Vegetarian rumspringa (Aspect 2 of Coffee Region, Cartagena, and Pasto)

I just ate a ham sandwich.

Let that sink in. I'll wait for a second.

Yes, you understood correctly. After twelve years of vegetarianism, I'm back on the meat. Well, temporarily at least. To refresh your memory from a previous post debating this:

1) Food is a major part of the culture in any country, and missing out on something this integral component is something that can't be ignored when a good deal of what one's life is dedicated to is world languages and cultures.

2) Vegetarian food in Cali is hard to come by, and when you do find it, it's often time very expensive. Tofu, for example, is double what it costs in the US, whey is also about double the cost, and while they don't have seitan, they have gluten. However, it isn't a complete protein. Gluten is basically the same as seitan except for it hasn't been marinated in soy sauce which adds in the final missing amino acid. 

I decided to make my trip to the coffee region my vegetarian rumspringa. For those who don't know, rumspringa is when an Amish youth leaves the community to go experience our way of life. At the end of that period, they decide whether to return or not. I made the choice to do this on a trip because there was a lot of shame wrapped up in the idea of eating even a little bit of meat again. It's a source of pride for myself that I don't eat meat, and I was sad to give that up, to part with that piece of my identity. At least while I was traveling, I would have no one to explain it to, no one to look at me to see what my first reactions would be, no pressure to do this any sort of way than how I wanted.

Flash forward to the coffee park where I ask for an arepa filled with chorizo. I ate it and waited. I was afraid that after twelve years, my stomach would launch a full scale coup, and I'd be rushing to a bathroom on the regular. Last thing I wanted was for that to happen during a roller coaster. No one likes a poopy pants. And everyone absolutely hates a poopy pants on a roller coaster. This is universal law.

But as I waited, I didn't notice much of anything. My guess is that because my diet has usually been pretty heavy on dairy, maybe this was close enough for my stomach to still process meat. There is also the fact that I had eaten meat for the sixteen years of my life, but suffice it to say, no bad effects whatsoever.

After I found out that eating meat wouldn't send me into a world of pain, I took full advantage of my rumspringa. "Let's tempt fate," I thought, "let's try to find some meat thing that I absolutely love and would go crazy for, something that would make me think I'm actually missing something because that chorizo arepa was like eh....." So I ate every meat item I could get my traitorous little hands on during that trip.... And nada. Meat, while it can taste good, still can't come close to rivaling vegetarian food in absolute savoriness. There's so much flavor in vegetarian food, and meat is just... there, all lumpy and stupid. Don't get me wrong. There were a few things I did like, but vegetarian or not, they weren't things one should make a habit of eating.

When I went to Cartagena, I tried step two of this grand experiment and didn't eat any meat to contrast, and it was probably the wrong place to try this. Not only is that city hella expensive, it's whole culture is based around seafood. Options were found; I didn't starve, but man, it was difficult without access to a kitchen to cook things for myself. I mean, yes, my hostel had a kitchen, but cooking in it was sure to give me an as of yet unknown disease, probably breeding in its darkened corners and waiting for it's opportunity to go out into the world. I've seen horror movies with plague motifs. I'm not going down that road. NOT TODAY, EBOLA!

After this experiment, the twenty pounds I've lost in the six months I've been here, the prohibitive prices of vegetarian food, and an increasing feeling of exhaustion and weakness, I decided this was the right choice. I won't eat meat at home, and I tend to follow a meal plan and it won't include meat, which means it'll mostly just be out when I'm at restaurants, but there you have it: I'm eating it none the less.

I was once explained that religions can often be broken down into one of two groups: ones that put a premium on time (such as Christianity, with an emphasis on history and potentially impending rapture or apocalypse) and ones that focus on space (such as a good deal of indigenous religions). I prefer the ones that focus on space, which I think Buddhism. It transforms and merges with the culture in which it finds itself. Zen Buddhism in Japan is not the same as it is in the United States, and there's good reasons for that. The Buddha himself wasn't vegetarian. His principle was to eat whatever was placed in his begging bowl. Well, Colombia is putting meat in my begging bowl, and so, it's meat I'll eat. 

Who Here Loves A Good Standardized Test?

Well, a weight has finally been lifted from my shoulders. Last Friday, I took Le Test de Connaissance du Français as part of my TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program in France) application. Most people applying have the luxury of just sending a college transcript with a few years of French courses and a recommendation from a French professor and call it a day, but since all of my French courses were in either high school with the incomparable Mme. Donley or in independent language insitutes (shout out to Jordan, Mouda and Julia at Fluent City in New York!), I have to take another route: standardized testing. What fun.

The TCF is like any other standardized test with time limits, multiple choice questions, lots of pressure, and bubble sheets. I arrived at the French Aliance about a half hour early since I had never been to the northern branch in Cali, and they seemed pretty strict about not showing up even a minute late, a refreshing change of pace in Colombia. After I had checked in, I felt myself starting to get nervous. The big day had finally come. But I knew my nerves would be a surefire way to sabotage, so I turned on some Coeur de Pirate. Because I challenge anyone to keep stressing out with that cute little voice singing in your ears. And sat there, waiting for the next thirty minutes, watching other people arrive for their tests, all of us collectively freaking out but unsuccessfully trying to play it cool.

At 8:45 a.m., we were allowed to enter the room. And by we, I mean me and one other guy. Apparently everyone else was taking the TCFQ. Why? I have no idea. I guess Quebec should be prepared for a Colombian invasion because there were quite a few people taking it and it's only good for immigration applications to Quebec.

When he entered, I greeted my companion in Spanish, and he greeted me back in French, so I made the only possible conclusion I could from his "Bonjour:" "Oh shit, this guy's probably like fluent and shit. What the hell am I doing here?" But I had already relinquished my cellphone to the proctor and with it, Béatrice Martin's voice. So I did the only thing I could think to do: I counted my breaths. Applied Buddhism.

The proctor, who was quite friendly and strangely familiar, explained that the oral section would be first.

Aw, shit....

I wish I could tell you how I did, but it really all a blur. Actually, the moments I remember where when I became a bit unfocused, wasn't listening to the clip (which we only get to hear once) and kicked myself as I let my subconscious guide my pen to whatever answer magically seemed right, like a kind of French dowsing. I had practiced this section before on Radio France International's website, but I didn't realize how fast paced it would be. My strategy of being able to skim the choices before listening went out the window about every other question, and I can't really tell you how I think it went. Maybe that's a small mercy on some nameless guardian angel's part; I'm prone to mental flagellation.

After that was a quasi-grammar section, which I suppose went alright, and then reading comprehension, which was pretty easy, relatively. Suprisingly, the guy who had inadvertantly intimidated me into nothingness with one word couldn't finish the reading comprehension. When the proctor called the end of the test, I was casually checking my answers, and he had begun to beg for more time. And I remembered how useless it is to go around comparing yourself to other people.

I left the test feeling "okay," which is acceptable considering that the questions ranged in difficulty from A1 to C2 on the Common European Framework. Since my evaluation at the Alliance put me at B1.2 and my aim for this test was B2, quite naturally, some of it was going to be out of my reach. Now I have to wait between one and two months to see if this feeling is justified. Those were the two difference answers I got when I asked how long they would take.

Now that this test, which has been looming over me for months, is over, I'm looking forward to my new freedom. Up to now, and since about the time I arrived in Cali, I have been taking almost two hours of classes Monday through Friday at 6 a.m., meaning I wake up around 4 a.m. every day. (See also: dedication.) Then in the course of the day, I have been doing two hours of practice, mostly listening comprehension. Lather, rinse, repeat for two months. But no more, folks. Sweet freedom. More time to explore Cali and Colombia. But what do?... I hear there's a cafe in San Antonio playing French movies every night this months.

How to Have Fun in a Strip Club

This is what I thought to myself
once I got onto the bus.

So last week I had to make a decision: Stay in New York for pride or take up my friend Mike's offer to go down to Washington D.C. to visit him and my friend Jose. Since this would be one of the last opportunities I would have for a while and also that I'm liking D.C. a little more than NYC these days, I decided to go down for a short trip. I left at 7 a.m. on Friday after a very drunken night which included meeting fellow Fulbrighter Derek, a failed underwear party turned Eagle code night with Frank, and absolutely no sleep. As a pride weekend miracle, the Chinatown bus I took arrived at its scheduled time: 12 p.m. I was soon in Mike's apartment, napping it up, and when he arrived, we decided to go to a strip club called Secrets.

I've been to a strip club before. It was actually the same one I went to about two years ago with Jose. It was a disappointing experience. There weren't a lot of dancers, and the ones that were there weren't that attractive. To be quite frank, when you see a striper and think, "I've had sex with guys more attractive than you, and it didn't require sticking dollars down his pants and/or sock," you're a little demotivated to do more than pound back some drinks to make your visit worth it and then move on to the next bar. But Mike told me that this was the one night of the week that they dance without underwear and so I thought, "Well, at least there's that." And we went.

This time was a bit better. There were a wide variety of guys, all very good looking in their own way, and a bunch of people hanging around, drining and staring at the naked men. This alone provided about five minutes and six seconds of entertainment, so I already considered it an improvement over last time; however, after those five minutes, I was back to square one. "You're all pretty, and that's great, but now I want to go do something else." But Mike, on the other hand, was just starting up.

If you know me, you know I love talk to people. And if you don't know me, I just told you. I like poking at people and getting them to tell me the story that they're dying to tell someone. It's not as hard as it sounds because I, in turn, am dying to hear it. It's the best part about traveling. When you tell someone you're just passing through, they tend to consider you low risk because chances are they'll never see you again. That's how, the next day, I got Cheryl to tell me about the time she was held at gun point and had to fight off a potential rapist. Sounds dreary but combine that with a digression into Buddhism and you have a conversation about the triumph of the human spirit.

So Mike, being Mike plus three glasses of wine, started striking up conversations with all of them about their lives, if they were in school, what they're studying, and all sorts of other stuff, and that's when it dawned on me: Dude, just talk to them like any other guy you would at a bar. You know, where you're motivated by how attractive they are and that's what gets you to approach the person, but then once you get them to talk to you, you let it all fly to the wind after that because if you're letting a perfectly good human interaction be dictated by nervousness and fear, what's the point? Sure, sure, sure, they're not even wearing underpants, but why let that get in the way of you getting them to tell you an interesting story? It may sound totally bizarre, but it works for me.... because I'm bizarre.

Because, you know, nakedness...

So I talked to one guy about his bodybuilding competition coming up, to another about when his high school science teacher came to see him strip, and then another who didn't have much interesting to say but kept groping me so I called it a win because after that many beers, I don't know if I could still be considered the best conversationalist. (Sorry, I am a male after all.) And I ended up leaving having a good time after all.

Alternate woes

Before I get into it, some thanks are definitely in order. As far as I see it, this was a group effort between me and so many other people. So super special, confetti-in-the-air thanks are owed to:

• 

  Nothing says confetti like Rip Taylor
  and a mariachi guitar player

  Gabrielle David, 2Leaf Press' publisher; Maria Cornelio and Adrian Izquierdo, my former translation professors; and Michael Jackson, my coworker and friend, for writing wonderful, amazing letters of recommendation;
• Myrna Evans, Hunter's Fulbright advisor, for guiding me along the way from beginning to end;
• Nick Lazor, a good friend, all-around smart guy, and Spanish language and culture enthusiast, for being the final eye on my essays;
• John Nolan, a friend who has pushed me from the very beginning to get out of my soul-sucking night job and find one that will really excite me; Rene Ugarte, venezulano extraordinaire whose patience with me knows no bounds; Susan Trowbridge, the Colombian aunt of Cheryl Trowbridge-Miller (who is the paternal grandmother of my niece); and Amy Obermeyer, a friend and comparative literature PhD student at New York University doing some really cool research concerning the relationship between Japan and Latin America (ask her about it sometime), for giving me challenging practice interviews in English and Spanish, which proved to be ample preparation;
• and of course Jesse Hicks, my boyfriend, who deserves a special beyond the call of duty sort of mention because he had to live with me and bare my neuroses over the six month waiting period. This goes double for the week that I hung in alternate limbo.

I couldn't have done it without all these people's help and the emotional support of a lot of friends, family, and even strangers sent to me by fate who would say a strange comment here and there that inspired me to stay hopeful. And I did stay pretty hopeful... until I got the email notifying me of my placement status.

I was in the middle of San Loco in the East Village drinking a Modelo after a very satisfying and very large burrito with guacamole when my phone flashed with an incoming email. Before I could even open it, the big "A" in the subject line had slapped me in the face with their decision: Alternate. The burrito nearly made its escape from my stomach on to the table and down Saint Marks Place right then and there. After six month of waiting since turning in my application, there was the answer. Out of the blue. Right there. One minute waiting, the next minute: Pow! Right in the kisser!

Footage of me in
the San Loco bathroom

I told Jesse, and I think he might have been more shocked than I was. I excused myself to the bathroom where I promptly started to imitate Shelley Duvall in The Shining. In a moment of desperation, I prayed to anyone who would hear me, “Please let me get it!! Please let me get it!!” As a Buddhist, I had written off prayer, at least in the sense of a sort petition, as something that increases your attachment to desire rather than frees you from it. I think I changed my mind that day. Sometimes you need to say something out loud to whomever or whatever will listen in order to really let it go. These little daily lessons. They come to us suddenly like that. Just as suddenly as watching all your dreams potentially fall through, like that slow-motion moment right before the glass of red wine you bumped falls on the white carpet.

By the time I had left the bathroom, I had pulled myself together. I don't think anyone had noticed the harrowing freak-out I had in the bathroom, but I was still undeniably upset. Jesse suggested a taxi home, and uncharacteristically, I gave in pretty easily. Unfortunately, it was around five o'clock, and if you've been running late at five o'clock in Manhattan, you know that's the time you will have to elbow an old lady for a cab, if you can even find one at all. And we didn't. I rode the hour home doing my best not to cry on the street, at the ticket machine, on the subway platform, on the train, anywhere with foreign eyes. I made it home with most of my remaining dignity and fell asleep and slept for twelve hours.

I called out of my graveyard shift job proofreading financial documents. I was in no mood for that. I was in no mood for French class the next day. I was in no mood for anything. It was Depression City, USA, population one, no trespassing allowed. Wednesday my loan repayment plan was denied. Friday I got sick with the flu and had to call out of more work. It was an all-around bad week.

This sums it up well.

So imagine my surprise when only a day and a week later, it all changed around! I was, once again, stunned. Since I woke up late for French class then had the gym and work directly after, it was only mid-document, at about 3:30 a.m., listening to Imagine Dragons' “On Top of the World,” that my eyes misted over because I realized my dream had in fact come true.

Why do I write all of this you ask? Because sometimes alternates do get selected. And sometimes your dreams do come true when you least expect them to. And I wanted to remind you all of that. It's the least I could do.