Bartenders for Bush!

Just kidding, sort of.

So Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Indiana a few days ago, pretending to be a beer-swillin', gun-totin', working-class Midwestern Christian with a pickup truck, and she arranged this great photo-op at a bar... she's campaigning with a real mug of beer in her hands!

As a former bartender, I only vote for candidates who can do serious damage to a bottle of Jack or a keg of Milwaukee's Best. (And that's exactly why I voted for Bush early and often. I'm lying.) I had decided to vote for Obama a long time ago, but then I saw Hillary on TV, with a beer in her hand. Time to reconsider my support?

Of course, she doesn't touch the beer. But the bartender--who is clearly a Republican--decides to mess with her by slapping a shot of Crown Royal on the bar. (Real beer-swillin', gun-totin', working-class Midwestern Christians with old pickup trucks don't drink Crown very often, incidentally--it's way too expensive. It's a yuppie whiskey, wildly popular in San Francisco... tasty, though.)

Not much happens in the first 40 seconds of this video, and Amber and I decided that we'd both turn into Hillary supporters if she pounded the shot like a real Midwestern man. If you want to see what happens, here's the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V4fffzU1wA&feature=related

Hint: the term "sorority sip" comes to mind.

And while you're on youtube, check out this hilarious clip of Andrew Bogut, an NBA player who is apparently a real jerk. His teammates hate him or something, and they didn't come over to give him high-fives after he made a free throw, so he just high-fived his imaginary friends instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc11PUnFgkQ

DC's best awning

Hey, that's the first time I think I've ever typed the word "awning."

I gave up on the blog, thinking that nobody was actually reading it, anyway. Actually, I was spending 60+ hours a week writing/editing TOEFL books, and was no longer in the mood for recreational writing. It's not like I ever wrote this crap because I really though that anybody (besides Norm?) was reading it...

Then I've gotten a couple of "where the hell are you, there's nothing on your blog" emails in the past week or so... which suggests that maybe four of you might be reading this. Because all four of you are sooooooo special, I'm back to writing.

Well, unemployment also helps. Starting in a week or two, I won't be writing any more TOEFL books, at least not for awhile. Some financial issues at the TOEFL mothership. Not a pretty sight.

Somehow, I now live in Washington, DC. I have the same zip code as the president. Not sure if I'm proud of that or not. (In case you're wondering, the DC thing was entirely Amber's idea. I just follow her, since she's prettier than I am and speaks in complete sentences.)

I figured that DC would sort of feel like a smaller, more government-y version of New York. It's the east coast, so I thought that nobody would pay any attention to anybody else on the street... unless, of course, they want money from you. Not mean or rude, just indifferent.

I was wrong, or at least it seems that way so far. I've only been here for a grand total of about four weeks--came from Korea via San Francisco in early March, spent two weeks apartment-hunting and furniture-shopping and TOEFL-writing, then left for Asia again... I've been back for two weeks now. So I can't claim to be a DC expert. I'm still basically a tourist here. Okay, a tourist with an overpriced apartment lease.

Surprisingly, people in DC really don't suck. Thanks to the random kindness of DC strangers, I installed my first Washingtonian hangover last weekend. Amber and I were wandering home from dinner on Friday night, and it started raining. It turned into a really ugly, hard, slanting thundershower... far worse than anything the California weather gods ever unleashed on us. We're dumb, so we walked a few blocks in the worst of it. By the time we ducked under an awning, our asses were soaked.

Not interesting, huh?

But wait. Two random guys walked by, and invited us into their apartment. Our asses were soaked, how could we say no? They offered us beer. Beer is good... We played with their golden retriever. Dogs are usually good, though this dog was named Molson. That should have been a warning to us.

After a beer in their apartment, they invited us out to a club across the street (which I'd walked past a few dozen times--from the outside, it looks like a lame steakhouse for Midwestern grandmothers, but it's actually a three-story Eurotrashy nightclub with a rooftop deck). They bought us more beer. When they suggested another club, we couldn't say no--we still had to reciprocate and buy a few rounds.

It gets pretty blurry from there. At least three more nightclubs, a few rounds of shots (my dumb f**king idea), some greasy pizza, probably some barf, maybe some transvestites (I don't remember)...

Anyhoo, the point is this: people in DC are friendly, maybe even more friendly than your average Midwesterners. These dudes weren't trying to get into our pants or anything, as one might suspect in, say, our former home of San Francisco. Just friendly. Same seems to apply to the neighbors--I get into random conversations all the time around here.

Who knew? I'm pretty much amazed that DC doesn't suck. I haven't visited any of the memorials or the capitol or anything like that yet, but I can tell you this: the awnings in DC are awesome.

correction(s)

I finally met somebody who recognized John Edwards' accent. And no, it is not fake--it is a genuine drawl from the mountains of North Carolina. I was absolutely wrong.

For a much more depressing editorial mistake, check out the Sunday, January 6 edition of Parade magazine, that glossy thing that is always wedged between the comics and the coupons in your Sunday newspaper. The idiots published a photo of Benazir Bhutto on the cover, with the following headline: "Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against Al-Qaeda? 'I am what the terrorists most fear.'"

The buttholes at Parade published that article 10 days after Al-Qaeda killed Bhutto. Brilliant.

If you're curious to read this piece of hard-hitting journalism: http://www.parade.com/contents.jsp?edition=/articles/editions/2008/edition_01-06-2008/

It's followed by an article about why dogs chase cats.

south of the Waffle House line

The Mason-Dixon line is dead. Nobody remembers who Mason or Dixon were, if anybody ever knew to begin with.

You know when you've entered the South when you start to see Waffle Houses. They don't exist anywhere in the North, unless you count Missouri or Arizona. Most New Yorkers would never accept either of those states as being Northern. Hell, most New Yorkers have no idea where those states are.

But this isn't about Waffle Houses or their 1700 greasy yellow roadside huts, or New Yorkers' epic ignorance of "flyover" states. I'm in the South. And I've finally had some real Southern moments.

I've been staying in Wilmington, North Carolina for the last couple of weeks. In a way, it feels just like any other smallish (150,000 people, maybe?) American city--strip malls, department stores, Home Depots, coffeehouses, gas stations, check-cashing ripoff joints, etc. Most people have a little twang in their speech, but you would otherwise have no idea that you're not somewhere in suburban Illinois or Oregon or Colorado.

But hang out here for a bit, and you start to hear interesting things.

Right now, I'm in a coffeehouse, trying hard not to listen to a racist old fuck who keeps trying to draw people into a conversation about the Iowa caucuses. He keeps saying (loudly), "Jefferson Davis must be turning over in his grave today"--a reference to the apparently-terrifying fact that we might end up with (gasp!) some colored guy as our next president. The stupid bastard repeated that Jefferson Davis line to me twice. I ignored him, and pretended to be deeply engrossed in my work. If he didn't have a gun rack on his truck, I'd have said something about how I no hablo ingles.

I heard a great story about a Midwesterner who relocated to North Carolina. As soon as he moved into his new home, a neighbor came knocking. Welcome wagon? Not quite. Without saying hello, the neighbor asked, "what's your church, and who's your driver?" The Northerner (an atheist with no interest in NASCAR) wisely anwered, "six car, first Baptist." He was apparently allowed to stay in the neighborhood.

I don't want to rip on the South too hard--most people are incredibly friendly, and I get the impression that people like that Confederate assmunch are fairly rare here. But I can't imagine that too many of you heard anything racist about Obama in coffeehouses above the Waffle House line today.

Last night, we drank a toast to Iowa. Whatever you think of Obama as a candidate, his victory was a serious milestone in American race relations--a lily-white state voted for him, apparently without giving a flying fuck about his race or his funny name. South of the Waffle House line, I'm not sure that white minds are quite so advanced.

fried chicken theory of presidential elections

This will be a rare, ass-free blog entry. Which might make it boring, unless you like politics more than you like hearing about my bum.

I haven't said this too many times in my life, but I'm really happy to be in the United States right now. Not because I love my country, and not because I really missed good burgers or ESPN or my native language while I was overseas. I didn't really even miss the American health care system, even though I spent a minute or two thinking that the Brazilian health care system was about to kill me by accident.

Nope, I'm in the United States right now for the politics. (I'm also here because my girlfriend happens to be in North Carolina, recovering from a stubborn tropical disease... but you know that story already.) The Iowa caucuses are in five days, and seven different candidates have a reasonable chance at becoming our next president. We can even fantasize about brokered conventions. If you're a news junkie who stares at candidate interviews on YouTube instead of videos of chicks with big boobies, this is the best political porn ever.

I'm not going to lecture about who I think the best candidate is, but I'll tell you who will win. If I'm wrong, you can throw tomatoes at me in November.

The winner of the general election will be... the candidate with whom Americans would prefer to sit around and eat a bucket of fried chicken.

The (relative) King of Fried Chicken has won every single election since I've been alive. Bush beat Kerry and Gore because both Democrats seemed like really boring guys who were on low-fat diets. You know that I've never been a fan of Bush, but he has that "real guy" sort of appeal. I'm sure that George and I could have a great conversation about--I don't know, sports or women or whatever--over a pitcher of beer and a bucket of fried chicken in some shitty bar and grill in some small town in some flyover state.

And guess what? He won almost all of the "flyover" states.

You can keep going back, and the theory holds. Clinton could do some serious damage to a bucket of fried chicken, and he could talk to anybody about anything. Unsurprisingly, he beat two stiff Republicans. Michael Dukakis was a really good dude, but he was boring as hell, even compared to Bush Sr., and he looked like he ate ethnic food instead of fried chicken. Reagan was charming as all hell--who wouldn't prefer to hang with him than, say, Walter Mondale? Jimmy Carter and his little drawl did okay on the Fried Chicken O'Meter--far better than Gerald Ford--but he had no chance against Reagan. Hell, even chimps and Democrats were drawn to Reagan.

Even if you think I'm right about this, you might be wondering why the hell this matters right now. It's primary season. Too early to worry about fried chicken.

There are seven candidates who have a reasonable shot to win a major-party nomination--Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee. Sorry, I think Thompson and Paul and Richardson (thankfully--I met him five times in New Mexico, and can assure you that he's a clueless asshole) have no chance.

Looking at these seven, we can put them in some sort of order on the fried chicken scale, and then use that to predict the winner of potential general election matchups. And the runaway winner is Mike Huckabee. Even if you're liberal, take some time to watch Mike Huckabee talk. Trust me--you want to hang out and eat greasy food with this guy, even if you think that his economic and foreign policy ideas are complete idiocy (and yes, they are).

After Huckabee... nobody comes close, really. You could argue for Obama (seems down-to-earth enough, but he's awfully skinny and has a funny name), Edwards (the combination of a $400 haircut and an over-the-top Southern drawl makes most of us uneasy), or maybe McCain (kind of prickly and getting a bit senile, but kind of in that likeable, "grandpa will tell you some hard facts about life while we eat fried chicken" kind of way). Let's say that Obama, Edwards, and McCain are tied for #2.

The three remaining candidates are pretty much tied for last. Romney is a slick-looking guy from Boston, and everybody hates Massholes and know that they're too full of themselves to eat fried chicken--plus he has the Mormon thing, which still creeps people out. Giuliani is even pricklier than McCain, and he's from New York, and he seems to be legitimately corrupt, and he knows that he's just too damn New York-y for fried chicken flyover country--which is why he's barely set foot in Iowa. Then there's Hillary, who might be okay over tea if she thinks she can get something from you, but it's downright impossible to imagine a warm, casual conversation with her over burgers or beer. I know quite a few people who have had conversations with Clinton, and not one has used the word "warm" to describe her.

I don't care what the polls say. Huckabee would beat any Democrat in the current field, and that scares the hell out of me. If you're a Republican, you should vote for him in the primaries.

At the same time, I think Hillary would get clobbered by almost anybody, besides maybe Giuliani or Romney--and Romney barely has a chance at getting the nomination, anyway. If you're a Democrat, you should vote for anybody but her.

Don't get me wrong--I actually think that Hillary would be a competent president. But if she gets the nomination, she'll lose if she's up against Huckabee or McCain.

And since I'm in North Carolina, I feel obligated to make one more comment about John Edwards. He supposedly has a genuine North Carolina accent. Nobody here talks like him. Not even close, really. Maybe I've just seen the wrong parts of the state, but my friend Ehren has lived in North Carolina since he was a teenager, and he says the same thing: the drawl sounds like a fake.

Okay, no more politics next time. I promise.

dumb American, smart toilet

I'm about to get on a plane for Chicago via Shanghai (normally the layover isn't worth mention, but China hasn't figured out through-ticketing yet... I have to get off the plane, go through immigration, enter China, check in again, go back through immigration and customs and get on another plane), so this will be a quick entry.

And sorry to make butts the new theme of the blog.

East Asia is famous for its embrace of technology--you already knew that. But the toilets are really something special. Toilet paper is obsolete in the finer bathrooms of Korea and Japan, because the toilet is "smart" enough to do the work of the paper and your hands. You do your thing, then press a button. First, there is a "clean" cycle. Then, we have the "bidet" (rinse) cycle. Finally, the dryer goes on.

But that's not all--the seat has an automatic butt-warmer. As soon as you sit on the seat, it starts to warm up. Amazing.

I never got around to pressing the "nozzle" or "massage" buttons--kind of scary.

The toilet and I got to know each other rather well. No, I didn't get sick or anything, but I ate what had to be the highest-fiber meal I've ever eaten. (Besides maybe that time in Mexico, when I ate nothing but papaya and mandarins for breakfast and lunch on a 10-hour bus ride.)

Last time I checked, I was in Brazil, learning Portuguese. So I don't speak a lick of Korean--it's been a challenge just to tolerably pronounce "good morning" and "thank you." All of this makes ordering food a little bit limiting. Street food is always safe, because I can just point and smile.

For restaurants, I do my best to pick the places that have pictures with a few English words on the windows. That way, I can just point, and there is at least some chance that somebody inside will speak some English. Yesterday, I pointed at a blurry picture of a dish called "barley rice," simply because I had no idea what it was, and it didn't look like it had any scary animal/fish parts in it.

Yes, I've gotten into all sorts of trouble with this strategy over the years--I always try to order something I don't recognize. Many intestines and stomachs and other pig or cow bits have ended up in front of me as a result.

Anyhoo, this meal was amazing. Eight small bowls of different wonders--a light rice soup, a spicy tofu stew, a bowl of barley and rice mixed together, some sort of seaweed thing, some pickled radish-like things, kimchi (of course), another bowl of some sort of spicy pickled root thing, and a big bowl of mixed sprouts and cabbage and lettuce and mystery veggies and hot pepper flakes. Really tasty. And nothing but spice and fiber, aside from the bit of rice mixed with the barley.

Probably not a smart thing to eat the day before a 20-hour plane trip. I'm convinced that the toilet in my hotel room is smarter than me.

I didn't really get out much on this trip, just because of the demands of work. But Seoul seems like an incredible place, from the little bit that I saw outside of the hotel and offices.

The United States lacks "real cities" like Seoul--our list begins with New York and ends with Chicago, in my opinion. These are places where you can get coffee, beer, burgers, or shawarma any time of the day or night in any possible state of dress or partial undress, and nobody ever gives you a second look, even if you're wearing shorts at the pizza joint at 3am in the winter. And you know that you can piss off entire neighborhoods, and there will always be more neighborhoods to explore.

Seoul seems like an endless place, just like New York--it's dense and energetic, and has more coffeehouses than anywhere I've ever seen, including Seattle and Paris and Berkeley. I like.

And oddly enough, it's a comfortable place to be foreign. It's one of the world's safest large cities, most people speak a word or two of English, and nobody finds it the least bit strange that my Korean sucks. I felt more foreign in English-speaking Trinidad & Tobago than I do here.

Good thing I like it here. I'll probably be back in a month or two, whether I like it or not.

Korea: #1 in pig intestine flavor, #134 in TOEFL scores

If you're still bothering to check this recently-neglected blog, I owe you an explanation.

Last time you tuned in, we were in Brazil, with plans to stay until March or April. Amber had a lingering case of dengue fever, which confined her to the hotel rooms for the most part. We were both starting to get cranky about it all.

To make a long story short, Amber decided to go back to the US to recover properly. In a way, that was kind of sad--we were finally in Fortaleza, and we immediately took a shining to the city. The whole plan was to stay in an appealing city in northeastern Brazil. By the time we found one, it was too late. Mosquitoes 1, Gringos 0.

At some point, it was just becoming plain stupid for us to be in Brazil. As you know, Amber was getting better only in fits and starts, and I was pretty damned sure that she'd be happier and healthier back home. Eventually, she agreed, and she's now resting in North Carolina with her best friend, Sprocket. (See picture.) Along with his humans, Heather and Ehren, Sprocket owns a lovely home in Wilmington, NC.

Once Amber decided that she wanted to go back, I started trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do if I left Brazil. One hour on Google chat with the owner of DemiDec, and I suddenly had an offer for a full-time editing/coordinating job. With a salary and stuff.

And the job offer had a big question attached: how quickly could I get to Korea? Would Saturday be okay?

Yikes. Turns out there's no direct flights from Fortaleza to Seoul. Actually, there's no direct flights from Fortaleza to anywhere useful, besides the Cabo Verde Islands. But I'll get to that part of the story.

Within 24 hours, Amber and I had agreed to the plan: we'd fly to the US and Korea, respectively, as soon as possible.

Then I got sick. Not foot worms, thankfully, but a fairly high fever. That would never really bother me in the US, but with dengue and malaria around, we were pretty spooked when the fever didn't go away for a few days. I suspected strep throat, but we wanted to be sure. Off to the hospital.

If you're keeping score, that would be hospital visit #8 of our Brazilian trip.

I could launch into another long description of Brazilian public hospitals (blood on the concrete floors...then there was the time I literally stepped over a body), but I won't. It started off as a pretty uneventful visit. A disinterested doctor diagnosed me with a bacterial thing--probably strep--within two minutes. In the usual style of these hospitals, he prescribed antibiotic and fever-reducing pills, but then also sent me to the medicine room for some fat shots of both. This much was no surprise--Amber had also gotten a few shots for her fevers during the past few months.

The surprise was, they were butt shots--my first since I was a kid. In my feverish haze, I didn't notice that the first needle was huge and filled with a whole lot of some creamy-looking fluid. It hurt, which was fine. The second needle wasn't so bad. I entertained the nurses by making a show of being shocked by the butt thing, and gave a theatrically feminine scream when they injected. Then I left for the waiting room.

In all seriousness, the next 90 seconds might have been the scariest of my life in some ways. Even scarier than when I was chased around by some white supremacists in Canada who decided that I was a Pakistani. I don't really understand what happened, but I had a bad reaction to the shots. Maybe it was just the sheer quantity of medication, I don't know. But as soon as I stepped out of the injection room, everything went gray and I crumpled. A male nurse happened to be right next to me--not that I remember this part--and carried me back into the injection room. They hooked me up to oxygen. I couldn't see anything, I lost feeling in my arms and legs, and I don't think I could speak--I'll have to ask Amber about that part. I remember having thoughts, but I don't think I got them out.

On one hand, this wasn't too big of a deal. A fainting spell, maybe? Just a little bit too much medicine injected too quickly? That's not so bad. Within a couple of minutes, my vision came back, and after 20 minutes, I felt fairly normal. The nurses seemed to think it was a mild allergic reaction to something--in any case, nothing too serious.

Here's what made it so damned terrifying: when Amber and I were planning this trip last summer, my mother, sister, and I all had nightmares on the same night about bad things happening in my travels. My sister's nightmare was the scary one--she dreamed that I died from getting a tainted injection in a hospital. So there I was in a third-world hospital (some Brazilian hospitals are great; this one was definitely rough), on the verge of passing out, thinking about Sonya's dream, with poor Portuguese-less Amber standing there, feeling helpless. She was probably more frightened than I was.

By the way, that series of dreams last summer played some role in our decision to go to Brazil instead of Mozambique. But that's another story.

So that was a humbling experience. Not a genuine near-death experience, but it was enough to mess with my head for a bit--especially against the backdrop of all of the health problems Amber has had on this trip.

After we returned to our hostel, Amber went to buy some groceries, and I rested for a bit. (Laying on my stomach--my ass was sore as hell from the shots for a few days.) A few minutes after she left, I heard some growly-dog noises, and two women screaming for the dogs to let go. I went outside, just in time to watch two dogs tearing a cat in half right in front of me. The cat was still protesting, barely. Really disturbing.

But hey, at least I didn't get any worms in my feet on this trip.

So the next day, I accepted the job offer and bought a crapload of plane tickets. Fortaleza to Seoul via Belem, Manaus, Miami, Chicago, and Shanghai. Six flights in all, for a total of about 12,000 air miles with four different airlines. The Chicago stopover was long enough to catch my breath--36 hours with Amber's wonderful family. Then off again.

I've been in Seoul for about five days now, in the middle of a crash-course in TOEFL, DemiDec, and Korean publishing. I have tons of stories. You don't get to read them right now.

All I'll say is that Korea is obsessed with TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)--check out this article if you want details: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/world/asia/17korea.html?emc=eta1. But in spite of the obsession, Korea ranks #134 out of #147 countries in terms of their scores on the speaking section of the test. And you would be amazed by how much money goes into the test in Korea--the largest section of most bookstores is probably the TOEFL study guides.

But although Koreans don't do so well with TOEFL, they are great at cooking pig intestines. Innards are one of the great inevitabilities of international travel. Some local friend gets that slightly-evil glint in their eye at the dinner table, and decides that you need to try this really great local specialty. I've seen that look in at least five or six countries. It's the "hey gringo, have some tripe" look.

So we were at a street stall, eating some really tasty rice dumplings in spicy red sauce, when one of our Korean companions got that look. Next thing I knew, there was a piece of noodle-stuffed pig intestine in front of me. In a black sauce. And there was an audience. The owner of the stall had generously given it to me as a gift. He had the "tripe for foreigners" glint in his eye, too. I was stuck.

But it was actually good. I announced that Korea is #1 in pig intestines. I think the Koreans were proud.

I'll be back in the US on Monday, where I'll enjoy some relatively boring food. One more night in Chicago, then off to North Carolina--Wilmington for a few days, then probably Charlotte for a week or two. If any of you have any idea of how to write a TOEFL guide, send me an email.

damned Brazilian bologna

I sort of danced around the topic of Amber's health in the last posting, mostly because I wasn't sure if her mother knew the story yet, and partly because it probably isn't the least bit interesting anymore.

The real story is that she had a mild relapse after our trip to the dunes. Her fever shot back up to around 102 the day after the tour, and she spend the next five days in our hotel room. The nausea was back, too--so lots of soup and liquid tylenol for a day or two. She got better quickly, but her body is clearly a long ways from being okay. Every time she spends even half an hour outside--even in the shade--she comes back inside with a mild fever. Not fun.

In case I forgot... if you see a mosquito today, smash it for me.

Twice. One smashing for each time Amber has had a high fever.

So we stayed in Barreirinhas for a full week, just for health reasons. Nice town, but nothing to do there. No bookstores, movie theaters, or newspapers. And only one TV channel, with nothing in English for poor Amber. The boredom sometimes seems to be a worse villian than the dengue.

We're back in São Luiz just to build her strength back up for the next bit of traveling, a flight to Fortaleza, probably on Thursday. And she'll be back in bed there while I have a good look around the city, scouting for places to rent an apartment.

In the meantime, I think we're settling into some routines. It's all about wasting time as pleasantly as possible, in spite of the fact that we're in places that aren't necessarily inspiring to us.

For example, Amber is in the hotel room. Nice room. Not inspiring.

Breakfast is always included in Brazilian hotels and pousadas. We've experienced the full gamut of Brazilian lodging options, from hammock space on a boat to dingy crap motel to mid-range restored colonial mansion to five-star hotel, and the breakfast is always the same. Bread, juice, coffee, fruit (always papaya; pineapple or watermelon if you're lucky), and then something to put on the bread. Like "ham."

By and large, I really like Brazil. A lot. And if you're still reading this blog in a few weeks, you'll probably hear a lot more about why.

But then there's the ham. Why do they have to process the living hell out of it, and turn it into bologna? It's honestly a challenge to find any lunch meat--turkey- or pig-based--that doesn't taste like bologna. And why do they have to do the same thing with juices? If you go to a grocery store in Brazil, you can't buy a bottle or box or jug of just juice. It's always some sugary juice beverage. If you're particularly unlucky, you'll get a soy-based sugary juice beverage. This in the land of the most amazing fruit on earth. Very strange.

Okay, that's my bit of gringo whining for the day. If you're keeping track at home, today was morning #38 of bologna and papaya for breakfast. Since we're just killing time these days, it's all about trying to make breakfast as long of an affair as it humanly possible. So that means lingering over a third (small) helping of bologna and papaya. Every day. It's the routine, now.

Coming soon: pictures of my new potbelly.

mechanical bull, eat your heart out

When I last wrote, we were planning to take a long, slow road from São Luiz to Fortaleza, through Lençois Maranhense and a buttload of sand dunes.

Well, that didn't really work out so well, but we got to play rodeo for a day.

We went to Barreirinhas, a town of about 13,000 people (according to the guidebook) on the edge of Lençois. After an obligatory day of rest (required--every time Amber has a day of activity, she has to spend a day in bed... we agreed to that rule as part of the dengue recovery), we took a half-day tour into the dunes.

The dunes and lagoons were pretty stunning--exactly what you might expect. Hills of sand as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the occasional pool of shallow, warm water. Which had zillions of tiny fish. Surprisingly, they bite. Seemed to have a special penchant for my nipples. Hm.

But the hour-long trip to the dunes might be the part that I'll remember the most. We rode on some benches in the back of a large 4WD pickup. There was no road, just a couple of divots in the sand. I've ridden on some rough trucks/cars/bikes/buses over the years, but this was a winner. Brought back fond memories of the weekend I worked at the rodeo in Tucson, right next to the mechanical bull tent.

And that bull had nothing on us. Hilariously bumpy ride, everybody holding on for dear life, dodging the branches of cashew trees that tried to whack us from the side and top.

And best of all, there was no annoying country music or American flags.

So after a week of twiddling our thumbs in Barreirinhas, we're back in São Luiz. We chickened out of the slow road to Fortaleza, and will hop a bus or plane later this week. I'm off to explore some beaches outside of town, while Amber enjoys another obligitory rest day.

Happy belated turkey day, everybody.

did anybody see a tree somewhere around here?

Well, we finally escaped from Manaus after 18 days, which made us both really happy. We took the 13-hour speedboat downriver to Santarem, a journey which usually takes 36-48 hours on the standard boat...well worth the extra US$45 per passenger, especially if you're recovering from dengue and don't particularly relish two nights sleeping in hammocks slung alongside (literally) hundreds of other travelers.

So, yeah...that was our first real look at the Amazon rainforest during the boat ride, since we'd only seen hostels and hospitals during the previous weeks. And guess what? We really didn't see a whole lot of trees, at least not the big kind (with pumas and anacondas and stuff) that you would expect in the Amazon.

It was honestly a depressing experience, in spite of the otherwise-comfortable ride (six movies in a row...sweet). The shore between the two cities was almost continuously occupied--not at all what I expected from 500 miles of river in one of the most infamously remote regions of the world. Lots of grass, scrub brush, cows, factories, and an occasional soy field. When there were trees, they were small and spindly--certainly not primary forest.

You all know that the Amazon is going buh-bye at a really fast rate. But it's another thing to be in the middle of it, and see how far gone it already is. Sad.

After a night in Santarem (sleepy, nondescript city of about 200,000 people), we headed to the nearby beach resort of Alter do Chão, which is deservedly the subject of a bazillion postcards. Bill Gates already vacationed once in the town, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was scheduled for a visit to Alter do Chão while we were there; he never arrived, due to some goofy Brazilian politics (something about Lula and the local governance being from different political parties).

So yes, it was a beautiful place and all that. Big white-sand beaches on the river, stretching on endlessly.

We only had three days there, and it was our last chance to try to, like, see some trees or animals or something. We almost signed up for a two-day tour, and the guide didn't even seem to know whether the forest we were visiting was primary or secondary. But he promised lots of nice meals on the beaches. We passed.

In the end, we took an expensive (roughly US$180 per person) two-day tour with another agency, simply because it was the only trip we could find which involved a hike through some virgin forest. It was a great trip, in the end--we took a boat down an unbelievably fat Amazon tributary (Tapajós, which made the Mississippi look narrow), canoed into a little creek, went snorkeling there, visited an indigenous community where we explored some of the traditional food-processing methods (really interesting...honestly), took another tranquil bird-watching ride in the canoe, rowed back to our boat, spent the night in a hammock...

All good stuff. The next day, we made our six-hour hike through virgin forest, mostly just so that we could say that we saw some. We got a few glipses of monkeys and saw a few monstrously-large trees, but it was by no means the most impressive nature hike we've ever taken. Still absolutely worthwhile, thanks mostly to our unbelievably brilliant 20-year-old native guide. He's one of those rare geniuses who can identify every bug and plant on the trail, but who also understands every bit of the big picture of politics, economics, culture, and history. Had some great conversations with that guy.

And that's really about it. We spent the next day taking it easy in Alter do Chão, sleeping in and eating lots of obscenely tasty fish in a cococut milk stew...mmmm. Next day, we flew to São Luiz, Brazil's most famous colonial city. It's a likeable place with some interesting old archecture, but neither of us have fallen in love with the place.

For those of you who don't already know, we're now starting to look for a city that we really like. As soon as we find one, we'll stay there until our visas expire in March or April. São Luiz didn't make the cut, so we'll take off tomorrow in the general direction of Fortaleza, the next 'candidate' city.

But we'll do it the hard way. Instead of the 18-hour bus on paved roads, we'll head along the coast, through a dune-filled park called Lençois Maranhenses (http://viajarbrasil.com.br/lencois_maranhenses_maranhao.html if you want to see a few photos and read some Portuguese), which sounds far more amazing than most of what we've seen on this trip. After that, it'll be a bumpy series of trips on 4WD vehicles to get to the next bus connection on a paved road, close to Fortaleza.

This might take awhile. I don't expect to see any internet cafes until we get to Jericoacoara in a week or more, so (*attention motherly types*) you might not want to get your hopes up for any emails or calls anytime too soon.