London, Paris and the Adventure of a Lifetime

What a city. Paris is beautiful! It's like London, only in French!

We stayed at the Best Western Nouvel Orleans, and if you're ever in town you should definitely check it out. The accomodations are small and cozy, but the beds are comfy and they have typical Parisian balconies overlooking the rues.

Showing Hillary around London made me so terribly happy. I do love London a lot, and I'm going to miss this town when I leave (in twenty-one days, can you believe it!), but I absolutely cannot wait to get home. I miss my cats and my puppy and my rabbits. I can see it now, I'm going to walk through the front door and be smothered by a big old blind kitty who is going to give me scratchy tongue kisses all over my face (especially my eyelids, because she's weird) and she is going to make me carry her 15 pound self around for an hour or so and when I finally get her to calm down and realise she isn't dreaming I'm going to be pounced upon by a slobbery dog, who is then going to make me carry her 40 pound self around for an hour or so. The rabbits won't slobber, pounce or smother, they will just see me and jump all around and give me those big rabbit eyes and silently ask me for yogurt chips. Buns will request that I give him a kiss on her twitchy nose and that I rub him between his eyes.

Gosh I'm such a sucker.

But back to London and Paris. London is a fun town, and it was awesome to be able to share it with my most favourite person in the world.

Paris is just amazing, and fortunately they have very effective public transportation. We saw the Eiffle Tower at night, all lit up and glowing. We went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, which was okay but I've seen better art since I've been here (and there are better Da Vinci's elsewhere).

Walking around Paris was by far the best part of the little trip. Walking through the streets and little cobbled alleyways, arm in arm or hand in hand. Notre Dam was impressive, but the little Sant Chappelle across the street was better (but not free). I hope to get back to Paris someday, and to get back to France someday as well, just like I hope to return to Spain and Barcelona, and Norway and Oslo.

We had dinner at this little Italian restaurant (if there is one Italian place in a 5 mile radius, I can find it simply by following my nose, trust), both nights. We had the same waiter both times, and he remembered our orders (and laughed when I got the same meal and said 'I'm not very adventurous'). On the second night we had our glasses of chianti, our still water, our pastas, and then our desserts (she had the fruit tiaramisu and I had this DELICIOUS sorbet with fresh fruit with CHAMPAGNE, ugh it was like I literally died and went to heaven). When they brought our dessert out the waiter comes over to the table and hands us to LARGE glasses of amaretto (and the two cups of tea we ordered, post dessert) and said "from us" with a smile. They totally knew it was our one year anniversary, and they made it so entirely special.

When we got back into London last evening, we were starving and exhausted, so I brought Hillary to Marleybone High Street, where all the cute little restaurants are (and the best gelato in London, if I didn't know better I'd swear I were Italian), but we were so hungry that our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we barely ate any of our food. We stopped at a bar on the way home, after sharing a 1/2 bottle of red wine at dinner, and I had a double shot rum and coke and she had a double shot vodka cranberry and then we shared a pitcher of a drink called "purple rain" which is basically vodka and lemonade and anything else they feel like throwing in. We stumbled home in the rain, got ready for bed and passed out.

I got her to the airport today with 70 minutes to spare (they close the check-in for flights 60 minutes before departure, so we were sincerely hustling), held her hand and played with her soft brown hair the whole time. When we kissed goodbye while she was running to get to security I felt the biggest pang in my heart. I miss her so much, I miss home so much. It's like taking someone's heart and ripping it right out of their chest, and then sending it over 3,000 miles away.

But I'll only be here for another twenty-one days, and then I can go home and everything will be perfectly right with the world.

Hope everyone in the States had a very happy Thanksgiving!

Alt for Norge

It's 5:40 am here in London. The sun doesn't rise until 7:33 am, and (hopefully) Hillary will have been here for about 30 minutes by then. I leaving for Heathrow shortly to pick her up and bring her back to school with me, then going to my class then showing her around the city for the rest of the day (and letting her get some sleep and shower at some point).

Norway... was... AMAZING!! I always wanted to go to Norway, but it always looked a little too much like New Hampshire to me. But truly it is an absolutely beautiful country. Oslo is such a wonderful city, the architecture clearly has some very Eastern influences, the people are all so friendly and willing to help and it's easy to get around on public transportation or even just walking.

And it wasn't even that cold.

Our hostel was in the red light district, but it wasn't even that bad. There was a strip club a few doors down that we had to walk past every night, but everyone was friendly. Even the prostitutes on the corner were friendly. One night we saw someone passed out in the crosswalk right in front of the hostel, and promptly ran up to the hostel to watch his friends and passers-by get him into an ambulance. Practically no one goes out during the day in Norway, everyone waits until the sun sets (and it sets early in the winter) and then they go out and get pissed beyond recognition. We stayed away from the bars and the clubs, because Norwegians can get pretty wild when they've been drinking.

I've honestly never laughed so hard in my life. My stomach is literally in pain from laughing at my friends so much. There were seven of us, and we would go back to the hostel and sit in our room, which was this narrow hallway of a room with two bunk beds (we had two rooms all together) and just laugh and laugh for hours.

On Saturday, which was our only full day, we went to Vigeland Park, which is the statue park with the huge fallice. We got up early and it was a very crisp morning, but when we were there the sun was just coming up. The roses are still budding, some are even blooming, just like they are here, making me think maybe the flowers are just confused because of the bizarre summer weather we all had.

We saw Akershus, which is the old Castle and Fortress right in the middle of Oslo fjord. We watched the sunset from the battlements of Akershus, taking in the beauty of Norway. We also saw the Nobel Peace Center! It's so cool to be able to say that we've been there!

We went to the Oslo National Gallery and saw Edvard Munch's The Scream among many other very famous pieces. I believe that the National Gallery is the most robbed art museum in the world, and if you even breathed on a painting the wrong way an alarm went off. My friend actually TOUCHED a painting, because it was "shiny," like a fool, and the security guards came running like she was actually going to walk off with it.

Norway (particularly Oslo, and I'm guessing the other major cities like Bergen) is an extremely expensive country. It's one of the wealthiest countries in the world (who says socialism doesn't work?), and also one of the healthiest with one of the highest standards of living. They tax the hell out of you though, and don't even get me started on kroner. I nearly wept when I went to the ATM as soon as we got there and my options were anything between 500 and 2000 kroner (which is approximately 50 and 200 USD).


This is us, getting ready to leave Norway, taking our last picture in front of the Opera House


The inner view of the Viking Ship


A ship from The Viking Ship Museum


Oslo at Sunset


Sunset


Sunet over the docks


The Nobel Peace Center


In front of the Royal Palace


The Royal Palace


Vigeland statue Park


Being a creep


Angry dancing baby?


My obsession with flowers


And again

It was nice to see the country my father's father left behind. I hope I get to go back some day soon.

I may not be back here for a while (or I may be back every day, it depends on what we do). Hillary and I celebrate our one year anniversary this Friday, in Paris. We leave Thursday afternoon and return Saturday evening, then Hillary leaves back for the states on Sunday. If I drop off the face of the Earth for a week, have a great week, everyone out there!

Another Letter I'll Never Send

As I'm leaving for Norway tomorrow, and I will be there until Sunday, I feel compelled to write something that I have been giving a great deal of consideration for a long time now.

Dear Daddy,

On Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 5:05 pm (Eastern Standard Time) it will be twelve years since you lost your battle with cancer. It will be twelve years since my big, strong, courageous Daddy gave up his last breath. Sometimes it feel like you took me with you when you went. Sometimes it feel like I can't even go on another minute for the sadness of the whole thing. And then I remember how badly you wanted to live, how desperately you loved life, and clung to it with every fiber of your being.

Life was a gift for you. You never took it for granted, even before you were diagnosed with cancer. I remember when you scooped the little baby cardinal out of the pool one summer and cradled it and quickly fashioned a make-shift nest to stow in the pine trees so that its mom would her it calling to her and she would come rescue it. You had such respect for life, and such an understanding of nature. I miss playing basketball with you, when you would lift me up so high so that I could make a dunk. I remember the time you let me ride my bike by myself on the sidewalk around the neighbourhood for the first time, but you had to drive alongside me the whole way. Some woman pulled over and asked me if you were bothering me and I casually replied "no, that's just my dad."

I loved everything about you, your thinning grey hair, your blue-yellow eyes, your bright smile. You were all legs, just about the tallest man I've ever met in my life. It doesn't seem fair that cancer could come and steal such a healthy and wonderful person.

I was in the flower garden on the side of the house when you told me you were sick. The tulips had just come in and the air was fresh and rich with spring. We had just moved to the new house, it didn't seem fair that you should get sick.

I remember being in the kitchen, many months later, when mom told me you were dying. No one ever candy-coated the issue for me, no one ever treated me like a child. I would go up to your bedroom every day after school and lay with you and Candy, reading or watching videos or just talking. I was so scared to let you out of my sight.

When you went to the palliative care unit at Hartford Hospital, we all knew you were very near the end. Ducky and Candy took it the hardest, they loved you so much. Ducky died within a week of you, she couldn't bear to live in a world without you. I know Ducky is curled up on your shoulder, I bet you can hardly get the darn cat off of you. It took Candy eight years to follow you home, but I know she's sprawled out across your lap right now, like any giant overfed black lab.

It's a lot easier to pretend like it doesn't hurt that you died, as I imagine it's easier to pretend that a lot of things in life don't hurt. But it does hurt that you died. It hurts every single day of my life. It hurts every single day of mom's life. It hurts every single day of Becky's life. We miss you so much.

Twelve years is too long for a daddy to be away from the people who love him. But I know that someday, when it's our time, we'll all be together again, and there won't be pain or fear. There will just be boundless love and happiness.

I'm blessed to have had a father who loved me more than the sun the moon and the stars. I'm extremely blessed to have had two parents who loved each other more than oxygen, and loved their child with every fiber of their beings. I'm equally blessed to rest easy knowing that my mother and father will love each other into eternity, and my parents loved me and wanted me. I only wish that my daddy could have been there to see me walk across the stage at graduation. I wish you could have been there to give me flowers when I performed in orchestra concerts and competitions. I wish you had been there to carry me home when I broke my arm (roller-blading on the ice) when I was ten. I wish you had been there on my sixteenth birthday to hand me the card you had made and the beautiful pearl necklace you made sure to get for me before you passed away. More than anything I wish you were there when your three beautiful grandchildren came into this world. I wish you could carry them on your shoulders, cradle them gently in your strong arms, walk with them wrapped around your legs.

Life would be so different if you were alive today daddy, who knows if it would be different for the best or for the worst. I often say "I would not give just anything to see my daddy again," but the older I get, the more I believe that to be a lie. I would give anything to see you again, to smell you, to hug you, to hold your hand.

My last memory of you alive is curling up alongside you in your hospital bed, two nights before you died. We both fell asleep alongside each other, you with your arm as my pillow and me with my arm wrapped around your stomach. I have the best memories of you. Thanks for being the reason I can honestly say that I had the greatest dad ever.

Love you forever,
Rachel

British Museum

If there is any one place in London that would cause me to want to stay here permanently, it would be the British Museum.

I remember going to the National Gallery every day for the first few weeks we were here, like I was trying to become one with the paintings or something hah. The whole time everyone kept telling me I needed to get over to see the British Museum.

But it's "the British Museum." Sometimes I don't even know why I'm IN England. The English weren't particularly nice to my ancestors, and quite frankly they weren't very nice to anyone's ancestors. I really have no interest in learning about the history of a people who managed to rape and pillage and decimate entire populations of people on almost every single continent (and who continue to do so even to this day...). Moving on though.

Eventually I made my way to the British Museum. Let me just say, it is NOT a museum about everything British. It's basically a HUGE building filled with random collections of artifacts, sarcophigi, pieces of architecture, totem poles, tribal dress, etc. etc. from all over the world. When you first walk up to the building, you are immediately awe-struck by its sheer massiveness. It looks like an ancient Greek temple, it doesn't look at all like it belongs plopped in the middle of London.

This is the top of the entrance, I need to try to get it at a better angle, I took this picture the first time I went and I was all fumbly with excitement.



Then you get inside and you're confronted with these massive triagular windows on the ceiling. It's simply incredible, the amount of light flowing everywhere. It is HUGE, both inside and out. It's not a museum you can see in one day, so good thing it's free! This is the main area, which apparently used to be a green but is now a lot of things (anything but green though).



These are some bearded men. They look kind of like the statues with the glowy eyes from The Never Ending Story Shows you how much I paid attention whilst walking through the museum. It's a knowledge overload.



I do remember that these were taken from the Parthenon. The Greek parts of the museum are ASTONISHING (not that the rest of the museum isn't...)



And this is the Rosetta stone! Cool huh??



We went to the British Museum today for my Renaissance Art class to see the Prints and Drawings room where they have the sketches of such famous Renaissance men as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, etc. It was AMAZING to see their sketches up close, not behind glass or anything. They're very protective of the sketches, don't get me wrong, but the room is intimate, only something like 10-15 people are let in at a time, and it's a HUGE library-like room, with lots of workers bustling around cataloguing things, but it's so quite and it's like it's just you and the Renaissance. It's really very beautiful.

I do love it here, a lot. I was walking home from the museum today, alone, and I thought to myself "Self, I don't think I've ever felt quite so alone in my whole life," but it's not a bad kind of alone. It's like being totally and utterly alone on a distant planet, away from all other people and life, but it's okay because you have you and your thoughts and your imagination. I probably feel like that because the people in London are so unfriendly, they can't even be bothered to say "hello" or even to make eye contact. But it's nice, this alone-ness. I think I might just miss it when I go home.

This is my "I'm so happy to be in London" face :)



If I don't post tomorrow or Friday, have a lovely weekend world! I'm off to Norway to become one with my inner Viking. I think I'll start going by Rachel the Red hahaha

Healthcare Reform

I'm not buying it. I've been a socialist since the day I was born, and I just plain am not buying this crap.

Now... the United States is one of the most backwards countries in the world (admittedly, there are POCKETS of backward-ness throughout the country). I was watching Religulous last night (it was a great film, I definitely recommend it, but more on that later) and Bill Maher said that the U.S. is one of the most profoundly religious countries in the developed world (on a list of thirty of so developed nations, we rank right before Turkey, which is the "most religious" "developed" nation). We're still shoving religion down everyones' throats, including our own country-men.

So tell me why the Catholic Church has such a big hand in this Healthcare Reform (oh, and why the Catholic Church has the right to send millions of dollars in the effort to make sure that I don't get my rights?). Don't we hate the Catholic Church? Wasn't that the biggest issue in electing JFK, that he was a Catholic? His allegiance is to the Pope, not to our country.

Sometimes it makes my head spin.

My cousin is a neo-con (*puke*), and he's just about the scariest person I've ever met in my life. He's always battling me over facebook status etc. saying that Obama is a communist, a marxist, a socialist (because those words OBVIOUSLY scare me?) and that Healthcare reform will be the END of our great nation.

No... it won't. In fact, it would be AWESOME. Yes, please, for the love of God, REFORM THE SH*T out of healthcare. Reform it till it can't be reformed anymore. Then maybe people wouldn't have to die from treatable conditions. Then maybe people with conditions (for example, chronic asthma, of which I am a sufferer) wouldn't be denied healthcare due to a pre-existing condition. I can't help that I live in the U.S. and my industrial nation gave me asthma as a youngster.

I also can't help wanting to just grab naysayers and take them to Canada, or the UK, or ANY of the Scandinavian countries, etc. and show them what a country with universal healthcare looks like. It is r.e.a.l.l.y. OK.

I have a feeling this is going to be the start of a new "red-scare" if this Healthcare reform doesn't pass.

And if it passes with the abortion measure, well, welcome back to the 1950's and 60's of back ally abortions and coat-hangers. We never liked our women that much anyway.

This whole argument about "well I don't want my children to have to pay for someone else's healthcare" sounds a lot like classism to me.

I have private healthcare (care of my mother) and when I graduate college, I'll need a job with benefits or a spouse with a job with benefits (or both!). I can honestly say that whatever needs to be done to fix the compeletely messed up (and murderous) insurance industry, needs to be done. Increase taxes (let's start with the upper "class" though), do whatever needs to be done. Just make sure that no more innocent lives are lost simply because they can't afford it. They're Americans too, they're human beings too, and they MATTER. We all MATTER, and in the end, that is what this whole argument boils down to.

This boy is a hero

Will Phillips, a 10 year old elementary-schooler from Arkansas, is exercising his Constitutional right to stand in silence while the Pledge of Allegiance is recited. He refuses to recite the pledge because, in his belief, it does not apply to all Americans, namely GLBT Americans.

God bless this young man, and take care of him too. It's hard to fight for what's right, but he is 10 and he is standing up to his peers and his teachers and his administrators and saying "Something is not right with this country, and this 'pledge' does not apply to all Americans." When I was 10 I thought about art class and what I would make today, I thought about playing my squeeky and shrill violin, I thought about playing on the playscape and avoiding getting splinters, about petting the horses behind the elementary school during recess. I didn't much think about things that were bigger than the immediate future, much less things that were any bigger than just me. We need more adults (and kids) like Will Phillips, what a brave young man.

Well You'll Never Find It, If You're Looking For It

My mom is leaving for India this evening at 10:25. 10:25 on the East Coast is 3:25 am in London. I'll be sound asleep.

I had a nightmare last night that my mother died. I'll spare you to morbid details. It was so scary that I opened my eyes abruptly and stared at my ceiling for hours, wondering... what would I do if something were to happen to her?

I couldn't handle being an orphan.

Sometimes I feel orphaned in this whole thing with my mom's friend Naveen. It's not fair that he has two parents, a brother who has a wife and a son, a sister who has a husband and a son, dozens of cousins with families and children, all of whom he considers to be his immediate family. It's not fair that he has taken my mother from me, the only person I have. Sure I have aunts and uncles and cousins. I have a sister and a brother-in-law and two nieces and a nephew. All those people love me, but no one loves me like my mom. We've been through so much together, it's impossible for anyone to truly understand our relationship. It's impossible to articulate how much I love my mother, despite all of the terrible things she's put me through (I know I put her through a lot in the not too distant past, as well). It's like loving someone or something so much that your heart might rip open.

But then Naveen came into the picture, and slowly took her away from me. I feel so helpless, like I'm standing on the beach, and a riptide has come and swept my only parent away from me.

It's like having my father die all over again.

November 21st will be twelve years. I have no anniversary for when my mother was taken away from me. And I can't even mourn her loss without being called crazy, but I do mourn for her. She's going to a strange country, not even to a major city but to a tiny village. Naveen's parents have never even left their village. My mother will be treated as a woman, which means she won't be respected at all. She will be respected even less because she is "unmarried," even though she was once married. She will be treated, effectively, as a teenaged girl: worthless. And she is willingly going to this country. She is getting on a plane for 18 hours to fly to a country where she will be treated like an outcast, like a stray dog.

She'll be there until December 5th. I feel like I will have many nights of laying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, unwilling to sleep when sleep only brings dreams of torturous things.

I feel completely and totally alone. No one understands, no one tries to understand or wants to understand. It is utterly heartbreaking to have this happen and be unable to prevent it. I'm powerless. This is my least favourite feeling in the world.

I hope she has a safe flight, a comfortable journey, and that she comes home safely.