ya man

the best part about the trip - going with so many people and having so much fun with them. i've never suspected seven totally different folks could get along so well, everyone surely compromised some of their wants, but it turned out to the best.
the best part about jamaica - the forest at the bank of the rio grande, plus, of course, the bus rides, taking a chicago bus seems like a such a luxury now, no familiar squeezing, no elbowing your way thru the bus, no palms outside the window neither
i liked jamaica a lot, i liked the people, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile and tired of tourists, oh, one thing, no matter how much smiling was done, i never quite escaped the feeling that they eventually would make things happen the way they want, it was us, intruders, who adapted to their rules, to their easygoingness, to their style of haggling, to their attitude in general, also to some calling us whities, we were just visiting, and i suppose we did our job well, smiling, taking pictures, getting ripped off, getting friendly with the locals and secretly taking the mickey out of a jamaican gigolo courting middle-age and -size americans.
dunno, seems like we should get straight a's for the trip, so should everyone we met on our way
ps. especially our guide in the forest, who, incredible as it sounds, did get lost and was cutting his way thru the bushes with a pocket-knife, good on ya, mate!

sugar daddy

sleeping in a brothel (officially a montego bay downtown guesthouse) was quite an adventure, and i don't mean the already mentioned noises, or dilapidated restrooms or vacancies in all 17 rooms. it was about this man
first he told me his life story, he told me about his awesome car, his daughter and ex-girlfriend in germany and all the fun stuff
after a while he suggested that if i speak german i should come to jamaica and be a tour guide.
'not a bad idea' i say
'so when are you coming'
'oh, not too soon probably, you know, i can't afford it, anyway, i need to finish my studies, and i dunno what i wanna do'
'but you could come for a weekend' he goes
i laugh
'no, seriously, it wouldn't cost you anything, you could stay at my place'
ha! that's how for the first time in my life i was offered a job after a ten minute interview, keep up the good work, anna!

simply jamaica

so what did you do when you were in jamaica? the question is what didn't we do when we were in jamaica. i came home tired as hell, no, actually my body was tired but my mind hadn't been that rested for a long time.
we didn't sleep a lot, and when we did it was either on a bus (or i should say in the bus) or in a brothel with obvious noises coming from behind the wall
we ate good, you know me, lobster, shrimp, or rather: swimp in jamaican, delicious almond cakes and creme de la creme: patty, looks like a big pierog, delicate and crispy outside, deliciously spicy inside. did i mention jerk pork? smoked in an old oil barrel, served in alu-foil, for 3 american dollars i got a carefully selected handful of marinated hearts, livers, cheeks and sheer pork fat, and all of this at 10pm at night during a blackout in port antonio, candles and good food, does it get any better?

just look, no buy, pretty lady

there is so much to jamaica it's hard to pick one subject and stick to it, whenever i try to talk about one thing there're hundreds others so closely connected to it, that it's almost impossible to make it a somewhat coherent story, or any story at all

let me then start with something typical for all 'southern' or non-western cultures, i.e. haggling. i think i came to jamaica with wrong expectations, hoping i can get pretty much anything for a quarter of an asking price. well, it might be true for less touristy places like black river but hectic kingston or negril swarmed with american springbreakers - forget it. many people didn't even bother haggling after a minute or two when they didn't get a desired price. at first, i haggled restlessly just for the fun of it, not for those couple of american dollars i was keeping in my pocket. i though, ignorant me, that maybe all the tricks i learned in india i could i apply here, to no avail, calling them friends and portraying myself as a poor polish student simply didn't do the trick in jamaica, and one more thing - walking off from their stand, to my great surprise, simply made matters worse, they didn't run after you, like in india or arabic countries. we were wandering where it came from, this attitude and to be honest i dunno. sure thing they're spoiled by americans who are happy to get twenty per cent off (making the locals roar with laughter), either way, we could always get something off, unless we were asked a regular price, but even then we were so used to being tricked that we tried to haggle nevertheless,
some sellers were defiant, most very kind telling us to 'just look, you don't have to buy, pretty lady', agnieszka even heard 'you insult me by walking off', well, my friend, you insult me by giving me such price in the first place

jamaica, a try

trying to see jamaica in seven days is even harder than trying to recap what happened during those seven days.
i guess it takes an honest brainstorming session to organize all the striking oddities about the country, its people and the land.
being such a small island, jamaica still creates the feeling of diversity and great abundance of landscapes, attitudes and behaviors. it surprises anywhere you go, it seems the more people you talk to and more things you see, the less you know about what this caribbean island is all about. every person is a story, every place invites an interpretation

garfield park conservatory

quiz:

what does the picture show?

1) lukow, browarna
2) warsaw, praga
3) lodz, anywhere
4) chicago, near garfield park conservatory


a real trick question, right?
i wandered off today somewhat to the south, it still says 300north, but it does feel like the south side near the uni of chicago. this time it's near the garfield park conservatory, an hour away from my place on a bus. an hour and a world away.

dunno, maybe the older the more comfortable i get but i kinda freaked out today, in the middle of a day! it didn't seem safe at all, and i don't actually know why i held my purse tighter and speeded up in my futile attempt to look confident passing countless groups of young blacks. i reckon there was no good reason to think this way, but still. the last time i seriously freaked out like that was over a year ago on a beach in india where i foolishly (easy to say after some time's passed) went out on my own to see the sunset, a freaking romantic soul, right. when i wandered off i came across a group of young indian kids, aged seven thru ten maybe, i said namaste trying to win them and it did work for a while but when i wanted to back off they started well... throwing stones at me, which i can assure you made my heart thump widely, nothing happened fortunately but that was the worst moment that comes to my mind when i think of india

the observatory itself made up for all my efforts of whizzing thru the neighborhood - it's big showcasing a lot of various plants, most of which i've already seen somewhere but not on such a large scale. i liked it and i'd surely like to go back, during a day, and maybe with a companion :) this time

quickening my pace in run-down neighborhoods and longing for a garden of my own, am i growing old, or what???

anchovies

three steps that will perk you up when you're down
1. walk into an ethnic restaurant
2. order something you've never had before, which shouldn't be too hard considering the number of various cultures and hence their cuisines here in chicago
3. look closely at the server when s/he brings your check and sees what you've done to the food, how you try to fish our a teeny tiny octopus from a bowl of soup, fyi: bowl of soup full of reeking tofu which you don't know how to eat - do you mix it with rice and use chopsticks or do you use a spoon or do you drink it out of the bowl?
anyways, the point is, the way the lady looked at me was hilarious, and she had to be polite and not burst out laughing into my face, which I have to admit did yesterday seeing a guy putting sour cream over gołąbki and mielone