travel – Growing Pains

January 2, 2019

Vignettes from The City That Never Sleeps

A girl and her father walk through the Met looking at ancient art while watching kids sledding through the window.

An older couple looks at two statues kissing passionately and the man says, “that’s us tonight.” His wife laughs and holds him tighter.

A woman in a colorful sweater sits with a group of kids in front of a George Seurat painting and teaches them how to sketch. She speaks to them in fluent Polish.

A little girl cries while riding her scooter through the One World Trade Center at midnight.

Two strangers bond over their shared love of Jay Z and dancing in the subway.

December 2, 2018December 5, 2018

Costa Rica Service Trip 2018: Alajuela, Cafe Florida, & Nauyaca Waterfall

Alajuela

On Saturday, November 17th, I along with around 30 other schoolmates boarded a charter bus and took two planes to San José, Costa Rica for a service project & vacation. What occurred in the next eight days became the best travel experience of my life.

On Sunday, right after we arrived in Costa Rica, I ate a traditional Costa Rican lunch of rice, beans, chicken, and tortilla chips before arriving at our hotel in Alajuela, a large province slightly north of San José. The hotel, called Casa Cielo Grande, was situated further up on the mountainside with a gorgeous view of the city below. At night, the city lights flickered as we splashed in the outdoor pool. I shared a large one-room, two-bathroom house with many of the other girls in my class, along with my sister. After a few long days of traveling and sleeping in the uncomfortable bus and plane seats, I gratefully sunk into the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

Cafe Florida & “The Jungalow”

The next day my group, which was comprised of mostly seniors and juniors along with a few sophomores, took a five-hour bus ride to a sustainable coffee & cacao farm called Cafe Florida. On our way, we stopped at a bridge to see crocodiles lying in the sun and at a Costa Rican supermarket to pick up local snacks and fresh-squeezed juice.

We stopped on the side of the road to get our first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean.

Fun fact: crocodiles cool down by leaving their mouths open–they look like they’re smiling!

We stopped in the mountains at a roadside restaurant with a view of the jungle; it was beautiful. Next to the restaurant was a fruit stand, and the man who worked there was very happy to show us different kinds of local fruit and even let us taste most of them. My favorite was called mamon chino. It’s pinkish and spiky on the outside, and to eat it you break it open and a round, peeled-grape-looking fruit is inside. It’s very sweet and juicy.

The gorgeous view from the roadside restaurant.

My lunch at the roadside restaurant, a typical Costa Rican meal. I ate beans, rice, palm heart (that’s the yellow chopped food mixed with the rice and beans), a small salad, and breaded chicken.

A half-opened mamon chino: the red part is the outside shell, and the white part is the edible fruit.

After a long day of driving, we arrived at Cafe Florida and met Roy Cisneros, the farm owner, along with his wife, young son, and their adorable dog, Pecan. The Cisneros family showed us around their farm and let us try cacao straight from the plant, as well as their other plants and herbs. Cafe Florida is incredible because it is almost completely sustainable and eco-friendly. The Cisneros family uses fecal matter from their pigs to power their stoves, and they eat only what they grow or buy from their neighbors. According to Mr. Cisneros, the family grows bananas, coffee, cacao, coconuts, mangos, lettuce, and many various herbs. They also raise tilapia and shrimp in their pond, keep cows for milk, chickens for eggs, and guinea pigs to be pets for their son.

At Cafe Florida, the family cuts open bamboo stalks and plants herbs in them.

The family uses the pigs’ poop to create biogas to fuel their stoves.

After touring the farm, Roy and his family led us to their porch, where we were taught how to make empanadas and were able to try steaming hot cups of Cafe Florida coffee with fresh cow’s milk. The family’s story and their farm were so inspiring and a great reminder to support local small businesses over large corporations.

After I devoured my empanada, we headed to what we called “the jungalows,” little huts in the jungle where we spent that night. The girls discovered a nasty surprise when we realized that we had left our back door wide open all afternoon, inviting all of the bugs and jungle creatures inside. What followed was a night of screaming and panicked scrambling around the jungalow when we found numerous beetles, cockroaches, and spiders. This was the first time I learned that in Costa Rica I had to learn how to be okay with bugs.

The “jungalow” where I stayed with the rest of the girls.

Nauyaca Waterfall

The next morning I woke up early and headed down to breakfast with the rest of my friends. We ate rice, beans, eggs, and fresh pineapple. During breakfast, we talked to a little boy named Matias, who was the son of another local farmer. He loved seeing himself and the rest of us in our Snapchat filters, but what he loved, even more, was making fun of the way we looked with the Snapchat filters. We all had a lot of fun with Matias, even though our Spanish was pretty rusty.

After breakfast, Roy (of Cafe Florida) took my group and a bunch of dogs to the edge of their village to begin our hike down to the Nauyaca waterfall. We began our descent into the jungle, and the hike turned out to be a lot harder than I had expected it to be. The path was narrow, and most of it was muddy and slippery due to the early morning rain. I would be lying if I said that many of us didn’t slip at least once. Hiking through the jungle was a beautiful experience, and I was able to see crabs, birds, termites, and various other jungle creatures. Thankfully I didn’t encounter any snakes.

As I got closer to our destination, I could hear the roar of the waterfall. We all hurried down the rest of the hill, excited about the prospect of swimming and playing in the waterfall. The trees opened and suddenly I could see it: a large, thundering waterfall ending in a huge pool full of people swimming and splashing around on the rocks. I stripped off my shorts and shirt and ran into the water with my friends and half a dozen excited dogs. The water was warm and felt amazing after our sweaty hike, and the rain that eventually hit was an added bonus. I sat on the rocks with my feet in the water and talked to my friends, splashed water at the dogs, and jumped numerous times from a rock ledge into the water. A more thrilling part of the day was seeing some daredevil tourists climb the actual waterfall with a rope and jump off of it, doing flips and turns on the way down. After we all got our fill of swimming in the pool, we took another shorter hike to the upper level of the waterfall, where we spent time doing individual reflections and just enjoying the roar of the waterfall and the spray against our faces.

The lower level of Nauyaca falls. This is where we swam and ate lunch.

Eventually, we began our grueling hike back up to the bus. Going up was, in a way, easier than going down, because the risk of slipping was minimal. However, it was very steep and it had gotten hotter since our morning hike. As we got to the top of the hill, our leaders JP and Travis told us that the bus had gotten stuck five miles away and we had to walk to it. I was about to just give up and take a nap, but thankfully it was a (cruel) joke, and we boarded the bus and headed to San Salvador, where we would meet our host families.

February 28, 2018

Fiction: At Midnight

There are things that can only be said in the darkness. There’s something about the suffocating pitch of deep navy blue that makes words unsaid spill from your lips, unstoppable and irrepressible. And in this precise moment, I hated the fact that I was quite predisposed to this trait. I pressed my face against the window, willing myself to somehow melt into the flickering pane of glass and disappear forever. But instead, my eyes followed the never ending line of white that cut sharply like a knife through the glistening black highway. I closed my eyes as nausea rose up from deep in my stomach, cursing my uncanny ability to remember the exact details of every moment.

“I love you.”

“You…what?”

“Um, nothing. I didn’t say anything. Yep, definitely didn’t.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Say it again.”

I sighed heavily, squeezing my eyelids tightly against my burning eyes. How badly I wished that I could go back in time, so that I could trap my deep, dark secret in my lips and force it back down my throat. His eyes flicked to my face. My eyes were still closed, but I could feel his gaze, a shard of glass digging into my cheekbone.

“Iris,” my name slipped off of his tongue like a sigh, so quiet it almost blended in with the dull humming of the car’s wheels running along the pavement. I shook my head quickly, my nose grazing the frosty glass of the window, turning pink under the ochre streetlights. “Let’s talk about this.” My eyes snapped open at that, my chest tightening, twisting against my spine. His eyes were bright against my face. Too bright for this night, too bright for the stars, too bright for the moon. Eyes that made me pray to any god that was out there that no one would ever hurt eyes like those. But here I was, dangling at the precipice, so close to delivering those fatal cuts.

“What’s there to talk about? I said something that I regret, I wish I hadn’t, so let’s just leave it.”

“I don’t want to leave it, you said it for a reason, so tell me the truth.”

“Just leave it alone!” My voice, cracking against the foggy windows and the expanse of highway ahead. Uncomfortably loud in the silent, heavy night. But the silence that comes afterwards is almost louder. He glances down at his hands, long, spindly fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel of the car, knuckles whitening and two angry roses of red blooming across his cheeks.

“If you didn’t mean it, why did you say it? I get that you can’t say it anymore. So why now?” The words aren’t judgmental, not angry anymore. Simply curious. And slightly melancholy. A tone that made me panicky, sticky palms and short breaths. Like something was ending. This couldn’t happen, I wouldn’t let it. I was slipping off of the precipice, fingertips grazing the edge and legs swinging, ready to fall–. Climb back up. Hurry.

“I didn’t…uh, I didn’t say I didn’t mean it.” Off the precipice, on shaky, unfamiliar ground. The panicky feeling was gone, but replacing the herd of buffalos was a swarm of angry, anxious butterflies, wings grazing my stomach, my heart, my throat. A semi roared its way past our car, kicking up the dusty desert and causing the car to shiver in the cold of the night. The dawn seemed hesitant to come, waiting patiently for my midnight confession to be fully realized. I stared straight ahead, my eyes flicking alongside the pattern of the yellow highway lines. I watched the road disappear beneath us until I couldn’t bear it anymore. A gust of wind burst angrily from my throat. Anger not directed towards him, but towards myself. I was such a hypocrite. Here I was, making the kind of convoluted grand romantic gesture you see on movie screens and scoff at, all the while living my life as undramatically as possible. No wonder Will didn’t understand. There was nothing to understand. I had gotten myself into the type of mess I promised I never would.

We had a good relationship. Comfortable. I insisted on it as soon as we met, quashing the butterflies in my stomach with promises of “just casual” and “no drama” and “easy”. He had loved me then. Fire clashed with the chocolate in his eyes, flowers in his hands and kisses on his lips. Met time and time again with my pushing hands, my “thank you, but it’s not like that”. A man can only take so much rejection before he falls, easily almost, into the mold he was meant for. I thought we had an understanding. But how ironic that, in the end, much too late, I was the one to confess. I had worked so hard to force his love for me into a tiny box that fit into my life that I had neglected to realize that the other boxes and I had created for myself were decomposing, ripping apart at the seams.

It had been too long, I realized suddenly, the thought breaking through the haze of the other confused and disjointed thoughts practically sprinting through my mind. He had been silent for almost five minutes while my mind went into overdrive against my wishes.

“…Will?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to say anything?”

“Yes.”

That shut me up. I rested my hand on my thigh, fingers drumming against its clenched muscles. I didn’t want to rush him, but I was getting impatient. What was I waiting for? He didn’t love me back, that much was obvious. But maybe I was waiting for a confession less dramatic. Maybe I was waiting for him to tell me that he cared deeply about me. No. I would’t be satisfied with something so clinical and offhand.

“Iris?” My stomach seemed to drop through my body, slicing through the car motor and sinking deep into the desert.

“Yes?”

“I love you too.”

And suddenly every stolen moment and gentle kiss and longing glance that had been kept curled tightly around my heart came undone, and unfurled, spreading warmth from my fingertips to my toes.

– J.S.

February 28, 2018

Fiction: Zenith

THE PRESENT

The first thing that registers in my mind is yellow. I don’t know why, but my mind fills with the color. Almost as if someone poured pure sunshine straight into the center of my heart. My body feels warm. I open my eyes to see a ray of sun illuminating the swirls of dust floating across the bedroom. I love nothing more than these mornings, when the slats of the blinds create tilting stripes on the bedsheets and the shrieking of my alarm is absent.

His warm breath shifts the hair on my neck, tickling the sensitive area below my ear. I grin, turning towards him and planting my soft lips against his warm ones. His lips, his cheeks, his forehead, his neck. He groans, shifting slightly towards me, his arms snaking around my waist. I study his groggy face for several seconds. Like a map of his life, my eyes seek out the scar on his eyebrow from when he fell off of a chair when he was five. I look at the ruddy red mark on his jaw, where my lips tattooed a rose on his face the night before. I look at his eyelashes, long and feathery against his tanned cheeks.

“Morning,” his voice is scratchy, clashing with the early morning softness in his grey cloud eyes. He still looks asleep, his mouth pouting, then stretching into the smile I know oh so well. And I lose track of time, like I always do, as Nina Simone plays softly on the radio.

Maybe it was seconds later, maybe hours, maybe only minutes that I lay beside him, legs tangled in the bright white hotel sheets. The blinking clock on my right reads 11:38 am. I blow my bangs out of my eyes.

“We should get going, it’s getting late.”

“At this rate, we won’t even reach Sedona until next week.” He chuckles softly, not sounding sorry at all.

“It’s your own fault, you know.”

“As it always is.”

“Shut it.”

“Rude, now make it up to me.” He leans in, all minty breath and sparkling eyes and freckled cheeks and how could I say no, and before I knew it it was 2 in the afternoon.

“Will, we have to leave now!”

“See,” he says lazily, looking up at me from the bed, “the thing about not having a schedule is that you’re supposed to be relaxed. Relaxed, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”

“Let’s go!”

“Alright, be patient woman.”

We drove through the night, the stars rushing by overhead, the universe singing its song of silence as the city fell blissfully asleep behind us. The headlights lit up the desert, casting shadows of cacti and tumbleweeds against the harsh clay cliffs.

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere.”

“Well, let’s go then.”

“Yes, let’s.”

And we did. And when the sun escaped from the horizon that held it captive all night, it fell onto our smiling eyes and lips and it was satisfied.

THE NEXT MORNING

Have you ever had that feeling like those twinkly Christmas lights were packed tight inside of your chest cavity? And you feel like you could burst from the electricity of it all. Like you were listening to the deafening climax of your favorite song, only it was happening on repeat, and every time your heart beats a little faster. Yeah, that’s how the inside of my old Subaru felt.

“What’re you thinking about, prettygirl?” His hand slid from the wheel to my folded hands, his fingers brushing like sun rays across my palms. The Christmas lights in my heart seemed to twinkle a little brighter.

“I’m just…I feel obnoxiously happy.” A laugh burst from his chest. It was bright pink, like the rain boots currently strewn across the backseat. “Seriously, I might start to annoy myself if I keep this up. I feel like I’m living my favorite word.”

“You’re living zenith?”

“How did you know my favorite word was zenith?”

“You told me. On our very first date, remember?”

And I did.

THREE YEARS EARLIER

“Are you,” I paused. I couldn’t remember his name.

“Will Jewell. And you’re Hadley Jameson, right?” Of course, ultrahandsome guy remembers my name.

“Yeah, sorry. My memory and I aren’t the best of friends. She gives just as much as she takes away.”

“I’m sure I can get her to remember me. I’m very memorable.” He smirked, and suddenly my brain was all pearls and chocolate and gold.

11:39 pm, and instead of curled beneath a heavy blanket of crappy TV and coffee gelato I’m at a 24 hour coffee shop with the boy with the chocolate eyes that I’d only met today. And instead of discussing the latest Olivia Pope drama with my cat, I’m trading favorites like baseball cards, tossing my secrets recklessly across the smooth tabletop.

“Favorite movie?”

“That’s easy,” I say. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” A long pause ensues.

“You’re…very unpredictable, I must say.”

“I’ve gotta keep you on your toes somehow, right?”

“Right.”

“Alright…favorite dessert?”

“Oh pumpkin pie, no question. Favorite word?”

“Favorite word?”

“C’mon, everyone has one.”

“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.” That’s what I said. What I wanted to say was you just read my heart.

He stands up and I grab my purse and our glances clash like silver swords as we step into the inky dark air. I watch his feet leave invisible footsteps on the concrete as he walks to his car.

“Hey, Will.”

“Yeah?”

“My favorite word? Zenith. It means-“

“I know exactly what it means. I’ll see you later, prettygirl.”

I was in for it.

THE PRESENT

“You still remember that? After-“

“All this time? Of course I do. I ask that question on every date I go on. You’re the only girl I’ve met who actually told me a word I didn’t know.”

“Wait! You told me-“

“I wasn’t about the embarrass myself in front of such a pretty girl, was I? Besides, I have a track record with words, remember. I know them all.”

“You DID have a track record with words. But that was before-“

“I met you.”

His words ricochet against the windows, lit white by my warm breath. They clang against the solid glass until finally settling in my lap. The silence of the endless road could have gone on for hours-

I was jarred by the rumbling of gravel beneath the car tires, stark in comparison to the smooth worn highway. Will slams his foot against the brakes, my hands crack against the dashboard, and the roar of the engine quiets. Someone screams during all of this and it slices through the night sky. I realize that someone was me.

“Hadley! Are you okay?”

“What the hell just happened?”

“I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to be so…abrupt. I just need to tell you something. Well, ask, more like but…”

“Spit it out, Will.”

“Look, Hadley. I thought of all of the big words I would use when I said this, words like elysian or epiphany or metanoia. But right now, only one word comes to mind. Redamancy.”

TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER

“Pancakes with chocolate chips, just the way you like them.”

“You’re perfect. You only forgot one-“

“Coffee? I could never forget to give you your lifeblood. That would just be cruel.”

“Like I said, perfect.”

“And I love you.”

I had always thought the phrase “deafening silence” was an obvious oxymoron until this exact moment, when the lack of voices in the room was louder than the washing machine on laundry day.

“…what…uh, what did you just say?”

“I love you, Hadley. So much.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

His breath caught on the fishhook in his throat and it turned his eyes red.

“Reciprocation would be a great choice.”

“I just…you surprised me.”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does!”

Wrong answer.

“No, it doesn’t.”

His sigh blew the walls of the house in, leaving me standing in the middle of it all with nothing but the dust.

His back rose and fell, causing the patterns on his comforter to morph into triangles and circles and guilt. I stuck the sticky note against his wall, covering the gash I made on a day involving chocolate cake and frisbees. Redamancy. The act of loving in return.

THE PRESENT

“Will, what are you doing?” My voice quavered, my tongue a tangle of leaves in the wind.

“Just- just wait. Redamancy. It means the act of loving in return. You gave me that word once, when I needed it most. And now I’m giving it back to you, a thousand and two times over. I promise you redamancy forever. I promise you redamancy when we’re old and we wear adult diapers and our eyes are too bad to see the lines on the road. I promise you redamancy when you’re grumpy and I’m frustrated and our favorite songs aren’t enough anymore.”

“Will!”

“Just wait.”

*to be continued*

– J.S.

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018

Travel: Barnard College Tour

In December 2017, my dad and I flew to New York City to tour Barnard College. I had been telling my parents about Barnard for a few years, and I was so ready to finally see it in person! Barnard is affiliated with Columbia University, but is all-female and much smaller. The campus is located across the street from Columbia’s campus in Morningside Heights on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We arrived early so that we could get to know the campus before the guided tour. Unfortunately, it was under construction so we weren’t able to see it in its full glory.

Although the campus is small, it is very beautiful. Walking through the classic, ornate iron gates, I felt a thrill of anticipation. I had never toured a college that had the “classic college” look that Barnard has. Beyond the gates, the towering pillars introduce Barnard Hall.

A visit to Barnard College isn’t complete without stopping by the well-known Greek Games statue. Barnard’s tradition of the Greek Games began in 1903 as an effort to recreate the competitions of Ancient Greece. Events such as dance, poetry, hurdling, and discus throwing were involved. The Greek Games were stopped in 1967, but were reinstated in 2011 with the addition of “Yoga in a Toga”, “Plato’s Pilates”, and other creative events.

Our tour guide told us about the rigorous academics, extensive extracurriculars, and incredible opportunities that Barnard has to offer. In addition to the resources on Barnard’s campus, Barnard students have access to Columbia’s classes, libraries, extracurriculars, and research opportunities. We finished our tour in the beautiful Milbank Hall, which was also under construction at the time.

Here are some of the most interesting and exciting things I learned during my Barnard tour:

New students get a full week of orientation (living on campus, settling into dorm room, seminars on subways, city etiquette, and safety, ect.)
Students complete extensive roommate surveys, so roommate assignments are frequently successful.
Attending Barnard means discounted Broadway tickets, museum prices, and much more.
The Morningside Heights neighborhood is consistently rated the 2nd safest neighborhood in New York City by the NYPD.
Barnard offers study broad opportunities in over 35 countries across 5 continents.
Barnard’s top majors are Psychology, Economics, English, and Biomedicine.
Each Barnard student is paired with an advisor to help them make the best class choices for their major and career path.
Every student has access to summer internships and research opportunities through Barnard.

After our tour, we stopped by the infamous Liz’s Cafe for some coffee and a snack. The staff was extremely friendly, and the atmosphere was buzzing with students milling around, lounging in the welcoming orange couches, and poring over textbooks. I felt right at home. A great ending to a great tour.

If you have any other questions about Barnard, feel free to ask! If you are currently attending or have attended Barnard, I would love to talk to you about your experience with the school.

– J.S.