Thinking Travel

photo by Adactio

By the time you read this I’ll be in Madrid. Hopefully enjoying a nice cafe con leche and a tortilla.

I’m trying out a new journaling technique on this trip. Two, actually.

The first one is a postcard journal. I’m going to buy postcards and make my journaling notes on them. When I get back home I’ll bind them together.

The second one is a photo journal of all of the food I eat and the cafe con leche I drink. I’m going to take a photo of everything I eat on this trip.

I’ll show you the finished products when I’m get home. Until then, I’m going to enjoy Madrid and Granada!

What I did over the weekend:

Friday. Even though I flew to Atlanta on a plane that was about the size of a Suburban,   the flight turned out to be quite ok and not scary. I might even go so far as to say that I enjoyed the flight.

Most of all I’m pleased to report that year’s flight to ATL was less eventful than last year’s…

Saturday. The workshop I co-facilitated went very well and I felt like I actually helped people. Later, a barista at the hotel cheerfully made (really good) lattes for a handful of customers, even though she’d already closed two hours earlier. That’s good customer service.

Sunday. Aaron and I went to Target and Trader Joe’s with coupons and grocery list in hand and left $200 poorer! We did a stock-up shop, bought fresh fruit, and have lunches for a couple weeks, but still…things are getting expensive.

Something to read before we head into 2008…

• Travel Skills: I’m Getting Better at Them
• Journaling Prompts: Globalism
• Coffee Talk
• Bridging the Academic/Business Divide
• ORYGUN
• Hot, Hot, Hot
• Serendipity in a Car
• Happy 4th of July
• Another View

Hey! Join the conversation: leave a comment!

This is a perfect evening.

I’m at Open Eye Cafe with Aaron. The sun has set, we’re drinking coffee, and Disintegration (the Cure) is playing.

Hope you’re having an equally perfect evening.

Updates from our Labor Day Weekend Home Improvement-o-Rama…In three days we:

• Painted the trim and closet doors in the guest room and re-painted portions of the ceiling. The trim was easy enough to paint but the paneled doors turned out to be a royal pain. I initially had this grandiose notion that I’d repaint all 16 of our paneled doors (both sides). Now I’m think I’ll wash them down and be done with it.

• Pulled up the smells-like-cat/dog carpet and pad in preparation for painting the floor to seal it before the new carpet arrives (who knows when that will be). The old carpet is now on our deck and we’re really hoping we don’t have a late-summer storm because it’s hard enough as it is to carry the 12ft long carpet cigar.

• Unpacked a bunch more boxes in the den (Aaron’s office). We love the wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves!

• Made our weekly visit to Home Depot/Lowes/Target.
• Spent too much money.

OK, we worked for like three days straight but now it seems like we accomplished very little.

Well, what else did we do?

• Watched the German movie “The Lives of Others” about East Germany and the Stasi. Great movie. Loved hearing German, since I so rarely hear it anymore.

  (Random memory: When I taught in Magdeburg I supposedly lived across from a former Stasi office.)

• Ate a lot of take-out because we never seem to have time to go grocery shopping.

• Sucked down lattes at Open Eye Cafe Sunday morning (thanks for the coffee date, Momo!).

• Did 5 baskets of laundry at a local laundromat/bar (our dryer is still broken and it’s too humid to dry our laundry at home since our a/c is still broken).

  (Random memory: When I taught in Magdeburg there were no laundry facilities in our dorm so we scrubbed our clothes in our giant East German claw foot bathtub with scalding hot water and then hung jeans, shirts, socks, sweaters and the like from every chair, desk corner, and any other object that was sturdy enough to hold a dripping mass of wool. We cranked the heat so the clothes would dry faster but with three people’s soggy clothes covering every inch of the room, it got a tad muggy. So we opened the giant window to let in the -30 degree very non-muggy “chunky breeze” (i.e. wind/snow). *Sigh* Good times.)

• Cleaned, vacuumed, did dishes. (For like the umpteenth time. What’s up with this? I’ve been doing this cleaning thing for several years…and I’m still not finished. ; ) Ha. Lame joke, I know.

• Attended the final installment of a summer festival. Unfortunately, we were the only ones to attend because we were a week too late.

• Scribbled in my big fat red journal.

• Since Aaron gets up way before I do on weekend mornings, I know he accomplished some things while I was still comatose.

• Uploaded photos to Flickr (click on the banner in the right sidebar).
• Escorted a grasshopper from our bedroom ceiling to the backyard.
  Three times.

And what did October do all weekend?

Today…

Memories. As I type this I’m sitting at my desk in my just-a-little-bit-more-organized office. The windows are open, the ceiling fan is spinning, and I can hear Aaron digging away in the dirt of his latest garden project (more about that in a bit). Best of all I’m drinking an iced Senseo. (It’s hot and sticky today and our A/C is still on the fritz.)

Any time I drink iced coffee I aways think back to the summer afternoons I spent with my German host parents on their patio drinking what my host mom called Calorie Bombs. She’d leave the left-over morning coffee to cool on the kitchen counter. In the afternoon she’d slyly ask if we should have a Calorie Bomb and enjoy the summer afternoon outside. I always said yes because she made the best iced coffee ever – strong coffee with milk, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, topped with freshly whipped cream.

Nowadays I indulge in iced coffee any chance I get so I make mine skinny: coffee, ice, and skim milk. Yum.

Unpacking. This afternoon I unpacked a few more boxes in my office. I’d procrastinated because I thought I might paint the walls first. But things have gotten busy for both of us as work and we’ve had to be more realistic about what we can accomplish on the weekends.So for now I’m sorting my books into two piles: office and den (Aaron’s office, the den, has floor to ceiling built-in shelves). Only the books that relate to intercultural communication/training, travel, or journaling receive a spot on my office bookshelves. Everything else goes in our downstairs library.

Next on the agenda: Sort thru all of my paper (articles, grad school notes, diss stuff, receipts) and reduce it by half.

The Garden. Aaron is working on a new gardening project that has turned out to be a

tad more work than anticipated. I’m so impressed with his determination and when he’s

finished the side of our house will be lined with beautiful butterfly-attracting flowering

bushes.We bought several purple and white bushes and green and red grasses last weekend at Southern States and decided how to arrange them. Then Aaron got to work digging up the existing weeds and dirt. That’s when he discovered that the dirt is actually clay, which I’ve learned is very difficult to dig up, at least in our yard. So he’s getting quite a work-out today.

Dilemma. Aaron and I have a love/hate relationship with TV. I love it, Aaron hates it. ; ) No, actually, there are shows we enjoy watching (Lost, Ugly Betty, Heros, and of course anything on PBS) . When we were first dating we used to hang out at Aaron’s apartment on Sunday nights eating dinner while watching the Simpsons and the X-Files. That was back when we both had free cable. And for the record, I have to add that Aaron had a ginormous TV that took 5 strong men to carry (ok, maybe not quite that big) , while I was content with my sling-under-my-arm-ultra-portable 13-inch set. Then we both moved to apartments where we had to pay for cable and we both opted out.

We then spent the next few years TV free. And it was fabulous. Really. (This is coming from a TV-addict.) Then one Friday night while eating at a brew pub in East Lansing, MI, we found ourselves glued to a TV hanging from the ceiling. It was the opening ceremony for the Sydney Summer Olympics. A relative of mine was in the Olympics that year and I wanted to watch him compete, so after dinner we rushed to Radio Shack and bought rabbit ears for Aaron’s TV. And then we watched the Olympics non-stop.

Since then we’ve disposed of Aaron’s TV and have been using my itty-bitty TV. We didn’t want to deal with moving Aaron’s 5-ton set and since both of us were in grad school, we didn’t want another distraction. So we got used to hearing Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke and the gang, but not actually seeing what they were up to because channel 11 looked more like a colorful snowstorm than a TV show. And we didn’t think twice about watching movies on our laptops. We decided we’d buy a nice TV and DVD player when we bought a house.

So last night we checked out 21st century TV technology and found that we are completely out of the loop. But we’re not sure we care about being in this loop. I mean, I’m a Lost junkie, and I’d LOVE to watch it every Wednesday on a 40+inch Plasma so I could see all the details fraught with hidden clues and read-between-the-lines meaning, but honestly, I’m just as happy watching it nearly commercial-free on my laptop on Thursdays.

Neither of us want to shell out another $40+ /month to Time Warner for cable because Aaron won’t watch it and I’ll watch too much of it (it’s physically impossible for me to turn the TV off when HGTV is on). But it’s looking like we’ll need cable, direct TV or something similar in order to get HD on an LCD TV. And then if we want HD when we watch DVDs, we have to buy a special DVD player and an extra-special cable.

It’s not that we’re lusting after HD or an LCD…but we figure if we’re going to buy a TV we should buy a nice one. We just didn’t realize how complicated and expensive TV-buying had gotten. And with everything else we have to research and then buy, we’re not yet convinced that spending the amount of a nice trip to Costa Rica for a TV is going to add enough value to our lives to make it worth the effort.

Cantaloupe Cat. October, my brother-in-law’s cat whose living with us for a few months, is a very choosy eater. She has no qualms about letting us know when she’s less than satisfied with her meal. Recently we were becoming a bit desperate because she didn’t like anything we scooped into her food dish. Then one afternoon October sniffed, licked, then attacked a slice of cantaloupe on my lunch plate. As I held the rind she chomped and slurped with abandon. I had no idea that cats liked cantaloupe.

Coffee shops have a way of pulling me through their doors. I get weak in the knees when I think about sipping hot creamy latte. Give me a journal, a comfy pen, and put me in a coffee shop and I’m in heaven.

Because I worked from home thru my many years of grad school I often fled for a coffee house when I needed inspiration. It never failed. Consequently, I spent most of the time I studied for my German literature comprehensive exam at either Beaner’s or Schuler Books in East Lansing, MI (I needed all the inspiration I could get).

So anyway, I took Thursday and Friday off so I’ve been enjoying a long weekend (the 4th thru today). Aaron had to work so I planned to relax, take things easy, do some things I no longer get to do during the workweek. Like spend some quality time at Open Eye or 3 Cups.

But when I woke up on Thursday morning, I was drawn to our deck. I made a latte-like Senseo and sat at our table outside as I journaled. I’d completely forgotten about going to a coffee house.

I’ll go Friday, I decided. And since I had coffee at home on Thursday, I’ll splurge on a really big latte with whole milk.

Friday arrived, and I got up early (7am on a day off!). Once again was lured onto our deck. I watched the deer emerge from our bamboo forest. I listened to the July bugs that become louder as the humidity increases. I enjoyed the many birds that swoop in-between our trees and chirp up a storm in the morning. And once again I completely forgot about going to the coffee house.

I don’t have any earth-shattering point to all of this. I guess I’m just surprised that I like our house so much that I’d forget to go to a cafe. But then I’ve never liked where I was living enough to develop that type of affinity.

Right now I’m sitting on the deck. I made some of the Blue Mountain coffee I brought back from Jamaica and have been sitting here relishing the relatively low humidity enhanced by a soft breeze. It’s going to be HOT and sticky today. Just in the 45 minutes I’ve been outside the breeze has stopped and I’ve started to sweat. And since I’ve been sitting with my legs propped on the table, one has fallen asleep. I think it’s time to go inside and turn on the A/C. (Yes, I’m a wimp.)

But first: I titled this post “Lazy Sunday” because it refers to a 2005 SNL video (they later changed the name to “Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia!”) that was parodied by many a small towns, including Carrboro. Check out “It’s Carrboro” to see where we live.

Last night, my sweetheart treated me to a surprise Valentine’s dinner at Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant in Chapel Hill.

Yum.

I’m not an adventurous eater AT ALL. But I’ll eat anything at Queen of Sheba, even if I don’t immediately recognize it. It’s that good.

The last time I was at Sheba’s was in November when our SIETAR-NC group went there for dinner. Using torn-off pieces of a very thin pancake-like bread, we scooped up spicy lentils and creamy mashed chickpeas off a communal round platter.

Towards the end of our meal, our lovely server, who I think was the restaurant owner, spent some time talking with us about her native Ethiopia. What caught my attention was the bit about coffee: it’s a beverage meant to be shared, not consumed alone.

I love coffee. I love coffee shops. Whenever I need a creative tune-up, I head to one of my favorite cafés. While studying for my PhD exams, and later writing my dissertation, my brain sparked the best ideas while sipping a creamy latte or smooth café au lait in a secluded corner of Schuler’s, Beaners , and later Caribou, Weaver Street , and 3 Cups …alone.

For me, coffee is creativity, ideas, stamina, and too often in a paper cup. Because much of my work and many of my North Carolina to Michigan road trips have been solitary ventures, coffee was my warm and comforting companion.

So my reaction to hearing that coffee is never (traditionally) consumed alone in Ethiopia was ethno-centric: I’d never survive there, there’s no way I could always drink coffee with others, I couldn’t imagine making small-talk in order to get coffee, etc.

But before I got too far with this line of thought I laughed at myself because 1) I’m not going to Ethiopia any time soon (though I’d love to), so it’s not like this is going to be an immediate problem, and 2) I’m supposed to be open-minded about things like this, right?

Then I started thinking about coffee from a different perspective: I began to recall the numerous times coffee has been a community experience for me:

When I’m at home to visit family, we spent hours at 5^th Street Public Market sucking down americanos and café au laits while catching up.

My grandma, a fellow coffee enthusiast, and I often express missing each other by saying “I wish you were here so we could go get a latte!”

At a conference in Seattle a few years ago, a grad school friend and I re-connected over lattes in one of the oldest cafés in town.

I conducted diss interviews with study abroad students at German cafés.

My husband and I love reading while sitting close at a tiny round table, our coffee cups inches apart.

While teaching in Freiburg, Germany a few years ago, I spent afternoons planning lessons with my colleagues…in a café, over coffee.

You get the idea.

I still love scoring that perfectly secluded café table near the window that offers the perfect balance of espresso-machine hissing and quiet isolation so I can work in blissful solitude. But after thinking about coffee from a different perspective, I have a better appreciation of the times when coffee creates community.

Journaling Prompt: What does coffee mean to you?