Saying good-bye to Walter Patrick

Last week I had to something completely unexpected: I had to step foot on United States soil before June 1, 2015. And it was to do something I had expected but still thought would never come: My step-father, Walter Patrick, passed away. When I left for Colombia, he was on hospice care and a decent amount of morphine, but he was still cognizant most days, and when he wasn't, I normally chalked it up to the massive amounts of painkillers he was taking. I can't promise you I'm going to get the details right, but his problem, as I understood it, was basically advanced emphysema made worse by a back injury he sustained after he had a violent coughing attack one night, and then further complicated by a devastating case of pneumonia. After fighting with the pneumonia for some time, he was eventually rushed to the hospital, where they induced a coma in order to allow his body to rest, and when he was taken out of it, his physical therapy proved to be so taxing that it sent him back into another coma. When he awoke from that one, his care was switched from restorative to the ease-your-suffering variety. All this happened while I was away, still living in New York, and it was one of the things that influenced me to come back early.

I officiated their wedding.
On the left is his oldest son, Wally,
and behind my mother is
my sister Samantha.

Walt and my mother met and got married after I had already moved out of the house, and I only saw him on visits back. A week here, another there. And slowly, over time, we got to know each other. Toward the end of his life, he told me he viewed me as a son. I think I would have viewed him as a father if I had known exactly what that meant. My father and mother divorced when I was about five, and when I was about eleven, he moved to Colorado. I didn't see him much after that. I don't really know what a father is. I get clues and hints, through my relationship with my Uncle Steve and without a doubt through my relationship with Walt.

In the month before I came to Colombia, I was living with him and my mother in Indiana. She needed help taking care of him, and I wanted to see my family before I left for a long time. It was in that month that I grew even closer to Walt. I helped care for him when my mother was tired, getting him Pepsi and Kool-Aid and those brownies he positively addicted to, he bandaged my ankle for me when I twisted it so badly running that I walked with a limp, we had heart-to-hearts, watched Bunnyman, and I even remember giving him a stern pep talk when he was starting to get down on himself and life, asking me and my mom what the point of planning was when there was so little time left or why bother to leave the house to his beloved casino when all it did was making him sleep for the rest of the day. I found myself, in idle moments, trying to plan the viability of a trip back to the United States around Christmas time, if I could afford it, when would good dates be, maybe I'd go a little bit before Christmas to not disrupt other plans but we'll check the prices and see...

According to him, it was
the very definition of ambrosia.

And then that message came. And there was no more hope of seeing him at Christmas. There was no hope of seeing him again. The message came, and for me, it was as good as hearing he had already passed. I would never see him again. When I left, he told my mom, "This might be the last time I see Adam." When she told me, I said, "Maybe. We just don't know, I guess." But deep down, I had believed he wouldn't go so quickly. My mom told me he was outside in his Hoveround, washing the side of the house a few days before, and when I had left, he seemed to be able to walk farther and farther using his walker. On good days, he had been able to stand himself up.

Ever see a guy in a Hoveround spray a house
with a high powered hose? It's a sight to behold.

He passed only a few hours after my sister's message. And this time I wasn't in New York but in Colombia. I felt so selfish and so helpless. Selfish for being here when maybe I should be there and helpless that so far away, there was so little I could do. I've been trying to teleport for years (don't ask) and that would have been the perfect moment for a break through. But alas, this is real life: I don't have mutant powers, teleportation is not (yet) possible, and when people die, they don't wake back up. I left to Indiana a few days later.

I spent a week in Indianapolis. After a twenty-two hour door-to-door trip, I arrived home, stayed up with my mom talking way past bedtime, and the next day we had to be at his visitation. When I saw his body, I went into a state of shock and disbelief, which dammed up my emotion and isolated me from feeling the emptiness of the house without him in his bed in the family room, without his wisecracks and wit, without the constant stream of Cops and People's Court on the television. And that shelter of emotional dysfunction is where I stayed until the funeral, when the fact was no longer deniable, when I had to face that Walt was gone.

I'll miss you.

Click here to read his obituary.

Vegetarian Food Hoarder

Hello, my name is Adam Wier, and I am a food hoarder.

Yes, you heard me right. Food hoarder. I hoard food and only food.

Here's the deal, mes amis. If you don't already know, I'm a vegetarian, and much like when I went to Spain, one of my biggest problems adapting here in Colombia is finding things to eat. Often times, locals aren't too much help. In both countries, vegetarianism hasn't really taken off like it has in other places in the West. So when I ask where I can get vegetarian food, I'm normally told that "such and such place has great salads!"

Seriously?!

How would you feel if I told you, "Oh, don't worry, we don't have any meat, but you can just have a salad!" I would be just as woebegone as you.

I can't speak for other vegetarians, but I know that I don't really eat primarily vegetables and fruits. I mean, I'm not angry at vegetables or fruits. If they happen to be in whatever I'm eating, that's great, they're allowed, they can stay here, but I mostly go for other stuff. Like dairy. Not that protein is really a problem for your average vegetarian (iron and B-12 might be a different story), but dairy products tend to be a good source of it. But that aside... you've like heard of cheese, right?!

Of course, I go for somethings that aren't really meat substitutes per se but are the staples of a thriving vegetarian diet. Tofu, seitan, tempeh, and other things that if you ask a person in a grocery store in Cali about, they'll look at you like you just asked them where the glardivarks are. (And I don't know what a glardivark is, so don't even ask. It's probably not a vegetable though.)

In any case, this week I made a breakthrough in finding food, which brought the situation from red alert to a cool green. As a warm up I found a vegetarian sandwich with seitan at my university's food court. And with a lot of help from my roommate Luisa, I found about a gazillion different flavors of tofu at Carulla. And then thanks to my adviser at the university, Roger, I found some seitan that's even cheaper than what's sold in the United States!

Thanks to fellow Fulbrighter in Bucaramanga,
Eddie, for the meme. Check out his blog at
http://ciudadanoglobalcitizen.blogspot.com/

So when I found this bounty, I did what any other animal facing the threat of starvation would do.... I stockpiled. And I did indeed pile a stock! When I looked at my bank account, I clutched my pearls for dear life. A decent chunk missing. Vegetarian food here is often a bit on the expensive side, and I eat a lot. Put the two together and you got trouble. There's no reason to worry. I still have plenty of money till pay day, but man, I felt it. I also have a full fridge. And that feels pretty good too, especially after SALADFEST 2014, also known as Fulbright orientation week (see left).

That brings us to this morning. As I was cooking some eggs for breakfast, I started trying to figure out the next time I could go to another store someone had recommended. Maybe after work today? Maybe tomorrow? I opened the door to get some milk to pour myself for and looked at all the food I had in there. Several bags of milk (not a vegetable), about thirty eggs (not vegetables), a few stacks of tofu (also not vegetables), arepitas con queso (still not vegetables), some olives (okay... vegetables), and a freezer with two large packages of seitan as well as a few other odds and ends (all, I assure you... not vegetables). Enough food for a few weeks at least. I had no business buying more. And that's when I realized it: I'm a food hoarder.

And with that came the sudden realization of why. And of how freaked out I am. About everything. Because that's how it is when you're a stranger in a strange land. And stuff like that hits you especially hard when it encroaches on something so vital and familiar to you as your eating habits. Amassing food was a means to feel in control again, to feel like I've got something under wraps, to think that everything's going to be okay, and that life will begin to find a bit of regularity and familiarity again. And it is, but the thing is buying all the tofu and seitan and whatever in the country isn't going to make that happen faster. It'll come with time, and that's all there is to it. We should never underestimate the wonderful ability of humans to adapt to their surroundings, no matter how much the environment might change, but we have to have the confidence to give that ability the space and time to work. So, tonight, there are no more shopping trips, no more searching, nothing. Just eating some good food in my new home...

...and some anime.

Food Fight MiniMix

In case you can't tell, the next entry is about food.

Adapting to a new country is a bitch

Every time you go to a new country, there's always a pesky period of adaptation you have to go through, and Colombia is no different. This period of adaptation is generally characterized by everything going wrong. I mean, EVERYTHING. A secondary characteristic, which may just be a symptom of the first, is that you feel completely out of place and you notice (whether it's actually there or not) a strange look in everyone's eye. You feel like an alien. And not the cute, gray kind, but the kind that like has five eyes, three mouths, some other identified appendage, and no manners whatsoever. The kind of alien where you don't even know where to look at when you're conversing. Some full blown H.P. Lovecraft, Azathoth shit.

It's great for self-esteem, let me tell you.

In order to show you how a day can go from normal to disaster without even trying, allow me to recount to you my last Wednesday, in which I tried to obtain my Colombian ID. It's called a cédula de extranjería, and when you have a long term visa, you're required to apply for one by your fifteenth day in the country or face the consequences which can be anywhere from a fine to deportation. This little nugget becomes important later.

I had intended to wake up at six a.m. just to be safe, but as we all make horrible decisions when we haven't gotten enough sleep, I decided to sleep in until nine. I got up, got dressed, had a short breakfast to try to make up some time, and I was out the door and onto Colombia's main public transportation system, the MIO.

I had never gone to the Migración office before, and I was in a bit of a rush, so I jumped on a bus I was pretty sure would take me there. To make sure, I decided to ask the girl sitting next to me what bus we were on: "¿Cuál es el número de este autobús?" Her response: "No hablo inglés."

Rude.

"No te hablo en inglés. Te estoy hablando en español. ¿Cuál es el número de este autobús?"

"E21."

"....Gracias."

You know, shit like that really pisses me off. Same as when you ask someone to repeat themselves once, and they either start speaking to you in English or they pass you off to their English-speaking co-worker. Like, really? We're in a bar. There's music blaring, and my asking you to repeat yourself has nothing to do with how you might need to speak up but everything to do with that I can't speak a language I've studied for well over a decade. Okay then...

Anyway, it was clear early on it was going to be that kind of day.

I got off two stops early to stop at the bank. I enter what I think is the right bank to pay for my cédula, and I'm told I actually need to go to the sister branch, two blocks down. So I do. As I walk up to the door, in some twist of tragicomedic kismet, I watch them shut the door and turn the lock as they look me right in the eye.

I basically freaked out, which looked something like this.

Click here to see
why Ingress is pretty awesome.

It turns out banks close here from 11:30 to 2:00. Yeah, you read that right. Two and a half hours. It was then that I started to worry about not getting to Migración in time. And that day was the deadline for my cédula. But I tried to keep cool. I played Ingress.

In the course of my wanderings, I discovered a supplement store, and as it was about one thirty at this point, I decided to go in, buy some better tasting whey than they were selling at my local supermarket, and then be on my way to the bank. Not so simple. It turns out they keep all the products in some other location and only keep display cases out. So when I finally decided on some overpriced whey, the guy left to go get it from this mystery storage center. I'm not sure what time he came back because at 2:45, I said I absolutely had to go, and I did.

When I got to the bank, I passed through the line twice because I didn't realize I needed to fill out a form. When I paid, I dashed down the street toward Migración. But when I got there, it was nowhere to be found. After asking about three different people, I found it hidden behind a series of other buildings. I also found it closed. The next day was a holiday. My deadline would be passed. I sat down and cried on the sidewalk. It had been a horrible day.

Epilogue
When I finally went back on Friday, they said I'd have to pay a fine. We went through the process of fingerprinting, registering everything, and they told me the website I can check to see when it's ready. They never asked for the money.