List #1. What to do when you (hypothetically) have moved to a place and have no established routine or social circle.

You have a lot of free time and need to find ways to spend it where you wont be lonely or feeling bad about yourself.  

Sublist #1:  Things not to do:

1. Watch a lot of T.V.

2. Feel sorry for yourself

3. Hours on the internet

4. Pity-eat

5. Reminisce about old times -- spending hours on facebook looking at photos or sitting on gchat talking with home friends

Sublist #2:  Things to do

1. Go for long walks. Preferably in the rain. Crying is allowed.

1.5. Go for long bike rides. Preferably in the rain.  Crying will probably impair your vision

2. Talk to random people.  Whats the worst than can happen -- you know no one.

3. Write blog posts about what to do when you are feeling antsy

4. Exercise

5. Cook

6. Read books (if you can handle the utter self-exclusion of it all)

7. Find new hobbies

8. Get better at old hobbies

9. Listen to speeches on youtube

10. Drink 

11. Go to all of the free things that you can

12. Go to a ton of organizations/meetings

13. Be VERY outgoing and optimistic

14. Make art.  Especially if you aren't artistic

15. Send out letters and postcards

16. Call grandma

Juggling in CO

In moving to a new place (CO) and starting a new job (AmeriCorps), it is hard to keep a lot of things constant.  Routines are abandoned and habits become memories.  It is a kind of test, a way to determine what you find important in your life, what you are willing to sacrifice and fight for.  I'm not surprised by most of the things that I've managed to retain, but there is one action that I'm always baffled at -- juggling.  I picked up juggling about a year ago when I found out that my little brother, Andrew (age 20, slightly skinnier clone of Franklin), could juggle.  It took me days to learn, but after I picked it up, I was gone forever.  In Spain, I learned some tricks and formed friendships that were largely based upon juggling.  Saw some crazy clown shows, watched circus men juggle flaming knives, and learned that I know almost nothing about the art.  When I got back to the USA, I bought some juggling clubs and went to a juggling club here in CO.  I think that I now finally have glimpsed the mountain of juggling and realized how imposssibly far it is up to the top, full of lightning-quick hands, strange jargon, even stranger objects, and my jaw hanging agape most of the time.

But that is okay -- I'm fine with marvelling at people so much better than me.  Yet, it is still something that I enjoy coming back to, find myself unknowingly picking up the balls and messing around.  Sometimes I get in weird trances, lost completely in the act, only to awake an hour later with an unexplainable smile on my face. That is what I think draws most people to juggling -- it is an act (or action, who are you really performing for?) that easily allows -- almost forces you -- to focus all of your mind on your hands and the things moving 6 inches in front of your face. No daydreaming or stress permitted.  If you start thinking about what you're going to eat for dinner, the balls will drop.  And do you really want to drop the balls?  

You could draw a line between juggling and meditation -- both focus on nothing else than what is happening at this moment.  But I couldn't do it -- juggling has something more that meditation lacks.  It is finding peace in action, almost chaos, being able to sustain this weird pattern even though you really have no idea how it works (and lets face it, no one really understands how you get your hands to move and throw the balls in such a perfect pattern over and over again).  It is observing a machine move and move and move, and then knowing that you are the machine and you realize wow (but then drop the balls again, because that thought is just another part of the daydream)!  For me, my favorite part about juggling is right after I learn a new trick and can do it unthinking.  My brain has processed it and all I have to do is put effort into my physical capabilities, focus eyes and hands on the atoms whizzing around and thats it, until maybe a spontaneous laugh comes up from nowhere and I drop the balls, but thats okay because I understand then that the balls will always be in the air, whether you put your hands to them or not.

(I'll put up a video soon)

Alexis' Waterfall Chateau

Alexis met us half an hour up the road, gorilla-like and wielding a machete.  He whispered to me that the paths on our route were treacherous, so we would have to walk single-file in some places.   This little spark of danger made me a little nervous, but it was worth it, as Alexis would take us on one of the most diverse and beautiful hikes that I have been on in a long time.  We started in the forest, looking for snakes, those tiny adorable leaf cutter ants, and (I quote here) 'monkeys moving in troops swinging through the trees'.  That is right -- apparently monkeys move in troops (troupes?).  Through some clearing in the brush, we could see the entire valley spread below us.  Completely green and terraced with coffee plantations, it continued on forever.  Alexis took us to two waterfalls, looming giants which you could barely approach because the water fell too strong.  The rocks stood slippery with algae and slime, no path existing, and I realized that this is not a place that many people get to see. 

After swimming in rapids, Alexis took us to his own farm.  It lay bare on a mountainside, the coffee, pepper, chayote, and blackberry plants raising a kaleidoscopal labyrinth which induces a mixture of diziness and wonder.  He kept some land fallow, and we climbed up to the bald peak of a hill -- in fog so thick it was almost solid.  Leaving the forest and instantly coming to this foggy wonderland was, without any other words to put it, horror-movie-creepy.  'Oh-my-God-someone-is-going-to-kill-me-soon' creepy.  I would not have been surprised if the mist had suddenly turned red and a bloodthirsty Costa Rican stumbled through, dual-wielding machetes.  But, Alexis guided us safely out of the fog and to his house.  Like everything during this experience, it was out of a fairy tale; built by hand, his house is made of smooth logs of different colors, fitting together to make the quaintest dwelling imaginable.  It is decorated with hundreds of gourds hanging from the ceiling, mini-watercolors plastering the walls, and woven baskets in the corners.  The furniture is cut by hand and topped with animal pelts.  He has three trout ponds out back, with more than a thousand minnows swimming in each.  And there we are, standing in the middle, jaws agape and marveling at the personality and color of the place.

Note: at the end of the trip, Alexis asked us all to sign a piece of wood.  He is going to have his daughter paint scenery around the signatures and hang it up on his wall.

Melvin #1 and the Cheese Factory

For our first excursion we drove even further up into the mountains.  

Melvin lives an hour from town and has a farm that mainly produces cheese.  We arrived at 6:30, just in time to lend him a hand with the morning milking.  He shames our weak American fingers, producing fire-hose strength streams of milk while we barely get a tinkle. Melvin is an ageless child, standing  5 feet tall and skinny, a large face and mocking grin.  Wearing knee-high rubber boots, he slogs through the mud and cowpies, directing the flow of cows in and out of the barn.  After the milking, we start with the cheese-making process.  He takes all of the fresh milk (about 2 buckets worth) and strains it into a bowl.  Melvin then adds 3 (or was it 4?)(or 5?) drops of a chemical that magically speeds up the separation of the curd from the whey.  And we wait an hour, conveniently greeted by a breakfast of eggs, tortillas, and fried plantains.  Melvin's wife and brother cooked for us, the kids amazed that they could make so much food over a tiny wood stove (with fire! and smoke!).     

After breakfast, Melvin showed us his farm.  It was like seeing a Latin American Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory guided by a shrunken Costa Rican Gene Wilder.  He walked everywhere with a machete.  We went to his sugarcane fields, where in one smooth arc he lopped off three stalks and carved them into little edible sugar bombs for the students. We toured his pigs, turkeys, rabbits, chickens, genetically-inhanced-dwarf-dogs, and horses -- making it back to see the cheese develop.  The next step is, strangely (is there really anything strange in this place?), to pour hot water over the cheese.  Somehow, the solid part becomes more defined, and Melvin carefully pours out the excess liquid.  He continually lectures us on the importance of hygeniety -- while he fondles the cheese like a piece of play-do.

Nonetheless, we taste the cheese and it is amazing with a pinch of salt.  The students are, by now, cracked out on a combination of endless coffee and sugarcane, so we leave Melvin's farm frollicking and in high spirits, ready for the second leg of our day.  

Some things that I did during my first week in Los Angeles de Paramo

1. Bought $800 worth of cement and cement accesories in a nearby town

2. Began teaching most of the neighboorhood population of children how to juggle

3. Wove a basket out of newspaper and wood glue

4. Got my 2010 Hyundai Tuscon stuck in a ditch

5. Ate tasty homemade Costa Rican food with only a spoon

6. Did not get bit by any mosquitos

7. Planned out our 16-person group's stay for the rest of the month

The First Week: And So, It Begins

I stepped off the plane in San Jose to find that American Airlines had lost my luggage.  "No big deal," I told myself.  "You can't do anything about that".  The incompetence of American Airlines actually allowed me an extra day to explore San Jose before I had to head to the village where we would stay for a month.  I immediately got lost in San Jose, a city of interminable signless streets and potholed pavement.  In big areas, I try to move with the crowd, to become lost and overcome with the collective sentiment.  But here, it is impossible.  You find some streets in the center strangely deserted, and others filled with people on individual trajectories, like arrows horse-blinded to their purpose.  Then there are the lotterymen and street vendors, barking eddies of desperation, making you wonder 'do they actually sell any of this stuff?'.  

So I left the city a day late and slightly disillusioned, but ready to find out everything I could about my new home.  The road from San Jose to Los Angeles de Paramo is, when compared with anything in the USA, treacherous.  The Panamericana (a main highway in Costa Rica) is a two-lane windy mountain road.  Common obstacles are: fog so thick you have to slow to a crawl, rock slides closing off half the road, Mack trucks in your lane speeding at you head on as they try to pass slower Mack trucks, scooters, bicycles, angry Panamanian window tinted tailgating BMWs, and your  own exhaustion as you fight to hang on to the inside of every curve.

Leaving the Panamericana, I had to take a dirt road an hour into the mountains.  It is a different kind of horrible than the Panamericana, requiring slow and careful driving to avoid the ditches where you could get your 2010 Hyundai Tuscon stuck forever.  At one point, the road had even been closed down for a month -- a mudslide due to heavy rains washed it completely away.  So I arrived in Los Angeles de Paramo in a drained and dazed state, carried only by the momentum of the roads and some odd vestige of energy I had tucked away before the trip.  

My first meeting was with our Costa Rica contact, Juan Vianey, and the local-head-of-town-shop-owner, Hugo.  I was so exhausted during that interaction that I sat sipping my blackberry smoothie while they blabbered away in fast Costa Rican Spanish.  Apparently, they had decided a lot of things during that conversation, including but not limited to: (1) I was to stay with Hugo for the week (2) All of our projects for a month (3) and that Juan was going to sell Hugo his 15-passenger green Safari Land Rover.  Juan left in his tiny green truck, and there I was, up in the clouds and coffee plantations, preparing myself for what would be one of the craziest months of my life.

Paco, el charco, and how I lost the masas...

This is really an interweaving of two stories into one.  I first met Paco during Carnaval.  At that time, my friend Jason from Australia was visiting, and I had gotten interested in juggling and doing crazy dances.  So, we decided to merge the two ideas, and started juggle-dancing with invisible balls.  One advantage of using balls that don't exist is that you can do a lot of things that aren't possible in real life.  Throw the balls over buildings.  Behind your back.  In your mouth.  And start spontaneous interactions with complete strangers.

Paco was one of those strangers.  But, instead of being like 'what the hell is going on?', Paco threw the invisible ball back.  This began an intense interchange of about 20 minutes, running around Badajoz, madmen posessed, oblivious of onlookers and obstacles.  It is like finding someone in a crowd who has the same birthday as you; you feel an instant connection.  After we could juggle no more, we hugged and parted ways.  I didn't expect to see him again, and pegged it down as one of those unexplicable coincidences that just happen in life.

Clearly, I did see Paco again (Badajoz isn't that big).  He roomed with one of my Erasmus friends, and after a couple of conversations, he offered to lend me some masas (really cool circus juggling-clubs).  Of course, I accepted.    Paco arranged to have his friends bring them to a BBQ we were planning to have at a nearby pond (el charco).  But he didn't come.  This all could have been avoided if he came.  

Scene 2.  Enter el charco. El charco is one of my favorite spots around Badajoz.  It is a large pond, and is hidden among the hills of an enormous park in the outskirts of Badajoz.  To find it, you have to drive on sandy paths for maybe 2 miles, until you reach a crest and see spread out below a sparkling lake rounded by small acorn trees.  There are groups of teenagers playing in the water, boys playfully tackling girls, everyone drinking wine mixed with coke and listening to bad reggaeton.  But, if you come at the right time, your only companions are ducks.

Some of my friends and I decided to have a going-away party at el charco.  We barbequed; we swam across the lake; we lay in hammocks for hours.  This was my first opportunity to try out the masas and I loved them, being able to juggle three within an hour.  But, somehow in the rush of logistics and packing up, I left the masas behind.  

A week later, Paco asked for the masas.  Only then did I realize that they are lost, and spent a frantic 24 hours trying to find them.  To no avail.  I felt like a shepard who has lost a sheep.  Breaking the news to Paco was hard, but I had to do it.  He was surprisingly understanding, actually still hoping that they will turn up somewhere.  My last interaction with Paco was a rushed goodbye, me leaving a party at midnight to sprint to the bus station to catch a ride to Madrid that will eventually start me on my exaggerated journey home.  

Side note: I ordered some masas online.  I now practice them every day at home.