I found this smashed between two folders on my desktop
See Sarah Go
Sarah is no longer in South America. She has moved to another alliterative appropriate place….a quaint valley in Colorado where she will continue the blog and the never-ending search of what exactly she wants to do with her life.
Pictures and stories will follow…
AMERICA, OH HOW I HAVEN’T MISSED YOU
I have been back in the states for less than 24 hours now and haven’t even been outside of the airport yet but already, I’m ready for someone to send me back. Can you get deported out of your own country? My second interaction with a stranger was with a TSA officer who, lets just be honest here, more than hated foreigners. Too tired and gross from a days worth of airports to greet anyone with a proper greeting, I reached through my maze of straps, bags, and heavy crap without talking and handed him my folded customs form. He looked at me as if I tried to offer him a sample of my stool and said “Can you open that….please.” This is were blogs fail and I can’t reproduce the annoyed and hostile tone in his voice. I open the form, hand it to him with a nervous, please-dear-god-don’t-make-me-open-all-my-meticulously-packed-luggage smile, and he responded with “Peru. Uh.” He stamps the form and as I begin to walk away I run over his grotesque clown shoes with my suitcase and acting on trained instinct from the last 8 months immediately say “Oh, discupleme, lo siento.” Now at this point I had been in the US for approximately 12 minutes and had only spoken to the first customs guy, who, happened to be of Spanish decent, so I didn’t use much English. Before I had time to realize that I apologized in Spanish and I was now in America disgruntled TSA officer was all over it. I shit you not, he yelled at me, “THE CORRECT WORDS ARE EXCUSE ME. YOU ARE NOW IN THE UNITED STATES YOU NEED TO SPEAK ENGLISH.” Lets all pause for a what-the-fuck-did-that-just-really-happen moment……
Yes. Yes, it really did. In all of my bad, baaad, really baaaaad Spanglish I’ve tried to glue together to make Tarzan sentences over the last 8 months, never has anyone flipped out on me because I was in their country and I couldn’t speak their language. Usually I get a smirk and chuckle and I know in the back of their head they are thinking “What the hell is this poor girl trying to say”. More often than not they are patient with you, try to find someone who speaks English or use what 10 words they know to try and translate. I’m sure at some point someone did tell me off but I had no idea what they were saying so whoever it was, you are forgiven.
I stopped dead in my tracks and tried to process what had just happened. I quickly rethought the situation and was so stunned by the fact that I was just yelled at all I could do was turn and look at him with this wide-eyed, open mouthed look of horror. He repeated, still thinking I was Peruvian, “IT’S EXCUSE ME! YOU NEED TO SAY EXCUSE ME.” By now, everyone was well aware of the incident and all of flight 069 was staring at me. After a moment I regrew my backbone, squinted my eyes, and said back, “I’m from Louisiana, it was a mistake” in factious tone. I looked at another security guard who tried his hardest to lose eye contact with me and quickly said to his co-worker, “It’s ok, she apologized. Next in line.” I could here him still talking shit as I walked away and I wanted nothing more than to tell him (amongst other choice things) that maybe it was time he found another job but my fear of detainment and arrest withheld me. On the bright side, he thought I was a Spanish speaker. HA. Jokes on him. Asshole.
Also, I just paid $3.28 for a banana and an orange. God, someone send me back. Please.
Mi Cumpleanos
There is no denying it. I am a full-grown, real, live, “find a real job” adult. That last one is solely a recommendation by my parents, not reality or close to actually coming true. Mid-20s. Oh, mid-20’s. At 18, I thought by age 25 I would have been living in New York for 3 years already, well-established in galleries, completely financially independent and money, what money? Of course I have would have looooads of it. Oh, how blindly ignorant and blissful my younger years were. My current reality of 25 is thus yet far: one last year on Obama’s “mooch off your parents” healthcare plan, one last year for discount flights and train tickets (this reminds me, I have to get back to Europe), one last year before 30 looks closer than 20, two more years until I can’t go to New Zealand for a year and a year farther away from saying “recently graduated” on cover letters (I’m still squeezing this one out until the bitter end). I may have had some mild panic attacks the past week, but I reassure myself by saying, “shit, I really do still feel 22.”
Even if now I am starting to freak out a little, my birthday was one of my best. I spent the day before, my final day of 24, climbing a live volcano. And let me tell you, that shit is hard. If the climbing isn’t hard enough for you, the 70 mile an hour winds and icy ”fall to your death” will certainly give you your fill. The hike wasn’t that bad until we reach the winds. Somewhere between the beginning of the icy glacier and first mirador I pulled my groin. The guides noticed I was dragging my leg like an old piece of luggage and told me I would have to stop but I gave them each the death stare. As if to say “Don’t make get black girl on you”. I had made it so close, like hell I was turning back. The closer we got to the summit the stronger the winds got. When we reached 50 feet or so from the top we would step, crouch, wait until the wind passed, stand up, step, crouch, repeat. It all took a rather long time. We summited and our guide said “Ok, you have 3 1/2 minutes, take your pictures and get the hell down.” Really reassuring Victor, thank you. The view would have been more amazing if I could have seen it, the wind was so strong and sun so bright I basically just crawled around the summit with my camera on Automatic and shot blindly. Looking at the photo’s, I think it was spectacular. One of the cooler birthday’s I’ve ever had.
The group I climbed with were all really great people and I feel I made some good friends in them. As we climbed down we made plans to all meet up for a drink later in the night. We met up at our guides house and began the all too familiar festivities of how Latin American’s go out. Start drinking at 9, say we are going to wait until 12 to go out, at 1 finally try to make a move and by 2 am you are finally out of the door. Within this time frame I managed to get run over by a car. That’s for another blog, but no serious injurys and thanks to my human speed bump, there were no drunk drivers from our group that night. All in all, it was a great time. I got Happy Birthday sung to me in Spanish, free drinks all night and watched the sun come up while trying to find our way back to the hostel. Did I mention the discotech was in the middle of woods, completely off the grid, totally Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit.
