Settled in Oxford

We've been in Oxford for two months now and we've really settled down, meeting the neighbors and making friends. The problem with Oxford is that it's such a nice place with so much going on that it's hard to focus on work! We've both been trying the discipline ourselves to get enough work done each day, but as you can see from some of the posts in my other blog, I've had mixed success.

Julián has been loving Oxford. His English is much better. Back in Madrid I was the only person who regularly spoke to him in English, so while he understood everything, he didn't say much. Now he's rattling on in English, even when he's playing by himself, and he's even picking up a bit of an English accent!

The school we have him at is good too. It's a Montessori school, and that allows him to pursue his own interests, mostly things related to geography like maps and animal cards. He's also producing two or three drawings a day.

I like the diversity there too. Most of the kids are bilingual or even trilingual, and his best friend is a little Nepali guy who is so much like him I beginning to think they're twins separated at birth. His school back in Madrid is mostly Spanish kids, with only a few North Africans and South Americans, so I'm glad he's getting to interact with so many different kinds of people. The best part is that he doesn't notice the differences at all; they're just the kids he plays with! Growing up in a whites-only neighborhood and a whites-only school, I had to unlearn a few things. Hopefully he won't have to unlearn anything.

My Favorite Travel Post for 2008

Looking back at this blog, which I started in March of this year, I see I've written 108 posts. Not bad for a beginning blogger! I think my favorite post was about the day I didn't see a yeti. It was certainly an eye-opening experience for me.

Do you blog about travel? What was your favorite post? Send me a link at seansontheweb (at) yahoo (dot) com and I'll post it here. It could be a favorite trip, a great photo you took, or some cool postcard someone sent you. Check out my other blog for similar "best of" posts I'll be covering from across the blogosphere.

International Year of Sanitation

If you've been reading my blog for a while you know I'm planning a big trip to Ethiopia, although I won't be able to go for more than a year since we're researching in Oxford for most of 2009. I always keep a close eye on East African news to learn a bit before I go, and I came across a depressing article in BBC's Focus on Africa Magazine about the main river in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, having become an open sewer. The reporter interviewed a family living in the slum right next to the sewer/river, who have to haul water from a pipe a kilometer away. While their drinking water may (or may not) be clean, they still have to deal with the stench.

This is all too common in the developing world, and "First World" water is none too clean what with all the chemicals in our water table. In Varanasi I saw people bathing in the Ganges not a hundred meters downriver from where bodies were being burned. In Nepal I saw hillsides covered in human filth, with pigs rooting around in it and the village water supply flowing nearby.

That's why the UN declared 2008 to be the International Year of Sanitation. No, I didn't know that until today either. Basically they want to teach people how to keep their water sources clean. Not a bad idea, but a little leveling out of wealth might help too. How about fewer wars and more water treatment plants? Or fewer billionaires and more jobs with living wages? Nah, no government would ever go for that.

The Day I Didn't See A Yeti

A BBC reporter wrote earlier this week about his hunt for the mande barung, a jungle version of the famous yeti or Bigfoot, supposedly to be found in the jungles of eastern India on the border with Bangladesh. He interviewed eyewitnesses and came across some interesting footprints, but didn't see the creature itself. Go figure.

As an agnostic in all things both spiritual and mundane, I can't utterly discount the possibility of giant human-like creatures in the world's remoter regions, but my own experience in the Himalayas makes me doubtful.

Back in 1995, I hiked to the Annapurna Base Camp, at an altitude of 5,050 meters deep in the Himalayas. I'd already heard talk of the yeti, and even met a Sherpa who claimed to have seen one. He pointed to a rock just off the trail and said he saw one sitting on it. When I asked what it looked like he said, "It looked like a man."

Once I got to the base camp, I stayed in a stone hut nearby and the next morning went exploring. Pretty soon I came across some amazing tracks in the snow. They looked for all the world like the footprints of a barefoot man, except very large and strangely rounded. I followed them for about a hundred meters onto a part of the slope shielded by a high outcropping of rock. This part of the slope hadn't received any sunlight, and so the snow hadn't melted at all. The tracks there were different--much smaller and obviously animal in origin. I'm hardly an expert tracker, but to me they looked like a fox's. I retraced my steps and looked at the "yeti" footprints. They were obviously on the same trail and there were no other tracks in the vicinity, and nowhere for the yeti to run off onto the rocks and a fox to miraculously take up the trail.

So this is what happened: the snow on one part of the trail got warmed by the sun and the tracks partially melted, becoming wider and rounder. The claws became "toes" and the pads of the feet joined into one oval mass. I've read up on this phenomenon and apparently it's quite common.

Oh well. If I hadn't let my curiosity push me into tracking a yeti, I might have become a believer.

Great Film from Nepal

I've been attending the 7th Annual Madrid Indian Film Festival, indulging in my love of foreign film. Despite the name, only about a half were from India, the rest being from various Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The best film I saw by far was Kagbeni, a Nepali film. I'd never seen a Nepali film before so I didn't know what to expect. Considering that it's one of the poorest countries in the world and just emerging from a nasty civil war, I figured I'd see a low budget effort.

Boy was I wrong! This is the best film I've seen this year. Cinemaphotographer Bidur Pandey has lots of fun with panning shots of Nepal's beautiful scenery, perfectly capturing the wonderful colors that are still vivid in my mind from my visit there more than ten years ago. The acting was well done, the scripting tight, the cultural mores are made accessible to a foreign audience, and the plot was engaging. The fact that this is Bhusan Dahal's directorial debut is simply amazing.

I won't give away the plot, but it's based on the famous story The Monkey's Paw, written by W.W. Jacobs in 1902. The story revolves around an ancient monkey's paw that can grant wishes. But as we all know, wishes come at a price. . .

If you get a chance to see this film, by all means do.

Third World Children 1, Obnoxious Backpackers 0

Speaking of class warfare, I saw a great example of the worst that backpacking culture has to offer when I was in Nepal back in 1994. I had just come back from trekking the Annapurna circuit and base camp, this being back when you slept in village homes and there weren't any internet cafes along the route.

I came back to Pokhara, a small city that acts as a launching off point for many of the best Himalayan treks. I'd rented some gear and needed to return it. When I got to the store, I found the owner was out and his nine year-old daughter was running the shop, and deep in an argument with three burly Israeli guys.

Israeli backpackers have a bad name overseas, and it's because many of them have just gotten out of the army and are a bit high-strung. Perfectly understandable after spending a couple of years dodging terrorist snipers and car bombers, but can't they go through post traumatic stress disorder in their own country?

Anyway, these three heroes were shouting at this kid because they didn't want to pay for their last day of equipment rental. They said that since they hadn't kept the stuff for an entire day they shouldn't have to pay, but it was evening, closing time, and any sane person could see they were in the wrong. The little girl was obviously sane. She held her ground, demanding the ten rupees they owed her (a grand total of 30 cents) while they towered over her in an aggressive semicircle, shouting at her and moving closer and closer, fists clenched.

It was beginning to look like they were going to hit her and I would have to come to the "rescue". I started calculating just how thoroughly they would kick my ass before the whole market piled into the store and lynched these guys.

But the little girl saved me from having to save her.

She stomped her foot on the dirt floor, shot out a little hand towards the biggest of the three and shouted "No! You give me ten rupee!"

They backed down, tossing a ten-rupee note on the ground and stomped off, muttering things in Hebrew that were probably not fit for adults to hear, let alone nine year-old girls.

I paid my bill without even checking it.

Lesson learned: nine years in a Third World country makes you tougher than two years in a First World army.