting right in between an old apartment building I'd always wondered what it looked like inside and the gas station we used to fill our car's tank at. Wedged between the two had once stood something that had since been torn down and all that remained of it was an empty sorry looking grass field.

And as much as I tried I couldn't remember what had been there before.

I stood there racking my brain trying to remember and as the minutes ticked away a nasty thought crept into the back of my head: this is how it begins. The first time you're back, it's only one empty slot, everything else is the same and welcomes you with open arms and wonderful memories to be relived. But next time more will have changed and the memories will have started to fade or be forgotten.... a beloved store will have closed down while you were away, and you wont be able to remember if it was at this Monoprix where you got that blouse you love or at the one over at Jaures.

From now on, the city will transform, change and forget you while we are away and from now on every time I'll step off that train I will feel less and less that familiar feeling of belonging here.

Photo: "Paris" by Hubby

Fned.

Los conquistadores

- The conquerors -

Thanks to Will and Kate's decision to get hitched, Hubby and I were able to travel to Peru recently. The Royal Wedding added an extra holiday in a two week period of time already crammed with two other bank holidays in the UK, so at the thought of being able to take 13 days off for the price of 4, Hubby and I jumped.

Who needs to see Kate's wedding gown live anyway, right?

As you can imagine the trip was amazing. All throughout my eduction in Mexico every year our history lessons always, always, dedicated a large chunk of the year to studying pre-colonial civilizations (go figure) and of course that meant systematically at some point or another talking about the Aztecs, the Mayas and the Incas. I've been fortunate enough to have been able to be in close contact with the cultural legacy and actually touch the ruins of the first two over the course of my life in Mexico, but the Incas had always fascinated me with exotic and mystical tales of Inca princesses and lost cities.

And above all, I wanted to see those famous "terrazas" we always read about.

The first step of the trip was reaching Cuzco, the lovely colonial town high up in the Andes. Cuzco is the starting point for the Inca trail and for me personally it was in my top three highlights of the trip. It has the most amazing cathedral I've ever seen in Latin America and an original colonial atmosphere you can almost imagine Francisco Pizarro and Ines Suarez strolling along its narrow cobblestone streets.

The pretty little town of Cuzco

The main square

Ladies crossing the street

Cuzco at night

Cuzco, is also 3800 mts above sea level, which means somebody had to take oxygen to deal with the altitude sickness (hint: it wasn't me).


Anyway, it was in Cuzco when we started noticing it. Whenever we listened to a guide talk about the city, the history of the region or the Inca people there was a very clear, very loud, very explicit message: the Spaniards came, they infected us with their diseases, they captured our Inca emperor, they tore down our sacred temples to build churches on them, they basically destroyed our civilization and every bad thing that has ever happened to Peru since then is the fault of Spain.

No sugar coating or anything.

In Mexico we've always had mixed feeling about that part of our country's history. Of course it bothers us that the Spaniards conquered us and shipped our gold and silver off to Spain but at the same time we acknowledge the very important contribution mestizaje played in making our country become what it is today. Nowadays, nobody denies or resents the fact that 80% of the population has a last name ending in -ez. That's why when talking about that "sensitive" part of our history, mexican historians are always very careful to use the words "conquistadores" or else make sure to emphasize that they are talking about la Corona Espanola (the Spanish Crown) and not Spain as a country and much less the Spanish people. Although it is always implied that we are of course referring to Spain, it is very seldom referred to as such so openly.

But in Peru I was shocked to see that they have no such inclinations. Guides will blatantly say the Spanish ruined the country, killed the Inca emperor, destroyed the beautiful temples and took apart the carefully constructed political and social structure the Incas had so successfully built. Everyone we spoke to in Peru at some point or another brought up the subject of how Spain's ambition and unquenchable search for gold and treasures provoked the downfall of the Inca civilization. And although from a historical point of view that may be true, it still was quite shocking for me to realize that, so different from my own home country, the resentment and hatred towards Spain is still very much alive in the Peruvian's heart and memory.

During our trip we got to meet several Spaniards also backpacking through the country. When we spoke to them of this they and asked them their opinion they pretty much told us the same thing: although they never for one moment felt threatened or discriminated while traveling in Peru, it did make them a little uncomfortable when guides would not blink an eyelash when blaming the Spaniards right in their faces for the violent history and destruction that was brought on by the Conquista.

I guess I always took for granted the fact that Mexico probably had it better than other countries in Latin America. By the time Pizarro arrived in Peru, Cortez and his men had already pretty much conquered all of Central America and the conquistadores were no longer in it for the adventure and excitement of discovering a new world, they were hungry for gold and glory and cared little of anything else. What initially (and briefly) had been an encounter of two different worlds, by the time it arrived in Peru it was pretty much a story of "yaddi-yaddi-yadda... if we've seen one sacred temple, we've seen them all. Tear it down, build a church and show me the gold people!!"



Thankfully, not all was torn down.

The tiny little town of Aguas Calientes
perched high up in the Andes - last stop to....

... you guessed it....

The amazing Machu Picchu ruins!!

The Condor Temple -- can you see the Condor?
(I couldn't at first glance!)

That little patch of grey in the center..
THAT's Machu Picchu!!

No words can describe how amazing it is to be there!!

Those famous terrazas!!!
Dug right on to the mountain's shoulder,
they were the amazing farmlands of the Incas

All photos taken by Hubby.
You can check out more on his Flickr page here

Fned.

Contagion

- Contagious -

No, I am not referring to some sort of mysterious epidemic making the rounds or to the frightening e-coli breakout that's scaring the living daylights out of vegetarians across Europe. I am talking about the most common of all contagious diseases expats invariably catch when living abroad.


Accent contamination.


Have you ever thought about it? As a foreigner, does your accent in your foreign language catch the accent of the place you're living in? Does it give away the place where you are not from by belong to? (at least temporarily)

Whenever Hubby speaks in Spanish, people always tell him his accent sounds mexican! I don't really buy it because he can't pronounce "guadalajara" correctly (no Frenchman can), but the fact is he's picked up all the mannerisms of the accent when he speaks: the musicality of the words, the way he constructs his phrases, even some of the slang he uses, all lean more towards the Mexican accent than the more common Spanish (from Spain) tone you hear most foreigners speak in Europe.

When he moved to London last year and I came over to visit during the time I was still based in Paris, I quickly started to notice that his English was picking up a slight British twang. It used to drive me crazy. I'm ashamed to admit I'd impatiently throw him a "stop it! you sound stupid" whenever it happened because quite frankly I was not used to him asking me if "I reckoned" anything!! After all, he's been married to ME all these years, the least he can do is stick to my accent and not drop it like a hot potato the minute I turn my back, right?

But then Kyle and Seba came to stay with us a couple of weeks ago, and every once in a while they'd suddenly interrupt me while I was talking, point an accusing finger at me and yell "you just sounded SO BRITISH!"

Whaa-aat?!?!

Let's get one thing straight people. If there is one thing I am damn proud of is that I have a very strong, very annoying, very authentic American accent. I've got nothing against the British accent, don't get me wrong, I love hearing it, but heck, I am half American! I am famous for over indulging in the uhm 's and the like, you know 's. Americans themselves ask me what part of California I'm from. You can't get more American than the Golden State. NO WAY am I picking up a foreign accent to supersede my own mother tongue accent!!

I decided Kyle and Seba had to get their ears checked and filed their observations under "whatever".

But the question kept looming around in my head and I started to notice that accents are contagious no matter how much you fight against them! My first clue came from my friend Jorge, who is Spanish but who ever since he started hanging out with yours truly (for the past 6 and odd years) sounds more and more like Polo Polo and less and less like Zapatero (don't ask). I used to think he was making fun of me... now I know he's just been contaminated.

And just like Hubby's English got contaminated with the British accent and Jorge's Spanish with the Mexican accent, I soon had to come to terms with the fact that my French accent had always been contaminated with the unmistakably Parisian twist. "That's normal", you say.. after all I learned French in Paris, right? The thing is, I was suffering from local contamination: depending on who I was talking to my accent shifted slightly! If I was hanging around Hubby's friends I would suddenly start to sound more "jeunes" and a bit "banlieu-esque"... but once I was at work and surrounded by my work colleagues I noticed my accent became more "branche"* since this was the way most of the people around me spoke.

Contaminated. Guilty as charged.

To make matters worse, the more I think about it the more I realize you can even get contaminated with a different accent in your very own language!!! When Hubby was living in Bordeaux he told me he picked up the very recognizable french southwestern twang and when he came back to Paris got a lot of teasing as a result.

And when I was living in Yucatan it seems every other word that came out of my mouth was "MA-re". To this day, it only takes me a few hours of being back in Merida for me to start picking up that very recognizable way of speaking and having Hubby roll his eyes at me.

I never really thought about all this before because I guess I was so used to my accent being foreign, period, that I didn't really consider what part of foreign it was.

Here, I figure I am going to have to over stress my "y'all"s and "howdy's" going forward if I want to avoid full blown, head to toe contamination.


I wonder what will happen if we ever go live in Japan.

Photo: "Howdy" by Fned.

Fned.

*
"Jeunes": young crowds
"Banlieu": outskirts of Paris
"Branche": hip and trendy

La distance ne compte pas

- Distance doesn't matter -

Today I ran a 10K race. And I almost died.

This morning's race wasn't AT ALL like that other 10K I ran a year and a half ago. This was very different on several levels, a sort of wake-up call if you like.

For one thing nobody was dressed as Santa.

For another, running this thing blasted through whatever denial walls I'd set up in my head and cruelly reminded me just how unfit I've become since the previous race. I hadn't trained at all for this event (not even a quick stroll around the park), and quite frankly I haven't set foot at the gym since last Feb. This obviously led to me making the worst time ever on a 10K (1h17m). To add insult to injury, I had to walk several times throughout the course, something I'd always promised myself I would never do no matter how tired I became while running a race. :(

The other thing that was so different from my previous experience, is that this was a race for charity. I don't know how it is in your country but in Mexico or France charity unfortunately doesn't seem to be a big thing. Basically if you wish to volunteer or raise awareness on any given issue, you have to go out there and look for the organizations involved in these subjects yourself. No one is going to go ahead and sign you up without you even knowing about it!!

In the UK the mentality is totally different. You don't have to go out there and look for ways to get involved, they come to you. The possibilities for volunteering your time and money seem to be endless in this country. As an example, my Company gives every employee 2 days off per year for volunteer work and there is always ongoing events to raise money, be it Movember, dress-down Fridays, staff parties where all proceeds go to charity, or in this case, the Macmillan 10K Fun Race.

Macmillan raises money for Cancer Research and this 10K was one of the many initiatives organized towards that goal. As Macmillan is my company's selected charity of the year, several people from work signed up to run this race and when my friends saw that I was dragging my feet at signing up too (because of afore mentioned lack of training), they went ahead and signed me up for it anyway!! :)

So anyway, that's how I found myself at 9am in Regent's Park standing at the start line of a 10K. The cool thing was that although there wasn't a lot of runners (300 at the most) it seems we did manage to raise some serious dough... according to the announcer right before the start of the race, my fellow charity runners and myself managed to raise a little over 78,000 £ which sounds like a heck of a lot of money !!! Yay for us !!

And then the race started.

Of course by Km2 I was slagging behind and waved to my friends to go on without me. With a wave of regret and frustration I resigned myself to keeping a pace no faster than a toddler's baby steps if I wanted to make it to the finish line. At least I was technically not walking....yet.

And that's when I started to notice it. The numbers. Most of the runners around me had written notes on their numbers saying who they were running for. As runner after runner passed me on the road I suddenly started to be aware of all those "For Grandma" or "for my dear Lizzie" or "in memory of Donald". Every single one was hand written, some decorated with glitter or feathers, some with printed pictures of smiling loved ones.... it hit me how these people were probably not even thinking about their fitness condition or worried about in what time they were going to make it to the finish line like I was. They were running for someone they loved. Someone they'd lost.

I was also immediately aware of another thing: the most repeated written phrase on those numbers was "For Dad".

Of course this made me think of my own dad. Although he didn't pass away from Cancer per se, I've always associated the disease to be the root of all his health problems and the ultimate thing to blame for him having left us so young. I suddenly wished I had written down in my own number "por mi padre" or simply his name.

I don't know how much that thought helped me make it to the finish line or even if in the grand scheme of things it matters much, but I do know that this race, however hard, however grueling, however disappointing, was the most rewarding race I've yet to run.

Photo: "The running gals" by Hubby

Fned.