It makes sense that I’ve become a return traveler. In many other ways, I am not like the typical traveler, or travel blogger. I prefer my stays to last a month at a minimum. I almost always speak the language. I research the history, culture, and politics heavily and before and during my stay. This is just another way of settling myself deeper into the places I go.

One value is that I get to see the changes. Pre- and post-Revolution Egypt look incredibly different, and I loved seeing how the place and people had changed. The progress in Cuba has been amazing, and I’ll be writing about it more later on. With the Republica Domincana, the two trips were close together but that meant everyone remember me. I had the great experience of keeping my promises and seeing Mata during the rainy season we had heard so much about. France is just a second skin, and getting to know that for sure forever erased any doubts I felt when I first visited in a sleep-deprived 16 year old haze.

If return traveling seems like a waste of time, I think it either means the place doesn’t work for you or you have a very different set of travel priorities than I do.  Maybe someday this will change for me, but for now I couldn’t be happier spending my last traces of un-adult life in Cuba, for the second time.  And I can’t wait to make my way back to Egypt, France, the Dominican and Cuba once more.

Last time I was here I was very lucky with the internet.  We had wifi in our home and at school.  It was slow, but I was able to email and google voice chat every once in a while.  All of that was free and in the two locations we went to most frequently.  This time, we have to pay 10 CUC for an hour’s worth of internet on one of Habana Libre’s computers.  Today we just now figured out how to get the internet on a couple of laptops at the Jose Marti center where we take classes.  It’s a landline, it’s slow, facebook, twitter, Skype and WordPress are all blocked. 

If I were a Cuban with a question, where would I go?  The books sold at the Plaza de Armas are as old as dirt.  Getting to the internet is incredibly expensive for someone on a salary of less than 100 USD a month.  The newspaper here is the state-run Granma, named for the boat that brought Fidel and co. back to Cuba.  education is amazing here, but the textbooks are outdated and everything is rn by the government (sort of sounds like America…).  Often I can’t even find the party line, nevermind well-researched, balanced facts. 

Luckily, Cubans are known for their ingenuity.  I’m rying to learn more, but they have figured out ways of getting blocked television and radio, using proxy sites and SAT phones which are closely monitored here.  I still wish informaton would open up more down here, and I believe it would help Cuba as a whole, inclding the government.   Unfortunatuely, no big conclusions here.  Just a lot of hopes and questions.

Cuba is just too important to me for that.

I hate that for an American, there is no place to consume valuable, accurate news about Cuba. You can read the nostalgic memoirs of Miami Cubans, dipped in vitriol for Fidel. You can see the photos online of cigars, old cars and the same few Cuban workers dressed in colonial costumes. You can read Yoani Sanchez’s pissed prose, or the blogs of a few dedicated gringos. You can read the old fiction of Hemingway or Graham Greene. But where does an American turn to hear what regular old life is like for the majority of Cubans?

After I came back last time, a couple of my dad’s cousins asked me, while we were doing the MS Walk in Porstmouth, NH, what a couple of guys like them would be doing if they were in and from Cuba. That is the question we needto ask ourselves about foreign countries, instead of reducing everything to sexualized or demonized stereotypes.

I guess if I felt like Cuba was a well-covered topic, I could go for pure aesthetics. In Boston I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I value seeing the glorious within the everyday. But when the glory is artificially manipulated and the vida cotidianna is nowhere to be found in public discourse, it seems more like dishonesty than an aesthetic choice. There are a few journalism majors here, and I’ve enjoyed hearing their perspective on which stories we should be telling with our photos.  While some of the students are design majors, many are not and the combination makes for a lively mixture. 

Granted, I don’t think my method is any better. Given the chance, I would accompany all of my photos with novellas explaining the several decades worth of history, culture, politics and economic shenanigans that converge on the theme of my photo. It was pointed out to me that I am allowed one sentence, and any more than that would be a lecture. Um, yes. Can I just do that then? Can I just give everyone lectures and accompany them with a handful of photos?  Luckily, Andrea (one of the professors) is awesome and understood my dilemma right away.  When we get back to the US, everyone is going to put together a final product.  For me, she suggested that I do a book–the photos I take here broken up into thematic chapters with a lot of copy.   

On rough days, I feel that photography may just not be the medium for me. This fatwa on words is pretty anathema to everything about my personality. At the very least, I hope when I return to better internet the enhanced photos will make the lectures I post a bit easier to stomach.  But then I have days where if I don’t shoot until the afternoon I get antsy.  And everyone in the class I’m (supposed to be) assisting has been incredibly helpful with their critiques.  I’m certainly enjoying the steep learning curve, and I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by some incredibly talented, kind people from whom I have picked up a lot.

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. It’s how I learned about Apartheid, China’s One Child Policy, and racial reality in the pre-Civil Rights South. In fact, for a long time I thought writing historical fiction was going to be the small way in which I would attempt to save the world. I know the history and I have seen the movie. But that doesn’t make it any less depressing when the Mirabal sisters die. Well, all but Dede, doomed to be the one who lived. And the husbands all die. And the mother dies. And the father died years ago, likely after-effects of going to prison rather than giving his Minerva to that goat of man.

I love that Alvarez shows these women as women first, even when they couldn’t admit that to themselves. They were sisters and daughters and lovers and mothers and friends. It’s not like they grew up saying how they were going to be martyrs destined for Dominican currency and to be the founding example for the UN’s Day Against Violence Towards Women. They grew up as the Mirabal Sisters, and the capital T in “The” came later. The perspective shifts from one sister to the next throughout time, giving each the time to illuminate the exaggerations and omissions of the others. Each chunk of their lives is separated into sections, and the overall effect is that you miss each sister as soon as you leave her. By the time you get to the stuff that’s already been in the papers, you no longer are unsure how asthmatic baby Maria Teresa could be the bold gun-runner who was tortured in prison after she refused a presidential pardon.

Minerva is the natural heroine, for myself as well as a less argumentative general audience. It isn’t hard to see the opinionated, authority-questioning, boundary-pushing Minerva as a revolutionary. After all, once you ask the president (whom you slapped) for permission to be the first woman in your country in law school, hiding explosives in the garden is no bit thing. But Ms. Alvarez did a rare thing with Minerva: she showed how a brave and boastful woman could be so totally broken and vulnerable inside, without losing an inch of her bravery and old self. I have no doubt that Minerva couldn’t always see it, but it is something powerful to see a powerful woman break down as much as she can without losing herself.

I highly recommend In the Time of the Butterflies to anyone who knows anything (or wishes to know) about Dominican or Caribbean history. Also, I think it is our duty as Americans to learn the bits of history that we collectively lie about to ourselves every night so we can fall asleep. While America is only peripherally referenced in the novel, it’s not hard to realize how we fit into the martyrdom of Las Mirabals. Our inaction jumps off every page, as do the allusions to our eventual occupation of the DR.

PS the film starring Salma Hayek as Minerva is also lovely. I watched it while sick one night in the DR, and I think I freaked out whoever it was who came to check on my and found me crying alone in a dark room with my teddy bear. Sorry!  It’s just a really heartbreaking story, made all the more so by it being more or less true.

A final note on gender: this book has often been expressed to me as being perhaps too focused on women. It was once a requirement for Shaugnessy’s DR trip I took last year, and apparently the discussions of menstruation, marital woes, and motherhood proved too much for some male readers. Under the category of “sorry I’m not sorry,” I don’t think a book about four women, written from their perspective, needs to explain why there are so many women in the book and why they get so many pages. Also, is it actually emphasizing women that much? Or are we just so not used to female protagonists (and especially ones of such complexity and depth who refuse to be reduced to our usual tropes or to being the props of the men in their lives) that we can’t handle good ones? And finally, I think as a whole we have gotten too comfortable with white, attractive, able-bodied men as our blank protagonists, and the concept of blank protagonists in general. If we want worthwhile minds then we need to read challenging literature, and that requires characters, whether real or imagined, that push us beyond our comfort zone. So stop feeling bad for all the men of the world who do not receive nearly enough coverage in history books, news channels, daily conversations and literature, and push yourself to see the value in the lives of these women, even the parts of their lives that are “icky.”

I stood outside of Casa, my old school for a while. I didn’t go in. I walked past Alex’s house without noticing. I didn’t go inside la esquina de primera y a. None of the ninos were by the fuente. I didn’t stop for croquetas de pollo y una naranja. The woman at the gas station had to count out omy change for me, and even bought a goddamn fiesta cola. Light. Two of them, actually. Goddamn they taste like crap.

Everyone was probably with their madres today anyway. Sometimes I dislike how easily I go unrecognized. I have the same shoes, beach cover up, and tshirts. I go to the same beach and speak the same fractured Spanish. But I have red hair, bangs, a hoop through my nose and 15 fewer pounds to show for the last two years. A lot of the same people are important to me, with a few notable exceptions.

Everything is more affluent this time around. We had lobster my first night. It was the only option, so bottoms up for me! Luckily it was the first food I kept down all day.

There are two channels of HBO, as well as multiple ESPNs. Breakfast is an actual buffet, with real options and more than enough for everyone. Multiple types of bread, plenty of butter substitute. No fighting over the cocoa powder or Nescafe.

There was hot water in the shower. I turned on the cold water anyway. I guess I’m old fashioned like that.

It’s strange not living in the Real World House, or even a reasonable facsimile. I only share my bathroom with one other person. No one barges in unexpectedly. We don’t have the internet, but more importantly, there is no music. There is no dancing. There is no drinking in the shower, no Try a Little Tenderness, no swimming off the Malecon, no practicing drums in the living room.

There are the same flat pillows and scratchy towels. The threadbare bedspreads and choking old guaguas. The politics are the same, although mis compadres know far less about it now than those who came before them. Instead of my balcony, I write from my artificially condicionado’d room, about the same size as the one I shared with four other girls back in the day. Everything is either exactly the same, or exactly different. Are we sure I came back to Cuba? Or is this some other isla?

Canada is like that guy from your hometown that you paw around every once in a while just to feel alive, or to remember how it felt when you were sixteen and everything you did with him was new and dangerous. You may go back every once in a while, but honestly sometimes you get more out of not even bothering.

Egypt is like your first time: different for everyone. But no matter how you found it, it will always have a grip on you. It will always make your pulse quicken and give your stomach a jolt like an electric shock. You may wander back when you’re not sure what else to do, and while it may welcome you back, it could just as easily chew you up and spit you out. You will always wonder what if, and Egypt will always be there to remind you and tempt you.

Benin is like a bad fling: been there, done that, no regrets and no returning. Unless it was for a really good reason…

Greece was like finally getting with the most popular guy in school and not really getting it. What’s all the fuss about? I was too tired and busy from the pursuit to even enjoy it. And anyway, shouldn’t he come to me?  Maybe someday it will be time for a reunion…

Cuba is that guy your mother wanted you about. Some call it abuse; others are jealous. Sometimes, those people are one and the same. He’s frustrating, mean, fickle and generally beyond human comprehension. He may depress you, confuse you, and even cheat on you, but he makes you feel like a queen. With him, you are a woman no one else ever see or creates in you. With him you are wild, free, fun, and young forever. You are powerful, flirtatious and just a wee bit dangerous. Anyone who tells you they’d rather be alone than by his side is lying or they don’t know what they’re missing.

For reference, this is Thought Catalogue.

“Slacktivists don’t raise money”

“Slacktivists aren’t informed”

“Slacktivists aren’t connected to the cause”

“Slacktivists aren’t real activists”

“Slacktivists don’t accomplish anything”

I have some SERIOUS issues with KONY 2012, but this is still interesting information. Click through to enlarge

I’ve heard and read these complaints a million times over.  How many times do we need to see a campaign like the one launched to restore Planned Parenthood funding when Susan G. Komen Foundation pulled out?  Over $400,000 were raised rapidly, Komen went back on their decision, and at least one board member was fired/resigned.  That strikes me as a lot of money and accomplishment for a bunch of people who, “don’t care,” and “can’t accomplish anything.”

I would like to point out that the TOMS Day Without Shoes (which appears to have accomplished nothing more than clogging my inbox) is considered ”activism,” while buying something BOGO is “slacktivism.”  I have an inherent problem with the term slacktivism, but I also have issues with how we define it. I don’t thinkwe have to choose between one or the other, and I think there is far more overlap within these groups than is usually portrayed.  How often do I have to go to protests to maintain my credibility?  How many times can I tweet about a cause before I shift into “slacktivism” territory?

Traditionally, buying BOGO, purchases where a percentage goes to a cause, signing an online petition and donating via “like” or text message are all considered Slacktivism.  Isn’t my money just as good if it comes via text?  In the paraphrased words of my friend Eduardo, we all have to wear clothes, so they may as well mean something and do some good.  Isn’t my slacktivist clothing accomplishing more than your sweatshop-produced, unsustainable stuff?  Isn’t my support for a petition just as good online as in person?

Not only are these things as good, but I think they’re better.  Change.org can gather way more signatures than I can on foot.  People are more likely to donate when it is convenient, and a text or like is nothing if not that. I’m buying clothes and other products anyway, so shouldn’t everything I buy go to some good cause, whether its breast cancer research (which has mobilized this method quite well), AIDS medication in Africa or university apparel made by a unionized workforce earning a living wage.

Then there is the other category of Slacktivism.  The “likes” that aren’t attached to a donation. The shirts that say “Occupy” and serve only the profit of an individual.  The act of sharing a video like Kony 2012.  This isn’t armchair activism, this is not really giving a shit.  Can’t we please just separate the two?

I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to take hundreds of hours out of their time to go to rallies and protests and knock on doors and gather signatures.  But why should we?  I think about the schedule of someone like my mother, who works full-time and is involved with her family and community.  There are several causes about which she is passionate, including MS research, Breast Cancer and women’s rights.  Sites like change.org allow her to be informed and to inform her online network about the causes that matter to her.  She can post the link and recruit signatures while she makes dinner.  She can shop for my Christmas present and support small businessnesswomen in Africa at the same time.  Why shouldn’t we harness the power of caring yet busy individuals?  Of course we still need the employees at NGOs, advocacy groups and in public policy, and we need the weekend warriors to make a powerful, physical statement for news cameras.  But my mother’s donation to Planned Parenthood is just as good as those of “real” activists.  To ignore the power of modern media and a busy but empathetic public is foolishness.  If online and in-person activists work in concert and organizations harness that power and direct it to the proper systems of power, I see this as a gain for activists everywhere.

So please, banish the term slactivist from your vocabulary.  How about we get back to the causes instead of trashing on other people who just want to help advance them?

When picking out go-to attire for a woman’s closet, I was thinking of a scarf, black and white cardigans, and skirts that go to the knee.  In my mind, everything was lightweight and flowing, and colors and patterns are encouraged. They all said LBD and plain black suits.  I explained myself: you never know when you’ll end up in a mosque, or meet with a dignitary who would be insulted by bare shoulders.  I thought this in all earnestness, and have given this “must-have” list to many fellow travelers.  They looked at me, mouths agape, and someone said, “is that what your life is like?  Do you just like meet princes and stuff every day?”

Well, not every day.  But often enough to bring the damn scarf.

For jewelry, I was thinking of my funky fork bracelet from Cuba, a scarf that benefited women in Thailand, or politically snarky Cold War-themed earrings.  The other responses were along the lines of Tory Burch flats, animal prints and “nude pumps.”  to me, that sounds like the tag line of some crummy skinimax flick.

Yesterday in class someone gave me a hard time for writing out “His Excelleceny the American Ambassador to Canada.”  People were laughing and the professor asked why.  It’s over the top they said.  While i know in part they only said this because they were offended that I called their paper over the top, they were also genuinely surprised by the terminology.  My partner assured them we looked it up, but internally I was agitated.  We didn’t need to look it up.  I did to make her feel better, but i knew i was right, because I use that terminology.  To be clear, to say Mr. So-and-so the ambassador to Canada is like saying Mr. Clinton, who used to be president.  It’s not just a job, it’s a title; that title is forever.

I didnt end up defending my word choice because I was so incredibly taken aback.  ”I know you say it’s right, but it just sounds really pretentious,” they declared

And that’s when I realized it: no one else in that room had ever met an ambassador before.  Just like no one in that other room had been inside a mosque before.  A quick tally has me at nine different embassies in the last five years.  Not that I always meet the ambassador.  It’s usually a chargee d’affairs or something, but you always brief everyone for the possibility, and I have met several ambassadors.  I won’t even bother to count all the various houses of worship.  How is this not everyone else’s life?  Aren’t they bored?  How do they fill their time?

My life is different.  It just is.  I spend dusty days riding vans down pock-marked roads in the field.  I find myself in four- and five-language chains of translation.  I prepare for modesty and have rules about giving gifts or money, or allowing people to use my camera.  Why?  Because this isn’t new.  This is my life.  Eaving the US, travelling eveyr other weekend or so, packing at a the last minute, this is who i am.  Learning what poverty looks like in this new place, counting heads, cursing people out in a foreign language when necessary.  constantly knowing nothing, being an outsider, feeling useless.  Meeting royalty, fighting over minutiae the likes of which most people have never imagined, debating whether to feed a starving person.  Greece, the alleged armpit of Europe, felt luxurious to me.  I felt guilty just for being there.  It’s not all good or all bad, but it is definitely my life.  And it is definitely weird to most people.

Honestly, i wouldn’t have it any other way.  And that’s the bit that has me stuck.  Because so much of that life doesn’t account for what else is my life: playing school with Bridget, watching Zach and Cody with DeDe, tea and old standards with my grandmother.  Weddings and funerals in spades.  Holidays that range from 30 to 90 people.  Walking places alone at night that would make my mother’s skin crawl, bars where they know my name and order, sports teams that make your world and break your heart.

FAs I look forward, it seems like it will be starkly more difficult to reconcile these two odd pieces of my life.  for one thing, model un will be gone forever.  No more debate, no more conference, no more “mom!”, no more winning, no more neurotic, competitive delia.  No more mentoring, no more embassies, no more overnight trains, no more brand new crop of friends every semester.  That UNA part of me will never come back.

I will no longer have a partitioned life, a clear timeline and financial capability to leave, purposefully, for a little while.  I talked the other night with a friend about the need to be relevent, to do the things that I consider “work” all the time.  So often when people ask, amazed, “why did you do that?” that answer is, “because it’s my job.”  When taking care of delegates and advising students to go abroad isn’t my job, what will be left?  When I don’t have readily available ways to matter to the human race, to contribute, what will be left?  He’s right: I can’t be happy if I’m not doing my work.  It is a passion.  But what if no one will allow me to do that work and pay the rent?  Worse, what if they won’t allow me to do the work and not pay the rent?

When I don’t have this insane workaholic schedule, the one I started at age eleven with science team and forty hours a week at school, who will I be?  When there are no lectures, no charity events, no competitions, no meetings, what’s left?  And what good is all this experience and education, this thoroughly different life, these five fractured languages, if I never use them to help anyone?

The last thing to be touched by a foreign hand is the hair.”

Arian, our ACT liaison mentioned this during one of our pre-departure orientation sessions.  While I don’t think this just applies to foreign countries, as many college students prefer to cut their hair back home over break, she certainly has a point.  I know of very few people who have had their hair done while abroad for a semester or less.  A definite exception is the DR spring break and dialogue crews, which included a bunch of people who had their hair done, but not cut.

Nevertheless, few people are willing to get their hair cut abroad.  For some reason, the travelers I know are more likely to get a tattoo or piercing abroad than a hair cut.  Does that seem strange to anyone else?  Of course, a few months after Arian said this, Kathy and I died each other’s hair in the Hotel Metropolitan bathrooms, and a few students had their hair cut.  But it was fewer than 15 of us out of 151, and I feel like an at home dye job is the same no matter where you are in the world, so I don’t really count.

Others have rules about dating abroad.  Some won’t enter into a serious relationship, knowing it will likely fail when they return home, while others won’t even casually date.  Some people won’t date other people on their trips, but locals are fine; most of the time I find that the reverse is the case.

While in third world countries, many have rules about internet usage, and television tends to be vetoed by most travelers regardless of where they are.  While people often fail at their internet bans as soon as they are given the chance, many others refuse.  While in Benin, a friend said it would feel like, “cheating on Africa” to go on the internet to email or use facebook.  Of course, a quick glance in the local internet cafe would argue otherwise, as well as the prevalence of our Beninois counterparts on facebook.

In perhaps the strangest example, several people on our Benin trip would not drink the tap water in Paris.  I’m pro-germ, and Cuba made me incredibly appreciative of clean tap water, so this just confounds me.  It’s a G8 country for crying out loud!  They have a permanent seat on the security council!  The idea that Parisian tap water is somehow drastically different from the water in Boston sort of boggles my mind.

Why do we abstain from certain things while away from home?  Does it make travel feel more “real”?  Are we afraid of the outcome?  Are there things you won’t do abroad that are normal for you at home?

If I think of it as just another in a chain of entertaining Family Dinners with NUin, it was a great night.  If I think of it as Thanksgiving, it makes me a bit sad.

For the first time, our students realized that the people back home may be happier than they are.  It’s also possible that this was the first time they were right.  Many students’ families were able to come, but not all.  I think this made it that much harder on those who had no visitors.  Unlike a regular day, some students did have people to make them less homesick.

As for me, I couldn’t believe there was a Thanksgiving bigger than my dad’s side, which clocked in at 89 people this year (I would have been number 90!)  But alas, around 200 people filled the hall on ACT’s high school campus.  Of course, since it’s not a holiday in Greece, this came after a full day of work and school for Team Greece, which certainly added to the mood.  Also, I know it sounds silly, but not being able to relax and enjoy a glass of wine or a beer with my Thanksgiving dinner was a pain.  I understand why there are rules, but it was our job to spend all day and evening Wednesday and Thursday with our students, thereby disallowing us from a time to fully relax and enjoy the holiday.

Perhaps my favorite part was the contributions of our students.  Armaan and Vitaly played piano while we ate, Ben sang “Home” and made half the room cry.  There was going to be a prayer at dinner anyway (since when is Thanksgiving a Christian holiday?), so we went for the all-inclusive approach and opened the floor to our students.  A few said a Jewish prayer intended for the first time a person does something–like the first time a person has Thanksgiving in Greece.  We also had a few stripes of Christian prayer, and Sultan rounded things out with a spur of the moment Muslim contribution.  I only wish he had slowed down and translated it for the rest of us.

Another highlight of the was how classy and respectful our students were.  I’m totally impressed by the way they handled some disputes playing football, not having enough room on the bus, and a few non-NUin people giving them a hard time.  Any woman who can handle being called the C-word (for absolutely no reason, not that that even matters) by calmly removing herself from the situation is a mature person in my book.  We also had tons of our students calmly, respectfully, voluntarily leave the bus so other students could have their seats, even though many of those who offered up their seats had guaranteed spots on the bus and gave them to those who shouldn’t have been on it in the first place.ACT Staff, study abroad students, NUin kids and us.

To end on a good note, one of the very best parts of our Thanksgiving was that Danny Tierney, one of our students, organized an 8-team football tournament.  He had cones, a med kit and a well-lit field.  At least 63 people played, and easily that many people came just to watch, ranging from ACT and NUin staff to student families and Greek students.

While the food certainly left something to be desired (food should never be mistaken for both cranberry sauce AND gravy), the company and our hosts did everything they could to make a dreary day a lot more fun.  The bottom line for me, though, was that I really hate missing holidays back home, and a fun workday is still a workday.