Running: The Aftermath

So I am finally feeling the ill effects from running distances (though nothing major) on concrete. I think I'm getting shin splints because the area around my shins are killing me. I stopped running for a week because of this and now am pretty much planning on just running sprints on the spongy astro-turf at this park near me, which sucks because the security guard there is a pain in the ass. A few weeks back he kicked me out because I was walking on the outskirts of the field (which is a running track) because there were soccer teams who were going to be playing. Uhhh....I'm not exactly using the field. Yesterday, he tried to pull that again and I said (referring to the sub-10 year old children practicing) that it didn't look like they were playing and proceeded to go past him and started my sprints. After about 15 minutes, he said "ok, that's enough", even though half the field was still unoccupied and I was completely out of the way of the practice. I talked with the guy for about 10 minutes, trying to logically reason with him. He clearly just didn't want ME there. There was a dad playing with his kid on the field, but there was no problem with him. Just with me, running on the side of fields. Finally I said that I was only going to be there another 10 minutes, I'm going to the middle of the field where there was no one. He said something like "well if the parents complain, you're going to have to leave". Like a parent is going to complain about somebody using a completely unoccupied part of the field. Well, then again, this is New York.

Did I mention that I'm in Peru? I didn't think so. Erika's mother was suddenly scheduled for surgery tomorrow, 6/6, so I booked a (unreasonably cheap) direct flight down here and thanks to my boss for his understanding and flexibility in allowing me to work from here. Not that he reads my blog (or knows that it exists ;o). So, I'm here, working from my youth hostel (or their neighbors') wireless internet connection!

J. Riley, I don't really classify this as a "vacation" trip, but I'll label it as such anyway.

What The....??

So I was eating dinner with an out-of-town former college mate on Tuesday down
in SoHo when a man walked by. It's common to see people out walking their pets
after work (sometimes I see them at 3:00am, too). But this guy was walking his
pet monkey. I think that's a first for me!

J. Riley, isn't that like illegal or something?

Finally I Have a Social Life!

I've been madly irresponsible with this blog lately, and it's about time I start carving 15 minutes out of my week to update people before I lose my fan base! Of course, if you're using Google Reader, I'm probably just another person on your list and any of my posts are just a bonus to you. But I digress....

So, a couple things. First of all, the weather here has been just amazing lately, except for a few thunderstorms and some rain. Today was probably the hottest day of the year, the second time I've felt my back wet while walking home from the office - ahhh, summertime is almost here! Time to ditch the backpack and leave the laptop at work. Rather than putting my bathing suit on and heading to Central Park to sunbathe afterwork like most people (errr...like most people I am checking out on my way home from work ;o), I've taken a liking to running sans shirt. I am actually surprised that more people don't do it, it's quite liberating. I'm sure most people who happen to see me flash by them shirk in horror when they see me (or at least are temporarily blinded), but I figure that if I can't get tan this way (or at least skin cancer), I can't get tan anyway (and will probably still get skin cancer).

Last weekend was pretty busy, I went mini-golfing with my volunteer group and barely escaped the impending rain, but still had a lot of fun. As is typical lately, I had a flurry of cancellations a day or two before the event. I am fine-tuning my organizational skills and procedures to prevent this, but I guess sometimes there are things you just can't prevent. Last summer it was kids not showing up, but I'd rather have few volunteers and more kids, as has been the case lately.

After golfing, I ate a ginormous hamburger from a greasy diner that I've never tried before by my house. One of the kids had eaten a burger at the mini-golf course and I was salivating all over the ground watching him eat it, so I stuffed myself silly with one before I met up with Alan and Andrea for the rest of the day. We rode down to the Brooklyn Bridge and (gasp) actually enjoyed doing something people all over the world come here to do, walk across it. We hit up a chocolate place for Andrea and then got some awesome ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory, sitting next to the stormy water and getting fat. Awesome.

Being in Brooklyn, we could have gone anywhere in the city afterwards but decided to hit up the old stand-by neighborhood downtown, the East Village. We stopped at a very nice place (which we need to try brunch at) called the NoLita House for happy hour (2-for-1, 7 days a week!), waiting for our appetites to pick up. Well, really Alan and I since Andrea is "practicing" being pregnant and not drinking anymore :o/ . I wasn't convinced.

With our whistles whetted and our appetites lubricated, we headed to a noodle place that we'd all read about called Momofuku Noodle House for a simple noodle dinner at a tiny place with a single bar-style table right down the middle of the room with people lined on either side eating their noodles. It was alright, but I think I wanted Alan's spicy kimchi bowl rather than my "mystery pork" dish (I suspect there was pork throat in there, since I saw it on other dishes), but it was a cool place nonetheless.

On the verge of throwing up from gluttonous feasting that day, we went to another chocolate place so Andrea could get a melted-bar of hot-chocolate (que richo!) while I contemplated the best place to vomit within a proximity limit of six feet. I had "that taste" in my mouth before deciding that it probably wasn't the best thing to do in public and distracted myself with people watching instead.

With the English Premier League finished, I was stuck watching Spanish La Liga soccer on Sunday morning before taking a jog and then entertaining Melissa while I was doing chores around the house like laundry and waiting to meet up with my family's good friends Frank and Sally. They came to town to see their daughter and generously offered to take me out to dinner anywhere I wanted. I guess they didn't know what they were getting themselves into with an offer like that, so I whipped open my plethora of guides before remembering that I'd always wanted to go to WD-50 but it was a little too trendy and creative for an average night in the LES, my neighborhood away from neighborhood. It is well known for it's inventive tastes and I thought they would enjoy something a bit different than the norm. Somehow I managed to get reservations the day of and it was good eats-on! Wow, this place was like a palette amusement park between the quinoa with...some...taste, shredded brussel sproats with apples, tagine-spiced lamb broth, scallops, apricot cous-cous, etc. etc. etc. It wasn't a lot of food, but it was very interesting. The desserts left something to be desired with more style than substance, but they were good conversation pieces, if nothing else.

Being in the neighborhood, we capped the night at Teany's tea shop of course and tried out the latest teanychino (candied apple teanychino!) and now Teany has a few more massive fans to go along with my parents!

Like all good things, the night had to come to an end however and I had to head home to make my nightly phone call before getting ready for the busy week. I had a root canal to wrap up on Thursday but, more importantly, had the Champions League Final on Wednesday. I wasn't sure how to leave work early two days in a row, so I made up a story how they had to create a mold of the hole in my tooth on Wednesday and then Thursday they would put the custom porcelain crown in and though I doubt my boss bought it, he didn't care. He probably wouldn't have cared if I said I was leaving to go to a bar to watch my team, but I didn't want him to think I'm not dedicated to my job (I'm not, really ;o).

I got lucky though when my dentist said they had an opening an hour and a half before the game started, so I got my filling (no crown necesito!), jumped in a cab and hauled but down to the Liverpool bar, only to find out that it was already at capacity!! Arggghhh...I could hear them singing inside and everything. With my Liverpool scarf wrapped around my neck, I hopped back in the cab to go to a bigger place, the "overflow" bar. It was also packed and I saw so many people wearing red running towards bars around town, it was great. Liverpool has the best fans in the world, there's little doubt about that. So I joined the throngs of people at Slainte, a big Irish bar with lots of flat-screen TVs and hundreds of fans. There was singing, drinking, cheering, jeering, and lots of Scouse accents in the bar, it was an awesome atmosphere. Too bad we didn't win, I'd probably still be there singing You'll Never Walk Alone, their theme song and famous Kop classic. Next year, boys, we'll be back....

J. Riley, BTW, I'm growing a beard just for the hell of it. I like the nasty beards that the stylish Brits have at my work and you don't see many shaggy people here in the UES. Once you can see it (stupid blonde/red hair cross-pollenations), maybe I'll take a picture.

Drilling For Oil

Or so it seemed my endontist was doing today when I went in to get my $1600 root canal :o|. Thank god for insurance, it's still going to take a nice chunk out of my savings, but at least it won't be the whole thing. And in return for said chunk of change? A nice, hollow bicuspid that they filled with some chemicals and that will probably start killing me in the next hour once all the ibuprofen that I took earlier wear off. On top of that, I can't eat on that side (my prefered side, by the way) of my mouth for over a week, when I get to go back to my dentist to get a crown on top of the hole.

The root canal was surprisingly not a big deal, other than the fact that it's so freaking expensive (I'd consider flossing if I were you) and that I still have to go in for more pain when they put the massive filling (crown) in. He did inject my gums with several shots of novocaine, which is probably why there was no pain. As an added benefit, the little microscope thing that he looked through to drill out my tooth had just enough of a reflection for me to get an idea of all the stuff (like chlorine/bleach, cotton, and some medicine stuff) that he was pouring into the hollow, nerveless tooth. Exciting, I know! I need to focus on no more cavaties, especially deep ones that kill nerves and require root canals :o| .

J. Riley, I somehow need to get this crown done on the same day as the Liverpool game so that I can get the crown and then head to the pub to watch the Champion's League final right afterwards! Boss might get suspicious if I disappear two days in a row after lunch for "fillings"....

To B(ike) or Not to B(ike)

So Sean decided this weekend that he needs to buy a bike. He's fascinated with
the fact that our water-locked island is incredibly small and a bike would
definitely be useful for things like running errands, grocery shopping at Whole
Foods, and commuting uptown since he lives so far away from the subway. And
likewise for me! Sean and I have different spending habits, however, so while
he drools over $1000+ bikes that he obviously needs (frown), I am trying to
find the cheapest bike available because I know that either a.) it will get
stolen, b.) It won't be stolen, but will have a wheel stolen, c.) I rode a tank
of a bike all through college up a massive hill, so I can handle anything on
these newer bikes. I found one for <$300 that I am having a serious thought
about, but I need to do some mental cost analysis to figure out the value of
such an investment.

Did I mention how nice it is to be done with all my orthodontics and mouth work?
Yes, it is wonderful to be able to bite an apple, eat ribs, get corn-on-the-cob
stuck in my teeth, bite a burrito that will make me feel sick to my stomach
later in the day (because NY doesn't know how to make them), etc. Oh, wait,
except that apparently all of this mouth work has hurt the feelings (literally)
of one of my teeth and now I need to get a root canal. Sigh....

J. Riley, does the oral trauma drama ever end?

Surprise! I'm Abnormal - for an Upper East Sider

One of the things many people struggle for in New York (methinks) is an identity. Something that makes them unique. Obviously everyone is unique in their own way, but you wouldn't know it by looking around in the neighborhood that I currently camp in, the Upper East Side (UES). The demographics of this part of town are as follows:

1.) Inhabitated by a.) recently graduated frat boys and sorority girls, b.) young professionals who most likely went to Ivy League schools and work in finance or another high paying job, c.) young families, d.) old money aristocrats.
2.) Most common ethnicities: WASP or Jewish.
3.) Income: Middle Class (for New York, ha!) -> Extremely Wealthy with Trust Fund
4.) Common social events: fine-dining, wine tasting, binge drinking, exercising in Central Park, black-tie house parties (depending on where you fit in #1)
5.) Dress code: Business Casual to Professional, Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Bloomingdales

Hello, identity crises! Where do I not fit into this narrow guide of the UES? I'm a young professional making a good income, WASP as WASP can be, securely Middle Class, enjoy fine dining and rollerblading in Central Park, and have a closet stocked with Banana Republic and other business casual clothing (for work). Well, the other half of my closet is soccer clothing, but still.

Ahhhh, but there is one attribute where I deviate from this classification. And I demonstrated this at Alan's SURPRISE 30th birthday party on Saturday night! I like to expand the horizons of us sheltered UESers by venturing to new parts of town. There was Astoria (Little Greece, Queens) and Greenpoint (Little Poland, Brooklyn) for my birthday last year, there was Jackson Heights (Little Columbia, Queens) for my end-of-my-social-life-for-the-year party in late October last year. Not to mention trips up to Melissa's in the Bronx (Little....well, Melting-Pot-minus-WASPs?). So when Alan's wife was planning the party and was considering a bowling party downtown, a light went off in my head: Harlem Lanes! I had been there during the day with my volunteer group and it was supposed to be a hopping place at night. We ended up standing in line in the middle of Harlem at 10:45 at night on Saturday to get into this place, it was so popular. And we were the ONLY non-African-Americans in the place. A couple white kids, some Asians, some Indians and a WHOLE BUNCH of bruthas and sistahs. Awesome, I was in my element. Alan was surprised to see all of his friends inside and they all asked us "how in the world did you get Alan to come up to Harlem to go bowling?" It was easy, he 's never surprised when I show my true colors below that standard UES outer shell :o).

J. Riley, disco bowling to hip-hop and watching "The Fight" (boxing match between Mayweather and De La Hoya) while bowling and drinking beers for two hours was awesome.

We're Going To Athens!

I use the word "we" pretty liberally, as in "we" - Liverpool FC. For the second time in three years, they have beaten an arch-rival in the semi-finals of the premiere football tournament in Europe: The Champion's League. In their 100+ year history, this is the seventh time they have reached the final, so two times in three years is pretty significant! The finals are in Athens on May 23rd and, cough cough, I can already feel food poisoning from a terrible lunch coming on the day of the final. I wish I was going to Athens instead, but I'll have to put that on hold this year.

So where in the world have I been? In New York, actually. Since recovering from my standard Tupac Amaru's Revenge from South America, I have reignited my running passion and my nights now consist primarily of a good +1 hour of exercise three to four times a week (yoga included) as well as 1/2 hour Spanish lessons four-five times a week from my illega...I mean downloaded "trial" lessons ;o). If I manage to make it through all sixty lessons, I'll probably be fluent. But there's no way I'm that smart! We'll see how far I get however. Add nightly phone calls down to South America as well as the typical errands like shopping and EATING and it's a wrap for the night.

On the social front (i.e. the weekends) I once again embraced Nana's genes and established my dominance in Texas Hold'm poker a few weeks back, wiping the table clean of chips up until it was me and my former roommate. He managed to prevail in the end but it was quite a comeback for me since I was down to just a few chips at one point and I at least got the money that I put in back in my pocket for coming in second place (a whopping $10). I think they're going to stop inviting me to these poker events ;o).

This past weekend I headed down to Brooklyn to experience the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. This is a massive event to celebrate Japanese culture and checkout the 50+ varieties of Cherry Blossom trees in full Spring bloom spread all through the gardens. Since we were so far into Brooklyn, we decided to head down to the classic old-school Coney Island amusement park afterwards. I had never actually been there and a portion of it will be torn down later this year probably so that they can build some expensive high-rise eyesore apartment building in this historical place. It was quite a run down place, probably not somewhere you want your teenager to work at but we thoroughly enjoyed hearing the game hawkers yelling out their deals, palm readers attempting to lure us in, signs for things like "Shoot The Freak" and burlesque shows, the wide assortment of fried food available, and of course the classic "Cyclone" rollercoaster which reminds me of the Big Dipper in Santa Cruz. Next time I'm in Cali, I gotta go back to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, that's a place I never really spent enough time at (probably for the best ;o). Anyway, if you want to see pictures of all this, check out Alan's pictures here.

Last week my Shakerika was terribly sick with a bacterial infection which caused her to stay home every day from work and get daily injections - yikes. This couldn't have come at a worse time because her mother is also going to the doctors daily for a more significant reason - she found a lump in her breast :o| . It has been removed and biopsy results come back tomorrow, but prognosis is not good at this point. I'm sending positive thoughts and energy down to her and her family right now in this time of need....

J. Riley, blame my employer for my lack of posts, they're blocking blogger again!!

Wow

It is on days like today that i realize why people from around the world flock to this city that I inhabit. Surely it must be the first real day of spring today, Central Park was in full bloom with every tree lit up in pink, white, purple, etc. Absolutely breathtaking day here. To round it off, I did a park clean-up with about 8000 other New Yorkers way way up on the upper west side early this morning before running an errand and then dusting off the rollerblades for a tour de Central Park, complete with a watchful gaze of the roller-skate/blade disco/funk dancing and a freestyle bongo drumb ensamble. What an absolutely stunning day....

J. Riley, I'm finally recovered from my stomach, tomorrow I restart bootcamp...

Left Hurting

Just when I thought everything was going right, I am left hurting.

A couple weeks back, two weeks+ into my new bootcamp workout routine (which hasn't been re-established thanks to the standard two-week Tupac Amaru's Revenge), I started noticing that my left heal was bothing me when I wear my stiff leather shoes to work. It's a blister-like sensation, but there is no blister and it feels like it is on the inside of my skin rather than the outside. It doesn't hurt to the touch, it doesn't hurt when I stretch back there, so I don't know what's wrong, but it doesn't seem to be going away. So, I have self-diagnosed it to be a ruptured achilles (the same doctor diagnosed my brain tumor a few years back, as some of you remember).

Then, on top of this, my left calf is notoriously tight and went ballastic on me earlier in the week, knotting up like a sailor's yoke and hurting when I pressed in on the massive ( :o/) muscle underneath the skin. It's possible that has to do with dehydration from Tupac Amaru's Revenge.

Finally, it has relented to it's standard just-tight stage and now my glutious maximus feels all bruised (no vulgar comments, por favor ;o) just behind on the outside of my hips even though all I did all weekend is lay in bed trying to recover from my illness....

J. Riley, I have a sneaking suspicion all or some of this may be connected. Literally. And figuratively.

Around The World in Four Days

I know that I typically can squeeze more time into a vacation than most people are able to cope with, but I do declare that I think this is a record. Two red-eye'd, seven hour flights, two 4-5 hour bus rides, and five servings of ceviche, all in four days! I guess that might have something to do with the reason I was exhausted on Monday!

So yea, last month Erika de Peru told me that she has four days off in April for Saint's Week/Easter. So I had to do some serious cost analysis to decide how much four days with my girl was worth. Let's see, wait until October to see her for a week or spend my tax-refund money on a short trip to get to know her better and see if the sparks are still flying. The choice was obvious!

After several text messages from her about being nervous about my arrival, I was the nervous one when I walked through customs to a massive throng of people (mostly taxi drivers hawking their services) in Lima and didn't see her. I walked towards the exit and thought to myself, damn. What do I do now? I just stood there like the gringo I am for a few minutes before my eyes lit up when I saw Erika walking shyly towards me. We talked for a few minutes and then jumped in a cab to her friend's house nearby. I got warned pretty quick for flashing my wallet too much when paying the cab driver and realized that, oh yea, I'm in Lima Central. Not advisable.

Once we met up with her friend, we ran a few errands like finding the nearest Citibank, buying piping hot rolls for breakfast, fresh tamales from the street vendors, and headed home for breakfast. While the girls were in the kitchen, I got the chance to clean up (the shower had one knob - no hot water) before sitting down to a....saannn....chicha(?), sanchicha(?), sachicha(?), hot-dog-with-more-flavor (essentially sausages) breakfast which hit the spot. Ahhh...South American food is sooo underrated!

Late morning, we headed to the crazy-busy bus station to take our $7 bus ride four hours down to Ica, a small city south of Lima. It was the official "last weekend of the summer", which is when pretty much everyone leaves Lima for places like Ica and why the place was packed, with buses leaving every five minutes.

Our hotel in Ica was surprisingly sparse for a three-star hotel, but since I'm comfortable in youth hostels, it was fine for me - though a safe would have been nice considering the amount of cash I was carrying, not to mention my laptop and other valuables. But the hotel had a nice pool in the middle (filled with partying drunks when we arrived - classy!) and was located in a very quiet area outside of town.

With the visitor's guide in hand, Erika (an event-planner by profession) started planning the days out, hour by hour, which was fine with me. This is mildly ironic because (as many people who travel with me can attest) usually I am the ones who does all the planning on my trips, but usually I do it a few months before the trip, not the day I arrive :).

So, over the course of the next few days, we followed her general itinerary. The first day we were both exhausted (she actually got less sleep than I did on my flight!) so we had dinner and went to check out some discos, which were all closed because the city is very religious and everything closed until Saturday (after Good Friday).

Friday, we rented a cab for the day to take us around the city and went to an area that was famous for the witches (I didn't completely follow the story here) and had a crazy palm tree that had like seven arms growing out rather than up, like a spider. Very eery! We also went to a city that was surrounded by giant sand dunes that had a lagoon at the bottom. As appealing as a land-locked lake (more like big pond) in a developing nation is, I resisted the urge to go swimming in it. And I promise it wasn't because of the tale of the sirens at the bottom of it that drowned men ;o) ! Then we headed out of town to a winery and got a tour and (gasp!) went wine tasting! Too bad there were too many people waiting for the wine, so we went in and bought ourselves a bottle for the hotel and a very very nice bottle for her family and paid a total of about $15. Gotta love it!

After a ceviche lunch (standard - and awesome!) we walked around town and down some shady streets (being a gringo walking down streets with car-part storefronts worries me for some reason :o/ ) and checked out the local church and went to the town's main square. We found some tour operators there and booked a two-hour dune-buggy and sand-boarding trip for an hour later, which gave us time to take a motor-taxi / tuk-tuk to the hotel, change, and then get back.

I gotta tell you about these motor-taxi / tuk-tuks. These are basically motorcycles with two seats in the back covered by canvas (no roll-cage of course) and they are all over the city, flying around corners at break-neck speeds. They are cheap, dangerous to ride in (for obvious reasons), and absolutely uncomfortable because you feel every bump in the road. So, of course, I incessantly bugged Erika about wanting to take one of them until she finally caved in (it wasn't a hard sell, she's not exactly high maintenance) and we took one back to our hotel. The hilarious thing about these things (along with most of the mini-Daewoo taxis) is that they are totally decked out and customized by the owner. They all had those mexi-lettering words across the back of them with either their name, their wive's name, the name of a saint, or something about the Virgin Mary. They had random stickers inside, multiple mini-stuffed animals suctioned to the inside windshield and filling the dashboard, and some taxis even had cool neon lights inside that would light up every time they stepped on the breaks or something. How awesome is that?? Taxis and motor-taxi's rock!

Our dune buggy trip was kinda a mess, totally disorganized and we missed the sunset on the dunes and basically rode off cliffs in the dark :o/ . Rather than attempting to sand-board down gigantic mountains in the pitch black, I opted for the laying-on-the-board-and-hold-on-like-your-life-depended-on-it-(because-it-probably-does) approach, which was easily one of the scariest things I've done in my life. I almost ran over a couple people at the bottom of the hill because I am so awesome at gaining speed with my eyes closed and white-knuckled gripping of the sandboard (which is basically a piece of ply-wood).

After returning to the hotel, Lilliana joined us and we experienced: THE PROCESSION. I had no idea what a procession was. Isn't that what they do at like funerals? Well, this was the big event of the week and when we were downtown, I couldn't help but ask question after question to the point of annoyment to Erika and Lili about what exactly was going on. There was a multi-ton statue of Jesus that was paraded through town while being held up by about 50 men and every quarter-block, it would stop, the men would switch out with a plethora of other men who were lined up for blocks for the honor of holding this thing up. At the same time, there's Latin music being played on one stage, prayers being said on another stage, and about a million people in the square holding candles.

Saturday was our romantic day of relaxation, taking a day-long bus and boat tour out to Paracas National Park, which is large, coastal natural reserve with islands which have been referred to (correctly or not) as "The Peruvian Galapagos". There were millions of birds, penguins, barking adult and baby seals, and even an indigenous native-carved image on the side of the cliff. They were reminiscent of the Central/Monterey Coast, but not as spectacular and grand. But, then again, California doesn't have penguins :o)!

We also stopped at a few very scenic vistas like Cathedral Rock and also the ceviche restaurant where we had expensive and decent ceviche on a small peninsula. There were a few beautiful pictures to be taken there as you might have seen!

Since the discos finally opened Saturday night, Erika and I went out for an AWESOME dinner at Roky's, which is a fast-food roasted chicken (pollo a la brasa) restaurant with all the chimmichuri I could dream of eating. I gotta learn how to make it! Then we walked across the street and hung out at a disco for a while. It was kind of techno/reggaeton/latin music and all the lights and everything which I totally dig, but not with my girl. I'm not exactly a good partner dancer when it comes to reggaeton, these hips don't lie! Besides, it was late and we had to be up at 6:30 the next morning.

Sunday morning we took the long bus ride back to Lima and went to Erika's house for the Grand Inquisition of the Gringo Boyfriend. Actually, it was nothing like that at all, her parents were very welcoming and had a massive barbeque with pork, sachinas, chorizos, and even cuy (guinea pig, a local delicacy and my only request) while Erika whipped up a batch of pisco sours stiff enough to get her light-weight cousin drunk on the first little glass :o) . Erika and her dad wouldn't stop teasing her and by the time we had finished two small glasses and a beer each, the cousin was off to the bedroom to pass out. It was very funny :). And Erika did an awesome job translating that day!

A welcoming home in Latin America is a bit different than in the states. First of all, there are no sleepovers allowed for anyone except family and your best-best friends. This would explain the unease Erika had when I told her that I had female guests staying in my apartment for three weeks :o). Not only that, there is absolutely no signs of affection allowed to be shown between boyfriend and girlfriend in front of her parents: No hand-holding, no hugs, and obviously no kisses. Also, there are to be no home tours given, especially to bedrooms. I was only allowed to see common areas. So I had to be on my best behaviour for her parents, but they really liked me (who wouldn't) and I had a great time talking to them via my personal translator.

Sunday night, Erika's best friend and her boyfriend came over. Her (old-as-my-parents) boyfriend has lived all over the place in the Americas and spoke perfect English, so it was nice to get into a nice, long conversation about the differences between the countries, that work attitudes, economies, business, politics, etc. I had a million questions that I've wanted to ask someone just like him and, well, I did!

Anyway, not a lot of detail on this trip because it was less about sight-seeing and more about spending quality time with Erika to see if I actually like her, we get along, etc. And I have to say two thumbs up, she is awesome, she is funny, and we get along well. Since she is a career-minded, non-money-leaching, non-greencard-aspiring professional, we'll just have to see what happens next.

J. Riley, this post should be long enough to detour random Googlers from reading it in it's entirety.