Ode to Laundry

I knew I was going to miss New York spectacularly, and I have not disappointed myself in this respect. Obviously, I long for the predictable NYC staples, like Central Park, the West Village nightlife, and the ubiquitous froyo joints (duh). Even more obviously, I miss the subway. But in the two times I've revisited Manhattan since my departure two months ago, even I have been surprised by what evokes pangs of nostalgia. The smell, for instance. Yes, you can laugh. For those of you who can't conjure up an olfactory image of what New York smells like, may I refer you to Christopher Solomon's recent description in City Room: "you always smelled like Spent Camel Lights, and warming urine, and the No. 14 bus - a perfume I never could quite embrace." (In my defense, New York also consistently smells of food - that's got to be what I miss, right?)

But there is another component to the perfume particular to Manhattan: the cloying scents that waft out from the laundromats that punctuate its streets. If the subway is my favorite New York social institution to analyse, the laundromat is a close second. The washer/dryer-less state that screams of poverty anywhere else in the nation is an accepted fact of life in New York City. The idea of having room for a washer/dryer in the average NYC apartment is laughable at best. And so New Yorkers flock to laundromats in droves, toting their dirty clothes in granny carts that, once again, would elicit jeers and sneers outside of the nation's hippest city.

When I, privileged suburban kid that I am, arrived in New York and was told that I, too, would be reporting to the laundromat with regularity, I was less than thrilled. Laundry is heavy. Laundry is expensive (especially in New York). Laundry is time-consuming. I could have written you a novel about the things I would have liked to do instead of carrying my duffel bag (I was too cheap to invest in a granny cart - bad move) full of dirty clothes to Ms. Bubbles in the rain. Laundromats are dirty. They are crowded. The machines often don't work. If you run out of quarters or forget something, you're out of luck.

But doing laundry, I gradually discovered, is a social bonding experience. As the subway is the perfect microcosm of the metropolis, so is the laundromat the perfect microcosm of the neighborhood. Local culture thrives amidst the whirring and clanking of the machines. Harried Hispanic mothers sing to their toddlers. Columbia undergrads study their biology flashcards. Elderly African-American women counsel the clueless Columbia co-eds on how to separate their colors. Should a washing machine selfishly gobble up your quarters and refuse to give them back, you can rest assured that everyone in the sweltering, overly-perfumed room will offer you a sympathetic look - and, if you're lucky, some extra quarters. They've all been there, after all.

It never ceases to amaze me how, behind its polished façade of anonymity, New Yorkers manage to assert and satisfy their need for human connectedness in ceaselessly innovative ways. By the end of the year, I loved going to the laundromat, even when I was so busy that I had to do it late at night. The laundromat was my secret community. And I miss it. Here in New Haven, I am blessed with a washer and a dryer in my kitchen. I don't even have to contend with stairs. It is easy. It is efficient. It is free. And it is a ritual that has been robbed of its meaning.

City living

The children at St. Martin de Porres Academy are the most stereotypical city kids you will ever meet. The only time they ever see nature or wildlife is when we take them on school-sponsored trips outside of New Haven, when they are appropriately fascinated by said phenomena. Last week, I accompanied a group of kids on a trip to a retreat center on the Long Island Sound and spent most of the day convincing 6th graders that a) the crickets weren't harbingers of the apocalypse, b) the seagulls weren't going to swoop down and eat them, and c) the seaweed wasn't going to come creeping out of the water and attack them.

Intrigued though the children may be by fishing nasty seaweed out of the Sound, their chief source of fascination seems to revolve around cattle. To encourage a college-bound culture (one of my school's maddeningly catchy catch-phrases), I have mounted a UW pennant above my desk. Invariably, the students who come into my office to work on applications are far more interested in the minutiae of my personal life than in their application questions, so "Ms. Saylor - you're from Wisconsin??" is a frequent avenue of distraction. Naturally, they all want to know if I spent my childhood communing with my bovine companions in the middle of a field, drinking milk straight from the udder. The answer I give all depends on how much crap the interrogating child has given me on the day in question.

Two bovine conversational gems for you, my neglected readers:

1) While in the middle of a where-do-you-want-to-go-to-high-school interview, a particularly ADD 8th grader interrupts my interrogation to ask: "Wait, you're from Swiss-consin? That's where all the swiss cheese comes from, right?"

Ohhhhhh boy.

2) While driving an 8th grade girl to her shadow day at a Catholic high school a 45-minute drive into the CT boonies, we pass a field of cattle. I am busy trying not to get lost, not to get into an accident in CT traffic, and not to accidentally swear in frustration that I don't even notice. My student, however, nearly leaps out of her seat in fascination and concern. "What's wrong with the cows, Ms. Saylor? Are they dead???" Confused, I ask her what leads her to believe that the cows have moved on from their earthly life. "They're all lying down, Ms. Saylor! Are the cows gonna be all right??"

Apparently I have come to Connecticut from Wisconsin, via New York City, to be a specialist on marine plant life and bovine behavior. Who knew that's where a degree in religious studies would get me?

Ich bin...ein New Yorker?

I spent much of the last year trying to resist New York's charms. The City (as those of us who are unlucky enough to live tantalizingly close to New York, but not close enough to visit regularly, are doomed to call it) intrigues, fascinates, seduces, despite one's most valid and persistent reasons to hate it.

My decision to move to The City was made on such a whim that it took me a long time to realize that it takes a certain type to sign up to live in Manhattan. 90% of the Midwestern friends and family members who came to visit me in New York (and they were numerous) took one good look at the city and said, "It's nice to visit, but I could never live here." And so they don't try to. In my humble opinion, an attempt to live in New York can lead to one of only two outcomes: either you hate it so much that you leave soon after your arrival, or you're hooked. You may not know you're hooked, you may not really want to be hooked - but once New York has gotten under your skin, there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it.

For the last month, I feel like I have done very little besides pine for New York. Believe me, this mindset came as much to my surprise as it did to my housemates' annoyance - there are, after all, few things more insufferable than a sulky New Yorker.

...wait...did I just call myself a New Yorker? In many ways, I'm decidedly not - living in Manhattan for one year hardly qualifies as an ontological identity shift. Native New Yorkers would certainly never mistake me for one of their own. Besides, I'm a proud Sconnie, and will be til the day I die! But somehow, without my being aware of it, I made it to the point where my non-New Yorker friends tell me I've become a New Yorker. And that's more than a little disconcerting.

I think it took leaving the city to make me realize how badly I want to go back. The good news is that, after I finish this internship in New Haven, I can! And I probably will. If for no other reason that I'm nowhere close to done analyzing the microsociological dynamics of the subway system (you don't think I'm serious? I miss the subway so much that a compassionate New Yorker friend of mine took pity on me and mailed me a subway map to sustain me through this year-long public transportation fast.). I'm glad I'm here for the year. I'm glad I have this opportunity to experience a different kind of East Coast life (and I promise to blog about it one of these days - it's definitely not boring!). But I don't want to be a New Havenite. I don't want to be a Nutmegger. To my very great surprise, I want to be a New Yorker. At least enough to try living there again for another few years. By that time I should have the interpersonal subway dynamics figured out, right?

As I'm sure you all wanted to know...

There are many things that are readily available in New York, but difficult to locate in New Haven. Red lentils, for instance. Or taxi cabs. Or halal carts, should you fall prey to a sudden craving for a lamb kebab (it happens, you know). The list goes on and on. But there is one thing, I have been delighted to discover, that is plentiful here and virtually impossible to find on the isle of Manhattan: bathrooms.

Frankly I'm amazed I never got around to writing a post about the Manhattan bathroom scarcity problem while I was living there. It's honestly worse in New York than it was in France - because in Europe, at least, it's socially acceptable to pee outside in a state of bladder emergency. There are just NO public bathrooms! There are virtually no gas stations to rely on, and restaurants (even the McDonald's!) and coffee shops restrict their access by key. Even most libraries don't have them! There are few worse things than being downtown and having to go, especially if you're on a budget and can't afford a cup of coffee every time nature calls. All smart New Yorkers have their own, well-guarded lists of places they can depend on in a pinch (I won't share all of mine, but should you find yourself in need on the Upper West Side, may I refer you to the Cathedral), but still! So much unnecessary stress!

However: New Haven, while it hasn't yet realized that its denizens might occasionally want to hail a cab or crave an Ethiopian red lentil curry, has come to the enlightened discovery that its citizens have normal human body functions. Whether you find yourself on the Yale campus, with its blessedly unlocked buildings (take that, Columbia!), or simply near a restaurant that doesn't have dictatorial policies about restroom access, you don't have to plan a day in New Haven around your bathroom breaks. And it is absolutely glorious.

Why packing is a downright terrible idea

I am, by all accounts, not much of a procrastinator. I was always the obnoxious student who started the paper as soon as it was assigned, just so I wouldn't have it hanging over my head. Leaving things to the last minute stresses me out unbearably. Except when it comes to packing. Indeed, it seems that the whole of my ability to put things off has been funneled into this one realm. I'm heading to Connecticut Saturday morning, and I'll probably be cramming things into bags up until the last possible second.

For now, all I can motivate myself to do is to just...move things around disconsolately. For all my inability to actually pack, I am quite excellent at constructing and disassembling large, random, piles. I spent a few hours last night engaged in this pursuit, until I gave up and went out with my friends, hastily chucking the heaps of kitchen utensils and winter outerwear out of my bed and onto the floor.

I woke up around 3:00 in the morning with an inkling that something wasn't right. Sure enough, I quickly became aware of a sharp pain in my right buttock. Further analysis revealed that I was lying on some kind of sharp metal object: which turned out to be...a Lamb of God cookie cutter (from the Resurrection set - because every good Episcopalian girl has one?).

Gotta say,waking up in the middle of the night to discover the image of a divine sheep painfully imprinted on my rear didn't really do much to boost my motivation to pack. It did, however, give me a rather severe craving for cookies. Good thing I'm moving into a house with a real oven in 2 days. Perhaps I should acquire some non-Easter themed cookie cutters in the meantime? It would be another way to delay packing...

I ♥...the subway

Just to clarify: the reason that the only reflective, summing-up post I've written was a snarky list of things I won't miss is definitely not because there aren't things I will miss. Quite the contrary! There are SO many things I'll miss that I can't even begin to confine them to a bulleted list (though, again, that's not for lack of trying). As the blog attests, I have come full circle in my attitude towards New York: from unabashed enthusiasm, to frustrated disdain, to a more informed appreciation. I am excited for the opportunity to try out living in New England...but I can't help but hope that I'll wind up back in Manhattan someday. Not permanently, but maybe for a few years...

So! Things I will miss! The list is endless, really: acquiring crazy seafarer stories, my fabulous coworkers and roommates, the incredible people at St. Luke's, all the amazing cultural opportunities, etc, etc, etc. But one of the things I'll miss the most is also one of the most surprising (though you, my esteemed readers, may have guessed it): the subway. I have spent a minimum of two hours underground every day for the past year. I have had no shortage of horror stories: trains breaking down, accidentally going to Brooklyn, getting drenched in chocolate milk...after all I've been through, I consider myself thoroughly entitled to hate the entire New York City transit system. But I don't. I don't hate it in the least.

I feel like every college grad can point back to The Class That Changed Their Life. It's taken me a while to recognize that mine is not, as it perhaps should have been, the Introduction to the Gospels course that I took my sophomore year, but in fact L'Introduction a l'Anthropologie Urbaine, the urban anthro course that I randomly selected from the incomprehensible course list during my semester in Aix. Thanks to Mme. Abigail Peses (who spoke with such a thick Marseille accent that it's a miracle I learned anything at all), I was introduced to the fascinating world of microsociology - in particular the study of interpersonal interactions in public space. All of a sudden, I had an analytical framework for the largely unspoken rules that govern our public behavior. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have not been the same since.

I have often said that the subway is the perfect microcosm of New York society. It has, thus, proven to be the ideal arena for microsociological analysis. If an empty seat opens up on a crowded train, what factors determine who gets it? How do you react to the person who holds up an entire train by getting their bag stuck in the door? When the time comes to encourage people to move into the center of the car, do you make a verbal announcement, or do you just push? How does the size of a person's 'bubble' change as a train gets fuller? When is it acceptable to strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to you? Is it socially permissible to switch seats if your neighbor is particularly smelly? What can you reasonably eat on the train without attracting dirty looks? As anyone who has ever taken the train with me knows, I am fascinated by these kinds of questions to the point of obsession.

This fond discourse on the merits of the subway system is not to say that there haven't been days when I've longed for the ability to teleport from Harlem to Newark and back. There have. But, at the same time, I know that a huge part of my understanding of and appreciation for this city has come from the time I've spent zooming through underground tunnels, pondering the intricacies and idiosyncracies of New Yorkers' behavior. If I ever live in New York again, I will fervently hope for a shorter commute. But don't be surprised if I take up riding the subway for fun - or if my first book is an exploration of subway sociology :)

5 Things I Hate About You

My muse has utterly abandoned me of late. The number of unfinished blog posts queuing up in my drafts folder bears witness to that. I guess you're supposed to be consoled by the fact that, while I'm not actually producing a steady stream of witty, insightful reflections for your enjoyment, I'm going half crazy trying.

But fear not! As my departure from NYC (and, thus, my arrival in New Haven) looms increasingly large on the horizon, I suspect there will be no shortage of attempts at producing some kind of summative list of what the year has meant, what I've learned, what I loved, what I hated, etc. Hopefully a few of them will make it past the draft stage. Here's one for you now. The theme is cynicism.

5 THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT NEW YORK. not even a little bit.

1) La Granja. Wikipedia defines it as: "Spanish for 'the farm,' cf. grange, monastic grange," but don't let yourself be fooled by the idyllic connotations. La Granja is Harlemese for "the nastiest business establishment in all of Manhattan." It is, in short, a live poultry store. And I have the twin pleasures of living just across Amsterdam Ave. from it, and having to walk past it anytime I want to take the A train. It almost always involves fording a stream of chicken shit (and a veritable RIVER of chicken shit if it's raining). After seeing the conditions those birds live in, it is amazing that I have not reverted to my high school vegetarian state. Words cannot do justice to either the stench or my revulsion.

2) Newark Penn Station. One of few things that can be said for this transit hub is that it smells better than La Granja - but only slightly. For the past year, I have been lucky enough to get to pass through this fine establishment twice a day, five days a week. It is full of almost every kind of people that society labels as undesirable: homeless people, people who shoot heroin in the bathroom, people who beat their kids in the bathroom, people who expose themselves to you in the waiting area. On my better days, I am outraged that such destitution can go unnoticed by the tens of thousands of commuters who pass through the station each day. But 96% of the time, I avert my gaze, breathe through my mouth, and walk past the miserable hordes just like everyone else. A humorous child's misunderstanding of the Lord's Prayer reads: "Lead us not into Penn Station." The sad thing is, some days I pray it in earnest.

3) Marriage proposals. Getting hit on constantly. Being told I'm too skinny to have kids. Being objectified and sneered at. I have loved working at SCI, but these things? These I will not miss.

4) New York coffee norms. Go to your average Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, corner deli, whatever; ask for a regular coffee and you will get a chocolate milk-colored concoction containing more sugar than caffeine. The first time I, an avowed black coffee orderer, made this mistake, I was annoyed but tolerant (different strokes...you know...I guess...). The next time I ordered my morning coffee, I was more specific: I asked for "Coffee. Black." To be fair, it was black in color. But it still contained more sugar than coffee. I was less than amused. By now, I have learned that, to get my coffee the way I want it, I need to say: "Coffee. Black. NO sugar. NO splenda. NO milk." This request is always, invariably, each and every damn time met with consternation and confused follow up questions. "No sugar...? You want flavoring...?" It makes me want to tear my hair out. Is it so inconceivable that a person could want black coffee? I simply do not understand.

5) Rush hour. I do not actually believe in hell. But if I did, my picture of eternal damnation would look a lot less like Dante's Inferno and a lot more like Manhattan on a Friday at 4:00. Before I moved to New York, I loved Fridays, for obvious reasons. I was, thus, astonished to discover, as the year went on, that the mere thought of Fridays reliably filled me with dread. It's that bad. The only way for me to make it through Friday rush is to turn my iPod to maximum volume, stick my nose in a book, and turn off my sensory capacities as completely as possible: the goal is for me not to even notice I'm on the train, much less smushed into a corner of an un-air-conditioned car, surrounded by angry, angsty New Yorkers, all of whom are willing to trample and/or bitch out anyone who gets in their way. I have seriously considered investing in a hip flask for additional support. That bikeable commute in New Haven cannot arrive quickly enough.

There you have it. A more optimistic list to follow, I promise.

On Wisconsin!

And now, for a change of pace. Up until now, the mission of this blog has been to describe, depict, and demystify New York City for an audience primarily made up of Wisconsinites (though I am consistently astounded by the unlikely reader locations turned up by my ClustrMap!). But now that my readership has expanded to include a large number of New Yorkers, I thought I'd turn the project on its head and do a bit of marketing and demystifying for my home state, where I currently find myself on a week of much-needed vacation. Because, seriously, New York friends: you have NO excuse not to high-tail it over here and come visit. For brevity's sake, I'll limit myself to 5 selling points (though I'll be happy to provide more via private correspondence to any interested parties!).

The top 5 best things about WI:

1) Lake Michigan. Dear Coasties, New Yorkers and otherwise who think of Wisconsin as "just another one of those good for nothing states in the middle of the country": we are not a Great Plains State. We have over 800 miles of Great Lakes Coastline, including both a breathtaking Milwaukee harbor and no shortage of gorgeous state parks. And FYI? When you look out at Lake Michigan you can't see the other side. It is not your average pond. It has waves. It has tides, even if they're not nearly of the same magnitude as the Atlantic. Best of all, it is BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely, mind-blowingly beautiful. I miss it every day I'm away from it.

2) Spotted cow. Aka, the best beer ever brewed by humankind. Made by the New Glarus Brewing Company, a small, local enterprise that refuses to sell its products out of state. Spotted was the first beer I learned to like, and I have yet to find one that can compete. You would be loathe to find a liquor-licensed establishment within our state borders that doesn't have it on tap. Better yet, it's affordable (having spent the past 11 months in a city where I can only afford to have one drink at a time, I appreciate cheap WI beer prices more than ever)! With these facts in mind, it's a wonder I was ever sober during my college years...

3) The Dane County Farmers' Market. Makes the Union Square market look like a dinky little Greenmarket cart. Held outdoors every Saturday from April through November, the Madison market winds all the way around the Capitol Square, and it is GLORIOUS. It is The Madison community event each week; virtually the entire city is in attendance. Go early if you actually want to beat the crowds and snatch up the best produce (and squeaky fresh cheese curds!), go mid-morning if you want to marvel at how utterly food-obsessed this lively, ultra-liberal city of not even 600,000 can get. Not a summer Saturday goes by when I don't wish that I were back on the Square with my camera and my tote bag. My enthusiasm about being there tomorrow is threatening to reach dangerous levels.

4) The Memorial Union Terrace. Aka, the best place to hang out in all of Madison, if not in the entire state. If you don't believe me, just check out the super cool Terrace webcam and see for yourself. Between the scenery of Lake Mendota, the easy access to Babcock Hall ice cream (made on campus from campus cows! most delicious ice cream you'll ever taste!), the constant free concerts and movies, and the endlessly flowing (and, once again, affordable!) pitchers of beer, you really can't go wrong. It is the quintessential Wisconsin experience.

5) Frozen custard. Now, you may think you have tasted this Most Hallowed of all Dairy Desserts, but seriously: unless you've been to Wisconsin, you haven't. This recently published article from the Village Voice is only half right: "Though first popularized in Coney Island, frozen custard—a soft extruded ice cream rich with egg yolks—is now primarily a Wisconsin phenomenon. In the city, you can get excellent custard at Timmy O's Frozen Custard...and at any Shake Shack location." While I cannot personally vouch for Timmy O's, I can assure you that Shake Shack's products, while tasty, do not even begin to approach the excellence available at places like Gilles, Michael's, or, my personal favorite, Kopp's. Not even in the same category. To get your custard fix, you'll just have to visit the Dairy State in person.

Sold yet?

Pride pictures

...and the internet is magically fixed, so here are the promised pictures (sooner than anticipated! Even I, the world's slowest blogger, sometimes manage to deliver). In reality, I was too busy having a blast to bother capturing the full, colorful spectrum of the Pride Parade, but here are a few random shots.

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Pride!!

This post is a bit late in coming, but with our internet down at home and all the people who could potentially fix it out of communications range for a week, things have been a bit chaotic. But anyway. Enough excuses.

This weekend, I was privileged enough to experience my first New York LGBT Pride. Actually, it was my first Pride experience anywhere, as the queer scene in Wisconsin isn't exactly something that captivates the attention of large numbers of people. I could fill up pages upon pages with exuberant, exultant adjectives to convey how much I loved it, but suffice it to say: it was FABULOUS.

Although the culminating Pride Parade in Manhattan took place last Sunday, Pride technically goes on for a month, with festivities and local festivals in the other boroughs building up through all of June. Since Memorial Day weekend, it's been impossible to walk 3 feet in the West Village (historically the gayest part of the city and also the end point of the parade) without tripping over a rainbow flag, a table full of pride paraphernalia, or someone handing out leaflets for a drag show. Pride in NYC is a big, big deal. Given that I attend a church that is a tremendous champion of LGBT rights, and that organizes more pride events than even the biggest enthusiast could possibly keep track of (and also that I've been volunteering with a church-run program that provides a safe space, arts workshops, and a weekly meal to 30-60 LGBT 13-21 year-olds, many of them homeless), it was impossible for me not to get sucked in.

So it was that I found myself parading down 5th Avenue on Sunday, alongside a surprising number of fellow New York Episcopalians (and a rather spectacular float), decked out in rainbow-themed attire and rocking out to the Lady Gaga that deafened the entire city all day. For a truly eye-opening experience, I recommend doing all these things alongside a dozen priests in collar (a good number of them women), and watching the facial expressions of the onlookers as they try to figure out how a clerical collar and a pride flag fit together. It was both surprising and incredibly encouraging, how many people cheered us on as we walked by. It is so urgent that our society start shaking off the belief that Christianity and homosexuality are irreconcilable, and I was deliriously happy to be able to do a very small something to contribute to that process of disbelieving.

After walking from 38th to Christopher St. (30-odd blocks) in 90 degree heat, I spent the rest of the day rejoicing in the glorious truth that proud, gay Episcopalians really know how to have a feast - pretty sure I ate 3 full meals between the hours of 4 and 6 pm. Turns out they're also incredible singers, as I discovered while losing half my body weight in sweat at St. Luke's Pride Evensong (turns out wearing vestments in an un-airconditioned building is miserable enough to make even me less enthusiastic than usual about acolyting). Good thing there was more amazing food afterwards - I really needed meals 4 and 5 after that.

I'm so very glad that I'll be living a mere 90-minute train ride away from all this fabulousness next year, because I would be rather put-out if this were to be a one time only experience. Pride 2011, here I come!

Pictures to follow as soon as I can get my laptop to a place with fast enough internet.

Yup, you knew it was coming!

Here it is, finally: the post about soccer. I know you were all wondering where it was.

Anyone who has spent 5 minutes in my presence over the past week and a half, followed me on facebook, or who knows the slightest bit about me, really, can affirm that the World Cup has taken possession of me completely. It's a good thing the Weltmeisterschaft only happens every 4 years, because we're talking dangerous levels of enthusiasm here. I pore over my bracket. I read match analyses in every minute of my spare time. I have soccer anxiety nightmares. And, of course, I live for the minutes spent glued to the TV - or, in less fortunate circumstances, the computer or the phone - when I can glut myself on the irresistible action, the waxing and waning of each team's stardom, the scandal, the gossip, the glory. It goes without saying that all this enthusiasm is multiplied by infinity when it's Germany that's on the screen.

Having blessedly been in Europe during the 2006 World Cup and the 2008 European Championship, I've really missed the evolution of the American soccer scene. Whether because the sport really has become more popular or because I live in New York, city of both soccer-crazed immigrants and wannabe-cosmopolitan yuppies who think following football is cutting edge (or perhaps both?) I can't say exactly, but it is gloriously apparent that the beautiful game has finally made it big in the US of A. And, while I still can't really bring myself to root for the US national team (though I will sheepishly admit that they're starting to gain my favor - now that they're not playing Germany in the round of 16!), I couldn't be happier about this transformation.

I could rhapsodize on and on for pages about how I think soccer has incredible potential to bring people together, especially in countries that have been through collective ordeals and need to rally around something, but I'll spare you that bit of soapboxery. Suffice it to say that soccer has finally become the talking point I've always wanted it to be, especially (and somewhat surprisingly) in the port. Soccer allegiances in New York City (and Newark) are particularly fascinating, because so many people here come from countries that never qualify for the World Cup, or that didn't this time. In the past week, I have had people from Egypt, Colombia, and the Philippines tell me that they're rooting for Germany, and people constantly surprise me when I ask them who they support. What's even more fascinating is the ability of a televised match in our seafarers' lounge to bring together anyone who happens to be in the building (which almost always includes me...) for speculation, gossip, and commiseration, even if only for a few minutes. At first I felt guilty for being a slacker and watching the matches at work (in my defense, I always make sure my ship-visiting is done first...), but then I realized that bonding with seafarers, truckers, and port workers over who can kick a soccer ball best is just a different face of chaplaincy. Which is cool. Really cool.

That said, I'm anything but an effective chaplain when the Mutterland's future is at stake. The poor Russian seamen who were trying to use the internet while the Germany-Ghana match was on this afternoon doubtless thought they were in the room with a complete lunatic. It certainly doesn't help that I've been exposed to Spanish match commentary (for some reason, we don't get ESPN and thus must resort to Univision), which means that my incoherent, trilingual rantings and ravings at the television have become quatri-lingual - to everyone's confusion, most especially my own. They snorted shamelessly when I shrieked at Özil's goal and giggled like schoolgirls each of the (many) times I swore. Anyone who tried to talk to me got waved away with a "for heaven's sake, NOT NOW!" and I may or may not have lied outright to shoo away a seafarer who wanted me to activate his sim card (during a match!? you've got to be kidding!!). But, I mean...everyone has their little obsessions, right?

Okay, I'm done rambling - at least for now :) It's just that I try to blog about what's on my mind to keep things as authentic as possible, and I'd be giving you a pretty damn skewed vision of what life has been like if I didn't at least mention soccer. So - let the games continue! And, more importantly:

LOS GEHT'S, DEUTSCHLAND!!!

Sex, marriage, childbirth...you know, the usual

Today marked the first day of my life as a married woman. JOKE! KIDDING! Well, kind of. Allow me to explain.

I wasn't kidding when I wrote, a few posts back, that the arrival of warm temperatures also heralded an onslaught of bizarre, inappropriate, and utterly exasperating sexual comments from the seafarers. It really is like someone flipped a switch. In the past 3 weeks, I have been hit on by what feels like 80% of the seafarers I've encountered. Did I say it was exasperating? Nay, scratch that. It has been driving me completely and utterly OUT OF MY MIND. To the extent that I dread going to work in the morning because, as I poetically ranted at my program director during a meeting last week, "I just feel like a giant, walking vagina!" (It had been a particularly bad day)

So I caved. While ambling about the East Village yesterday, I did what I should have done 9 months ago, and purchased a fake wedding ring. I'd been holding off for two reasons, really. 1) I didn't actually expect it to work - seeing as most of the perpetrators are, themselves, married men, I hardly thought they'd be deterred by a little piece of metal on my finger. And 2) I object to the idea of publicly broadcasting a false statement about myself to cater to social norms that are outdated, misogynistic, heteronormative, and FALSE. I live in the New York metro area in the 21st century, for Christ's sake! I should be able to function professionally without everyone needing to think there's a man in the background!

But getting up on my feminist soapbox isn't going to do a damn thing to change the fact that I have nearly 2 more months of climbing gangways ahead of me, and that it really would be in everyone's best interest if I made it through without murdering someone out of rage. So I forked over $12 for a plain, silver band, swallowed my pride, and entered the imaginary joys of wedded bliss.

To my utter and complete surprise, it worked.

Not only did it make me excited about going to work to see what would happen (since moving to NY, I've discovered that there's no better way to revive flagging enthusiasm than to pretend my life is a giant anthropology experiment), it deterred all but one of the forty-some seamen I interacted with from telling me I was beautiful, asking to marry me, or scolding me for being too emaciated to bear children (the latter insult, which I endured on 3 separate occasions last week, was really the straw that broke the camel's back)! Amazing!

Unsurprisingly, posing as a married woman in an international seaport yields some interesting conversations. Literally the second seafarer I spoke to this morning glanced down at my left hand, sighed despairingly, and said: "So you're already married too...I'll never find a wife..." Whereupon I was delighted to be able to nod sympathetically, reassure him that he was still quite young and would surely find the spouse of his dreams when he returned to the Philippines in a month, and all the while maintain an inner ostinato of "Not! My! Problem!" In a very pastoral way, of course :)

Many of them inquired about how many sons I had (seriously? are we living in the freaking middle ages!?), and were very concerned when I informed them I was childless. The dirty old man of a Greek cook who served me lunch (and was also the sole offender who told me I was beautiful) assured me that his beef would, "Make you very healthy! Good for babies!"

My favorite exchange about my marriage status was sneakily sandwiched into a confused discussion about the differences between Catholicism and Anglicanism. A Filipino engineer was inquiring about theological differences between the denominations and, at one point, asked: "Do you have Mary?" (as an aside, that is without any doubt my least favorite religious question to be asked, because I have an instinctive and unfounded aversion for the Virgin that alienates me from Roman and Anglo-Catholics alike) I awkwardly launched into my spiel about diversity of opinion in the Episcopal Church until he interrupted to ask, "No, you personally?" I waffled for a bit, then finally shook my head and said, "no, I'm not really so big on Mary." Whereupon he gasped, pointed to my ring, and said, "but what about your husband!?" Just in case I needed a reminder that my job rarely, if ever, makes any sense.

The ring is and isn't an improvement. It doesn't change the underlying reality that too many of the seafarers see me primarily as a baby-maker; it just shifts the focus. It will, I imagine, necessitate me spinning what threatens to be a dangerously elaborate tale of how I came to be married, who the husband is, when, where, why, etc. But these past few weeks have made me realize that every human being has a breaking point, and that I have reached mine. Not only do I get nothing out of ship-visiting if I'm constantly angry and frustrated; the seafarers certainly get little (if any) benefit from a tantalizingly unavailable chaplain who does nothing but yell at them. The ring, it seems, makes everyone's lives better.

...including yours! Because, if I'm sure of anything, it's that there will be plenty more amusing marriage stories to come. So keep reading!

Telecommunications

One of the biggest components of my job is topping off seafarers' sim cards. Almost all of the mariners have great difficulty understanding the voice prompts on the t-mobile customer service hotline (for which I can't blame them in the least), so it's much easier for everyone involved if I just do it for them. Of course, this means that I have had to learn how to handle cell phones of all shapes, sizes, qualities, and nationalities - which is both harder and more interesting than you might think.

Complication #1: because of our proximity to Newark airport, t-mobile service is ABYSMAL in the port. Finding a signal is usually a complicated game of turning the phone on and off repeatedly and wandering around the ship until you find a magical spot (the last bit is a blatant violation of security protocol, but no one seems to care.). Complication #2: ships are incredibly loud. The volume of the background noise confuses hell out of the system's voice recognition capacity, and I usually have to try several times before it works. Complication #3: veteran seafarers who are aware of the first 2 complications will often times just chuck their phones in front of me, say "top off!" and then leave. Sometimes they'll pay in advance, sometimes not. Sometimes they'll tell me how much money they want me to put on, sometimes not. It's all a bit of a guessing game.

Of course, the biggest complicating factor is that, half the time, the phones are in other languages. I recently had to ask a burly Russian seafarer for help when I inadvertently accessed his picture library and got the screen stuck on an image of a curvy blonde woman wearing nothing but a santa hat. Not awkward at all.

But today, I think, I made the most awkward phone faux-pas of my life in trying to top off the absurdly complicated phone of a Turkish guy. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to get the damn thing to dial - random menu screens in Turkish kept popping up, and I kept on pressing buttons, hoping it would go away. At some point, I gave up and returned to the seafarer for help. He took one look at the screen, gasped in horror, and let loose what was clearly a stream of Turkish invective. Much frantic translation revealed that I had accidentally called his ex-girlfriend. Oops. So much for chaplains making seafarers' lives easier.

Francophone Irony

Apparently, I just can't get a break.

I woke up this morning with an awful sore throat and decided pretty quickly that there was no way I was going to make it to work. After going back to sleep for another 5 hours, I finally made it out of bed and convinced myself to go run some of the errands I ought to have run last week, including picking up some dry cleaning (It is worth pointing out that the dry cleaner is less than a block away from my house. That it has taken me almost a week to go fetch my clothes is indicative of the sorry truth that I have not, in fact, been in Harlem at all between the hours of 7-7 during that period of time. I need a more sustainable schedule.).

I walk in and am greeted by a man I haven't seen there before, who turns out to be the owner. While he's searching for my clothes, he answers his cell phone and begins conversing in French with a Moroccan accent. When he hands me my order, I, in a state of illness-induced delirium, completely inadvertently thank him in French. He promptly hangs up the phone, turns to me, wide-eyed, and...begins telling me his entire life story. In French.

In ordinary circumstances, I would have been delighted at the opportunity to speak French. As it was, I couldn't help but be a bit exasperated: I spend all day, every day, trying to convince reticent Filipino men that I can function in a pastoral capacity if they wish to avail themselves of it, to very little success. I take a freaking sick day and the first random man I meet decides that the French-speaking girl who walks into his dry cleaning shop in her pajamas is The Chosen One to listen to and solve all his family problems. What irony.

After half an hour, I finally manage to extricate myself from the conversation. He bids me adieu with strict instructions to come back to chat as often as I like. I sure wasn't about to tell him that I live less than a block away and have to walk past his store to get virtually anywhere. But on the plus side...I made a new friend?

I kind of hope I don't need anything else dry cleaned before August.

Ship Visiting Gone Wrong

It has been perpetually interesting, going through this service year and noting how my experiences compare with my expectations. For the most part, they scarcely line up at all: Harlem is nothing like I imagined it, living in community has yielded joys and challenges that are vastly different from the ones I foresaw, and - let's face it - nothing could have prepared me for the randomness and insanity of my job at the port.

One of the most thought-provoking reality/expectation disconnects has been how cushy my job seems in comparison to my housemates'. While they contend with hostile nursing home patients, maddeningly bureaucratic institutions, and screaming children all day long, I (for the most part, it seems) spend my days hanging out with my awesome clergy coworkers and getting myself invited to lunch on ships. Yes, of course that's painting an awfully optimistic picture. But it often seems to me that I should be encountering more institutionalized prejudice, dealing with more truly ugly situations, getting pushed more violently out of my comfort zone...you know?

In many ways, what I'm running into is simply what happens when a young white woman from the Wisconsin suburbs gets plunked in the middle of a totally different reality. Of course it's not exactly what I expected. But even within the port, it seems like I somehow go on all the easy ships while my coworkers have to deal with all the messiness and drama. My colleagues each have an arsenal of harrowing ship-visiting stories, many of them involving injuries and illnesses that went untreated for weeks and even months because the shipping companies were too cheap to provide transportation to a hospital or the necessary guards to accompany the hostile, alien seafarers.

Until yesterday, these stories were simply that: stories, tales that had nothing to do with my day-to-day comings and goings. But then I met Justado, and my outlook on the entire shipping industry was transformed in a flash. Justado is (well, was) a deck fitter on a container ship with what is, in the grand scheme of things, a company that takes comparatively good care of its seafarers. While crossing the mid-Atlantic, there was an explosion on deck, and Justado couldn't get out of the way in time. He suffered 3 broken bones in his hand and severe burns extending from his fingers to his upper arm. The ship was 3 days away from land when the accident occurred. That's 3 days with no medical attention and, worse, no painkillers. I know full well that there are far too many Americans with inadequate health care, but this brand of institutional negligence goes far, far beyond what anyone living in a modern, Western country can imagine enduring themselves.

When I saw him, he was getting ready to be flown home to the Philippines (7 months before his contract was due to end, which is an enormous financial burden on his family), despite the fact that his doctors wanted to keep him at the hospital for observation for another 2 days. The shipping company wanted him off their hands (and off of foreign soil, due to visa restrictions) as soon as possible, never mind the dangers to his health and his livelihood. For my part, I can safely say that I have never seen a human being in such visibly excruciating pain, nor have I seen a seafarer in such emotional distress.

After I had done my (highly inexpert) best to deal with the situation and returned to the office, I indignantly asked my coworkers just how badly a seafarer would have to be injured before the company would consider airlifting him out. My question was met first with blank stares, then with a chilling response: "Oh, sweetie, we've had crews come in where someone has died while crossing an ocean, and they've had to empty their freezer to store the cadaver." If someone were critically ill on a passenger ship, they would receive immediate medical attention. If an American merchant mariner were critically injured, they would be airlifted out by the military in a heartbeat. But if a Filipino man so much as dares to get himself hurt on the job, well, that's just too bad for him. He's got to suck it up and wait until the next port, and hope that someone will take pity on him and drive him to the nearest doctor.

It is rare for me to get on my soapbox about seafarers' rights, but this? This is just unconscienable. Much as I fervently wish that the whole incident had never occurred, I'm oddly grateful that I was the one who, by total coincidence, wound up visiting Justado's ship. My current state of outrage at the shipping company higher-ups makes me believe in the importance of what I'm doing with renewed commitment and enthusiasm.

Resumé building

Here is what my resumé currently reads under the Seamen's Church Institute subheading:

• Served as a full-time chaplain to merchant seafarers, providing them with spiritual counseling and assisting them with communications, financial matters, transportation/shore leave access, and legal issues

What it should really say:

• Worked full-time to deflect the explosive sexual tension that inevitably builds up when twenty-some virile men are cooped up on a ship for 6-12 months with little to no access to fertile females. Debunked strange, pseud0-theological myths. Sold phone cards and shepherded seafarers to the mall.

I don't know if it's the summer weather or what, but the port has been an absolute testosterone free for all lately. As you may have gathered from the lack of exasperated blog posts on the matter, I've grown much more adept at deflecting, ignoring, and re-directing the odd sexual things that get said on ships. Sure, I still get told I'm beautiful at least once a week (whereupon I either invent some ridiculous diversion, pretend to answer my phone, or start aggressively asking really banal questions of the perpetrators), but I haven't gotten a marriage proposal in over a month! I count this as serious progress.

Alas, my streak of good luck came to an end today. Below is a list of comments I fielded on the two ships I visited:

- From the Filipino chief cook of a container vessel that I've visited several times before: "I want to feed you lots! So you can become big! And have lots of babies!" Despite my stammering protests, he proceeded to feed me a full meal...at 10:45 in the morning. When I finally managed to extricate myself from his clutches, he called down the hallway after me: "Next time we're in port, I hope you will be fatter!"

- From the (also Filipino) crew of the ship I visited immediately thereafter, who were also hell-bent on feeding me (at least it was, by then, legitimately lunchtime): "You must be a fashion model!" And then, each of the 15 times I refused a plate of food, stating very clearly that I had just eaten and was too full to eat anymore: "You don't eat lunch so you can become a sexy?" To which someone else would unfailingly respond, "No, stupid, she's already a sexy!"

If I hadn't needed to stick around so that the chief officer could give me the phone card money he owed me, I would have left after the first offensive volley. It's just such a sticky situation. It seems an awful act of submission to the status quo to say that such comments bother me a lot less than they did 6 months ago, but what else can I do? Much as I wish it weren't so, I am just not of the right demographic to be an effective port chaplain much of the time. I'm younger than most of the people I work with. I don't have the benefit of a habit, or a clerical collar, or some other exterior symbol that sets me apart as a chaplain. And I'm female. No matter how many times I tell them I work for Seamen's Church, they have no reason to suspect that I'm anything besides a friendly young volunteer who comes to sell them phone cards. And thus, I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about what happens to the male sex drive when it's repressed for months on end.

It also appears that weird norms about what it's appropriate to say to a random woman who walks on to your ship and incredibly bizarre eschatologies go hand in hand. While on the second ship, I was helping a seafarer sort out a moneygram transaction that had gone wrong, and was writing down the customer service number for him. As I scribbled down the figures, the seafarer looked at me, aghast, and said "Mum! Is it...all right to call this number?" I assured him that it was perfectly possible to make a 1-800 call from the T-mobile sim card I had just sold him. "No, no," he replied, "I mean, is it all right with God?" Utterly confused as to when and how we had crossed over from tele-communications to theology, I asked for clarification. The even more bewildering response: "Don't you believe in the Bible, mum?" Whereupon he started reciting from Revelation with great enthusiasm. And it finally dawned on me that 1-800-MONEYGRAM translates to 1-800-666-394-726, and that this poor man suffered from the delusion that, if he dialed a satanic number to inquire about his transaction, the Antichrist would come to his ship and the apocalypse would begin. Talk about having no idea what to do. All I really could do was listen as he recounted his strange (and, I might add, not exactly true to what Revelation actually says) eschatological beliefs and repeatedly assure him that God wasn't going to hasten the hour of the second coming based on a customer service call.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of incredibly random ship conversations, let me end with two more perplexing questions that I've gotten in the past week:

1) From no less than 4 different people: "Is your hair real?" (yes.) Or, a slightly different variation: "Who made your hair?" (God.)

2) "You're Puerto Rican, right?" (no.)

Life is wild.

Running in the city: the obstacle course continues

It has come to my attention that, thanks to facebook and an active church gossip mill, this little blog is no longer the quasi-secret it has been for the past 9 months. Up until last weekend, almost no one I've met since I came to New York had been privy to this address, but now that the cat's out of the bag...well, welcome! This new wave of reader enthusiasm is simultaneously flattering and terrifying, but hopefully its primary effect will be to prompt me to actually update more than once a month. So here goes.

Yesterday, while driving the 72nd seafarer of the day to the mall (our driver is on vacation for 3 weeks, which means that the chaplains get to take turns filling in. Being an intern, I get to experience this unparalleled joy rather more often than anyone else seems to...) and daydreaming longingly about the run that was to be my reward for making it through an endless day of chauffeuring, I had a revelation: riding the subway and running need not be mutually exclusive. Don't worry, I have not been overcome by the suicidal desire to jog along the subway platform. But it did occur to me that it is completely possible to hop on the train for a few miles and run home from there. Which opens up whole new frontiers of route possibilities, chief among them, Central Park.

The fact that I have lived in this city for 3/4 of a year and not run in the Best Freaking Park Ever is almost criminal (I blame my godforsaken achilles tendon, which has kept me sedentary for a maddeningly long stretch of time). But seriously - street running and Central Park running ought to be classified as 2 completely different sports. As I've previously blogged, running in Harlem involves lots of obstacle dodging - cars, strollers, people, stray cats, overflowing trash bags, etc. Park running also features obstacles, but on a much larger scale. There you'll be, merrily jogging along, when all of a sudden you'll come to a pond. Do you turn around and double back? Do you try to run around the pond, assuming that the path will eventually resume in the direction you wanted to go in? Decisions, decisions! And then there'll be a giant hill that you won't feel like running up. Or some stairs. Or a baseball diamond. So you keep taking random forks as you see fit to avoid all the obstacles in question, and pretty soon you realize that you have absolutely no idea where you are.

Which ties nicely into the second major difference between street and CP running - the difference in the likelihood of getting lost. Unless I am a) functioning on 3 days of no sleep or b) in the West Village, it is near impossible for me to get seriously lost in Manhattan. It's just too logical. But the minute I step off the grid and into the lush foliage of Central Park, my sense of direction flies out the window. I am notoriously incapable of trying to walk crosstown without ending up 10 blocks north or south of where I started; it's truly embarrassing. Thus it should come as no surprise that, what I had very neatly mapped out as a 3 miles run from 86th street back to Harlem, wound up taking almost an hour and god only knows how many miles. And, if my very life depended on it, I couldn't tell you where all I was (though I can tell you that I was, at one point, so turned around that I was running due south instead of north...excellent).

But it was SO GLORIOUS! It was quiet, a good 10 degrees cooler than on the streets, and breathtakingly gorgeous. There is nothing in the world like running around the reservoir at sunset and gazing up at the illuminated skyline to make you feel like you're in a movie. Plus, the beauty of being fantastically lost is that it leads you to all sorts of nifty little CP nooks and crannies that you had no idea existed: a waterfall, a Gollum's Cave-esque little grotto, the problematic pond... needless to say, I am hooked. In fact, I find myself incapable of thinking of anything besides my next Central Park escapade.

It's almost like the city of New York knows I'm leaving in 2.5 months and is trying to entice me to stay by saving the best for last. If I hadn't already signed a contract in Connecticut, I just might be persuaded. At any rate, I plan to avail myself of as much New Yorky glory as possible for the remainder of my time here :)

GUEST POST!!

From the guest blogger who brought you such treats from Aixpedition's Guest Blog #1: Colette Invites Herself to France comes the exciting sequel: Colette Invites Herself to New York! Your favorite spare room crasher is currently 2/3 done with her sojourn to the mystical and fascinating world of New York City.

For a quick glance at our itinerary, click here. Otherwise, enjoy some tidbits:

Friday: excitement and worry as American Airlines/Dane County Regional airport cancels my flight from Madison to Chicago WITHOUT TELLING ME UNTIL AFTER I CHECK IN. Their excuse? The weather. You know how many other flights were cancelled? Zero. Luckily, thanks to Brian, The Very Best Boyfriend in the World, I get driven to O'Hare in record time and breeze through security to catch a flight to La Guardia. At 11:30, I am greeted after security by a certain person who now goes by the name of Kristin. Kristin!

The next day we did a whirlwind tour of the island of Manhattan. First, a trip to the largest cathedral in the US, St John the Divine, and then across the street to the Hungarian Pastry Shop. Brian, expect something rich and delicious. Then we made our way downtown to, among other things, walk the Brooklyn Bridge. That led to taken the Staten Island Ferry, where I ran into the only other person I know who lives in New York. Small world! We end the tour eating at the Yorkville Creperie, thanks to a deal from Groupon. We overdid it and had some rather impressive food baby bellies afterward. The evening was spent with me speed reading every book that interested me from the intern's bookshelf and watching The Bells of St Mary's.

Today involved...church. One of Kristie's Kristin's co-worker's showed up at 9am because she was preaching at St. Mary's (where Kristie lives). We sat for 15 minutes of that service and rode the subway to St Luke in the Fields. A lovely church! Four baptisms! And one crucifer, 2 thurifers, 4 eucharistic ministers, 6 acolytes, an subdeacon, and 3 priests. Incense everywhere, I lost consciousness halfway through the sermon, but it was a classy service. Afterward, we went with the 20/30s group to a picnic at High Line Park and had a very informal photo shoot in Central Park. (Pictures forthcoming?)

So it may sound like a pretty chill weekend (consider it was my first trip ever to New York City), but the loveliest part so far was getting to see and get reacquainted with a good friend.

The food's been pretty good, too.

What not to eat

This one's gonna be short and sweet, but the story is too good not to share. 

On Monday (yeah, I'm behind. Deal), I was invited to lunch on a Taiwanese ship. It was a rather formal affair - shoes taken off in the hallway, sitting at white upholstered armchairs (how do they stay white on a container ship, I wonder?), food served by obliging crew members. The last bit is particularly important, as it means that I had no say in the food that was put in front of me.

Which was...unusual to say the least. There were some rather unappetizing, shriveled little fish, some wilted baby bok choy (which tasted like soap), some spicy tofu and ground beef, and some soup. The soup, which appeared to consist primarily of cabbage and broth, was the only thing I really felt safe eating without making appalling faces of disgust and thus offending my hosts. So I dutifully worked my way through the layers of cabbage, while intermittently pretending to eat the rest of my food and taking refuge in that old childhood standby of messily pushing things around on my plate. It was a good strategy...until I removed the last piece of cabbage from the broth and found myself looking not, as I had expected, at the bottom of the soup bowl, but at something I had never seen at the lunch table before. 

It was a testicle. 

A pig testicle, to be specific. There it was, all round and pink and plump, just staring up at me. And I was duly traumatized. Revise that: I am duly traumatized. Rudeness be damned, there was no way in hell that pork genital was entering my digestive tract. I will have to rely on hearsay to know what they actually taste like. 

And that is the latest installment in the saga of what my life is like aboard ships in Port Newark. I keep myself entertained. 

On fashion

I spent the past weekend in Northern Virginia, with frequent trips into downtown Washington DC. It's always fascinating to me to travel from one East Coast metropolis to another, taking note of the tremendous differences between these two cities that are, geographically, so close. It had been quite a while since I'd been down to DC, and thus the differences were particularly striking to me this time around. Perhaps because it's warm (actually, that's the understatement of the year - temps soared into the 90s yesterday and today!) and you can actually see what people are wearing, I found that I spent an awful lot of time thinking about fashion.

Yes, you read that right: fashion. Yes, I too sometimes think about it. In fact, what I wear has occupied steadily increasing amounts of mental energy since I moved to Manhattan. After enough time in this city, anyone's insistent apathy towards clothing gets worn away by attrition, I'm convinced. You can't live in New York and not care about what you wear, at least a little. Because New York is a constant fashion show. 

When I first arrived way back in August, I remember quickly becoming aware of several trends. First and foremost, the New York wardrobe is characterized by a notable lack of sneakers and sweats. Unless you are actively working out (and if you're gonna play that card, you'd better have worked up a legitimate sweat), the aforementioned items are verboten. If you're going to wear jeans, they need to be tight (it took me months before I bit the bullet and bought into this trend - it's just so goddamn uncomfortable!) and preferably stuffed into trendy boots (guess who now owns several pairs). But the most fascinating and powerful New York fashion rule (at least according to my observations) applies to leggings.

Yes, leggings. An obsolete article of clothing that, prior to November or so, hadn't graced my closet since elementary school. Proud Sconnie that I am, leggings had always fallen into the Coastie  clothing categories that were vehemently denounced by the Badger Herald shoutouts, including, but not limited to, North Face fleeces, uggs, and puffy jackets. Just so happens I live on the Coast now. And, while I will never, as long as I live, turn into a full-fledged Coastie (pronounced with the appropriate accent, of course), I fear I may have started dressing like one. I'm not going to admit to the number of leggings and tights I now own, to say nothing of the accompanying articles of clothing that go with them. The peer pressure to own and wear these strange pieces of legwear is crushingly irresistible. Which would be fine, if I could actually figure out the rules on how one is supposed to wear them. 

Clearly, I am not going to be the next contributer to Vogue. I have no actual knowledge of fashion, just an amateur's eye and a knack for observing details. And it seems to me that the absolute key ingredient to putting together a New York look is an above-it-all air of boredom. You can wear whatever the hell you want as long as you act like it looks completely normal, and like you couldn't be paid enough money to give a shit about what anyone else thinks (only, of course, you do). You master this art and you can wear neon green half-length leggings with a fluffy purple skirt and a red wife beater and look fantastic (as long as you throw in some really awesome boots). You cultivate this, and no one in their right mind is going to mistake you for a tourist. And believe you me, being mistaken for a tourist is the last thing you want to happen to you. 

It's been a difficult concept for me to wrap my mind around because, though not a tourist, I have zero interest in being mistaken for a real New Yorker either (first and foremost because...I'm not). So I try to strike a balance. I rock the leggings. I bust out my boots (I even bought my very first pair of rain boots recently!). But every once in a while, I pull out some jeans in which I can breathe and a Wisco shirt, just for good measure. And I refuse -flat out refuse - to give up my Birkenstocks. Nope, sorry, New York. Not happening. Your fashion trends are an amusing diversion for a year, but I'm looking forward to having my WI wardrobe back eventually (I wonder how they dress over in Connecticut...?).

Thus it was good to spend the weekend in a place where people dress like normal people. It was somewhat distressing how strange it was to see people in sneakers and track pants - in public! For shame! Apparently I have joined the ranks of New Yorkers who are in frequent need of a reality check. 

The New Haven saga unfolds

Good Lord! How has it been almost a month since I last updated? The ability of weeks to fly by without my noticing it is seriously freaking me out. Apologies to the faithful few who have not given up on this blog entirely due to its woeful lack of new content. I promise to try harder in the future.

As you may have guessed, life has been pretty insane since the last post, mostly in a good way, but a little insanity goes a long way. In big and important news, I now know where I'll be working in New Haven next year! I have accepted a position with St. Martin de Porres Academy, a charter school for grades 5-8 that works with very small classes (8-12 kids in a room!) of low-income, at-risk kids. I had a chance to visit both the school and the church where I'll be living a few weeks back, and am insanely excited about both. I went into my interview day at St. Martin's with a ton of reservations (most of them concerning my complete lack of qualifications to work in an academic setting), and was consistently won over by what I saw. I made my first impression of the place at breakfast (they provide 2 meals a day), when I was cordially greeted by a group of unbelievably polite 7th grade girls, who pulled up a chair for me at their table and invited me - a perfect stranger - to join them. Having spent quite a bit of time working with that particular adolescent demographic, and NEVER having experienced such pre-dawn politeness, I was rather blown away. For a group of kids that (I gather) comes from some  pretty rough backgrounds, I found them to be consistently polite, engaged, and motivated. It really made me believe in the value of education all over again. 

I spent the remainder of my day visiting classes, chatting with teachers (they draw on young, largely inexperienced Americorps talent, which is an interesting and provocative philosophy), and trying to get my interviewers to give me an actual job description. Details are still hazy, but I'm finally satisfied by the picture I got: long story short, I will be working in the administration, taking pressure off the overworked school president, and doing anything that needs to be done (because the school is so small, only 80-some students, everyone kind of does everything). But, the really cool bit, is that I'll be running graduate support programs - helping 8th graders (and their parents) apply to high schools, and helping recent graduates get access to tutoring and whatever other academic support they need. Needless to say, I'm nowhere near 100% sure of what I'll be doing, but I am quite positive that I will a) have lots of direct contact with people, and b) not be bored. And, really, that's all I care about. 

It was an interesting and, on the whole, positive experience to get a glimpse of what my life will look like next year (especially given that I came to New York knowing no one and nothing). I've now met most of our program leaders in person, seen my worksite, and visited my future home - a 2-story rectory with TONS of space (exactly how the bedrooms will be divided amongst the 8 of us is TBD), multiple bathrooms, and a gorgeous kitchen. Considering that I am currently working with 2 largely non-functioning electric burners and a toaster oven, the thought of a convection oven and a 6 burner gas stove makes me drool in anticipation. And: in house laundry facilities. Excited. 

On the whole, I loved New Haven. Which, considering that the almost universal reaction when I tell people where I'm going next year is one of horror, came as something of a surprise to me. Granted, my enthusiasm for the city can largely be chalked up to the simple reality that I'll be living in a nice part of it. I fully acknowledge that a large percentage of NH is not somewhere one generally wants to be. But the good parts? Are AMAZING. Yale = Oxford. The architecture is stunning, and there are tons and tons of church bells ringing all the time. Methinks I will be quite content with my new digs. 

It's a woefully incomplete update, but it will have to do for now, as real life is beckoning to me. Just thought I'd keep everyone posted on the major developments of my life at the very least, and hopefully some more reflective material will arrive on the blogosphere sometime in the near future.

My real life: exposed

It is high time that I made a public confession: the real reason my attitude toward New York has improved so dramatically is not, actually, because of the warmer weather, though that definitely helps. It will not surprise most of you in the least to discover that my rekindled love for this city springs from my love for my church. No, not the one I live in, that would be too simple. Instead of simply going downstairs to worship, I trek halfway across Manhattan to the church of St. Luke in the Fields - and believe me when I tell you that it is worth the trip. 

To put it briefly (because I've been known to ramble on endlessly about the virtues of this parish that has so graciously adopted me), St. Luke's has everything I ever wanted in a home church: transcendent liturgy, a professional choir (and a congregation that sings with more enthusiasm than any place I've ever been, I kid you not), absolutely top-notch preaching, a passion for social justice, a welcoming and unbelievably vibrant congregation, and a deep-seated commitment to full inclusiveness, in every sense of the word. Most notably, it is the only religious institution I have ever been in where sexuality is a total non-issue. 2/3 of the full-time clergy are partnered gays and lesbians, but I didn't discover that until my third visit - it's not that anyone is closeted; it's that the entire community has established such a degree of shared trust that discussing any one person's sexual orientation simply isn't relevant. St. Luke's isn't "the gay church;" it's a church with a lot of LGBT members. And a lot of straight ones too. For someone who hails from a place where homosexuality and the church don't quite know what to make of each other, that climate of full inclusion is completely mind-blowing. 

Needless to say, I've been hooked. Over the past few months, I've become more and more involved (leaving me less and less time for things like blogging, for which I do apologize) - with the 20s30s group, with one of the outreach programs (which merits a separate post), and with the team of acolytes. Equally needless to say, I'm particularly enthralled by acolyting - not only does it fulfill my long-unsatisfied desire to wear vestments, it's also been by far the best way of actually getting to know people in the parish. After only a few Sundays of parading around ceremoniously with a cross or a candlestick, I now know enough people that I cannot extricate myself from coffee hour conversations in fewer than 45 minutes (and that's if I'm lucky). Believe me when I say it's amazing. I love my roommates, but I've been craving interactions with people with whom I don't share a bathroom, and it's been wonderful to get to know some real New Yorkers who - believe it or not - rival me in my passion for church. 

In all those ramblings, I forgot to mention one other amazing thing that St. Luke's has: a bell. Like, a real bell. In a real tower. Rung by real people. Those of you who followed aixpeditions will no doubt remember that the one surefire way to my heart is by leading me to pealing church bells. Turns out the even surerfire way to my heart is to let me ring the bells, which I got to do during the Easter Vigil last night - thereby checking off one of the key items on my "Things to do before I die" list. It was seriously one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You know that scene right after the wedding in The Sound of Music, where there's a short clip of a bell-ringer, flying up and down as he holds on to the end of the rope for dear life? That was what it was like. Only this bell was so big, it took two of us (both wearing cassock and surplices, which is hardly ideal bell-ringing attire) to ring it - meaning that we continually crashed into each other in midair for the full ten minutes we were at it. Ringing bells is hard work. I'd call it a cross between jumping up and down while holding a hugely heavy barbell and doing pull-ups. If there is a muscle in my body that isn't sore from that undertaking, I have yet to find it. 

But it was SO worth it. I honestly thought I was going to die of joy when I was told I could have the privilege of ringing the bell (after I had begged them to let me do it and convinced a quorum of bicep-measuring acolytes that I was buff enough). I thought I was going to die of joy again as I soared through the air while ringing out the Easter Alleluia. I'm pretty amazed I'm still alive :)

I know I don't blog for a particularly churchy audience, and I've intentionally kept my content pretty secular. But given what a huge part of my life St. Luke's has become, I feel like I'm giving you a woefully inadequate picture of what my life in New York is like if I don't write about it at least once. So: welcome to my real life! And a very happy Easter to you all!

Look who's back from the dead...

...a little prematurely as far as the liturgical calendar is concerned, but there are times and places to be theologically relevant, and blogging is not one of them. 

Anyway, I write to tell you that I think I've been a bit confused concerning my "I hate living in New York attitude" that has come to the fore ever since I found out I'd be moving to New Haven. It turns out I falsely equated "I hate New York" with "I hate New York in the winter" - and those two statements, I've discovered, mean vastly different things. NYC when it's sunny and 70 (which it hasn't been since last week because it's been too busy torrenting, but oh well) is actually a pretty spectacular place to be. And so I have begun looking forward to my Manhattan summer with great anticipation, dreaming of expeditions to Coney Island, Shakespeare in the Park, and other things that aren't possible when you live in the City of Perpetual Darkness and are the world's most seasonally affective person. It's a strange but good feeling to be all up on New York all of a sudden.

To be sure, part of my recent attitude spike was brought on by the presence of two wonderful visitors from Wisconsin. There's nothing like playing tour guide to bring on the realization that - wow! I actually have come to know my way around the city! This realization was reinforced by a not-so-lost-in-New-York experience I had today when a coworker literally dropped me off at a random intersection downtown, leaving me to wander around until I found a subway stop. Although I inadvertently went all the way to Chinatown (in the pouring rain) before I figured out where I was, the experience was not nearly as traumatizing as it would have been 6 months ago, when I probably would have just broken down in tears and hailed a cab (which, for the record, I have yet to do since moving here. Ha.). I felt very on top of my game.

The other benefit of having visitors around (aside from getting to spend time with old friends, which is, obviously, benefit enough in and of itself!) is getting to do touristy things. I was in more neighborhoods last week than I usually get to in a month: West Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Chinatown, Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Midtown, Theater District...it was incredible! Due to the culinary inclinations of my visiting friends, I also consumed unprecedented quantities of Asian pastries (as well as my first Magnolia bakery cupcake!), which was fun. When all I do is shuttle back between home, work, and church (which, to be fair, covers a considerable amount of ground), it's easy to forget that I live in this incredible city, where a seedy Chinese flea market is only 2 subway stops away from the nation's financial hub. The amount of diversity that is packed into this, all things considered, tiny strip of land is truly mind-blowing. And I, whether or not I am aware of it most days, am damn lucky to live here. 

Eat, drink, and...speak Hindi?

It was precisely because of my shameless love of languages that my program matched me up with SCI as a worksite. Their theory was that I'd be terribly useful in the port, able to converse with seafarers from all over the world in their native languages. Alas, thanks to the cultural dynamics of the ships that berth in Port Newark, this has not proven to be the case. Every once in a while, I'll speak German with a captain or officer, but I honestly can't even remember the last time that happened. Occasionally, I'll go visit one of the ships with Puerto Rican crew and attempt to speak some Spanish (usually with disastrous results...), but as they all speak perfect English, that usually doesn't last long anyway. I have spoken French with exactly one seafarer to date (the cook from Madagascar). I have never had to speak Portuguese, and am frankly very glad of it. 

To my very great surprise, the language that has turned out to be the most useful in ship visiting is...Hindi. Now, bear in mind, my study of Hindi (and all things Indian, really) was limited to my freshman year of college. With one year of undergraduate education under my belt, I decided that studying languages and cultures of Asia wouldn't be at all useful to me in life and moved on to study such useful things as New Testament scholarship and all the Romance languages (I mean, clearly! These are useful, marketable job skills we're talking about here!). My Hindi books and flashcards were relegated to the back of my closet, where they accumulated a lot of dust and were never thought of again. 

Until this past September, when I found myself on a ship with an all Indian crew and had an astonishing thought: "Holy shit, this could actually be useful!" Not because it's necessary to speak Hindi with Indian seafarers (of which there are a fair few among the ships I get to visit); they all speak impeccable English. Not even because it provides comic relief when I say things like "How much peoples are on mine family?" No indeed - my study of Hindi is useful chiefly because it can be strategically employed to get me invited to lunch. And, as I've said before, there is generally no place I'd rather be than at lunch on an Indian ship. 

The reason for this post is that I was on pretty much the best Indian ship ever today. 29 crew, all Indian, from all over the subcontinent. This, of course, meant that there were about 100 different languages represented, and Hindi was not most people's mother tongue. I had spent an agreeable morning talking about comparative religion and linguistics with the Catholic first officer from Pondicherry (hence not a native Hindi speaker) and was actually just about to give up on lunch when the invitation came. "You can stay for lunch if you like, ma'am. There's only one problem: our food is...spicy." I enthusiastically try to reassure him in Hindi that I love spicy food and am greeted with blank silence. I repeat. Still no comprehension. He suggests I write it, which is a terrifying thought: my recollection of the Devanagari script is even rustier than that of my Hindi grammar. But I try. He still has no idea what I'm trying to say. The scrap of paper on which I have scrawled what I hope is "I like spicy Indian food!" is passed around to 4 different people before an interpreter is found. A conversation in a language I don't speak (perhaps Tamil?) ensues, followed by much laughter. Finally, I am informed that I have, in fact, written - in very formal, demanding, and misspelled Hindi: "I want a spicy (actually more like well-seasoned, I was told) Indian song!" No wonder they were confused.

Fortunately, my willingness to humiliate myself won me the seat of honor at an extraordinary Indian feast: fish curry, some kind of eggplant dish, daal, rice, pappadums, salad...served without spicy musical accompaniment, to my great relief. I was seated next to the captain, who was an incredibly gracious, fatherly Zoroastrian (!! So cool!! It was a great day for inter-religious dialogue) who kept leaping up from the table to give me gifts to take home. I walked out full-bellied and with a backpack stuffed full of pappadums and mango pickles (which...what the hell am I going to do with? anyone want them?). Amazing. 

The moral of the story, aside from "Do anything you can to get free, authentic Indian food" (which should be a no-brainer, really) is simply this: to all of you who would berate yourself for wasting college credits on ridiculous classes - don't. You never know when your Hindi (or Yoruba, or knowledge of ancient Chinese literature) will come in useful.