six months

London in springtime: the sun is shining, birds are singing, and the sky is finally, amazingly, stunningly blue.

So I left.

Six months is just long enough to find London's mildness soothing, rather than boring; to stop being surprised when the English mention "the Europeans" rather than "we Europeans;" and to make a few good friends.

It's also, as it turns out, long enough to realize that I no longer want my "charitable" activities to be only hobbies; that golden handcuffs do come off (though they are very snug and definitely leave scars); and that I'd rather feel sheepish about leaving than resign myself to staying.

So, here I am. Thousands of miles from fine dining and fine art ...but two feet from my sweetie, and a million times happier.

(A bit sentimental, I know...but it's the truth.)

budgeting

Meant to post this earlier, but oh well.

Last Wednesday, March 12, (before the Spain trip), the UK's annual government budget was released. The government official who presents it each year is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, (essentially the Secretary of the Treasury).

What's notable about this is that people here know when the budget comes, care about it, and actually change their behavior accordingly. It's amazing. No doubt, their concern is partly motivated by the UK's relatively high taxes and the frequency of the increases (apparently, annual).

But for the average person, the reason they care about the budget is that taxes are raised on very important items: beer, wine, and cigarettes. In coverage by at least one of the major newspapers, "Lifestyle taxes" were reported first. One of my coworkers actually bought several cases of wine on the 11th, in anticipation of major tax hikes. The taxes on cigarettes (11 pence on a pack) were to take place at 6 pm that day. Seems pretty far from the popular notion of slow government bureaucracy...

my kingdom for a salad

Six days into Spain, and I'd kill for a decent green salad. Barcelona was all meat, all the time. Do Spaniards really eat like this? We've been having cold cuts around the clock, simply because they're here.



Delicate ham, spicy chorizo, peppery salchichón...I can't believe I'd ever admit this, but I'm a little sick of swine.

The fruit stands at
La Boqueria were gorgeous, but they were mostly just looks, except for the papaya, wild strawberries, and the gargantuan red peppers. Here's my brother Henry, holding up a beauty:


In Barcelona, we hung out with my siblings, parents, and my sister's boyfriend, Christian.

I'm very close to all of them, so it's been great to spend so much time together.














As you can probably tell, there's no shortage of silliness in this group, which makes it all the more fun.

chimps

During my last visit to Monrovia, we went on a day trip to Marshall Island.

First, we stopped at the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research (LIBR). Some time before the war, LIBR had been conducting research on chimpanzees. Somehow, the chimps (and the LIBR campus) survived 14 years of fighting, and then five years ago, the chimps were released on Marshall Island. Though they no longer live in captivity, they depend on their erstwhile keepers for sustenance. Apparently some people bring them food every day, and they also eat cookies thrown at them by tourists.

We drove to a small village, where the locals were selling some red fruits. Initially we were ecstatic - we thought we had found a secret source of red peppers.

The fruits are "a little sweet and a little sour," according to one of our drivers. I think they are called "cruces" or something similar. The one I tried tasted a bit like an unripe persimmon - it gave me that same, dry mouth feeling.

Two men agreed to take us to Marshall Island in dugout canoes.

After an hour of slow movement down the river, we saw chimps! Our guide, Morris, brought us very close to the shore, and tossed packets of cookies onto the beach.

Their bottoms were, uh, inflamed.

The younger chimps were very cute, but the adults were actually a little frightening. They were much larger than we had expected, and the biggest ones seemed as a large as us. Some of them ventured into the water toward us, and I thought for a moment that they would swim or wade to our canoes. When we ran out of food, one of larger males splashed us - in anger, perhaps? I wondered if he was insulted when we laughed. The largest, oldest male, had only one arm, but put it to good use: after picking up a biscuit from the ground, he would dip it into the water before eating it. Sort of the way I would dip a biscotti into a cup of tea...except that this was a river, and he was a huge, balding, scary, one-armed chimpanzee.

You may not be able to tell, but in the last picture, Morris' shirt says, "WKRP in Cincinnati."