Brooklyn, New York. Or, People I Love, Gentrification, and Introspection.

I flew back from Kiev, Ukraine last week, en route to a home I had never seen before. Luckily, Chris was home that night so I knew I wasn't coming home to an empty building. My friend's mom drove me home, and told me when I first got in the car that if she didn't like the neighborhood, she wasn't letting me out of the car. Well, the first few neighborhoods we drove through she thought were adorable. Then we started to enter mine. Not so cute, by her measurements. As we pulled up, she told me, "I don't like this neighborhood, Lilly." I sat in the back seat, half-grimacing, half-smiling to myself, thinking, "if you only knew that I grew up in a neighborhood like this...." I was almost home.

Our apartment is glamorous by my-first-apartment standards. We live on the third and top floor of a walk-up in Brooklyn, 20 minutes from NYU's campus on the L subway line. We have a fire-escape that leads to a rooftop with no railings (no drunken parties on the roof!) but a breathtaking, soothing view of the fabulous and sometimes frightening Manhattan. There is a California-style Mexican food joint on the corner, and a convenience store on the other corner that sells my 99 cent Mucho Mango Arizonas.

The neighborhood is mostly Puerto Rican, but Mexican enough that I can find Mexican products on almost every block. It is also getting super gentrified. While I LOVE the Mexican restaurant on the corner (they have chicken mole and horchata and sometimes Jamaica and speak my brand of Spanish!), they offer tofu and soy cheese and they're always packed with young white folks. Same deal with the delicious Thai restaurant around the corner. Walking back from the subway, I hope I don't look like another one of them who doesn't realize or care how much their/our presence is altering the community and neighborhood. I came home hella upset about it the other night, and Chris talked me through it and soothed my conscience a bit. He promised we'll find out if there's any sort of community board, and we'll go to meetings and be actively engaged in the community. Without trying to run it, of course.

So people have been coming to visit me in this new apartment of mine (that I would have cried if I had to move into by myself. Thanks, Dad!!). Last night, one of my closest friends came over to chill. He told me I've changed. I seem quieter, more pensive. I'm not super talkative like I used to be. I've been thinking on this all night, trying to figure out what has changed within or about me. Maybe it's 'cause I've ingested so much this summer--been filled with so much information, with so many new lenses for seeing the world. Maybe once I start my hectic lifestyle up again, I'll be highly caffeinated and unable to shut up. Or, perhaps it's just part of me growing up. Me learning that silence doesn't need to be filled with banter, that not all my thoughts need to be shared. Maybe it's me validating myself, in my head and in my heart, instead of seeking external validation.
Regardless, I do feel like something in me has shifted. I am growing. To where and to what I'm unsure, but development is under way and it feels at once scary and comforting, epic and insignificant, natural and unusual.

So here's to New York, to grounding myself, to staying in one place for a while, to reuniting with people I love and to finding new ones. To remaining self-aware, but shedding self-consciousness. To Brooklyn. To this new year, and whatever it may bring.

P.S. My new favorite song that I listen to at the break of each day: India.Arie: Beautiful Day. Please go listen! When I shared it with Jenna, she remarked that this is the philosophy that she and I hold about life. It really is.

Love and smiles and introspection,

L

Odessa, Ukraine. Or, A note on bringing zen to the mountain

Wednedsday, August 12, 2009

Some background: The Kazakhstan chapter of the trip is over. I am sitting in my hostel in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where we have been for two days now. Before this we were in Odessa, a beach town on the Black Sea in Ukraine. When I say we, I'm referring to myself, Elise, and Lindsay. We all fell in love with Odessa from the moment we arrived. Well, maybe not the moment, but I'll comment on our busride in a minute :).

Odessa is beautiful, charming, full of people showed out, dressed up in their finest, strolling along the main streets, chilling in the beautiful parks, sunbathing on the dirty but nevertheless refreshing beaches. Open air restaurants line the streets and the whole city is breathing deeply, slowly, fully. The hostel we stayed at was run by two dudes, one from San Jose, California (I am always shocked by how I find Bay folks everywhere... today in the underground caves of the monestary in Kiev I ran into a guy wearing a Cal t-shirt), and one from Poland, whose wife and two-year-old also lived in the hostel. Part of the reason why I loved Odessa is how amazingly nice these two were to us.

A note on bringing zen to the mountain:

Yes, I believe it, because when everything went wrong on our busride (we got off the night train in Odessa and rode the bus an hour in the wrong direction), i just smiled, shrugged, and brought zen to the bus. I placed my fate and path in the hands of the world and determined to meet it all with an open heart. Being here, though, on the port of Odessa, makes me wonder. Because I definitely did not bring zen to the water. The Black Sea brought it, refrehed it, instilled it in and to me. Maybe it's because I already felt zen. But the water has always had this effect on me.

I do believe that places possess spirits, that locations have vibes and souls. Each being who comes to the place leaves a different mark on it, minisculey or massively altering its essence. Even those who mentally or emotionally--but never physically--cross its path alter it. Because the seeds of rumors or taints of opinion carried on the wind also touch a place.
Right now, I am touching Odessa and she is smiling on me.

Later that day:
I've realized that I adore vacation spots if the majority of vacationers are not American. That's why I loved Zihuatanejo so much, and I'm sure why I love it here. It feels comfortable here, but the lack of Americans also makes it a foreign experience. Almaty felt so far away from home, but this feels familiar, cozy in an eye-opening, sun-soaking way. I wonder, though, if I had been on the water in Kazakhstan, if I would've felt more at home. Water seems to do that for me.

Sometimes I write lists of topics in my journal as they pop into my head, thinking I'll come back to them and expand later. I almost never expand. At the end of Thursday in Odessa, my list stood as follows:
*Recommending Odessa to people
--Whiteness
*People-watching without eavesdropping because of the language barrier
*Our night out with people from the hostel
*and a longer entry on Israel and Judaism, which I'll post later.

love to all. I return home in 2 days! please write me emails! I have email access at this hostel :)
infinite x's and o's,

L

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Greetings from Almaty!

Let me give you a visual of where we are: When we stepped off the airplane into fresh air (it was one of those planes where you walk down the stairs and a shuttle bus takes you to the actual airport), at 6 in the morning, after four days of travel, the first thing we saw was ice-capped mountains in the background. Almaty is the business hub of the country, and is surrounded by mountains. Gorgeous! The country is enormous, so we first flew to Kiev, Ukraine, spent a day there, and then took another six hour flight to Kazakhstan.

We're staying in the mountains, in a little camp. We're living in cabins, with two to three Americans and two to three Kazakhstanis in each one. Kazakhstanis is the term used to describe people born in Kazakhstan, but not originally from here. Kazakhs are the native people of this land, and they look Asian. Kazakhstanis usually look Eastern European (Russian, Ukrainian, etc.). The country, or at least Almaty, is a mix of each.

It is our second full day here, and Ive already been on a rollercoaster of relationship building. Of course I love our NY group, but it's the Kazakhstanis that are the most fun to get to know. I've built good friendships with some who speak slim to no English, and my Russian is non-existent. Still, when you clean an old woman's windows and floors for four hours with someone, you learn how to communicate and bond without words.
Last night, we went up to an amusement park on Kok Tobe, a beautiful, big mountain above Almaty. We rode rollercoasters that you control the speed of yourself and found a statue monument to the Beatles. Lindsay asked me at one point what I was thinking, since I looked deep in thought. I told her this:

The relationships we are building now are despite our language barriers. The problem is that this time, we are definitely not going to be able to keep in touch easily. Sure, we can be facebook friends, but all I can leave on their walls is a smiley face. We don't speak the same language, so we can't write each other messages. We can use online translation sites, but ultimately our friendships exists within the boundaries of this trip.

So, rather than being sad, I have decided this means that every moment must be my favorite moment, every second has to be the best. I am living in the moment, for the moment, with the understanding that this trip is amazing, these relationships solid. Time is always a factor, but it can be my friend if I let it. This week, I am one hundred percent living in Almaty.

I miss and love you all! Hugs and kisses from K-Stan!