'Pologies All Round

I've owed you all an update for a long time: the last month has been rather hectic, and my jet-lag-addled brain is not dealing with all of it too well.

Chavin was pretty good to me all in all. Working eight hours a day in the sun at high altitude is a humbling experience: all it has taught me is that I'm as unfit for the life of the body as I am for the life of the mind. If you don't believe me, witness, as I prove the point and take refuge with other illiterate curs in that poor-man's-paragraph, the bullet list.

Of Things Learned In Peru, and In the Multifarious Ways in which they are Entirely Inconsequential to Man and Beast Alike

• I can find my way around a set of ordinary garden implements.
• Useless because I only know their names in Spanish (quieres tocar mi badilejo?), because I wield them like a limp-wristed paraplegic, and because, really, when am I ever going to have the time to help my mother tend to her infernal geraniums? The only plant I've had any of luck with of late is Ballsbridge's latest acquisition, mother-in-law's tongue: strangely enough, it's a very forgiving little darling, content to survive on what few drops of water you lavish on it.
• I can make humitas, a sweet dessert-like tamale, containing mashed oca (a sweet tuber indigenous to the high Andes) and cinnamon.
• Useless because it's hard to find oca anywhere outside of South America for a reasonable price, except perhaps New Zealand and because they only really taste good if you've just gorged yourself on a kilogram of meat. Bonus useless fact: it was one of the first crops to be domesticated (in the New World, if not all of human history), in the very valley in which Chavin lies, the Callejon de Huaylas.
• I am familiar with the essential principles of digital surveying, and can operate a Leica theodolite without supervision or assistance.
• Useless because I was never trained in the use of the digital-mapping software that allows one to make sense of this data.
• I learned how to pour beer correctly at high altitudes, where it has a tendency to end up in your glass more foam than liquid.
  
• Useless because this skill only makes you drunker faster, and one drinks in the mountains to while away as much time as possible.
• I can sing Piel Canela ("Cinammon Skin"), a Peruvian (?) love-song.
• Useless because... well, let's just say that you'll know what I mean if you were there that awful night the good Dr. Frier made me play Karaoke Revolution.
• I lost weight in all the right places.
• Useless because I promptly followed that up with three weeks of Persian food, a week of Pakistani food and now a week of Turkish food. You will be relieved to know that I am restored to my former self, padded just well enough to keep the voices inside from hurting themselves.
• All the things I've learned to identify! Soils of the high Andes by color and texture, Peruvian ceramics from 3500 B.C. to the colonial period, camelid and rodent bones, obsidian projectile-heads... oh my!
• I think this one's pretty self-explanatory.

I'll spare you the much longer list of things I was supposed to have learned but never quite figured out. So very little accomplished, all in all, in case anyone was jealous that I was out travelling the world and learning new things.

In the aftermath of Chavin (much tears and ballyhooing all round), I had a week to explore Cusco, Macchu Pichu and Lake Titicaca. A bit rushed but the ever-anodyne presence of the old ball-and-chain saved me several times (though not from losing my wallet). A thick mist clung neurotically to Macchu Pichu the morning we made our ascent by motorcoach, but it disappeared by 10am for some stunning views of pooping llamas and goggle-eyed German tourists. I don't know if I can forget it fast enough. Lake Titicaca was a beautiful shade of blue that I've utterly failed to capture in any of my photographs. There are dozens of floating islands, made by the Uros Indians out of what appeared to be extremely buoyant reed. These days, I was told, the islands are stuffed with plastic Coke bottles and the like for flotation, and covered up with reed for the tourists' sake. The Seventh-Day Adventist Church was representin' too, with a large floating school built to turn the scruffy heathen children into slightly-less-scruffy Christian children. No word on how that's going, but I hope to see a floating Starbucks the next time I'm there, preferably with wi-fi.

Thence to Miami, humid and sticky as ever. Hurricane Ernesto never materialized (Tropical Storm Ernesto would do well to audition for Sesame Street... cuddly and Hispanic - I can't think of a better candidate for the show's first tropical cyclone), but we had to gear up for him all the same. Key West was expensive but pretty; Hemingway's cats are indeed polydactylous, the poor darlings, not to mention overfed and spoiled by the visitors. I've also become fairly familiar with TGIF's latest menu, so do ask if you want a tip (hint: stay away from the Sizzling Chicken.).

And then Dublin, where I did too much in one week with too much alcohol in my blood to form anything like real memories. My mother thrashed me at golf but bought me a new suit to make up for it afterwards. I visited the University of Limerick on the way to the city itself: their Health Sciences building is shaped like a gigantic train-engine, but no-one has been able to explain to my satisfaction why midwives and speech-therapists aren't more steamed about this. Me? I'd be railing against those who'd approved the decision, even if they tried to cover up their tracks.

On a day-trip to Belfast, I asked a shrivelled little Asian lady at a KFC on Shankill Rd. if the chickens served here had been scum-sucking baby-eating Catholics or God-fearing Queen-loving Protestants, but she was unable to give me a definitive answer. I tried to sidestep the issue by ordering some fries. Unfortunately, both the ketchup packets AND the Bar-B-Q sauce came from Catholic Portugal, and I was stuck there, staring at the gritty and grimy remains of the neighborhood, munching morosely on my salty Fritten sans salsa and pondering Papicide.

I also managed to go to Cork and get dragged in front of TV cameras with my parents, before sitting down meekly to biryani and daal with the Pakistani community in a depressing little parish recreation center. I did not get to make out with Blarney Stone, to my great chagrin, because it was too rainy (all the better to wash the slobber off, no?) nor did I see the harbor whence the great Titanic set sail. But all this for next time, yes? Especially if one of you lazy land-lubbers decides to visit me.

I arrived in Berlin last Friday, two days before my 22nd birthday (an event I would have missed entirely if not for some of your kind e-mails). I'm living in Steglitz, a small residential neighborhood, about a 25-minute commute (door-to-door, including 2 minutes on the U-Bahn) from the Villa where we study. My host-mother, Angelika, is a social-worker who hasn't been able to hold a job since she was laid off in 2003. Her son Tim is either playing World of Warcraft all day or masturbating; either way, I have no access to the Internet when I'm home. They also have a cat named Lala, an utterly detestable creature that only manages to get in the way in our little fifth-floor flat. My room is nice and large and even has a balcony attached, for candle-lit entertaining or somesuch.

I'll update more in a few months, or upon request. Until then... tscheuss!

PS: I have pictures to share (not least the ones from Senior Dinner on the Quad): they will probably end up on the Facebook unless anyone objects, so stay glued to your mini-feeds!