- In Cairo, because Garza speaks Arabic and gives people the benefit of the doubt, I had encounters with Egyptians as opposed to just having encounters in Egypt. One of them fed us dinner in his home (which doubled as a kitten refuge), one of them made Garza cry with libido-spiced tea and and one of them almost attacked us when we got out of the cab.
- I had written Nairobi off as a city full of overpriced services, underwhelming sites, and a night life unsettling in its abundance of cutely dressed white Kenyans. Then Dan took me out to some burger joint and we danced and laughed in a room crowded with relaxed beer drinkers and he wore a t-shirt and the city was redeemed.
- During my lunch break in Bujumbura, Lizzie and I would go to the pool together and swim for an hour or so. I taught her to do the butterfly and she inspired me to back flip. We let ourselves be amused by the swimmers wearing biker shorts under their bathing suits who did some blend of breaststroke and dead man’s float. Her car doors don’t open from the inside and she would hop out from the drivers’ side and open mine for me and I laughed at her.
- Jenny said I should get in touch with her friend Wendy in London and so instead of eating alone in a cheap Indian restaurant before Avenue Q, I crammed myself into a noisy pub with some young British professional and discussed the best way to make a Bloody Mary then ate some of the best (and most expensive) sushi I’ve ever had.
- Livy brought boxes of Zatarin’s mix from home so we hosted gumbo feasts in the house before leaving. With Italians, South Africans, British, French and Burundians, we dined on homemade Cajun cuisine and desserted on duty-free chocolates.
- Stephen helped me meet up with Reem in Bethlehem on an afternoon when we could actually see the wall. From Manger Square, we drove past the refugee camp on our left and the cab waited for us as we walked past the freshly painted graffiti. Banksy and friends taught us how sometimes difficult issues are best communicated through absurdity.
- Brian got close to Prof. Nasser Isleem in Arabic class so Nasser put him and Stephen in touch with his childhood friend. After we ate dinner there at his home one night, with a vatful of tabouli made especially for me, Nasser called from Durham and we all talked to him in the Ramallah living room. “I never thought…” he said, “that Taylor Steelman would be in my best friend’s home!”
- Ben’s Spanish was good enough to understand the shopkeeper’s Portuguese and he discovered that a Christmas Parade was about to pass us by. Instead of walking over the bridge to the other side of Porto we waited as 4,000 Portuguese people dressed as Santa Claus cascaded down the road behind a trail of confetti snowflakes. Then we got cotton candy popcorn.
- Not only does Pauline have the most adorable apartment tout pres to Bastille that let me pretend to be Parisian for a few nights but she staged an impromptu intern reunion with her, myself and Valerie. We had dinner of good bread and assorted spreads, including fresh West Bank olive oil and zattar, in the picture-spotted and pagne-covered one room apartment. And since she didn’t have pierced ears to house the earrings I brought her, we went on a search through the Marais for the best jewelry store to pierce her funky double lobe.
- Kyle showed up late to Bryant Park and in spite of reason, aggressiveness, and being cute, the yellow coat security guy wouldn’t let us in to the ice rink. I waited for 2 hours in all to get into the rink but then we skated until midnight to Christmas music and stories about boys.
- My Aunt Nancy creates beautiful sparkling necklaces and Sarah was there in her Upper West Side apartment to see the demo of the "Kaleidoscope Collection" with me. Nancy decided to start a business when a woman bought a necklace off her neck for hundreds of dollars. Now when I wear the one I won during the Christmas exchange at least Sarah will appreciate how special it is.
- The best sunrise I ever saw followed a delicious dinner at Tanganyika and a night of dancing at Archipel. It kicked off a day of walking around the coast with Juliette’s family, a matutu ride with me smushed up beside Fifi who told me about the love she lost in Congo, dancing to YMCA with Alia and Alex and Adam and Renaut and half the guards from work, a stolen wallet at Havana, peach shisha with Matt and another sunrise… which might have been even better than the first.
- On the way back from Kenya I met a couple with two big bags like mine. Both of them about 27 or 28, they were on their way to Mount Kilimanjaro. I think they’re from California. On a ticket around the world, they’re traveling together for a year and spending 3 or so weeks at each stop-off. They’re young and in love, tired and happy, climbing mountains and collecting postcards.
The list could go on and on. The thing is that books and cozy evenings in will be there all the time. My grandmother had a perfect corner on her sofa beside the coffee table adorned with a jar always filled with M&M’s where she sat and read on country nights. And a tree might not fall in the forest if no one if there to hear it and disappointing experiences are made better if someone can laugh about them with you and it’s more fun to walk down a cold street if you can cranny one arm around someone else’s elbow and reach the other arm up to point out a famous monument or a funny haircut or a sliver of a fingernail moon to them. “Psst, check that out.”
In these things I've found the most intense beauty: Not knowing what you want to do and asking lots of questions. Pretending to know how to answer them. Reading maps and disagreeing and hiding a smirk when you discover you were right. Falling asleep and getting poked awake. Body heat and long debates. Splitting the bill and following What-If conceits to the point of exhaustion. Posing for pictures and piercing ears and being unsure if you should really do this but coaxed into doing it anyway. They have one thing in common.
When interviewers ask me what I want out of the job I tell them I have three objectives: to be challenged, to learn something and to be useful (in a benefit-the-world kind of way, not in a get-the-coffee-for-the-boss way). And it's the truth. In the pursuit of those steadfast goals, here is what I want to do next, more or less but not necessarily in chronological order:
- Work... someplace useful
- Build up an arsenal of vegetarian recipes
- Climb a few mountains
- Learn Arabic
- Go back to Africa
- Stop speaking English
- Travel the world with a big bag
- Get into grad school
- Turn 30
My New Year’s Resolution is to spend as much of that time as possible with friends.
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