Blink

Once upon a time, there was a girl in high school, who kept track of all the days left of senior year. She started at “One day down, 176 to go.”

Then suddenly it was “176 days down, one to go.” And that scared her. She went home that day and cried.



Then she blinked.

She carefully cut nine pieces of double-sided tape. One on each corner. One in the middle. One on each imaginary diagonal line between the pieces at the corners and the one in the middle.

Then she turned over the paper, centered it on the last page of her scrapbook, and pressed it down.

A copy of her college diploma.

So much can happen in a blink.

Of Tea Breaks and Driving

A while back, I had made the decision to get our car close to our hotel, because "it would save us an hour of travel to Heathrow to pick it up, and I have detailed directions to get out of London."

Yeah, right. Never do that.

When we actually got to London, we decided that it would be awesome to leave our luggage at the hotel, pick up the car, drive back to our hotel, have breakfast, check out, get our stuff in the car, and then leave London.

Again, never do that.

All went well until we left the parking garage to return to our hotel. It would have been fine, even then, had the way back to our hotel not been one-way streets all pointing in the wrong direction. But they were one-way streets, and so we had to go round the other way. This also would have been fine, had we not somehow ended up in the other direction of where we wanted to go.

And if the check-engine light had not gone on.

So, there we were, at the mercy of traffic lights and one-way streets, still getting used to the fact that right was our left and left was our right. An hour later, after much effort and several arguments, we arrived back at the car hire place, explained the situation, and exchanged our Ford Focus - which Joy was terrified of hurting or crashing - for a Mercedes Benz. Oh, if that isn't irony, I don't know what is.

At this point, I called our hotel using Budget's phone, explained the situation, and begged about half an hour's leniency on checking out. Silly me, I figured that an hour and a half would be plenty of time to return to our hotel (which was still only three blocks away), especially since the nice lady at the desk had given me directions and marked it on our map.

Well, it wasn't enough time. We tried our hardest to get out of that awful city, but nothing would work. Finally we just turned down a little street and parked in the "you will be towed if you do not have a permit" area. Then I got out, looked around, spotted two men in a doorway, and went to ask for directions.

They were deep in conversation, but as I approached (saying, of course, how terribly sorry I was to trouble them, but might I bother them for a bit of directions?), they stopped talking and the one left in his car. How I envied the easy way he drove off! But the other looked at my map, turned it every which way until he figured out where we were, and said,

"You just need to go straight from here. Straight, straight, straight. You don't turn left; you don't turn right. Just straight, straight, straight." (Sounds like the Christian life!) While I was processing this startling bit of information, he said, "I'm going that way anyway. You follow me."

What were the odds? Well, our doors locked, and we could always just gun the engine and get out of whatever trap he led us into. So, with not a whole lot of trepidation - we were far too tired for that - we followed him. He brought us very close to the hotel, waved us on - "Straight, straight, straight!" - and we never saw him or his van again.

We parked a little ways from our hotel - Joy absolutely refused to go any farther, which made me unreasonably miffed. My mom and I went to collect our bags and check out. The guy at the front desk was glad to hear that we no longer had car trouble, but he was horrified to hear that we were still actually driving.

Well, what else could we do? We didn't want to rely on trains, especially with the threat of a national railway strike.

It took a bit for us to actually leave London. The roads were dreadfully narrow, and absolutely everyone drove like maniacs. Motorcycles especially tended to think that no rules applied to them. But we didn't get horribly turned around anymore, and we successfully left London behind us. We left our schedule two hours behind us, too, but it didn't really matter at this point.

After Joy had been driving for about four hours straight, almost ending up at Heathrow due to a confusing construction configuration, our car told us to take a tea break.

That's right; our car had a screen pop up. It even had a little picture of a steaming cup of tea.

Our car was a bit more commanding than this one.

At that point, we knew full well that we were in England.

We stopped by Stonehenge on the way to Bath. By this, of course, I mean that we were in stop-and-go traffic by Stonehenge on the way to Bath, and had an excellent view of an overappreciated tourist attraction. (By the way, I understand and support the need for conservation. But so many people know about Stonehenge, and I prefer to support conservation on a less-known place. Compare the amount of people at Stonehenge with the amount of people at Castlerigg Stone Circle, and you'll see why we went to the one and not to the other.)


We had to skip Nether Wallop, a little town we'd planned on seeing, but that didn't matter. After all, we were driving through some of the prettiest little towns I've ever seen. Joy, it is true, didn't like the sharp turns or the steep hills or any of the myriads of roundabouts (traffic circles) that we encountered on our way to Bath, but even she was able to see and enjoy some of the towns.

 

We arrived at Bath at about 4:00, thinking that everything closed at 5. Lo and behold, they were open until 9 pm. So we didn't have to worry about taking too long. I still wanted to get to Oxford, but we managed to enjoy Bath plenty. When my mom went to England, technology was non-existent and all the various interactive displays were not there. So she really enjoyed seeing all the reconstructions. I, myself, just enjoyed all the history. I had already read everything I could about Rome in sixth grade, I think, so I knew well how the baths worked.


We tasted the water, of course, and were just as unimpressed as I thought we would be, but in the opposite direction. It was not even nasty; it just tasted like lukewarm Chicago tap water. (Maybe we could set up a spa in our back yard and convince everyone that it's the fountain of youth...)



We peeked into the famed Pump Room of Jane Austen and Amazing Grace.

 

 And then we left for Oxford. Regrettably, we did get a bit turned around and lost about 45 minutes, but we still arrived in Oxford only a couple blocks from where I meant to be: the Martyrs' Memorial. We parked right across the street from the Eagle and Child, the pub which the Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien called "the Bird and Baby." We threaded our way through the bar crowd to take a look at the Rabbit Room, where the Inklings met.

Martyr's Memorial looks much like a sunken church spire - the stuff of Oxford legend, in fact. It honors Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, martyrs of the Inquisition. These three men were burnt to death in 1555 for refusing to believe and practice "the errors of the church of Rome." They were put to death near the spot of Martyrs' Memorial by Bloody Mary.



All in all, we saw everything we really wanted to see in Oxford, though we didn't get all the time we would have wanted to spend.


And then we got to find our way to our hotel for the night. It was a little country place, called the Brasenose Arms, located in Cropredy, a small town near Banbury. We had thought we'd be able to see the statue of the fine lady upon the white horse that's mentioned in the child's nursery rhyme, but we weren't able to.

Ride a cock horse to Banbury cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse.
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
She shall have music wherever she goes.

A strange thing to put on an itinerary, to be sure, but we thought that since we were in the area anyway, we might as well try.

We arrived at the Brasenose Arms 13 minutes past check-in time. I had asked for late check-in, in the event that anything happened and we needed to use it. But the place was dark and no one was up. We knocked on the door in vain. No one seemed to be there.

I broke down crying. It had been a very long day, and I had been looking forward to staying at one of the six rooms in the little country inn for quite some time. I had paid for it, planned for it, and set my heart on it. Joy suggested that we sleep in the car, which I did not want to do. But there was nothing for it, and after knocking once again, we turned toward the car.

Unbeknownst to me, my mom was reminding God that anything that happened must be for our good and His glory. Joy was reminding Him that He had always come through for us before, and she didn't see why He wasn't now. But I was struggling with trusting Him at all, and finally I just told God that I trusted Him to make a way for us before I got to the car. I then walked toward it.

"Hello?" we heard from the back of the hotel. It was the owners, key in hand, ready to let us in. They gave us our room, ensured that we were fine with it, and left us to settle in.

I broke down crying yet again. Mercy isn't always seen in such a short amount of time, but this time it was, and I was very grateful.

Tube Strike

Ordinarily the news that the London Tube is going to have a strike from 6:30 Wednesday night to 6:30 Thursday night would not be alarming.

However.

We're arriving in London around 10:30 on Thursday morning, and of course they're having a strike that day. We're Becketts. This stuff happens to us. We should be used to it by now, but we aren't.

Yes, we're going to England. We're even - overambitious, never-learning souls that we are - going to Scotland. It's a graduation trip/birthday trip/everything-for-the-rest-of-our-lives trip. My sister is most excited about Scotland. My mom is, as she says, "along for the ride." I'm most excited about England, seeing as how most books I've read (and movies I've seen) take place there or are simply English to their very core.

We'll wander through Westminster Abbey and see William Wilberforce's grave. We'll doff our caps to John Knox in Edinburgh, just like the real Eric Liddell probably did not. We will sleep in an old inn in Cropredy, miles - if that - from a famous battle of the English Civil War. We'll be unimpressed by the famous waters of Bath. We'll breathe history.

 I can't wait.

"grandness" vs. "Grandness"

We went to the Grand Canyon today. For the longest time, it seemed like we were nowhere special - just following a plain paved trail in the middle of a dry and fairly mundane desert forest. (It's mundane because if you've seen nine square feet of this desert forest, you've seen every other square foot of it on earth.)



And then, ahead of us, we saw a wall of rock, and a gorge opened up ahead.

 Let me tell you this: pictures just don't do it justice. It really is grand.

Typical "Foolhardy Person"

The National Park Service says to stay at least 6 feet from the edge at all times. I have no problems with that, being as terrified as I am of heights. (It's a useful fear to have, so I think I'll work on reducing it without removing it entirely.) But other foolhardy souls seem to delight in getting as close to (or beyond) the edge as possible. It's a horrible feeling to see a human being precariously close to a plunging gorge. My stomach did weird flips the entire time anyone stood more than 1 foot from the edge.We knew that it's instinctive to grab at anyone falling, and we didn't want to be taken with someone if they did fall, so - outstanding humanitarians that we are - we hightailed it to a different part of the area as soon as anyone got too close.

And I realized that that is exactly the feeling I get when I know that someone is willingly, knowingly, and actively pursuing the drop into Hell. However, in that case I do what I can to bring them back, or at least I try.

There is simply nothing like bigness to impress upon your mind the awesomeness of God. The sheer size of the canyon is overwhelming, but to realize that the Being that created it is so big that He's sizeless is something Grand indeed.

95 Things

Disclaimer: The problems that this post is about have all been resolved (more or less) satisfactorily.

I have been in Peru for only a week, and I’ve learned and experienced a crazy amount of things, in this order:

1. It is possible to get off one plane, go through security, retrieve your bag, leave and re-enter the airport, re-check your bag, go through security (and forget that you have a bottle of Gatorade, but they let you keep it), go upstairs, find a gate, and get on your next plane in less than an hour.
2. My big green suitcase now has only one wheel.
3. Gringos can be really, really annoying. This is even though I myself am a gringa here. But gringos, especially retired ones, tend to complain for hours about everything, including not having real milk to put in their tea ON THE AIRPLANE.
4. The Cusco airport has no security. Literally none.
5. The bathroom has water only in the toilets. There is no soap. Hand sanitizer is a wonderful thing.
6. There is a really cute kid at the airport. Cute enough so that you want to adopt him and keep him in your carry-on. And you privately name him Pepito.
7. Every flight at the Cusco airport is announced over the loudspeaker. That’s how small it is.
8. Dried strawberries are wonderful.
9. Do not assume that a tour guide that gets in the van from the airport is legit. He could be trying to scam you.
10. Just because said tour guide has a bazillion brochures and fold-outs, it does not mean that he’s 100% real.
11. Sometimes offers too good to be real are too good to be real.
12. It’s always a good idea to ask for time to think it over.
13. Sometimes you don’t realize the wisdom of that until after you’ve made a down payment of $100. Or until after you put the disclaimer into Google Translate and it says, “This document is not for accounting use, and must be exchanged for a bill of sale and/or invoice at the time of payment. It is worthless without an authorized signature and seal.”
14. It is physically possible to feel your stomach drop when you realize you’ve been hoodwinked.
15. Hey…every picture on the walls of our hostel room is crooked.
16. The Tourist Police of Cusco are in the Plaza of Túpac Amaru.
17. Guys like John Villafuerte Huanca (the guy who was trying to get us to use his tourist company) are described online as “slippery merchants.”
18. We can shake visibly from nerves and stress just as much as if we were freezing.
19. Down the street from the hostel, there’s a bronze fountain of a naked woman pouring water out of a pitcher. She’s lit with strobe lights.
    
20. Fireworks can go off at any time of day or night. Sometimes it sounds like someone dropped a match into a box of them.
21. Sometimes it’s easier to understand people about important things in Spanish than in English.  Case in point: “the other way is to go to the TURISM POLICE, they know very well how are do this king the falls contrat with the visitors so they have to lost time with the POLICE and to do the gestion with the denuncia” Whatever that means. What has a king got to do with anything?
22. The top bunk is really squeaky.
23. There are only 80 liters of hot water to divide among three showers. When the last person gets in, she will scream since the water is so cold.
24. You can’t beat a free breakfast with three courses.
25. Machu Picchu tickets cost $23, not $70.
26. There are fake guinea pigs made from alpaca fur at the market. They’re the cutest things since bunny slippers.
27. We’re too poor to buy Ramen noodles. So, buying the ingredients to cook a meal that costs, total, $4, will yield a lunch that tastes like it cost $4.
    

28. I can use Spanish subjunctive mindlessly only when I’m angry, and on the phone with John the Con. And even then I completely missed it because I realized too late I had used the informal “you” form, which simply isn’t done with people you don’t really know.
29. It is, regrettably, completely possible to feel exactly like the toilet on this sign:
    
30. The Tourist Police person is really nice to us, and gets things done very efficiently. He’s not so nice to sketchy tour guides: he threatens them with tickets.
31. John’s promise that we’ll get our money back (not including the bus ticket, guide, and transportation to the station), gives us enough of an adrenaline rush that we’re perfectly happy for a good hour.
32. There is a supermarket next to the tourist police.
33. Eggs don’t have to be refrigerated here, either.
34. There are booths upon booths of dog sweaters at the market.
35. Taxis are perfectly safe, even when they’re flagged off the street. They may have uncomfortably small back seats, but they’re safe.
36. Every single taxi driver is an unofficial representative of his own unofficial tourist company.
37. “Ya la tenemos” or “Ya lo tengo” (We/I already have it) works wonders with getting people to stop trying to sell you things.
38. Alpaca tastes like very tough steak.
    

39. Given the opportunity, Natalie can spit lemonade all the way across the table.
40. There are two Asian girls sharing our hostel room for the night. They really do bow when they leave the room.
41. It is always a good thing when John the Arrogant Blatherskite comes calling early, so that you’re just underprepared enough to not be really nervous.
42. It is possible for four college girls to make a grown man shake from fear.
43. Being sadistically ruthless in getting your money back feels entirely too good.
44. Taking pictures of a shyster when you’re pretending to calculate expenses is probably illegal. We did it anyway.
45. The Western Union at the Plaza de Armas has a better exchange rate than most places.
46. Jailli, pachakutik, llakta, and taki are all common things. (Yay for Francisco’s class…ish.)
    

47. Carnaval did not end here until Sunday night. We learned that when we had everyone throwing water balloons at us, and tons of carnaval foam sprayed at us.
48. There is no Daylight Savings Time in Peru, so I won’t have a smidgen of jet lag when I get back.
49. Taking a picture with an alpaca costs money.
    

50. There are really neat ruins in and around Cusco. A city tour consists in seeing the majority of them.
51. Beware of cute kids selling llama keychains. They will do anything to get you to buy them. (I was strong, and didn’t buy anything. I felt like scum, though.)
    

52. Real alpaca is cold to the touch. Fake alpaca might look cool, but it’s not cold.
    

53. White rice is not the best when it’s the consistency of tacky glue that’s been sitting on the shelf for a year.
54. The Hunger Games 2 movie is really exciting. So exciting, in fact, that Alex and Natalie went to bed about a quarter of the way in. (Liesel and I stayed up until a little before midnight.)
55. Waking up to an alarm for the first time in three days makes us all fairly grumpy, even if it is for 6 o’clock.
56. It’s best to put water in the coffee so you don’t use up all the milk and have to ask for more.
57. People love us on our tours because, though we’re the youngest tourists and are from the States, we still speak Spanish and are genuinely interested.
58. We are nerdy enough to feel like we’ve died and gone to heaven when we see old stones just sitting there doing nothing.
    

59. We may talk in English amongst ourselves, but we switch to Spanish immediately when talking to anyone else. Sometimes this is a bad thing. Case in point: Alex walks into someone’s picture. “Oh,¡perdón!” she says. He looks confused, and says, “Oh, uh. Sí, sí. Grahsiahs. Um, I’m done.”
60. Francisco’s class ONLY comes in handy on tours of Peruvian ruins.
61. The Incan drainage system was fantastic.
62. The history we learned in Ecuador is enough to make us able to give educated guesses on tours.
63. Alex calls the Pachamama the “Papamancha.”
64. Cute kids in the background can take all the attention away from the presentation of how thread is made and dyed. As in, people sit there and take pictures of him.
65. The Peruvian government is trying to build an airport on top of part of the Sacred Valley. Apparently that is how dumb governments can be.
66. Cornflakes and strawberry yogurt for dinner is the best meal we’ve made here so far.
67. The internet in the hostel has ceased to work for me.
68. A German is rooming with us. She was in Ecuador for a while, hiked the Inca trail with her boyfriend (who then went back to Switzerland), and she’s leaving for New Zealand in the morning. Talk about a world traveler!
69. Waking up at 4 AM makes us even grumpier than when we had to get up at 6.
70. Scrambled eggs in Styrofoam cups, alongside cornflakes and yogurt (also in Styrofoam cups), are a perfect complement to cheap bread smeared with weird strawberry marmalade.
71. We have John scared enough that he comes to drop off the taxi and our bus tickets exactly 6 minutes after the agreed-upon half-hour time frame begins.
72. The exchange rate is 2.8 soles per dollar. John owes us $2. (He paid the rest earlier.) He pays us with 6 soles. That means we get more out of him than he told us originally. AND we didn’t have to exchange it ourselves.
73. The station for the train to Machu Picchu is in Cusco, but, due to flooding during the rainy season, we have to take a bus to another train station. The taxi to the station takes about 15 minutes. The bus ride is 1 hour and 45 minutes long. The train is another hour and 50 minutes long. The bus ride up from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu proper is yet another half hour. All told, we travel four hours and 20 minutes to get to Machu Picchu, arriving at 11 o’clock AM.
    

74. Liesel sits next to a kid named Mauricio on the train, and gets hit on for the full two hours. She’s 19; he’s 16. He doesn’t even have decent pick-up lines. And his uncle “sneaks” a picture of her, which she definitely sees.
75. We look at the bus prices and realize we’ve been royally ripped off by The Jerk.
76. The guy from John’s company doesn’t know who John is. (Always a good sign.) We get the tour guide anyway without having to pay more.
77. What we paid in terms of “bus tickets,” “guide,” and “taxi,” comes to about what we thought we would spend on just Machu Picchu originally. So it’s not SO bad.
78. 60° F is now considered very cold. I have no clue how I am going to survive in Chicago.
79. What I always thought was Machu Picchu is not, in fact, Machu Picchu. That’s the name of the complex, sure, but the mountain in the back is Huayna Picchu, not Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is a squat little mountain behind the ruins.
    

80. About 20% of what’s Machu Picchu today was restored before UNESCO declared it a world heritage site.
81. The first guide in Machu Picchu was a 10-year-old kid.
82. The water in the Incan channels feels slimy.
83. It is so much better to go on Spanish-speaking tours. The guides’ English is almost unintelligible.
84.  People here are RICH. They can pay to go to Aguas Calientes to get lunch, where the cheapest sandwich is 16 soles and a drink costs a lot.
85. The bus gets really close to the edge on corners. It also slides in the dust.
86. I get to sit across from Mauricio (see #74) on the two-hour train ride back. I’m antisocial enough that he and his cousin both fall asleep.
87. John came through with the taxi to pick us up (he wasn’t there, but there was a taxi waiting), so we’re permanently done with him. 
88. People throw up in the street in Cusco. And it is possible to walk past and dry-heave on an empty stomach.
89. Nearly all restaurants close at 9, regardless of if their signs say they close at 10. If you get to the cheap one at around 9:05, you will be politely thrown out and have to go to the more expensive Inca-Azteca spaghetti/pizza place. (That doesn’t sound like a pizza restaurant, does it?) 
90. I can get "deals" in the markets because I'm a student and speak Spanish. Whether the deals are deals or not, I do not know.
91. We can get take-home boxes from the cheap place, and reheat noodles in margarine on the stove in the hostel for dinner.
92. Every bit of stuff I have fits comfortably into my two suitcases and my backpack, provided I leave my too-big pajamas and my split tennis shoes. 
93. The Western Union will take damaged American bills, to trade them out for soles.
94. The fruit salad topping we have every morning has been described by the Brits staying with us as looking "like dog sick." Descriptive, at the very least.
95. After seeing Machu Picchu, I feel like I can go home having done everything I wanted to. 

So, that's what I've learned and experienced since coming to Peru all of five and a half days ago. It's been what we call a "learning experience" at my house. Regardless of its challenges, Peru has been worth the effort and frustration.