Underneath the Stairs

(Dubious Disclaimer)

The following is a sincere firsthand account of the events that transpired the evening of 18 July, 2006, though some of the more unsightly knots may have been slightly straightened with a prudent censor's comb. A shamelessness that sometimes takes me by surprise and a noted tendency to trip and fall into situations that some might call ridiculous came together in epic form...



"Do you really want to see dinosaur fossils tomorrow", David deviously asked me around 11pm as we poured over yet another pressing decision - another beer?

We had arrived in Villa de Leyva, a sleepy village perched in the mountains a few hours north of Bogotá, a few hours earlier, lethargic from the two winding bus rides involving frequent frisks from Colombian highway police with guns and suspicious looks. Ready to relax a bit, we wandered about the area of the mail plaza looking for lodging, finding that our first-choice hostal did not, in fact, exist, and then misreading the directions to our second choice. Finally finding Hostal Villa, we peeked in every empty room of the little hotel with two Colombian girls who were also looking for a place to lay their heads, finding an employee only after 15 minutes of bewilderment. After brief bargaining, during which I attested that we were only going to use the room for some 10 hours, given that we were checking in around 8 pm and we planned on heading out early (not that early, but I was exaggerating for haggling's sake...), we agreed to pay 25,000 Colombian pesos for the night, about 11 dollars for the two of us.

Hungry, I asked a local loitering about the plaza where I might find some affordable but decent food, and he directed us to the La Casa Blanca ("The White House"), a couple of blocks off the plaza. A beautiful little walk over colonial cobblestone streets, we entered the restaurant to some intense stares from about half of the tables (nothing new really). The waitress told us we could sit wherever we wanted, and David commented on her good looks as we took a spot near the door. She served us a spectacular soup and a hearty plate with plantains, salad, rice, potatoes, and juicy stake with soft drink for 5,800 pesos, (about $2.50). We asked her for a recommendation on a relaxed (but open) bar in which to pass a couple hours on a lazy Tuesday night. She sent us to a place across the street from our hostal, but after standing outside and hearing POD or Lifehouse or some other unfortunate combination of sounds streaming from that particular bar, we decided on a Spanish bar on the other side of the plaza called "Los Caracoles" (The Snails). We inquired about their house wine, and the owner was nice enough to show us the BOX from which she would decant the Chilean red into a nicer looking glass pitcher. We were satisfied enough paying 7 bucks for a liter of wine in a restaurant, despite its having come from a box, though I think we would have preferred to imagine it coming from a classier container.

David and I passed an hour or so speaking in Spanish, discussing friends and life and selecting our favorite of the nude pencil drawings that adorned the brick walls. We were relaxing right near the door, reclining in big old wooden chairs, right up until we felt the eyes of the owner asking us to leave so she could shut down. We paid up, ready to go home, but decided to go for one more drink at the place the waitress had originally recommended. No wine at this place, so we opted for a canelazo, which is a hot drink made from aguardiente (traditional andean firewater) and agua de panela, essentially a tea with crude cane sugar. While we waited for the drink, David noticed that our waitress from earlier was at the bar - and was working there. The recommendation made a bit more sense now.

We finished our canelazos and decided on a beer to follow up, Aguila (Eagle), the people's Colombian brew. At this point we did not have enough money for anything else, and David posed the question which opened this narrative. We had planned on a hike the following morning to see a 120 million year old kronosaurus and El Infiernito ("little hell"), a curious old observatory of phallic stones. How much did we really care about those things? Well, Destiny would decide.

I opted to go back to the hostal to get a bit more cash for a couple more beers, as we were relaxing, chatting in Spanish, and generally enjoying ourselves. At the hostal, I waited about 5 minutes ringing the doorbell until the girl who had checked us in earlier came to answer the door. Sleepy eyed, she asked where my friend was (David), clearly not wanting to get out of bed again to let him in. I didn't have the heart to tell her I was only coming back to get money and I would be leaving. However, after retrieving a couple thousand pesos (very little money), I found that I could not leave the hostal without the employee's keys. Or rather, I couldn't leave the hostal and leave the door locked. The large wooden door to the hostal had a bolt latch that could be locked from the inside, and also contained a smaller door with a key lock, the door the employee opened and closed for me. I decided against waking her and opened the large door's bolt, leaving the door open for anyone to come in (this was safe, as there was not a soul in the streets and the door appeared to be locked to any passerby).

Returning to the bar, David was chatting with the waitress, whose name we learned was Sonia, and a very energetic fellow at the next table, Jorge. He informed me that he had taken two shots of aguardiente in the meantime and had two fresh beers on the table. We chatted for a bit, learning that Sonia was simply helping out at this bar, which her friend owned (this is one of those picture-book-everybody-knows-everybody villages). Checking out the little bar, I recognized the two girls who were also staying at our hostal sitting at a table a few feet away. I got up to tell them to simply push the hostal door in when they arrived, so that they wouldn't ring the doorbell and wake the receptionist (and so she wouldn't find that I'd just left the door open). I had a 60 second conversation with the two of them and two guys who were sitting with them, one of whom was clearly interested in the girl sitting across from me. The other girl, sitting to my left(and marginally cuter), offered me a little whiskey and a friendly thigh-stroke, neither of which I was particularly interested in, but I accepted the whiskey to be polite.

A moment later, David said to me, in English, "Zack, you need to get away from that table right now, this guy thinks you are hitting on these girls and wants to fight you." Having no interest in the girls or getting my face bashed in, I did as I was told. Standing up and turning around, unaware even of what "guy" David was referring to, I found my neck squashed between the huge hairy hands of the big Brazilian that was hitting on the girl sitting across from me during our extremely brief interaction. Mumbling through the pressure of his thumb on my throat, I calmly attempted to explain to him that I simply wanted to let them know how to get into the hostal. For whatever reason, he moved his hand from my throat to bend back the thumb of my left hand, which I realize in retrospect was very painful. At the time, I was mostly concerned with a decent explanation of the situation, as everyone in the bar was now standing up telling this drunken maniac to calm down. He insisted that I had somehow done him some grave injustice and that I must be punished. Perhaps reason passed his macho mentality for a second and he allowed my thumb to return to its normal resting place. I let my body do the same and sat back down with David, Sonia, and Jorge, to avoid any contact whatsoever with that absurdly drunken and worked up machista, whose Spanish and behavior were both severely deficient.

We talked about anything but the insanity that had just ensued for about five minutes, until the Brazilian returned to demand that David, me, and Jorge (who was now somehow implicated) go with him outside. Everyone in the bar wanted this guy to leave alone at this point (including his own friend, I think, who was reasonable, friendly, and not completely wasted), and nobody moved. The Brazilian left with the girls from my hostal, for whom he had been buying drinks all night, but returned by himself to wait for us to leave. Fortunately, he must have gotten tired, because when the bar closed and the owner put us out on the street, he was nowhere to be found.

The logical next step at this point would have been to go home. However, at Sonia's request, the owner dropped a bottle of aguardiente in her hands, a few plastic cups perched upside down on the cap. (Everywhere, they serve aguardiente with little thimble-like plastic cups reminiscent of the containers used in dentists’ offices for fluoride swishing. I have to imagine aguardiente kills some bacteria in the mouth, but instead of coating the teeth, it forms a film on the liver.) David, Sonia, and I sat on a bench in the well-lit plaza with the following crowd:

"Finche" (or something like that): The bar owner, sporting three shades of blue and a scout-leader mustache, happily gave Sonia the booze as she promised to pay up the next morning.

Jose Louis: A string bean Colombian studying in nearby Tunja, he invited me to his house and warned me to be careful in Colombia (both very common sentiments in this friendly country)

Colombo: Literally. Colombo. Jose Louis's husky counterpart, with a shiny leather coat and matching shoes (and even shinier gelled hair, smelling of vanity), he pumped up the volume on his red VW golf as he boasted about his job as a petroleum engineer in very bad English. The police visited on multiple occasions to tell him to turn down the tunes, an idea that David expressed to Colombo several times.

Jorge: David was subjected to the nearly unintelligible rants of Jorge, a skinny hotel employee who was into movies and cocaine. The former not being available in the plaza, he briefly entertained himself with the latter down the street.

Chocolate, called "Choco" for short: An old friend of Sonia's, he had entered the scene at some point with a friend of his, whose name I never quite caught. A 30-something with a Corduroy jacket and baseball cap, his hard facial gestures and intense gesticulation made him at the very least an interesting person with whom to converse at 2am in a sleepy little mountain village.


All of these characters, including David and myself, were swallowing little shots of aguardiente until the bottle was finished. Again, the logical next thing to do would be to go across the street to our hostal and hit the sack.

David made a move to do so. When I asked him what he was doing, indicating that Choco, his friend, and Sonia, were headed to some bar about three doors down, he responded "Nah, I was just checking to make sure the hostal door was open." New chapters were unfolding.

Choco kneeled down to turn his key in the heavy lock under a sign for "Tipico's Bar", explaining that he was the bar owner. We sat in the back room as he presented us with a couple of beers ("Poker" Brand), and turned on some music. David and I were wide-eyed at having opened a bar at 3am in Villa de Leyva. Perhaps a bit intoxicated but not without our wits about us. The bizarre events that had just transpired were beginning to settle into our brains.

One of the things I realized is that I'd smoked my first cigarette. 22 years old, I'd always felt that when I smoked my first cigarette, it should be at the top of a mountain, with a supermodel or Jimmy Hoffa, something epic. Perhaps I thought this evening qualified. Or maybe it was just that Sonia shoved a Kool Lite into my mouth. I somehow found it appropriate to comment, shamelessly and ridiculously, that "her beauty had fooled me", and David followed suit, commenting that she was "beautiful but dangerous".

Choco showed us pictures of his 3 year old son and discussed his divorce as David and I felt mildly uncomfortable, Sonia and Choco obviously being old friends. Choco's friend put his head on the table and slept for a couple of hours while we consumed a couple of Pokers and Choco continued to refuse to let in random passers-by, Jorge included. Perhaps it was the thin mountain air (a more likely culprit might be the wine, aguardiente, beer, aguardiente, and beer), but David decided at this point that trading his Wisconsin hooded sweatshirt for Choco's reversible corduroy jacket would lend proper sentiment to that drunken middle-of-the-night moment. As they switched outerwear, Choco put on a face as if he were a gangsta in the hoody, and David gave him his handkerchief to complete the part with a do-rag. Choco seemed to want to keep the do-rag, as well, but David made a compromise, ridiculously. This absurd situation somehow left David feeling as if we were all sharing a beautiful moment together, and he explained that his father had given him that handkerchief (as if it were a dying father's last gift to his favorite son. In reality, it held minimal sentimental value) He ripped two strips off of the hanky, presenting one to Choco and one to Sonia, with the delicate hands and serene expression of a bishop passing out communion wafers. I was floored with this absolutely absurd gesture, realizing its ridiculosity (it deserves its own word), but at the same time I was aware that this was not reality. Anything goes in the Villa de Leyva surreality.

Sonia suggested that I trade my University of Granada sweatshirt for her shirt, which was tempting, not because I thought her pink blouse would look good on me, but rather that there was nothing under it; but, I decided that the UGR sweatshirt, with two years of history (drops from friendly wines in three continents, paint splats from Malingua Pamba, dirt sweat and tears from some 14 countries), was not to be bartered with, under any circumstances...


Somehow we wrapped up the night and tiptoed into the hostal as the sun came up over the mountains... We awoke around 11am, the time we had promised to meet Sonia at some spa in town, without any real concept of the insanity that had been the previous evening, but with a good deal of that insanity pounding loudly in our temples. I attempted to open my eyes wide enough to see any rational reason for me to have smoked my first cigarette menthol at that). Rolling over, David groaned in surprise, finding a smelly corduroy jacket where his sweatshirt had been before. We both knew there was a healthy gap where our dignity had been before. We both knew that we weren't going to see any fossils.

From my bed nearest the entrance, I opened the door to our room to let the breeze roll in as we shamelessly lied in bed until well after noon, hostal employees passing by and trying not to look at the hungover Americans nailed to their beds. Around 2 o'clock, after showering and madly rehydrating, we moved to leave the hostal, aware that the sign in the room showed checkout at 11am, and that we'd been granted a good price on the argument that we'd be out early. The receptionist from the previous night attempted to make us pay, but David bravely (or shamelessly... the word of the trip) refused, arguing that she hadn't told us about the checkout time, and then moving into a narration of some of the previous night's antics, until he realized that there was no reason whatsoever to continue talking to this woman. We searched for cheap pizza, and failing that, found a big soup/plate/juice combo place for a $1.50, attempting to soak up some of the previous night's booze as we attempted to put the pieces together. We boarded a minibus for the first leg of our trip back to Bogotá as we got our first and last glimpses of the amazing landscape surrounding the city. We almost wanted to stick around for the fossils, but shame pushed us back to the Bogotá.

David made a heroic effort not to vomit as we wound our way to Tunja. The girl in the row behind us asked for a barfbag, prompting both him and me to turn our headphones up high and avoid breathing barf fumes or hearing her retching. Next to the window, I was in better shape physically, though still wondering what kind of reality I was actually living. We caught our breath in Tunja, recovering briefly before taking a plush bus for the 3 hours to Bogotá, trying not to tear up at a movie with talking animals called "Racing Stripes" whose main character was a zebra who won the Kentucky Derby. Seemed Real Enough.

where we together weathered many a storm, laughin and singin till the early hours of the morn

I'd like to say that everything has been overwhelming; that I simply have not had a second away from the fast paced life of an international traveler to sit down and record each more exciting event. Truth is, I'm a vagabond who will bring two books, a pen and paper, and a ton of music on a 15 hour bus ride and do nothing but Think. I've spent a lot of time Thinking lately, and I'm not sure whats become of it, except a big blank spot in my blog. I'll try to fill it up.

Rewind: San Jose.

In the Rewind, Replay, Revisit, I'm sure to miss out details. Such is the nature of playing catch-up. I lived in San José. I had favorite places, to sit and to run and to consume alcoholic beverages. I had friends. I'm pretty sure that equals life (review: run, sit, consume, be friendly). I even had an occupation, something of a daily schedule, and random aquaintances, like the shoe-store girl who continually but politely refused my thinly veiled amorous advances or the large shirtless dudes on the first floor who always greeted me while re-fixing their souped up motorcycles (how many times can you take the same bike apart??). I even knew my way around (this is a major accomplishment in a city without street names or numbers, no addresses, nothing. It's MADNESS).

My time in San José was somewhat disjointed. While the time kept on ticking, it took me a while to find my rhythm.

After moving into my apartment and completing half a week of work, I headed for the pacific coast for a three day weekend, with a truly international crowd made up of my roommates intern colleagues from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (Colleagues is a classy word they use in the real world for co-workers. Someday I will probably have to be part of that world). Jackie (Mexico), Catalina and Luisa (Colombia), BreAnn (the only compatriot of mine), Pedro (the lone Tico), Daniel (my MexiRoomate), Irene (Italy), and I hastily packed our sunscreens and sandals and headed to the 4am bus, which would take us to Puntarenas for the 8:00 ferry, which took us to Paquera, where we boarded a local bus bound for Montezuma amongst a fury of confusion and mid-day heat.

Finally hopping off the bus after what was about an 8 hour trip, we walked the 40 feet to the beach. The hot sand demanded that we keep our footware on for the next 50 feet to a shady bar, where we immediately ordered a round of cervezas, quickly consumed before one by one migrating to the water like baby sea turtles (or something. Only faster. And in less danger of underfed seagulls). Later on, I had my first Michelada, which is a popular if unruly-tasting tica concoction: beer, lime juice, usually some hot sauce, in a glass with a salted rim. Something like refreshing, something like disgusting. Its hit or miss. In Montezuma, the Michelada was cold, and I was happy.

We made a call to find a camping spot down the beach, and walked about a kilometer to the south in the shade of the palm trees lining the white sand before hitting a cheap spot to put up our tents. Pedro and I occupied the tent Ryan and I had picked up for 20 bucks at the black market in Lima way back in February. Cozy, and hot as hell at about 8 am. I entertained myself with a guitar and the massive rolling waves until heading into town to pony up the 3 dollars for a nice typical casado, with plantains, rice, beans, salad, and meat.

For whatever reason (perhaps an addiction to internetting while abroad), I stopped in to one of the many internet cafes (there are almost as many internet cafes in south america as shoe stores.. Per-capita statistics might be astounding) with Jackie and Catalina for a fix. Among several emails was one from my mom, one I had sort of been expecting, explaining that my grandmother (her mom) had passed away, and asking when I could make it to New York for the funeral. Put a damper on my sunny day, brought me back to the states for a not-so-spectacular reason, and gave me yet another reason to sit on the beach and Think.

That night, I thought that I was pretty damn lucky to be spending that dampened evening with a great group of people that I'd just met, people that I can now call friends (oh, my. how a death all of a sudden injects profundity into a previously carefree blog entry.) Jackie, Catalina and I went right from the internet cafe to purchase the johnny walker red we would split on the beach later on, with the whole group lounging on blankets in the sand under the stars. I poured a shot out on the sand, sloped heavily in the darkness at low tide. Like Lincoln Duncan, i was thankin the lord for my fingers, a cheap guitar, the availability of ice and whiskey and plastic cups, and most of all the company. There were a few songs we all knew (Redemption Song, Wish You Were Here), and a few I just felt like belting. The waves were loud. I'm sure I wasn't bothering anybody.

Next morning I woke early for a hot run down the beach. It felt good to sweat, and even better to float high in the salt water and cool down. Running down the beach, I'd hit upon a pretty endless stretch of entirely unpopulated white sandy beach. This is the Virgin Beach you see in those brochures (at least I thought so... since then I've been on several others that were even more quintessentially tropically exotic). The girls tanned, Luisa and Irene wearing the Sombreros Volteados, typical colombian hats, of the type that would later frequent Daniel's head during our trip south to colombia. I thought some more, did some yoga, and hoped I wouldn't get sunburned. We stayed another night in Montezuma, a relaxed evening eating mangos before heading to bed early for the long trip back to San José on Monday.

The trip back was spectacular, as the 4:30 ferry back from Paquera to Puntarenas catches the sun setting over the bay sheltered by the Nicoya Peninsula. Rocks and cliffs cutting an angular horizon while the costa rican sun god does its thing up above. It was a colorful return to san José, where I'd pass a couple more days in limbo before heading to New York for a hectic homecoming.

Of Brief Repatriation

My week in the city was satisfying and stressful, emotional and eventful. Juxtapositions everywhere - my mind and body and guts were split in half with the whirlwind. Arriving saturday night and taking the bus and train up to apartment 8b at 140 West 86th Street, I was exhausted and happy to head out for a Bass Ale and a burger with my parents around the corner on Columbus Avenue. I was glad to see them- I was glad to see a lot of people during my quick week home, a real blessing that came as a result of a loss.

In my hasty game of blog catch-up, I'm not sure I can do the emotional part of this trip justice. The funeral meant tears, meant reunions and realizations and runny noses. I clutched some kleenex behind the podium and lump-throatedly hugged blood relatives and one-time aquaintances. My aunt and one of my mom's cousin's also spoke, calmed me down a bit. My dad and I steadied the vases of flowers in my uncle ron's car for the 8 block ride down Broadway to my grandparents apartment, which will probably smell like scotch and cigarettes for years. I hope so, anyway. I took off the yarmulke I felt not-so-strange wearing during the funeral and put on a happier face to eat the Jewfood my uncle Mike had provided for the post-funeral get-together. Rughulla (how do you spell) and bagels and locks went well with the cheap scotch and soda left in plastic bottles in the cabinet for all to enjoy. The conversations are too many and I think too much to put into words here. I'll say it was a good send-off, and all the scotch was consumed.

Later that week, we organized all of my grandparents things, moving them out of the apartment they had rented for 40 years (rent controlled.). It was something like packing Lives away into boxes. A somber experience, but dotted with discoveries at the bottoms of drawers, pictures and letters and report cards.

I myself pillaged the apartment for a wealth of household furniture (which will find a home as soon as I find a home in DC) the most exciting a dashingly handsome danish made dining room set with chairs and sideboard. My grandparents waited two years for it to arrive after ordering it, and my grandma was beside herself when the sideboard didn't fit through the door. They were considering getting a crane to slide it in through the window until it was somehow successfully maneuvered up the 8 flights and into the dining room (Ryan - the Ryan from South America- and I made the reverse trip in the service elevator, not very much worse for the wear.). I like to think that they'll be happy as I play cards on their fine furniture, roll around on their rugs, and make martinis in their classy shaker. I somehow managed to parallel park a UHaul truck in Manhattan, a miracle despite decidedly superior parking prowess (I reserve rights to shamelessly boast about parallel parking, for no reason whatsoever. I figure if a guy can ever toot his own horn, its right after his grandmas funeral.), and Ryan and I moved a remarkable volume down to the street on the carbs provided by greasy NYC pizza (thanks again, mom! you're welcome son!) and hit the road some time in the afternoon, to drive to DC, where the furniture now sits in a storage unit on Rhode Island Ave, NW, along with my future.

It was good to be back on the road again with Ryan - It had been a while since I was offered a sniff of some smelly shoes or dirty underwear (a peculiar attribute of a generally well-mannered gentleman.), and it was nice to be stupid a little bit with an old friend. On the road again, tourists of sorts in our own country. During a quick two night and one day return to my own nations capital, I was able to see a lot of the Good Ones I met during my six month stint there last year. These reunions required a strong effort in the field of partying, a task I was only able to accomplish with the eager encouragement and potable drinking water of my many-time temporary landlord, Jen, (Read: friend who lets me sleep on her couch.. Um, Jen, can I sleep on your couch next month?). I look forward to many more reunions come August. Despite late nite antics, Ryan and I were somehow able to make the midday chinatown bus back to New York, eating prepacked deli sandwhiches in the seats adjacent to the toilet. If not for all the English being spoken, we could have been crossing the Ecuatorian border. Some kid even got his backpack stolen.

I felt a bit like a tourist in my own country, with the hectic travel and even some sight seeing. I headed with mom and pop to Ellis Island, the Grizzwolds together if only for a minute or two. A long line to take the ferry out to the museum that once welcomed immigrants to our country. Still with my head in south america, I passed the time on my cousin rebecca's cellphone chatting with my soon-to-be traveling companion David about his plans to meet me in San José. Movers and Shakers. Looking back at New York was spectacular. My own country has quite a bit to offer as well, it seems.

And so, I packed up, ready to head back to what really was my Real Life (that of the traveling vagabond, carrying my harmonica in a dirty sock) in San Jose for the moment. I stayed the night with Ryan and Jin out in Brooklyn and we ate eggs just like we would have in any south american hostal, except there was pepper on the table and the pans didn't stick. A flight at 4pm shouldn't be too much of a problem, I thought. Ryan assured me I would make it on time.

After waiting about 30 minutes for a downtown train and then another 30 minutes for the bus to the Newark Airport (the one that comes every 15 minutes. Apparently one of the busses had broken down on 5th Avenue), I was a bit worried so I hopped in a cab with a very Euro looking Danish fellow and a nicely dressed middle aged Norweigan. After two blocks in what was Mothers Day Traffic, the cabbie himself (whose English was not as good as many South American cabbies') bailed on us, deciding it was too much for him. We transferred the Europeans' samsonite rollers and my ditry rucksack to a second cab. 45 minutes and two blocks later, I began to realize the weight of the situation as the digital clock on the dash counted ever closer to 4pm. The irony of my international encounter was not lost on me, as I unsuccessfully tried calling the airline on a Danish cellphone. I relaxed a bit once I began to realize that all hope of my catching my flight was lost - or perhaps that was the relief that came from my relieving myself on the side of the road in front of the Holland Tunnel with a hundred stationary cars looking on.

I stepped out of the cab at 4pm on the dot, a buck short of my third of the cab fare. I wasn't especially sorry, and the cabbie wasn't especially miffed. Fortunately, I was able to get on the next day's flight to San Jose. Penniless but not all that pissed, I had to figure out where to stay the night in New York. I'd left the keys to my grandparents' place locked in the apartment, so I planned on heading out to Max Berry's place in Queens, where we had shared beers and watched the pistons loose a couple nights before. I wasn't quite sure how to find his apartment, so I made an attempt to call him from a payphone. I needed a buck in change, so I treated myself to a starbucks chai (roughly the equivalent of a nights lodging plus continental breakfast in Peru) with the bills I'd taken out of the ATM. The cashier hassled me for no good reason, but the chai was tasty. At the other end the baggage claim room, payphone ate my cash as an automated teller explained that I needn't mark the area code to call Max Berry's number. I was obliged to traverse the room again in order to get change again, this time from the international change counter. Re-dialing without the area code, the same automated teller repititiously explained that I'd misdialed. The sound of my second cache of quarters clanking into uselesness elicited an expletive that I sheepishly realized was actually understood by nearby innocent bystanders. In Ecuador or Bolivia, nobody would have known what I was saying. In New York, they understood, but a screamed obscenity isn't exactly an odd occurrence.

Fed up, I hopped the bus back to the city and took the train out to Queens. Wandering semi- aimlessly through Astoria past some Greek bakeries and barber shops, I was mildly aware of my proximity to Max Berry's apartment when the man himself came up beside me, sporting a leather jacket and a Doctor Pepper. Hours earlier, I had called him from the cab, asking him to pretend to be me and negotiate a new flight. I don't think he wasn't entirely surprised when he saw my backpack roll by the front of the party store from which he was purchasing soda. Another night in the city, un-planned, but with welcome company and a good pizza was quite possibly just what the doctor ordered. After a run in the pouring rain the next morning, I hurried to the airport, arriving about 5 hours before my flight would leave. I passed on the chance for a voucher in exchange for my seat (the flight was overbooked, probably because they put me on it from the day before), a decision I may never live down, but was happy to relax in the airport and arrive back in San Jose late that night. A day late, but happy to jump back into things.

Back in San Jose, the weeks turned over a lot quicker than I'd realized, leaving me behind in a lot of ways. Back into work at ACNUR, I became a regular at the Costa Rican office of Immigration, where I helped the grossly understaffed and underfunded asylum section. The section consisted of two officers who interview and make asylum decisions for the roughly 100 applicants per month, almost all Colombians, some of whom are actually refugees fleeing from the armed conflict, many of whom are economic migrants looking for work. I got to be pretty friendly with Milagro ("Mila", Miracle in English), the more square of the two, with thick dark-rimmed glasses and Sara ("Sarita"), who always wore bright colors and was perhaps not aware of her occasional lazy eye. On a couple of occasions I asked myself "how did I get here"?, when lunching on steak with onions at a gas station with a couple of heavy-set costa rican asylum officials, or when filling out asylum applications for illiterate Colombians. The work at migratoin was interesting, fulfilling, frustrating, satisfying.

The contact I had with Colombians at Immigration paralleled that of my one-time Colombian family from Hostal Toruma. Colombians have a spirit that I haven't seen anywhere else. Now writing this retrospective from Colombia, I can say my previous experience didn't lie - they animated, friendly people despite the conflict in their country. Some time in May, my Colombian friends finally received their visa to move to the U.S., after waiting for 5 months in Costa Rica. A German friend of mine who had also befriended the family at the Hostal, Peter, and I, joined them for a typical farewell dinner before they left. We drained a bottle of chilean red wine and chatted about Colombia until the wee hours... I hope Chicago isn't too cold for them.

Apart from work, I managed to soak in a little culture and keep on Livin. A couple of trips to the Teatro Nacional, one of them to see the National Symphony Orchestra, which, while entertaining, made me appreciate the Kennedy Center and my own country's musicians. I found a rhythm and had several scraps of paper (which constantly fell out of my wallet) representing my phone book and social life. I began to recognize people places, like wednesdays at Lubnan's, the Lebanese restaurant-turned hip electronic music bar or random aquaintances walking through the University of Costa Rica.

The individual nights are too many to recount; it is ultimately the sum that makes a difference. I think the best night, representative of my time in San Jose, was some time in June, a fiesta in chez Daniel and Zack. I always felt cool having parties in college, hosting People Having Fun, but I'm pretty sure there were never 10 countries represented around a keg at my house on Catherine Street in Ann Arbor. I jammed some emergency-type candles in the tops of empty bottles of cheap wine and liters of beer, and somehow managed not to burn the apartment down while manuevering and mingling in a couple different languages. The following morning's carnage of empty litros, candle wax, and mostly-finished bottles of booze would not reveal how genuinely happy I was to be among such good and interesting people the night before. No hangover whatsoever, but my smile muscles were sore. I could write a whole blog entry just about the personalities, but I'd never do anyone justice. You'll have to buy the book.