Romp with me.

Moved

2010-10-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody,

This blog was linked to my old email address and it wouldn't let me change that, so I've started a new blog that is associated with the email address I actually use.
You'll now find me at www.BearsintheBelfry.blogspot.com

See you there!

Things get easier and Human Nature comes to the fore

2010-10-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Like I said in my last post, things have gotten a lot easier. Most of this has to do with the arrival of Reina, the Spanish language assistant from El Salvador. Reina is 26 and a fun friend to have. At first she seemed cold and closed-off, but as soon as I told her I spoke some Spanish and we started conversing in her language, it was like I was meeting the real Reina for the first time. She’s actually really funny – she has this animated, Central American way of telling a story or simply saying a sentence that makes even the most commonplace observation comical, and a funny story tears-in-the-eyes, ache-in-the-gut hilarious. It’s great.

She’s teaching me a lot about the culture of El Salvador as well, both directly and indirectly: Directly when she tells me about their food, their holidays (complete with the soundtrack you’d hear blasting from every household on Christmas Eve and New Year’s), and how she interacts with her friends; Indirectly when she expresses her values and preferences, and through her language (e.g. everything bad is feo/a, everything good is bonito/a). She’s also trying to break me of my hard, Castillan pronunciation of j (which I’m loathe to let go off but am being “forced” to! That hard j is so cool, it reminds me of Arabic languages; from whence perhaps it came). But she’s also trying to instill in me the pronunciation of ll and y like a very soft j. That I think is nice.

We do a lot of stuff together – cook meals, go to the supermarket, watch French TV (which I don’t like doing but almost try to force myself to do because it’s good for learning), and just sit around and chat. There isn’t any sort of romantic feeling between either of us, but we’re both very happy to have someone else around for some company and commiseration (I wouldn’t say we share misery though; it’s more like occasional co-melanchol-eration). The other woman who lives with us, Claire, is very nice too, but she’s not around as much. When she is though, she’s friendly and makes the effort to sit down and chat with me if I’m eating breakfast or something and she’s in the other room watching TV.

I came to a very interesting conclusion about the French people, yesterday. I call it a New York Dawn/Emerson in Europe experience. (New York Dawn because on my first trip to New York my freshman year in college, I arrived in the evening and couldn’t really sleep, so at dawn I decided to get up and roam around by myself for a while. As I did, splendid as the city was, I realized it wasn’t all that different in any truly significant way from Portland (this was the time when I was still wishing I had been able to go to school in New York). As the sun rose, I sipped coffee, took pictures, and wrote some really bad poetry about the profound realization that there was nothing I was really missing; one place was just about as good as another, and the Wonder that paints things such a magical hue was actually inside me; was me (well, I wasn’t quite that wise about it, but this experience laid the foundations for such thinking). I later found that Emerson had a very similar experience when he visited Europe for the first time.)

Anyway, I’m having a similar experience with the French people. First of all, I noticed yesterday that the primary subject of small-talk here in France is complaining about something, always in exasperated c’est la vie tones. The French have this way of turning down the corners of their mouths, raising the eyebrows, tilting the head slightly to the side, and sometimes also raising the shoulders and/or making a sound like…popping air out of the mouth. It’s very tragi-comic and I wonder if it has something to do with the long tradition of mimes in French culture and cinema. Well, it’s tragi-comic but in varying degrees; some people make it more comic than tragic, and some make it much more tragic than comic, which is too bad.

This is going to sound unrelated, but later in the day one of the teachers took me to the post office to mail some things. I knew she was sort of in a hurry but I didn’t realize it was quite so urgent until we were standing before the machine which needed some coins to stamp my envelope. I pulled a bunch of coins out of my pocket and they were all one Euro coins except one, which I couldn’t identify. So I reached out to flip it over and look at what denomination it was, out of curiosity, when she said “One Euro will be fine.” Right, I thought, but since my fingers were already on the mysterious coin, I flipped it over anyway. At this extra moment of hesitation, she uttered a small cry, grabbed one of the one Euro coins out of my hand, and shoved it in the machine with great exasperation. Woah!

As I thought back over the day, I also thought about how, when we were having lunch in the cafeteria yesterday, one of the professors pointed out to me that I am, in the eyes of most French people, gracious and polite to a fault. They don’t really like it when I say merci all the time, which I do, because they’re always doing nice things for me (taking me to the supermarket, post office, etc.). And they think my overall demeanor of asking what’s the culturally appropriate way to, for example, hold the fork and knife is strange and dumb. She explained that the French are more brute, a word that doesn’t exactly mean brutish, but something similar to it; they just be themselves, was sort of what she meant. Maybe unrefined? And then she said that she didn’t know why I acted the way I did, “Maybe it’s an Asian thing,” but that the way I acted was more like what you would have seen in the noblesse long ago, but not now. Huh.

Well, as I thought over all of this, the overall effect was to realize that the French are not really much different or better or easier to get along with than people from the U.S. They are not less shallow, they are not more polite, they are not more kind or interested in others (not that everyone in the U.S. is shallow, impolite, unkind, and solipsistic;* in fact, I realize they are even less these things than I’d thought. But some people are, that cannot be denied). Basically, people are people: there are nice ones and mean ones and in-between ones, but there is no land where everyone is kind and easy-for-me-to-get-along-with and feel-comfortable with. Haha, no, I didn’t think that France was going to be this magical land that I dream of, but I suppose I did think it was going to have perhaps a slight edge on the U.S. Well, it does in some ways, and in just as many others, the U.S. has the edge on France. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I realize that the people in the U.S. who are shallow and rude and solipsistic are not a product of U.S. culture; for the most part, they are a product of human nature. And there’s nowhere on this earth you can go to escape that, except inside your own head, though we all find varying degrees of problems up there as well, unfortunately. Well I guess you can also go on a drug trip or to the movies or inside a book, but those remedies all have their problematic sides too.

So, that’s what’s on my mind these days! On a less complicated note, I had some grapes yesterday that were far and away the best grapes I have ever had in my whole life! And they were green ones too! (Usually I don’t like the green ones as much). I guess it figures that to have all sorts of different kinds of wines, you’ve got to have all sorts of grapes too, but it never crossed my mind. Man those grapes were good. They had seeds but it was worth it.

* Concerned only with themselves; thinking the world revolves around them.

I don’t mean to be pretention in using this word, but I just can’t think of a better one to replace it. Selfish or egotistical don’t really mean exactly the same thing.

A Quick Post from the Past

2010-10-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Internet in the apartment is on its way, but in the meantime, from this Mcdonald's in Dijon I thought I'd post this bit that I wrote on the train on the way back from my baggage-fetching trip to Paris the other day. It's a "bleaker" picture than what I'm experiencing right now, so stay tuned for more good news!

So here I am in Avallon.

This whole adventure is really a lot more challenging than I thought it was going to be. Of course, I didn’t think know what to think or expect before I got here, so I wasn’t really thinking about it being challenging or thinking about it being anything but an adventure, but it is challenging. This is hard for me to admit, actually, for silly as it may sound, I’m surprised by how much I crave the familiar (my false pride had construed this very normal human thing – a penchant for the familiar – as a weakness). That may seem like something so stupid to be surprised about, but I suppose, or I realize, I somehow thought I was mostly immune to that. I suppose I thought that because I was doing fine with the unfamiliar-ness of the U.S., I would do fine with all unfamiliar-ness. Well first of all, I’ve got to remember back to the time when the unfamiliar-ness of the U.S. was demolishing me, a time which I seem to have sort of forgotten or downplayed; and second of all, this is unfamiliar-ness of a totally different degree, a degree which I’ve never really experienced before, and have never been this alone while experiencing. Moving to the U.S. was easier than this because at least I was fluent in the language and didn’t really have an accent – which makes a huge difference in how comfortable one feels, I’m finding – and was somewhat familiar with the culture. Here, literally all I have to do is say bonjour and people know I’m a foreigner, and I don’t know what it’s ok to make small-talk about or how to cut the cheese (haha, literally – a professor set a plate of a dozen different kinds of cheese before me yesterday and I had no idea what to do with it. Apparently you’re supposed to cut yourself small chunks of several kinds).

So, that’s what’s going on in my head. It’s all really good though, I’m glad I’m here, learning this stuff and being humbled. Like Nietzsche said, “There is no resurrection without the grave,” or something like that. And these are just the most melancholy of my musings; this surely is nothing like a grave. I should tell about all the nice things now.

I arrived in Avallon on Sunday evening. I had dinner at a nice, traditional French restaurant while waiting till the time I said I would meet my couchsurfing host. The meal was so so good (besides the à-la-carte stuff most restaurants have several set-menus to choose from, and these often cost just a little bit more than ordering one item, so I like to go for them; that way I get at least an entrée – here that means appetizer – and a main course, or a main course and a dessert). Then I met my host – Adrien – at his apartment. Adrien was incredibly nice and welcoming. I told him I’d already eaten, but he said of course I had to have dessert, so we talked for quite a while over a beer and then plenty of chocolate. Adrien had spent a year and a half in Tennessee so his English was pretty good. I asked him to speak in French with me though, because I said I needed to start practicing. Then I realized he probably wanted to practice his English, so we switched back and forth between languages.

The next day I walked across town to the high school and introduced myself. Apparently they didn’t even know if I was coming or not – none of my emails had gotten through – but they were glad I made it and called in one of the English teachers to show me around. She very kindly spoke in English to me. This is something all the English teachers do, to “put me at ease,” one of them said, but I have asked them all to speak in French to me and so now they mostly do; I figure I’ve really got to start getting better at understanding the velocity and the colloquialisms of everyday-French. Anyway, after the tour the English teacher drove me to the supermarket and then dropped me off at Adrien’s apartment again (he had given me his keys because I thought I was going to be spending another night at his place, so I had to be back to let him in his house).

I explained to Adrien that I now had a place to stay but he said we should at least go out for dinner together before I went back to my place. He said we should try this place he’d heard about in one of the neighboring towns (the towns are less than ten miles apart around here). So we took off in the car and Adrien was pointing this and that out to me and that was when the homesickness really set in (interestingly, the image that I get when I’m homesick is of waking up in the morning at the house in Manila and coming upstairs, choosing from The Mugs, each very familiar to me, and having coffee by the window). I tried to hold back the crying because I thought that would’ve been a bit uncomfortable there in the car with Adrien, haha, but I was really sad and lonely. Just then, in the sky, which had been gray all day, as it is most days here, appeared a small patch of brilliant, golden-orange sunlight. Immediately I was Given to remember my surroundings, to see the patch of brilliant gold – Adrien’s extraordinary kindness – in the midst of the gray. It became even harder to hold back the tears, though this time they were tears of…that feeling I get when things seem too wonderful – not even good or bad, but wonder-ful – to behold.

Then Adrien took me to a famous church in the neighboring town because we still had a little time before our dinner reservation. As we entered the silence and the musty holiness I thought, a little frustrated, “Well, this is nice, but this Stone expression of religion has no bearing whatsoever on the aching Humanity in me right now.” But all the same, in my desperation I was inspired to offer up a rare-for-me prayer of petition: God, give me strength murmured my Heart as we left the sanctum.

And then we were sitting down to eat. What a meal!! One of the best of my whole life, without a doubt. Adrien insisted on paying so that I could have the whole experience without worrying about price. So we had the works: an apperetif (glass of alcohol before the meal, to stimulate the appetite), a little soup, an entrée, the main course, a whole bunch of cheese and bread, and the dessert (with a palate-cleansing minty iced thing beforehand), all with a glass of wine, and all so astoundingly delicious. As Adrien talked me through the meal, explaining all the intricacies of French cuisine and why things are done the way they are done, how to swirl the wine etc. I found myself getting totally lost in the food – the flavors and the textures and the sensations. I think we sat there for almost four hours, at the end of which I felt fit (and full) as a flea; all that heartache seemed miles away, a faint memory.

Thoroughly immersed in this glow, it was only on our way out the door of the restaurant that I remembered my prayer in the church, and thanked God for HerHis* incarnation as a Frenchman named Adrien.

* I’m still not sure what third-person pronoun seems most appropriate to me for referring to God, but all I know is I don’t what to imagine God as exclusively male, or as exclusively female. And HerHis is alphabetical. :)

Avallon

2010-09-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Avallon! And I have an apartment - the school had one set up for me, which is really nice. Well, the apartment isn't the nicest, but it's nice that I didn't have to try to find one, and it's nice that it's less than half the price of anything I could have found to rent, and it's nice that I will be sharing it with another language assistant from El Salvador! She hasn't arrived yet, but I hope she's nice because it will be great to know/live with someone who will presumably be just as lost and confused and fumbly, and with whom I can (much less ashamedly) practice French, not to mention Spanish! I don't have internet there though, so this will have to do for now until I can get something set up there. (French keyboards are even trickier than the Austrians were.)

Reykjavik and Paris

2010-09-26T01:36:00.000-07:00

Iceland was so cool. It was a little bit of a disappointment to find that I couldn't just wander off into the wilderness by myself though (although it seemed a silly thought to have thought, after I realized it). So I spent the first day wandering around the capital city - Reykjavik. I couldn't find any distinctly Icelandic food though! There were a lot of Italian restaurants and pizzerias, several generic, American-ish restaurants, even a Brazilian and a vegetarian restaurant, but nothing that seemed very Nordic at all. So after getting something to eat, I walked to the other side of town to go to the Viking museum. It was interesting; they had a lot of wax figures set up to tell the history of Iceland and the Vikings. Actually, it was kind of scary to be in this dark room with all these very life-like Vikings gnawing on bones and beheading each other! Haha. By the time I walked all the way back to the other side of town and bought some groceries, I was absolutely exhausted and went to bed.

The next morning I went on the tour I had signed up for (that's pretty much the only way you can get out to do things outside the city, unless you have/rent a car). It was an hour or two on the bus out to the destination and the bus driver talked a lot about Iceland and the things we were seeing on the way, so that was cool. Then we arrived at the glacier we were going to go hiking on! I really had no idea what to expect when I signed up, I just thought it sounded adventurous - and definitely, because a glacier is basically a mountain of pure ice! I couldn't believe how tall that ice was. We were given crampons (metal spikes to put over our boots) to help us walk on it. All over the glacier are cracks, holes, and crevasses from small to huge and it was thrilling to peer down into the great holes and crevasses, hearing the rush of the rivers running underneath the glacier and hoping my crampons would hold me. It was a great experience.
Sobering and shocking though, to be shown by the guide how much he had seen the glacier melt in just the past two years! And also to be told by the bus driver how much drier and warmer Iceland was getting. It was interesting, because he kept mentioning how it was making it easier to grow crops and care for livestock, even as he was pointing out mighty riverbeds now channeling nothing but tiny streams and lakebeds only half full of water. I suppose to the people of Iceland, warmer climates will actually seem like a good thing for a little while, but I was very worried for the state of this planet. Well, actually just for the human race I guess. There have been lots of almost-total extinctions of life in Earth's history, and Life has always clung on and come back, but often not in the same way. So I'm sure life will survive, but maybe not life as we know it.

A couple more things about Iceland:
The hot water gets very hot, very fast, and smells like sulfur, which smells like eggs. It was a strange, funny experience - it felt like bathing in eggs! Haha. This is because the hot water comes from the geothermal stuff going on underground. The cold tap water is wonderful too - you can really taste how clean it is, having been naturally filtered through so much volcanic rock.
Also, Iceland is just chock full of really really beautiful people; I couldn't believe my eyes. It sounds like a silly explanation, but I'm pretty sure it's because the Vikings stole all the most beautiful women from England and took them back to their homelands. I've been told that, and sure enough, the Viking museum had a statistic showing how most of the men in Iceland were of Nordic descent and the vast majority of the women were Celtic. So now, centuries later, all the Vikings tend to be tall and gorgeous and the British people as a whole are famous for being not that attractive. Crazy!

And then I was in Paris. On my first afternoon here I went and saw quite possibly my favorite painting in the whole world, the painting I did a (poor) replica of in my painting class - Les Arbres Rouges by Maurice de Vlaminck. I stood before that painting with shivers running from head to toe and tears brimming in my eyes - such joy and wonder. Something about the way Maurice de Vlaminck paints is like the finger rubbed around the rim of the crystal glass in me. I was so thankful to have been able to see it in person, to peer closely at every single brush stroke and gain an even greater appreciation for his Genius.

After that first day I was planning to take the train down to Avallon to begin looking for housing etc., but I ended up staying another night here. It's a challenge to travel around with two big bags, a smaller bag, and a backpack, so Anna suggested I call the school to see if I could store some stuff there. I did, but noone answered (it was Saturday). So, especially because there doesn't seem to be anywhere to stay in Avallon that costs less than 50 Euros a night, Anna was kind enough to offer to host me another night here.
So the next day I went to another museum that had my other favorite painting by Maurice de Vlaminck (there was a lot of other really cool stuff at both museums too, of course) and then pretty much just walked around Paris all day. I had lunch at a sidewalk cafe, went and "admired" the Eiffel Tower (I didn't think it was that great, actually), and walked along the Seine - the river that runs through Paris - and through town. Paris is such a grand city: so many columns and sculptures and historical monuments, lining such sprawling boulevards; it's really something else.

En Route!

2010-09-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

I'm off! It still doesn't feel real. I don't think it's hit me one way or the other yet, even as I sit here in the Seattle airport. I don't feel nervous or scared at all, but there's not a feeling like this is Christmas Eve or something either. I think it's because I'm still settling back into my own head after months of living for most of the time, mostly outside it. It was a good vacation, for like all journeys to another place, besides being a lot of fun it provided (much-needed) perspective as I return to this snail-shell of a home. It's good to be back though. :)

What I'm first looking forward to are the two days I will spend in Iceland. I arrive in the capital of Reykjavik early on the morning of the 22nd, and will spend two days "romping" around before I fly to Paris on the morning of the 24th. I plan mostly to walk/hike around the countryside and, depending on how easy they are to do, I'd also like to visit one of the geothermal "baths" that are so abundant in Iceland and also to try to see some puffins and/or whales. I just know it's going to be so beautiful! I'll be bringing both my film and digital cameras with me, so hopefully I get some good shots. Whether I do or not, I'm sure I'll get some good views.

I'll be staying in the Reykjavik Backpacker's Hostel, which is right in the middle of the city and they are certified with the Icelandic Board of Tourism so they say they will be able to help me figure out good hikes to go on etc. Mom and Dad, the address of the hostel is Laugavegur 28, Reykjavik, and the phone number is +354 578 3700. There's a bus that will take me from the airport right to the front door of the place, so that should be easy.

Ok, it's time for me to board! Ooh, now I'm getting excited. :)

Hiatus

2008-09-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

Hello you forlorn, you remnant who are reading this.

It's kind of you to pay this dying blog a visit, but I think I will let it go in peace.

Having settled into a life that is a lot more conventional and routine, I've decided to put this blog on hiatus. I'll probably start it up again next time I study abroad (this coming Fall, hold onto your trousers).

So see you then!

Ode on a Philippine Island - or - Why I'd Rather Be in Manila Than Disneyland

2008-05-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

I arrived home yesterday, in Manila. They always say that "Third Culture Kids" don't know what to say when asked where they are from, and I know a lot of my friends from high school have that difficulty. Well I don't. Not in the slightest.

It seems to get easier for me the longer I am away from home. I am from the Philippines, I was born and raised here, and this is my home. I feel no doubt about it. And the longer I'm in the States, or when I come back, or with both things, I feel all the more acutely that this is really my home.

And that I love this country. People always say that, I love this country, but when I say that about the Philippines either I mean it more than most others or I never realized what a serious statement that could be. I remember driving along a road on the way back from Boracay last summer, with vividly beautiful hills on one side and the shimmering coast, sparkling in the sun, on the other. And I thought to myself, "I could actually contemplate, as a legitimate possibility, dying for the people living in the shacks on those hills." Not that I would want to, and I probably wouldn't when it came down to it (I'm pretty cowardly, I think). But I could actually understand how that would be a real thing that I could possibly do, if it came down to it. Whereas understanding anyone loving the denizens of some other place enough to consider dying for them had theretofore always been impossible for me.

Also, driving home from the airport yesterday, listening to the taxi driver's Tagalog and watching the cityscape roll by, I about got tingles, like watching one's crush perform some particularly endearing turn of the head. Every person in the city going about their everday, and often silly to the estranged and thus refreshed eye, motions really made me feel such a love for everything around me.

And those motions! The things that go on! Even if I could chronicle with Shakespearean diction each splendiferous observation I had, even just in the taxi from the airport to home, the true sense of what I felt would elude my pen.

This country just brims with life, with a kind of joie de vivre no Frenchman could ever quite label. The air is thick and heavy, with humidity yes, but also with stories and feelings and reality. It's part of what I feel lacks in America.

Now, I know part of my feeling that way (probably a very large part) is because I grew up here and not there; most visitors probably swat aside clouds of mosquitoes and humidity where I embrace memories and nostalgia. But there is an element of the concrete in my feeling this way. At least in my opinion.

Take for example a rainy day. In the States most everyone's got these superbly cushy roofs, all fluffed up with insulation and not suffering to bear the weight of one mossy tendril. So I shouldn't be surprised when often I don't even notice it's raining until I look out a window! Even in the heaviest of downpours.

Yet here, on a typhoon day or something, it's a struggle even to watch a movie or make a phone call when thick tropical drops are rattling the roof at deafening levels. Granted, that can be a nuisance, but it's all worth it when you're lying in bed, sticking to the sheets, and listening to that sound as you wait to fall into sleep. Or when you're just sitting around with friends, trying to think of something to do inside because streets are flooded all over and that's not conducive to driving.

Do you see what I mean? It's great to have these thick, impervious roofs that keep out the noise and keep in the heat. But they also cripple delicate pleasures like the sound of rain on the roof.

Ok, now I must tackle and partially dismantle my cute little analogy for the sake of fairness and political correctness. The deafening affect that rain can have on a tin roof can get pretty old, just like swarms of mosquitoes and smothering humidity. So I recognize that I'm only able to be so romantic about all this stuff because of the length of time which I have been away and because I will only be here a month.
And I know I am probably being offensive potentially both to Americans, who might see this as me being being smug or snide, and to poorer Filipinos who live in entire houses made of my cherished GI sheets. I'm sure they'd kill for the comfort of the average American house.

Which does, of course, make a lot of sense. Most all of us would probably choose more comfort over less if given the choice. But I'm still gonna stick to my bourgeois preference for a place streaked with the grit and grime of what I think is reality over a beautiful and "perfect" locale like The Happiest Place on Earth (doesn't sound very in touch with reality, does it?).

Rising Hopes

2008-05-04T17:00:00.001-07:00

That's just a dumb sort of pun. I couldn't resist.
My hope that the nerves preventing my left foot from being able to rise are themselves rising. Actually, I think they are quite high. I feel so sure that they are going to come back (and that they have already started to). I literally just feel it, things feel different when I stare down at my toes and clench every muscle in my body and tell those suckers to rise up. There's not much visible movement though. But my therapist said she could feel the tendon squiggling around, trying to do its job.
Oh that and I can now move my foot laterally, which I could not do before. So the thinking is that if that motion's coming back, the vertical motion will eventually do the same.

In other nerve news, I think the portion of my lower face (the right side of my lower lip and the area below it) has also recovered sensation. It was numb ever since they did the surgery in my mouth but is now back to normal.

Some really discouraging stuff has happened to me as well though, so again, this corporeal recovery is only half the battle, if that.

A Little Lighter

2008-04-23T16:27:00.000-07:00

is what I am. Because the fixator did come off today! Dr. Friess said the x-rays did look alright so he decided to proceed. First he just took off the bar that runs parallel to my leg (the stabilizing bit that all the bone-embedded pins attach to) and had me walk around like that, basically without the fixator. It didn't hurt so it was all systems go!
Out came the second to last pin. That same awful, grit-your-teeth pain of the bone jiggling and then it was over. Here comes the second pin! Dr. Friess stuck his little wrench type instrument on that last damn pin and I took a deep breath. And after only a second of turning he stopped because I had my fist clenched up against the wall and my back arched in pain, exclaiming that it hurt so much, so much, so much more than any of the others. The best metaphor I can think of is like when some hunter's got the deer he just shot flipped over and plunges his knife into the animal and slices its gut open. That, as best as I can think to explain it, is what it felt like had just happened to my tibia. Or maybe like someone'd stuck in a wedge in the break and just hammered it in. Anyway, it was some of the most intense, sharp, searing pain I've ever felt.
Dr. Friess had to continue in increments, giving it a bit of a turn or two and then letting me sink down into the pain and rise up out of it again to tell him to give it a couple more turns. Thankfully it got somewhat better the higher the screw came.
No one is quite sure why that pin was so excruciating compared to the others. Dr. Friess did say it seemed to be a slightly different kind of pin (one that should be discontinued if you ask me!) and that the bone must have grown onto/around the pin more than on the others. Ick.

Well, at least it's done and out. Unfortunately, nice as this is, it is just that. Not monumental as it might seem or would have seemed to me a couple months ago. For two reasons. One, the fixator got smaller by stages and when I could at least wear certain pairs of normal pants I was relatively appeased. But more than the fixator getting smaller, it's that other things got bigger, in my mind.
I realized the other day that I was, in the blink of an eye on October 14th, metaphorically (though in many many ways literally) reverted to infant-status, totally helpless and unable to do anything for myself. I slowly began to progress, opening my eyes and talking and then writing and then wheeling myself around and then crutching myself around and then caning myself around etc. All this reclaiming of independence was like me growing up, quite a bit quicker than a child would.
But for a child who has so recently been as underdeveloped as I was to burst into full adulthood quite unawares finds himself in a frustrating and bewildering state of unpreparedness. As I do.
The emotional/psychological difficulties I must now overcome, as well as practical matters like what do I do with myself now that I can walk but still don't have teeth but need a job and a place to live etc., are more trying, in many ways, than any physical trials.

So to be short, today was nice but not monumental.

Not for the Squeamish

2008-04-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

I'm finally done with turning the screw in my mouth three times a day. That's a relief, as it was just getting more and more painful to do so. And I didn't have to do it for the extra two days that my oral surgeon told me to "just to be on the safe side." The reason I didn't have to do that is not really very relieving though.
It's because the jagged, broken bone, which was rising up and up, went to so high that a bit of it ripped through my gums and is now sticking out and scratching up my tongue pretty much with every other word and bite. It's worse than the dull ache of turning it, and doesn't really diminish with pain medication.
I called the oral surgeon and he said the gums should heal over it in a couple days. I really hope so, as this is not only painful but puts me at risk for infection, which would be a huge hassle and possible set-back.

On the bright side they removed two more of the pins from my leg the other day. It hurt far more than any of the other times they removed pins, I guess because the pins were deeper and because, with less pins in, the whole thing provides less stability so my whole bone was "probably jiggling a bit," as the orthopedic surgeon said. Nasty imagery.
But even better is that he said come back in two weeks and the whole thing will probably come off! Whoohoo. I am pretty nervous though, partly because things have almost never gone according to mine/the doctor's expectations time-wise (it's always, "Oops, looks like we need to wait a couple more weeks") and also because I imagine something like them taking it off and I stand up and my leg just snaps in half. Haha. I don't think that one is very likely, but it could break again, that'd suck.

As soon as it comes off I want to be on a flight to Manila though! I want to go so bad that I almost would rather go tomorrow; it's hard to wait even for something so good as getting the fixator off.

No Wonder

2008-04-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

When I first heard that they were going to cut my jaw bone and attach a screw to it, and that I would have to turn it three times a day to pull it up to its former and proper level I was pretty nervous about the pain and discomfort I thought must surely be involved. But then I was thrilled when I first did it and found that it hardly even hurt at all and only gave my chin a dull sort of ache once in a while thereafter.
Turns out it was as I thought though - it was too good to be true.

When I went in for another check-up with the oral surgeon yesterday, I found out that he had made a mistake when he told me I only needed to turn it 180 degrees. It was supposed to be twice that, a full 360, and sure enough, it feels about twice as bad.

I was pretty much off the pain medication but now I am back on it and probably will be for the next seven days that I have to do this (and hopefully not any more than that!).

I just can't wait to get back to the Philippines. I think that plan is really gonna happen after all, finally. Of course it will probably be kinda lonely or boring or something as none of the people I used to paint Manila red with will be there, but it makes me realize something. It's really no different from how things have been since October 14th. I have been pretty alone, at least peer-wise, and pretty sedentary for months now. So it can only be better, because being peer-lacking and sedentary in The Philippines, country of my birth and home of my heart, is infinitely better than being so here.

Why are the bones in my left leg being SO lazy?

2008-03-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

They really are. I went in for my post-surgery appointment today, with the orthopaedic surgeon who was going to be doing the leg parts of tomorrow's surgery. The x-ray that they took left me with two options, neither good. The first was to proceed with taking it off. But because my bones haven't been keeping up with the re-building program, I would have to wear a cast for a week or two afterward until I got fitted for a brace that would be the support. What's more though, I would also have to get back to using two crutches and hardly putting any weight on the left leg. The second option was leaving the thing in for a couple more centuries and removing the second bar (there are two bars on the thing) so that my lazy bones have to do a little more work.

Well, while taking it off would let me get back to wearing normal, non-slit pants, I concluded it wouldn't be worth going back to major invalid status. So I am going to have the fixator left in. This is why I don't like getting my hopes up.

I have been able to do two fun things with my invalid status though. Both are things I have wanted to do for a long time. First, on a trip to the supermarket with my parents, I rode one of those little electronic carts! It was fun and I almost hit several people and several racks of food because I can't back up properly. I also got to ride the OHSU aerial tram! Thanks to a friend who works for the hospital for the free tickets. It was pretty fun.

T-minus Seven

2008-03-13T19:39:00.001-07:00

One week from today I will emerge from the peaceful slumber of anesthesia without any metal scaffolding protruding from my left leg. It will be a great day, probably the best moment of progress since the accident. I can't wait.

I'm getting the fixature off then because I am also having lots of oral surgery on that day, so the orthopedic surgeon said we might as well take the fixateur off while I am under anesthesia rather than take them out in-clinic while I am wholly aware of every turn of the screw. I had also mentioned to him that the screws in my right ankle bothered me a little bit sometimes so he said we could take those out too, three birds with one stone. I hope all this doesn't set me back a ways in my walking, like if I'd have to put less weight on either of my legs for a while or feel less sturdy, etc.

The oral stuff that is happening is really the big deal though. They will be doing three things. First they will take out all the metal brackets that are in my chin from when my jaw was broken. Then they will put the implants in my top jaw or whatever you call that part of the mouth (don't get excited like I did - implants doesn't mean the replacement teeth. They are the things that hold the replacement teeth in after they have grown solidly onto the bone after six or more months!). The most complicated part is the bottom jaw. They can't just put the implants straight in because the bone has receded. So they will cut the bone and apply this device, called a distractor because it "distracts" (like "traction," not like slight of hand) the bone upward. It can do this because the distractor has a sort of screw that is turned once a day or so, which pulls the bone slowly up and then new bone will follow it upward, filling in the gap. So only after I have the distractor for a while can they put implants in the lower jaw.

That's a lot of stuff and I am fairly nervous. But I just try to concentrate on how great it will be to not have that fixateur anymore. Here are some of the things I am looking forward to:

-Wearing jeans and other normal pants!! No more trotting around everywhere, every day in sweats or pajamas!
-Being able to turn onto my other side in bed by rolling over my stomach.
-Not having to worry about it always hitting every thing.
-Not having to stand back from the counter when brushing my teeth or be careful not to step in too far when walking up stairs.
-Sitting in cars easier.

Woohoo!

No Teeth

2008-02-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in a while. I seem to write in here less and less. I think one reason is that I don't feel like many read this anymore (and I feel silly always whining about that, but it's true). And second, at the encouragement of a friend, I have been writing in my journal again, which I had not done since the accident (I felt like it would make me focus on the bad stuff but actually, on the other hand, it helps sometimes).

It is probably good that I am using that as an outlet because my internal life has been darker and harder since I had the anti-depressant (actually prescribed as an anti-psychotic for the hallucinations I had) reduced further. To nip any concerned readers in the bud (or maybe I should be nipping their thoughts, not the readers themselves, haha) I actually wanted this and have been advocating getting off the medicine since I researched it and found out it was flattening my emotions. I really wanted to be able to feel every thing I really felt, whether it was upsetting or not. If you have a minute, do a quick Google search and read John Keats's "Ode on Melancholy." I think it is my favorite poem because I feel melancholy quite a bit, as did Keats, and he puts to words better than I've ever heard or ever could, why melancholia is necessary, even valuable.

Anyway, better to talk to myself or close others about most of that stuff than to thwap it on to the internet for all to see. I think the hardest thing I am facing now, besides just how frustrating this whole thing has been in general, is not having teeth. Every time I catch a glimpse of myself in any reflective surface I cringe and cannot believe how much not having teeth changes one's appearance. Every time I laugh, or smile, or even just say a word, I feel a sharp pang of humiliation and shame. It makes me so self-conscious, especially talking to strangers (what must they think??), and I now even try to smile with my mouth closed.

And I am to be toothless for six months or more.
Of course, I did just recently receive a supposedly better pair of temporary dentures from the "dentist" (prosthodontist) here, which are supposed to be more comfortable and less speech-impairing than the ones I was given in Austria but never wore for those two reasons.
I guess they feel a little better but they seem to impair my speech even more! So I have been planning on wearing them around the house for a few days to see if it goes away once I get accustomed to them. I just keep forgetting. Tomorrow though.
If I am able to speak properly the teeth issue will be a bit better.

Yippee. Then all I'd have to worry about is walking and whether or not the insurance is going to help out with these huge expenses I feel guilty of accruing.

What is My Do?

2008-02-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

I don't really do much around here. It's actually less boring than laying in a hospital, and in terms of having fun I get to do that more than in Austrian rehab. But in (Austrian) rehab they kept me busy doing lots of really needless things. So, to summarize, I do more fun things but less dumb things, and this can sometimes feel like more overall boredom. Well, it actually is more overall boredom, but I think it's still more preferable. Nevertheless, it is still boring. : ) That is the most horribly written bit of ramble I've seen in a long time. I suppose I'm that bored? Haha.

Things I have done recently that I enjoyed were, first of all, getting to go down to Newberg and spend the night at my brother's. We went to this IMAX sized 3D movie that was not really a movie but a recording of a U2 concert. I don't really like U2 (though I do like them a bit more after seeing that movie) but I'd never seen a 3D thing and it was awesome. I'm bummed I didn't get to see Beowulf. We also got to play Starcraft, which made my heart glad. : )
I have also been able to hang out with my cousin Nick, which is also really fun.
And thirdly, I have twice been able to go up to UP and see old friends there. That is great. It's just a little strange too though, because there are so many new faces and I'm so out of the loop not just by feeling a bit like a new kid but also by being on crutches and lacking any front teeth, so it is different but still good.

Here in America

2008-02-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

I've been back in the States for a week now. I was telling a friend last night that I feel almost chagrined to be so happy to be back. I mean, I was in Austria, a country I feel is so much more beautiful, cultured, and storied than America. And I was never America's biggest fan.
But I suppose it is the comfort of familiarity that thrills me, even if some of the things that are familiar are obese people at the ubitquitous strip malls and fast-food chains. No, but of course there are lots of other great things, those just stand out as the things that make me feel weird about loving being here. Like I said, I'm really glad to be back. I just found it to be an interesting internal dynamic.

I think I am close to finally being admitted to a rehab program here in Portland. And I hope it is at OHSU so I can ride the air-tram! I have wanted to go on that thing since I first saw it.
I visited an oral/maxillofacial (jaw and face) doctor as well as an orthopedic doctor the other day. The oral doctor felt all over my face, like my cheekbones and jaw and all that. He then asked me if I noticed anything different about my face since the accident. I told him no, and he then revealed to me that my left cheekbone is now flatter than my right, and my left eye is a little lower than my right. Interesting to know, but I don't think it's very noticeable at all so it's not too big a deal.
Better news from the orthopedic doctor though. He said I can begin putting more weight on my left leg (the one that's still broken, with all the pins still in it), and that we may even take the whole thing off at the end of the month! Although I don't really know how he makes such bold, positive claims when he hasn't even seen x-rays of my leg.
I hope he is right though - I am really tired of wearing sweat pants and pajama pants with the left leg sliced open to fit over my fixature. It is cold and makes me feel sloppy all the time. I want to wear jeans and be able to look a little more normal!
Of course it would help to have teeth to look normal, but it's one step closer.

Finally!

2008-01-24T04:44:00.000-08:00

Some good news!

In just a few minutes I will forever be done with this place, as my Dad and I are set to leave for Salzburg and a few days thereafter, Portland!
Not that this place was so bad, they treated me well and helped me out, I just don't need to be an in-patient anymore so I can't stand to be one any longer. That is the main reason I so badly want to get out of here.
It will also be a refreshing change of scenery (and more scenery, as I won't be in the same one building all day almost every day). And I won't have a sometimes tiresome language barrier. And I won't get the occasional dish that is a little too...shall we say typically Austrian for my taste.

So I am quite relieved. And I am also happy to leave because before we fly out (which is whenever the insurance gets their act together and gets me a ticket, probably Monday or Wednesday) my Dad and I will be staying at the UP campus again, so I get to see my friends there one last time.

Woopee.

Ire

2008-01-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

I don't feel like blogging. Every day that I put off writing a post, a new set-back or just something depressing happens and I can't stand to write about it anymore. So bye for now.

New Developments

2008-01-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

Oh to savor the freedom of walking in crutches!

It's kind of an ironic statement, but that's exactly what I was thinking in therapy today. I finished the walking class by practicing using two crutches, which was a really wobbly affair last time I tried. It was still kind of wobbly, but even my therapist said it was a lot better than last time and I was encouraged(even though I would've toppled to the floor and further mangled myself several times if my therapist hadn't caught me).

Anyway, at the end of therapy, as I hobbled toward my wheelchair, I saw that it had been pushed back a short ways from the parallel bars I mostly walk on. If I had been on the bars I would've had to have someone push it forward for me to flop down onto it, but my heart skipped a beat when I realized I could get in it just the same!

I would love to be on crutches, it would be so liberating. ...That kind of statement kind of makes my situation seem pretty pathetic, but that's the way it is. Kind of like how it was a breakthrough when I could do such simple things as button my own hospital gown or hop into bed or onto the toilet without ringing for a nurse.

In other news, last night I looked up some of the medication I am taking (the anti-hallucination stuff and the anti-seizure stuff) and got quite a surprise. I had thought that just the anti-halucination stuff had a sedativeside-effect, but now I know both can have that effect! In fact, it even said on the internet to avoid taking the anti-hallucination stuff with medicines like my anti-seizure stuff (it named it specifically) because it will essentially make you twice as drowsy. Well well. At least I know I wasn't imagining my drowsiness. I only take the anti-hallucination pill once a day, so I have asked the doctors to schedule me to take it at night rather than in the morning (why didn't they think of that earlier?). I hope this makes me half as sleepy.

But that's not all! What disconcerted me even more was finding out that that anti-hallucination medication is not just an anti-psychotic (to prevent me from having more of those ridiculous hallucinations) but an anti-depressant as well. In fact, they often prescribe it to people who are bi-polar because it is mood stabilizing.
And here I have been marvelling at my stable mood and thinking maybe I had experienced some character growth or something. Instead it is just chemicals; a phony, clinical calm. I was so dismayed. I have to take the medicine, I just feel like I am just now realizing I am not as strong as I maybe thought; I can't take credit for my mental state. Sigh.

Ups and Downs, As Usual.

2008-01-03T04:00:00.000-08:00

Even as I write this I am so drowsy and want to do nothing but nap (but it's so hard to wake up and then so hard to go to sleep at night). I realized only recently that one of the drugs they have me on and that I will have to continue taking for months more (to prevent more hallucinations) is actually a sedative; and I now know why I have been so sleepy all the time. It is frustrating.

Progress in therapy is pretty good though. My physical therapist is working on getting my knee to bend again. Unfortunately this means that class is half an hour of him intentionally inducing pain by bending my knee until it hurts; this is the only way to get it mobile again. It is not too bad though.
And in my "walking class" I have been going back and forth with both hands on the parallel bars (because I can only put a little weight on my still broken left leg) for "quite a ways" (by wheelchair-standards). Even more exciting though is that I did some walking first with one hand on the bar and one arm in a crutch and now today a little ways with both arms just in crutches. That was really hard though, with trying to keep weight off my left leg and remaining balanced - I might not have made it without the therapist helping. But it is encouraging progress.
At least I didn't have one of those near-fainting spells I have had from time to time. I had one just yesterday, but none today.

I'm so excited because in just a couple of hours I will see one of my best friends, Boram Ma, who I have known since third grade and who I roomed with my senior year and last summer (in his house in Southern California). I can't wait.
It will be a little sad after he leaves though, because then I will realize that my whole family (except for my Dad) is gone and what used to be five people visiting will now be just one.

I really hope I am able to go to Portland now - even the insurance company is calling about it (though I don't know why they would want me to go somewhere more expensive)! I have to see a sinus-specialist before they know if I am OK to fly though, because I have had so much surgery on my face and they are not sure if the change in atmospheric pressure will be a problem. Just another "We'll see," I guess.

This and That, I Guess

2007-12-27T06:43:00.001-08:00

I am back in the rehab center now, for a few days until New Year's break starts. Why they didn't they just let me stay from the 21st straight until after New Years, instead of having this pointless three day interlude, I cannot say.
I was pretty...not loving it but at the least apathetic about being here, but going back to Salzburg, being so free, and having such a good time with old friends made me realize exactly what I was missing in a tangible way - it makes it harder to be here.

Also while I was in Salzburg they took off the top part of my fixature and I can now bend my leg a bit (too much and I experience searing pain). It was scary watching them unscrew these big metal pins (literally unscrew), but not as painful as I thought. So good overall.

Today was not so good though; I almost fainted again while practicing walking on the parallel bars in therapy. So I missed the only two therapies that are of practical help (because I had to lay down), and I am once again confronted with the belittling weakness of my body. Frustrating!
Also, as I sit here in my wheelchair, my family is out seeing the sights of Vienna that I loved and would love to see again.

After my Mom and siblings leave, my Dad will be alone in an area in which he knows almost no one. As that will not be fun for him, and as I might benefit from being in therapy in a place where people actually share my native tongue (one of my therapists doesn't even speak English, but for the most part they do) my parents have begun looking into transfering me to rehab in Portland. I am not that particular about where I do this, I just want to get it done, but thinking about things makes me anticipate them. I have been imagining what it would be like in Portland and now I really want to go; I hope I am not up for another dissapointment!

Better sign off before I get too melancholy (maybe it's good I don't do too much written-musing; it tends to facilitate melancholy's cancerous growth in my mind),
Nathan

Good News + Bad News = ?

2007-12-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

I went to the oral surgeon today, for him to check how my jaw is coming along. The good news is that he said it is quite nice and I can stop wearing the rubber bands to hold my jaw in place! This is even more exciting because it means I can start eating more things, harder things. Oh finally.
I was actually expecting him to say "Oh, looks good but we still need a week or two more" because that is what he had said for the last two check-ups when he had predicted they would come off.

So it was nice. But there was also bad news - he found out that two of my bottom teeth are probably dead (as with so many of the other things wrong with my body we have to wait and see if my body fixes itself or if the damage is permanent). If this is true, irreparable damage it means a.) that I will have to have two root canals and b.) that they might turn gray and discolored like my Dad's dead tooth? That'd be a bummer. They are my two bottom canines, so pretty prominent.
The other thing is he said I might have to have orthodontic work even after all of this is over. Sigh, not again. And braces at 20?? Come on.

So I didn't know whether to be pleased or disappointed with the continuing pattern of finding out more and more is wrong with me as time goes by and even as some things get fixed. I guess some of both.
Tomorrow morning I go to the trauma surgeon to get the upper part of my fixature off. Again, this is good because I will a.) be able to begin the presumably longish road of getting my knee to bend after two months of being "fixed," and b.) that I might be able to lay on not just my right but now also my left side in bed! And I am a big sleep-on-my-side kind of guy.
But I am just a little scared for the process. These metal pins are screwed into my bone and the doctors remove them without any form of anesthesia. They say it only hurts for the first small turn and then it's over. Well it still sounds scary to me! And I just hope I don't find out any more bad news to go hand in hand with the good news.

Hooray

2007-12-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

Hooray! Today, or rather yesterday, was good news - I got busted out of the rehab center early! I say busted out because at first the director denied my request to leave three days before the Christmas break. However, the next morning I was told I would be allowed to go; one of the kind doctors, for no reason apparent to me, took my side and somehow convinced the director to let me go. (I thought this whole thing was strange because am I not paying to be there, of my own free will?)
The reason I was trying to leave early was because my parents were driving to Munich last night to pick up my siblings and my brother's girlfriend, so they figured why not take me along as they would be passing by Salzburg?
So I got to sleep in my good old bed and see lots of good friends; I'm excited, even more good friends will be arriving soon.
It is great to be back, if only for a little while and though the center is definitely not wheelchair friendly.
So now my whole family is here for Christmas and things, beside my leg, are fine and dandy.
Hoozah.

Addicted to My Eyes

2007-12-16T00:53:00.000-08:00

You know how I mentioned yesterday that my crippled eyesight makes reading and staring at a computer screen difficult/even a little nauseating? And then I even admitted that I was feeling sick as I wrote yesterday's blog. Well, I really should have paid attention to these facts that I now realize are not so insignificant or petty as to be ignored.
After spending lots of time writing that blog entry and perusing Facebook and the like, I went up to lunch. Sitting there with book-in-hand as usual, I all of a sudden became very tired and very tired of reading, so I put the book down. I then grew ever more tired and began to seriously consider giving in to the temptation to flop out of my wheelchair and sprawl out upon the dining room floor (haha, sounds silly but I was really weary, in a strange way). I didn't want to go to my own bed because lunch was good and it isn't always (and I'm desperately trying to put weight on my emaciated body) but as my disturbing sense of malady grew worse I realized I wouldn't be able to finish. I told the cleaning lady I was done and began to wheel back to my room but as I reached the dining room door blackness began to creep over my vision and my ears started ringing. I felt like I was going to throw up and realized there was no way I could make it to my bed on my own, so I called out to the cleaning lady for some help.
By this point I was not seeing and hearing well but I could tell a couple nurses rushed over and wheeled me to my room. They hoisted me into bed, raised my feet with pillows (for circulation), and put a cool towel on my forehead. Fortunately laying down made me feel almost instantly better but I am pretty sure I would have passed out if I had remained sitting for too much longer. It was so scary.

I have concluded I simply overworked my crippled eyes. The poor things - I read through breakfast, spent much of the time between breakfast and lunch on the internet (it is the weekend and there is no therapy), and then was reading again over lunch when I began to grow faint.
I will be so bummed though, if I am never again able furiously to work my eyes with books and the computer. I realize how much I love using my eyes and would hate it if I had to succumb to audio-books or something (no offense to you audio-book lovers, I just don't think they're for me).
It seems like I find out more is wrong with my body as days go by. Sigh.

Life in the SLOW Lane

2007-12-15T00:56:00.000-08:00

I promised I'd write and so I am. German keyboards and all their mix-ups makes it a little hard, but what is even more challenging is my eye situation. Since the accident I have suffered from double vision (thankfully only when I look up though) and a general blurring of vision (especially with computer screens, they are the hardest). In fact it is making me feel a little nauseated and headache-y right now, but I am so eager to get back in touch with people so I'm being super tough and powering through. :)
When I went to see the opthamologist about all this she said thankfully the problem appears to stem not from my brain but from the messed up muscles around my eye. Unfortunately, she said this problem might resolve itself on its own - we have to wait and see. I don't know what happens if it doesn't. I guess I can learn to live with it; maybe glasses can fix it?
This accident seems to have jumpstarted me on my desire to eventually look the part of the professor I hope to be - I might get glasses and I wonder also if I'll walk with a slight limp, too. This is because the nerves in half my left foot and lower left leg are currently not working. This means I cannot raise my left foot - it just sort of hangs there, limp and numb like a dead fish. Haha. Like my eye situation, we have to wait and see if my body fixes itself; the nerves may grow back slowly, as nerves do, or they may be permanently destroyed. If so, I will have to wear a brace to keep my foot upright for walking, and I wonder if this will affect my gait. Like my eyes, I suppose it's not that big a deal; I only hope I can still wear normal shoes!!

This is kind of the attitude I try to have about things: there is so much wrong with my body and some of it might never be better, so I try to just accept it. I am glad I am not an athlete.
Other things I have to accept are the often ridiculous truly-Austrian meals I am served. Although the food here is better quality than in the Salzburg hospital, with my jaw fractured as it is I am restricted to soft foods until it is ready for more of a work-out (hopefully in a couple weeks, although the oral surgeon kept saying that and then extending the deadline).
The deadline also keeps being extended on the date when my humongous fixature (the giant metal scaffolding poking out of the bones all the way up my left leg) is to be removed. I think I get the top part of it off this Saturday (so that I can begin to work on regaining the ability to bend my knee! I am predicting a fair amount of work will be needed, as it has been "fixed" for two months now - probably quite stiff) but I can't put pressure on it for a while as x-rays still show some nasty fractures. This is frustrating because I want to begin learning to walk again. I am getting quite good at wheeling around, but I feel like it's a bit of a waste of time being here in rehab when I can't even begin rehab on the part that really needs it. Like I said, I have to try and just accept it as there is nothing I can do .

Hmm, what else is there to tell? I guess other than the stuff I mentioned there's nothing majorly wrong with me, which I am quite happy about. Oh yeah, well I am missing my two front teeth and four front bottom ones. The bummer about this (assuming the permanent implants they give me look almost as real as my old ones) is that they say I can't get them for six months. This is because my chin is still implanted with titanium plates. In about three months these come out, to be replaced with bone from my hip (Agh! Another surgery! Sigh). When my chin becomes fully solid bone (I guess three months after the hip bones are implanted) I can finally get real, porcelain implants, which are supposed to look and feel a lot more real.
Until then the oral surgeon made me some temporary dentures which I don't really wear. They are like two big retainers with teeth (plastic teeth) sticking out of them. They are uncomfortable to wear, taste like plastic, making eating more difficult, and just really don't look that real or that good. Granted they look better than the huge hole in my mouth when I smile, so I do wear them like when I attended a dinner at one of Salzburg's (and apparently the world's? It was a really great dinner) hotels that my school put on. But they are not really for everyday wear, at least as long as I am here with a bunch of other mutilated people; who really cares, right?

I feel like I've summed up my current situation fairly well. I am just biding my time until my brother, his girlfriend, and my sister brighten my days with their arrival. I am also looking forward to hopefully going back to Salzburg and seeing so many good friends over Christmas. Till then I've got my parents and you lovely people to keep me company. Leave me a comment or write me a little note so I have something to do when I race downstairs, frantically callousing my pillowy hospital-hands and straining my atrophied hospital-back and shoulder muscles to try and snag a computer. Ok? :) You all are terrific and I can't say thank you, or that I am grateful, enough. Ta ta.

Oktoberfest

2007-10-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the last weekend of the famous (infamous?) Oktoberfest. Although lots of kids had already gone, I was in Prague last weekend so this was my last opportunity to get the chance to go. I wasn't really interested in going though, because it just seemed like a collection of "beer tents" all crammed full of belligerent people from all over America and Europe drinking ridiculously overpriced beer together. Not really my cup of tea.
However, most of my close friends were going and the train ticket to München (Munich) was so so cheap (27 Euro for a round-trip ticket for five people) so I decided I might as well go see what this world-famous event was all about. I was also motivated to go because our art teacher tells us in class almost everyday that Munich has some really great museums and that we shouldn't go just to drink beer. Some really famous Greek sculptures and ceramics that we studied in class are housed in Munich's main museum. So that was a large part of my motivation for going.
We left at about 10 in the morning and were in Munich by noon. Shortly before arriving we realized that none of us had asked any of the previous groups where to go or how to get there - kind of a silly oversight. But here is the funny thing: I don't know that I've written about this but the Austrians and the Germans actually wear the ridiculous traditional clothing that you see in all the postcards and photographs. The guys wear lederhosen (either high-waisted shorts or trousers with overalls made entirely of leather and generally with some designs etched around the waistband and stuff) and the girls wear dirndl, which are multi-colored dresses with kind of apron-like things over the front. The dirndl are actually really pretty but the guys just look so silly in their lederhosen. People wear this traditional garb to events like church and stuff in the same way that Americans get dressed up like businessmen and women to go to church. Very interesting.
Well anyway, our train to München became increasingly full of people boarding the train in lederhosen or dirndls, already holding a beer or two in their hands. We figured we could easily follow the assuredly massive crowds of these rather silly looking Bavarians to the Oktoberfest area. But when we got out of the train, some of our group needed to find a bathroom and we ended up losing track of the crowds. We saw a couple stragglers heading down to the subways so we figured we needed to do that, and I found out for us which ticket to purchase and which train to take (I was pretty proud of my stuttering German).
Oktoberfest is huge. But it is also very different from what I had imagined. It is more like a carnival than anything else! The giant square in which the festival takes place is surrounded on all sides by carnival-type rides of all sorts - roller coasters, bumper cars, carousels, etc. And then there are a dozen or more of these giant buildings that are the "beer tents" and they have bands on stage playing oompah-type German music and everyone is drinking super expensive beer out of massive, heavy steins (shteins).
Unfortunately, if you don't feel like (or don't have the money for) rides or beer or food, there's not much to do at Oktoberfest, and that was kind of the situation we were in. Thankfully we were all on the same page and all decided to head straight to the museums instead! And they were wonderful - we did see some really great stuff and it was so cool to see what we had studied in class. We did a lot of that in Vienna but that was with our art teacher walking us around; this time it was all of our own initiative and we were pointing out to each other things we had learned or found interesting. Very fun.
As night fell we got hungry and decided we should go back to Oktoberfest one more time to see it at night. The only difference was that there were no more families with kids and it was a lot more crowded (with a lot more people walking sloppily arm-in-arm, singing/shouting unintelligible German songs). Picture this with a backdrop of neon carnival rides each blasting their own cacophonous songs and with half the people in lederhosen or dirndls and it was really quite interesting. I had a dinner of Schweinebraten und Kraut (sausages and sauerkraut) to complete the cultural image.
And on the train ride back everyone around was passed out, mouth agape, snoring loud. What a different culture this is.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my faithful family (all of you) who are my motivation for continuing to write this blog, as well as to you few wonderful others who let me know you're there from time to time. Thank you, it means a lot to me.

Praha, a.k.a. Prague

2007-10-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

So last weekend I went to Prague (capital of the Czech Republic). I went with nine other people. I really liked all the people I went with but big groups and traveling aren't exactly peanut butter and jelly. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful time.

We left at 5 am, Friday morning. We live really close to the train station so we all trekked over at the break of day. It was a seven hour trip to Prague but we found these great rooms in the train where all the seats pull out and it becomes one giant bed; we commandeered two of those and got some semblance of sleep. We were woken up about every hour though, by various officials wanting to see passports, tickets, passports again, etc. So now I have more stamps on my new passport!
When we arrived in Prague it was raining and I instantly regretted not bringing my rain boots. To make things worse, the night before we left we had received an email from the hostel we had booked that they actually didn't have any room. So we went to another one but it didn't have room for nine people either. Thankfully though, they called another hostel that did have room and they were nice enough to come pick us up free of charge (because it was raining pretty hard). It was a more expensive hostel, but we weren't in much of a position to be picky.
After settling into the hostel the group split in two: those who wanted to go to the Jewish Museum (and perhaps the Museum of Communism) went one way and the paupers began tramping aimlessly and gloriously about the city. It turned out great for us because the museums were closing by the time the others got there, so I think we had a better time.
Then we all met up for dinner and I marshaled the group into going to a Chinese restaurant. It was so great! My second taste of rice in a month. It was a good, authentic place too - they had names such as "Strange Taste Chicken," "Duck with the Eight Treasures," and "Broccoli with the Mushrooms," so it was definitely run by real Chinese people. : )
The next day we went to this castle+cathedral atop a hill that overlooked the city. It was the most amazing Gothic cathedral I have seen yet (I am working on getting all my pictures onto the internet). We also visited some other "must see" things in Prague like the Charles Bridge and stuff, but it was just chock full of tourists and hawkers so it kind of bummed me out.
We had lunch in a terraced, outdoor garden and spent the whole day just walking walking around , seeing so much stuff and getting sore feet from the uneven cobblestones that pave the entire city. Prague is one of the only major cities in Europe that wasn't bombed to bits by WWII, so it is really and truly old.
So that was Saturday day, and we were soon approaching Saturday night. After a day of walking we were all pretty tired but all but two of us decided we would rather stay up all night (our train home was at 6 in the morning) than pay for another night at the kind of expensive hostel (talagang kuripot, but out of necessity! - at least on my part. I am the poorest kid here).
It also just seemed like a fun, adventurous thing to do. So the two people who wanted to sleep got a small room in which we put our bags and we set off to explore Prague's moonlit alleys.
We had street food for a late dinner and then just walked around a whole bunch more. Some people went dancing at this super famous disco in Prague, but I just found a more low-key pub with some of the others. We had a good time drinking the world's first ever Pilsner (as in San Miguel, Pale Pilsen!) and met an interesting Norwegian.
By the time we met up with the disco group, however, 6 am was fast approaching and we had to hoof it all the way back to the hostel (the subway had stopped running), grab our bags, and make it to the train station! Our hostel was way out of the way. It was pretty exciting - us nine Americans sprinting through the cobbled streets, fat touristy camping backpacks slapping against our weary backs. Haha. So silly.
We made it within a minute or two of the train's departure and were safely on our way back to Salzburg. I got a breakfast in the dining car and then tried to get what meager sleep I could (we didn't have a sleeper car this time).
Although we all went to Prague with really no idea of what to do (besides the castle, bridge, and some museums) and not even the ability to say "hello"or "thank you" in Czech, it turned out to be an amazing weekend. We saw a lot of beautiful Prague just by walking so much and I had a really really good time (although I still feel sleep-deprived!).

Vienna

2007-09-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Last week our whole crew of almost 40 went on a trip to Vienna. Es war wunderbar!

As some of you know, our weekends start on Thursday, rather than Friday, afternoon. So on Thursday afternoon we all piled into a bus and started the trip (we came back on Sunday afternoon). I always really enjoy our bus trips because every bit of the Austrian countryside is so so beautiful. We arrived in Vienna (spelled Wien, pronounced Veen) in time for dinner and then had the night to ourselves. I walked throughout the city with a bunch of people and marveled at its beauty.

Vienna is an awesome city, much bigger and more cosmopolitan than Salzburg, which is more quaint and traditional. It has more of an international, vibrant feel like New York or even Portland might have. It was really refreshing, although I also really like the atmosphere of Salzburg. One of the most interesting things about Vienna as a city, to me, is that in the mid-19th century the emperor had the old city walls razed and, in their stead, constructed a giant ring street that is flanked on either side by important buildings - the opera house, the parliament (or whatever) building, museums, etc. What is interesting about these is that they are all built in reminiscence of older styles of architecture (like some are Greek, some are Gothic, etc.)
This at first seemed really weird and tacky to me when we learned about it in class. It seemed almost like Las Vegas or Disneyland or something; really though, they are all so beautifully constructed and respectful rather than imitative that it is just really stunning. I saw my first Gothic (except that it was neo-Gothic) cathedral and I couldn't even believe how beautiful and amazing it was.
Anyway, our time there was really fun. Our Art History and Music teachers (two sweet, brilliant old ladies) came with us and toured us around all the museums and buildings that we went to. As touristy as it was (we wore headsets that our teachers talked into by microphone), I got so much more out of all the experiences and really enjoyed it. My favorite thing in the museums was seeing the works of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, two of Austria's prized Expressionist painters (Expressionism is the movement after Impressionism, which is really really interesting but that I had never really learned about before) . They are stunning works and I wish I could have bought some posters from the giftshops. Unfortunately my purchases were more along the lines of half a baguette upon which I put my pilfered liver spread when we had to buy our own lunches. Haha.
We also toured the opera house in the morning, so we saw everything all empty and in-preparation, and went to all these old Habsburg family palaces/castles (we walked through the room where 6-year old Mozart gave I think his first concert to Maria Theresia, empress of Austria). Oh, and we went to a very old monestary and a museum full of old and ridiculously gaudy royal treasures and stuff from old times, like Holy Roman Empire and earlier! The best part about that place was this huge narwhal tusk (like 8 feet tall!!) that those old religious coots thought was the horn of a unicorn, symbol of chastity. I just thought it was awesome to see a narwhal's tusk. Lots of stuff like that - pieces of wood that "are" pieces of the cross, blood that "was" soaked with the blood of Stephen...but then you find out there was bunches of these artifacts all over Europe, each purchased by kings and emperors for fortunes. Silly silly.

But the best part about Vienna was going to the opera! I had never been but had wanted to for a long time, and it was wonderful. We saw "The Barber of Seville," an Italian, comedic opera. It was actually pretty funny at times! The whole experience was breathtaking and so delightful; I want to go to many more.

I will definitely be going back to Vienna. I hear the newest addition to their zoo is a baby panda, which is still too young for exhibition. So I'll wait till he gets fuzzy and then go back.

This is very long and I hope not too boring. This is the kind of stuff we learnt, so I'm sharing a bit with you, but I think I will just end it here. I'd love to hear how you are doing, those of you who don't write me. This blog is a lot of effort for not much reap-able benefit.
Love,
Nathan

One day's romp through Salzburg

2007-09-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was our first weekend in Salzburg! I can't believe it, it really feels like we have been here a month or so already. It's strange seeing the same 40 faces everyday, having every class in the same classroom, eating every meal, which are all really similar except for dinner, at the same table in the same bitty room - such things really contribute to my misconception of time.

The best day of the weekend was Friday when this guy named Joe and I went adventuring into Salzburg. We packed a couple bits of fruit and some water into a backpack and set off without aim. I felt like a boy again, making an expedition into the "depths" of our "mountainous" subdivision in Baguio. The first neat thing to happen was that I met a Filipina! We asked this woman for directions into downtown and my Filipino-radar was picking up lots of signal so I asked her if she came from the Philippines and sure enough, she did! She had forgotten all her English though, so our conversation was a mix of German (which felt really strange, speaking German to a Filipina) and Tagalog, though I think she was so bemused she had trouble following me.

Anyway, Joe and I continued on through many winding streets and alleyways. Heading up one alleyway we soon found ourselves making a slow but steady little trek up one of Salzburg's many mountains (not too big, this was all paved and stuff). A little breathless towards the top, we were gifted with a breathtaking church and a breathtaking view! After an excited flurry of pictures we walked down the other side and continued ambling through the city. We found an open air market and some GORGEOUS, huge churches (there are about half a million in the tiny downtown area and around Salzburg). We then crossed through a tunnel into a totally different part of Salzburg that no one from our group had ventured into yet.

We stopped to eat an orange at an abandoned pagoda on the side of a smallish street (I guess all the streets in town are smallish - most of the ones downtown are not really for cars). It was a magical place, with weeds beginning to spring up between the floorboards and a chandelier overhead; I mention this because it kind of represents Salzburg to me. Everything is old and charming like that, with all these often unnoticed embellishments (like the chandelier) flourishing on every centuries-old stone and crevice. We continued on and soon found ourselves making our way up another mountain. So many mountains about, being at the foot of the Alps and all. This one had an even better view and a castle dating back to the 13th century! Right as we reached this castle right on the top, great rolling crescendos of thunder began to sound across the sky. We watched the far-off rain clouds move closer to us, over all the houses and steeples of Salzburg, dancing through the rays of the setting sun. As we walked back down the mountain, lightning flashed across the sky.

Last but far from least of the wonders of our journey, on the way back home through the city, we passed by a smallish pub full of older, more well-dressed people. Right as we passed, one of the men, beer stein or whatever in hand, burst into opera. Joe and I stopped dead until he was done.

Salzburg is lovely.

Yellow Wellies!

2007-09-12T11:17:00.001-07:00

Good news! I finally got ahold of some rain boots. I asked one of the teacher's aids where I might find some and she directed me to the nearby...sort of Home Depot type store where they had yellow (very important, black or green is too drab) rain boots in just my size. For only 13 Euro, which is really cheap. Even though the rain has finally cooled its jets I am thrilled and feel prepared for anything (except that I don't have my pea coat).

Other news is that we finally started classes this week. Here is a brief overview:

German--Marvelous! I wish I could have German class every period of every day. It is by far my favorite. I write this in such exalting language because I just stepped out of it - language classes always leave me feeling buzzy and excited. I really like our teacher, she speaks almost everything in German and even if I can't understand all of it, it's great fun. We also have a supplementary Conversation class once a week and I go so far as to sit in on the 200 level conversation class just for fun, I mean practice.

Philosophy--My second favorite class. Philosophy is not my best or favorite subject by far; my brain tends to tumble, rather than logically step, through a question, but it is interesting. What makes it such an enjoyable class is really the teacher though. He is brilliant and on top of that I am amazed at his mastery of not just colloquial but academic, philosophical English. He really puts us mono-linguists to shame. He is also really funny (in a dry, European sort of way) and likeable.

Theology--This is probably my least favorite class. The worst part is that our teacher speaks so slow (it often takes her some time to mentally translate from German to English) and quiet that it kind of puts me, and everyone else, to sleep. And it doesn't help that the material so far has been stuff I am already thoroughly familiar with (the basic history of the Old Testament). But I am interested to be taught such stuff from a Catholic perspective - the Bibles we were assigned contain the Apocrypha, for instance.

Fine Arts--Also wonderful! Our teacher is this amazing lady who wears diaphanous scarves and has her graying hair in a quintessentially European-art-teacher bob. To add to this, she shows us slides of art and architecture on a dusty, old slide machine - I feel like I'm in The Dead Poets Society or Mona Lisa Smile or something. She was the curator of Salzburg's modern art museum for 30 years and also taught at the University of Salzburg (like many of our teachers) but has now retired from everything but teaching at our center. It will be a great class.

History--This should be an interesting, if not terribly exciting, class. Our teacher actually hails from New York originally and went to Colombia - you can just tell he is brilliant and knows volumes about everything historical. So I really expect to learn a lot.

Music--I look forward to what I'll learn from this class too. The teacher is really sweet; she is a total grandmother-figure. And what is best is that on top of the opera in Vienna and the ballet in Paris and all that, we get to go to at least one symphony performance here in Salzburg! The center has 15 season tickets and everyone just chooses a day. I have already signed up and cannot wait.

That's about it. Our schedule is pretty nice (I never start before 10:30) and the classes are designed not to be too demanding of our free time. I think I will only be writing one paper this semester. It's extremely nice of the program directors to set it up this way. Of course, I don't know that my academic education will be as sound this year, but I'm sure I will learn and grow much more traveling around than I could in a classroom.

I was extremely ill just a couple days ago and am finally getting better but my throat still hurts and my nose still runs. What's more I have pages and pages to go before I sleep, so that's it for now!

The Flight Over

2007-09-09T03:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote out all my tumultuous thoughts on the UK while driving and loitering about it but now I can't find them. I was hoping to be able to write about it in fresh words, but I suppose I will just have to recollect.

I basically fell in love with the place after such a little bit of time. The first minute I began to feel that way was in the Dallas airport where the British families were in direct contrast to Americans (Texans, no less). And then in line for London immigration there was the huge line for non EU-citizens right next to the EU line. The non-EU line was populated with characters such as the guy in the huge white t-shirt proudly purchased in Cancun, Mexico that proclaimed his membership in the "National Pimps Association." As if that wasn't bad enough, he would periodically lift it's grimy hem to scratch and scrape at his beer gut. As if that wasn't bad enough, he then lifted the whole thing further up his belly to apply his spray deodorant. This is the sort of thing I was observing while simultaneously reveling in the British people's wonderful politeness and propriety. United Kingdom I'm yours.

I also fell dearly in love with the countryside as I drove through it on my way from London - Gatwick to London - Heathrow airports. Everything was so gorgeous and pastoral - I can now truly understand the obsession Milton and his ilk had with such settings! And I also loved how the English is just more intricate - "soluble" coffee for "instant" coffee, "amendments" for "changes," and so on. Basically it seems like a place that values a lot of what I value, a place I might feel more at home than oft-brash America. But that's not too relevant right now.

Right now I will tell you the tale of Nathan and the Excess Baggage.

I was aware even leaving Portland that my luggage was going to be grossly overweight for my flight from London to Zurich to Salzburg. The weight limit was 20kg and I had two bags that weighed that much and a little more. But I just kept saying "things will work out," and that "they usually do for me." So I got to London and hauled my luggage up to the Swiss Air counter where I was told it would be 185 pounds (almost 400 dollars!) in excess fees. Not too feasable. :-/
But the young lady was nice and told me it was too early to do anything but to come back in an hour and hopefully her colleague could work something out (because her shift was about over). So I waited in great suspense and in an hour, when I came back, none of the people I had talked to were there. I explained my situation again and was sent to Swiss Air's customer service type counter where a mean lady flatly refused me any exception. She said my only other option was to ship it with the excess baggage company which I soon found out would still have been 140 pounds!
At this point I really began to fret and worry. Not having any way of contacting anyone made this whole situation a lot more dire. I went back to the Swiss Air counter for one last plea and as I did, the guy who had been there in the first place walked up with another guy. They instantly began to scheme and plot. I think their original plan was just to sneak my extra bag on but when they found out I had already talked to the, in their words, "excess baggage-obsessed" lady at the other counter, they were distressed. Apparently she was some sort of head lady and her knowing about the situation made it impossible to do a simple sneak.
So they schemed and they plotted and it was so nice of them--the whole crew got into it. Finally one of the guys told me to go pretend to ship it with the excess baggage company and I carted myself over there. In a couple minutes he rushed over and urged me to come with him. We ran covertly up to the Moroccan Air counter and my Swiss angel arranged for one of my bags to go on that plane. As soon as it was on he ran off and said "I don't know you, nothing happened." without me even having the chance to thank him!
I felt almost too blessed for words. I still can't even believe the whole thing.

Switzerland was amazing as well. Just every European man acts and dresses like such gentlemen. For example, when thanked for helping take some luggage down from the overhead bins, this one Swiss man said "Thank you, you're a gentleman." In a truly kind and unassuming, matter-of-fact way the other man replied "Of course; there aren't many of us left."

Europe is a truly amazing continent. It is unbelievably beautiful as well. This weekend we went on some tours through the Austrian countryside to the most beautiful lake town I could ever even have imagined as well as to other places like the Kaiser Villa, the summer mansion of Franz-Joseph (the man Franz-Ferdinand was to succeed). I really can't even describe how beautiful everything was, and no picture would ever convey the feelings of this country's beauty.

I still need some rain boots. There hasn't been a day without rain yet.

Coming soon...

2007-09-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I am sound and safe here in Salzburg, things are going great! I have some really fun stories already, but they are all written down in the other building and I am too lazy to trudge through the rain and back to get them up here.

We are making an overnight trip tomorrow so I won't be posting in the next 24 hours, but stay tuned and stuff should be up soon. Thanks for reading.

Every Sprinkler in Town Is Frantically Sprinkling

2007-08-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

I always told myself I would never start a blog, but right now it seems like a good idea. I am doing this so that you, dear reader, can keep up with me while I am out and about. Being in Europe for a year without a cellphone or an internet connection in my room is going to make communication with the rest of the world a little harder for me. So hopefully here you can at least get updates as to what I'm doing, where I've been recently, and things like that.
Leave me comments to let me know you're perusing my publishings!

Right now I am living in an apartment on Chapman University campus with my buddy Bo and two, kind of three, other guys. Two of them go to Chapman and split the rent with Bo--the third guy is here nine days out of ten and crashes on the couch like me. : )
I've been working at Disneyland, specifically Splash Mountain. It's an alright job, I just wish I had more hours.
And that pretty much sums up my life right now: working and hanging out with these guys. It's been a great time.

I will most likely be Greyhound-ing up to Portland on the 31st and arriving on the morning of the 1st. I begin my adventurous solo flight through Dallas, two different London airports, and Vienna on the morning of the 3rd, which will put me in Salzburg just in time for school to start on the 5th. Family and friends in Portland--I hope I find time to see you amidst all the rushed packing and storing I will be doing!

Till next time,
Auf wiedersehen.