Breakthrough

Arriving at the school was slightly painful... the teachers don't speak English at all. I could understand the hand gestures and a few of the words well enough to get the general gist (you're going to take a test, then meet the host family), if they spoke really slowly. And then I met the host family and found out that while the husband speaks a little bit of English, the wife speaks none.

It was a little daunting. I did find that I didn't need the crutches as much as I used to think I did, but I still found myself in the deep end trying to swim. Suffice to say it was a quiet first couple of days, outside of the English that I was occasionally speaking with the Canadian and the Dutchman who were also staying there.

(And I still felt guilty about much of that - Diana would cook us dinner and then sit quietly while the three of us rattled on in English, which she doesn't understand. I've been the one who can't understand anyone else, and it sucks.)

But today was a breakthrough.

Crutches

[For clarity, the crutches part is a story from 8 years ago. I'm not on crutches now, I'm fine.]

I was given a choice: I could stay on crutches for three weeks, or I could use crutches for a week and then use a cane for a few weeks afterwards. So I immediately headed over to fashionablecanes.com and picked out a pimpin cane.

It would have been easier on my knee to be on crutches. Less work, less painful, faster. But crutches always come with their own difficulties: stairs, doorways, carrying bags, etc. With the cane I was not far off from how mobile I'd be fully healed.

I've found that other crutches in my life are similar. While they're easier at the time, the experience you get with them has its own set of difficulties. And thus I find myself, after 24 hours in Ensenada "on my own," being more comfortable here than any other time I've been in Mexico.

Planning

It's been a whirlwind past couple of weeks. Months, really. But this past month was... overwhelming, to say the least.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best idea to stack up leaving my job, a 3-week trip to see family, Burning Man, departure on a six month trip, getting rid of everything I own, and getting a new motorcycle running.

But with a few stumbles here and there, I've successfully made my way to Mexico for two weeks of Spanish immersion courses.

Condensation

One suitcase. That's what I allowed myself to keep out of the things that matter to me.

Sure, there are plenty of things that I'm giving to friends that they'll use and hang on to, and maybe I'll even get some of them back when I return. But at the end of the day, everything that I really, truly wanted to keep - the things that mattered to me and me alone - I gave myself just one single suitcase.

And I was having trouble trying to fill it up.

Grand Re-Opening

How do you re-open communication that's been closed for 3 years?

The last time I posted on this blog, I was in the interview process for a position in San Diego at Qualcomm. It seemed promising, and I'd just gotten back from a day of interviews with a team that it sounded like I'd really enjoy working with - though one of the interviews didn't go as well as I'd hoped. But I wasn't getting my hopes up too high, because I'd spent the previous Fall going through a similar process for a Qualcomm job in Boulder, and then a few days before Christmas I got a call saying that I didn't get the position.

So I was sitting in an extended stay hotel room in Tennessee, thinking about the contract job I was working at an oven company, and hoping with everything I had that this Qualcomm thing would pan out and I'd be able to move to San Diego. I was dreading hearing that I might not have gotten the position, and thinking about trying to find an apartment close enough to work that my commute didn't suck without being an hour or more away from Nashville.

Arlington Laundry

So here's a story from last summer when I was traveling that I never posted on the blog. It probably belongs just after the Roll With It post, and is the "story for another time" that I mentioned at the bottom.

The day after the earthquake in D.C. was a lazy one for me. I'd stayed up pretty late drinking and smoking the pipe with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time and a few of her friends, so I slept in. I had been planning on traveling to Philadelphia that day, but that got tossed out the window based on what time I woke up. I called my friend there and asked if she'd mind me showing up a day later, and she said that was fine. With a day of no plans ahead of me, I decided to get some things done.

First, I headed over to an REI I'd seen nearby to pick up a few supplies. The main thing I needed was more of the Dr. Bronner's soap I'd been using as bodywash, shampoo (now that I had hair again), dishsoap, and laundry detergent all-in-one. While I was in there, I picked up a few other things as well, and then I went back out to the motorcycle. Without much storage space, pretty much every shopping trip is immediately followed by removing everything from the packaging in the parking lot and a trip to a garbage can.

As I refilled a brand new gotoob with soap (I'd left the old one in someone's shower somewhere in the country), I marveled at the design. With the lid popped shut, it was, as far as I could tell, impossible to pop it back open by squeezing the tube. Though the entire lid did move a bit weird on this particular one, which I hadn't noticed before...

SQUIRT!

Flat (Independence)

I'm currently vehicle-less.  It's somewhat strange.

Yesterday I drove from Rockford back to Peoria and met some friends for lunch at Flat Top Grill - it's like a Mongolian Barbecue place where you put a bunch of uncooked vegetables and meat from a buffet into a bowl and give it to them, and they cook it for you. $10, and I can usually pack my bowl high enough to get three or four meals out of it. It's one of the cheaper ways to eat if you have a place to store leftovers and reheat them, and it's pretty good too.

When I got back out to my bike, I sat down, popped it into neutral, and noticed that even though I was on a bit of a slope, the bike wasn't trying to roll backward at all, which was a little strange. As I pulled away, I noticed it felt very sluggish - the bike didn't want to coast at all.  Before getting out of the parking lot, I did a quick look-over of the bike... and noticed a completely flat back tire.