I can see the Andes on the horizon

As I'm sure you all know by now, Brice and I are following up the semester with a month-long grand tour of Bolivia and Peru. Curiosity beckons! We plan to visit all of the big sites, of course: Machu Picchu, lake Titicaca, the Nazca Lines, Chan Chan, and even the Bolivian rain forest. We're also going to see lots of mummies and catacombs, as well as a fair few llamas. And - this is important - I'm going to eat a Guinea pig. Yes, a Guinea pig [pic related]. And I will swim with pink dolphins, soak in hot springs, and go anaconda hunting by moonlight.* I am so freaking excited about our trip, I can barely sit still. Of course, there are also the more worrisome details. Can I pick up my Spanish fast enough? Will I contract some deadly disease? Will we miss our bus and have to spend a night in the streets? I hope so, I hope not, and I really hope not, but I'm excited all the same.

I'm looking for a solid novel to take with me, because as you can imagine the flight is quite long. We're also going to spend a great deal of time on buses and in hostels, so... I was leaning towards Gabriel García Márquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it's still in the running, but all suggestions are welcome. The book should be reasonably long, available in paperback, and have a good sense of humor, language, or intrigue. Of course, all three are always encouraged whatever the combination may be.

Since Internet connections will be a bit sketchy and necessarily limited (logic: will have time to blog on bus / do not have laptop or Internet on bus; will not have time to blog in Internet cafes, will be too busy emailing family and looking up bus schedules. conclusion: will not blog), I'm planning on keeping a hand written journal. Not only will this give me something else to do on the bus, it will give me an excellent memento gratis to look back on when I'm old and boring. Naturally, I'll be taking as many photos as my memory card will allow, but I won't really be able to share those either. So - since I'm going to be back in Warren by mid June - I'll just type out my journal and publish the appropriate photos when I get back.

OK, to be fair, the odds that I will actually type out all of my journal entries is abysmally low. But I'll share the important ones, and paraphrase where necessary. Long story short, you (yes, all 3 of you) will get to see the Peru trip eventually, just not as it unfolds in real time. I may even include a few poems, if I feel compelled to write them (and by compelled, I mean if I just can't stand looking at Brice for another minute).

Well, no matter how exciting all of this is I still have to pass my finals and move out of my apartment this week. Busy, busy, busy. But I guess I have to take things one step at a time. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. It's going to be one hell of a summer, that's for sure.

*Hunting with a camera, but other than that I'm COMPLETELY SERIOUS. How awesome is that?!

Spring comes to Campus

I'm breaking with tradition a bit and including some photographs I took earlier today while wandering around the campus. I started out in the mid-morning haze trying to take candid shots of students and staff for the English Department News Letter (I thought it would be best to avoid spring-time cliches like raindrops and flowers). But, as you will observe from the total absence of any student/staff candid shots, I opted to photograph the flowers anyways. I suppose I did do a bit of journeying today; I flitted about on the well-worn path between Boyer Hall and Murray Library, bouncing between bright objects like a honey bee who knows she's going extinct and can't decide on her last supper, and just thought about stuff. Obviously I can't include all of my photos in the News Letter, but I think they're all very nice; I'm sure my family will love them. Well, here they are:

Alabama Lake House: Days Two and Three

The remainder of our stay at the lake house revolved around putting forth the least amount of effort to gain the greatest amount of pleasure and relaxation. Basically, we spent the whole time lounging in the sun, walking in the woods, and working on our homework at a legendarily slow pace. Seriously, the two turtles swimming around our dock were moving faster than Lis and I.

Barbi, Alita, and Alita's husband Drew came down on Friday, along with their kids, so we spent a good bit of time chatting with them, watching Tatum and Isaac run around with the dogs, and trying to avoid diaper duty with Rowan (Alita and Drew's new baby). I think I'm just going to do the rest of this photo-album style. There really aren't any anecdotes that need to be repeated here, but I still want to share my three days in the sun with everyone.


1 & 2) Aunt Debi and the kids.








3) Uncle Don's chapel, adjacent to the park.

4) Lis holding her new friend, Sadie.

Alabama Lake House: Day One

Well, we drove around 870 miles yesterday, from 9 AM EST until 10:30 PM central time, and we made it here just fine. My uncle J.R. and aunt Christine met us at the local Stop n' Shop about 15 minutes from the family lake house, and we got the grand tour at about 11. By 12, we were more or less settled in and watching our St. Patrick's Day movie -- Boondock Saints. Lewis Smith Lake is about 20 miles north west of Birmingham, and it's got about 500 miles of shoreline according to aunt Christine. It's in the middle of the Bankhead National Forest, and more or less speckled with lake houses like ours. The two in the picture are the two my family owns; we're staying in the "log house" on the right.


Lis and I stayed up late on Tuesday (into Wednesday, really) celebrating St. Paddy's, and we had a nice lie-in this morning. At noon, though, we were up and at 'em. We took uncle Don's canoe out for three and a half hours and toured the immediate area. The water level is pretty high, so all of the caves and crevices I remember from my last visit here are flooded or flooding, but we enjoyed the cliff sides all the same. I photographed a few of the more interesting ones, and we finally settled on a pale cliff with a shelf easily accessible from water level for a brief rest. After docking the canoe, Lis and I dangled our toes into the absolutely frigid water, decided not to swim, and she did a free climb up a crevice in the cliff face.

I'm not too terribly upset that Brice couldn't make it down with us, but I really think he would have enjoyed climbing and rappelling some of the rocks around here. I've included some of the pictures of the shore line here for you all to see:












Aunt Christine made us dinner, we played a bag-toss game after, and now everyone's just off doing their own thing and relaxing. Other than a smart sun burn and few more pages in The Crossing, I really don't have very much to show for myself today. I should work on my Sherman Alexie paper tomorrow. Really, I should.