Krakow: Reflecting on the Horrific

The last few days have been tough. It started when we visited the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and walked through the burial-size cement blocks of varying heights. The cement blocks stretch roughly 500x500 feet over descending and uneven ground. As you walk further into the memorial surrounded by looming cement blocks, you feel disconnected from the outside world -- alone. That aloneness turns terrible when you think about being Jewish under Nazi-rule facing the humiliation, the hunger, and the fact that any moment might be the moment that you are sent to a concentration camp to die.

Wilson and I have thought about death and suffering often in the past few days -- in addition to the Holocaust Memorial, we visited various parts of the remnants of the Berlin Wall and thought about those who died trying to escape the wall. And then we came to Krakow and it got worse. We've been to three museums in the past two days -- one museum showed modern human atrocities through photography (the Bunker Gallery), one museum expressed atrocities through contemporary art (MOCAK), and one museum discussed the atrocities of the Nazi occupation of Krakow from 1939-1945 within Schindler's factory (made famous by the movie Schindler's List).

The people that Schindler saved

The Bunker Gallery displayed a powerful photo competition, World Press Photo, from the world's news and daily life of 2012. Some photos were so beautiful and uplifting: there were photos from daily life, the 2012 Olympics, and penguins magically propelling themselves up onto ice. But the photos of Syria were heartwrenching -- people fighting and dying in what used to be a Unesco World Heritage Site: Aleppo -- the pictures of the hurt and dead children left an anchor in my stomach. The Syria pictures were not the only pictures that made my heart wrench -- pictures told different stories of alzheimers, whale sharks inhaling plastic bags, a chained monkey with a doll head mask, an Iranian woman whose abusive husband had poured acid on her and their 3-year old daughter, and the Somalia national basketball woman's team struggling to play while receiving death threats from Muslim extremist groups. One of the groups proposed that the punishment for women playing sports is to cut off their left hand or right foot.

The day before the Bunker Gallery we went to Schindler's factory and learned how quickly Krakow was captured by the Nazis -- within two weeks of Hitler declaring war on Poland. At the time, Krakow's population was approximately 260,000 and more than a fourth of its population was Jewish (70,000). Krakow had many synagogues and was also home to Wawel Castle, the beautiful symbol of Polish heritage. So when the Nazis took over Krakow, they sought to appropriate the gorgeous city and destroy Polish heritage and academia while also exterminating the Jewish population. They forced the Jews into ghettos and then began sending them to concentration work camps and also Auschwitz, the death camp. By 1945, when the Nazis left Krakow, only 4282 Jews reappeared in the city. We go to Auschwitz tomorrow.

Wawel Castle Gate

Next door to the Schindler Museum is Krakow's modern art museum, MOCAK. While we were there, it had an exhibition of 47 artists from 17 European countries about "Freedom". The exhibition begins by discussing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 that recognizes the inalienable civil liberties of the individual. Much of the artwork in the exhibition causes reflection about the many ways that individuals suffer or an individual's civil liberties are infringed upon. One piece of artwork was a video of a 1000 faces played slowly and then so quickly that they blurred together. It spurred thought about how the massive deaths of individuals become an unrecognizably huge number like the number of individuals who have died in Syria over the past 30 months: more than 115,000 individuals or in the Congo's conflict since the mid 90s estimated to be from 3 million to 5.4 million individuals.

The genocide in Syria and the Congo are not as systematic as the Holocaust but they are also horrific and overwhelming. As one explanatory panel said in the MOCAK: "The suffering that people inflict on one another other is one of the most terrifying and overpowering experiences."

2 exhibits from the Mocak

In some ways, these past few days have felt hopeless but there are things to inspire hope. For example, 700 million less people live in extreme poverty than in 1990 and two billion more people have access to improved water sources than they did in 1990. I am really proud of my dad and stepmom for being part of a project that brought water to 260,000 people in the Congo and for everyone in our community who are doing so much good. Hopefully, when Wilson and I finish this "traveling dream", we will move to a larger dream of contributing to global success stories.

 

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Travel Thoughts: Back on the road

Mu posted our big picture plans a few days ago, and it has been great getting all sorts of advice about places to check out, stay and eat. We spent a few days in London, which was amazing per usual. Love that city, walking down the Thames and running along the tow paths in East London. Love our London family of friends.

After a few days, it was time to start our trip in earnest and we headed to Prague. Both of us have always wanted to visit this city, so it was a fitting place to kick off this next phase of our travels. The city is buzzing, and lived up to the hype - really pretty with cool cafes. There is a reason that Prague is generally viewed as a must visit for travelers. We are now on a tranquil train up to Berlin, with rivers, foliage in full bloom on the rolling hills and little Czech villages dotted along.

More broadly, I have felt energized from starting our trip. This is sort of weird, since the actual mechanics and logistics of traveling can be quite exhausting. Sometimes you have to forgo some sleep or eat nasty food, which exhausts. However, this has not been the case since we got back on the road.

Here are a few possibilities:

- Brain more fully engaged: I have found my alertness increasing quite a bit these last couple of days. I am perceiving little things to try and get a hang on where we are and what is going on. Part of that is that I want to soak it all up and the other part is that I need to work to stay safe. Part of this stems counterintuitively from not knowing the language and thus needing to get other clues from our environment.

- Being comfy lost: Three days ago, we caught an express bus from the airport into the center of Prague to the train station. We needed to buy train tickets to our next destination: Berlin. While we were on the bus, I saw "a" train station and prompted Mu to get off the bus. We walked into the station, and it seemed like we had gone back to the pre-Violet Revolution era of Czechoslovakia. Lots of smoke, people sleeping off too much booze on benches and a departure flipping sign that had to be a hundred years old. Rough around the edges and not really the kind of station I was expecting from a true international destination. Of course, we were at the wrong train station. Whoops. It was only a 5 minute walk to the right station, which was more worldly and homogenous.

This is a microcosm for the kind of things that happen all the time when you don't know the language. We are constantly taking out maps to look like big geeks or asking people where we are and where we need to go to get to our destination. Sometimes they understand and sometimes not so much. That is fine and part of the fun. Back home, I really hate getting lost. The loss of control and failure, even if it is inconsequential, is frustrating. On the road, it is just part of the life so no need to get too worked up. I guess I could bring a little more of the traveling approach to the life in the States.

- Travel memories flooding to the surface: Being back in this international traveling life has kickstarted the neural pathways that have been formed in similar situations over the last year and beyond. Like begets like. I have found myself thinking often back to places and adventures we have enjoyed. When back home, i spent more mental energy thinking about sports or current events. Now, my attention is devoted to taking in what is going on around us and recalling prior trips.

- Connectivity: It has been an interesting transition from the always available connectivity across multiple devices to speedy, but catch as catch can, wifi. There is still tons of connectivity, but it has been a bit of a rough transition from back home to traveling. The clearest example is with info and addresses especially when we are wandering around looking for where our hotel is located. We could get data and/or phone numbers through SIM cards, but since we are staying in places for such a short time it doesn't make much sense. This means that we need to be prepared with info and directions on the front end, which does not come naturally when you are used to having a computer in your pocket able to assist with any last minute data.

In sum, it feels great, and very comfortable, to be back traveling, catching trains and seeing new parts of the world. Up next? Berlin, another city i have been looking forward to visiting for years.

 

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International Again: The Dream for the next 100 days

Wilson and I have flown the coop again. I am writing this from London and we are on our way to Prague. In the next 2 weeks, we will travel from Prague to Berlin, over to Poland, down to Slovakia, ending in Vienna. Along the way to Vienna, I may hit up Budapest, Hungary and Wilson may pass through Slovenia.

Not quite sure, yet.

After that, Asia -- below is a rough guide of where we will be. As always, please come meet us along the way or give us travel advice.

11/6 -11/17 Central and North Thailand

11/18 - 11/25 Myanmar (Burma)

11/26 - 12/19 Laos

12/20 - 12/30 South Thailand

12/31 - 1/7 Malaysia

1/8 - 1/27 Indonesia

1/28 - 1/29 Singapore

1/30 Back in Las Vegas.

If everything goes as planned, we will cover 40 plus countries abroad during the Korol dream...starting in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South America, Europe (again) and then Asia. We are excited for this new phase and hope that the adventures, and blog entries, will keep flowing.

Happy trails!

 

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Washington, D.C.: New Beginnings and a Shutdown

Wilson and I have been on the East Coast: D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and NYC for the past sixteen days and it has been fun! But it has also been a strange time to be in the D.C. area -- when the federal government has shutdown for the first time in 17 years. We arrived on Monday September 30th to watch the news about what would happen the next day on October 1st. We were anxious for a lot of reasons. In the immediate term, we didn't know whether Wilson would be able take the last substantive step in the Foreign Service process. In the long term, we didn't know how the shutdown would affect many of our friends who work for the federal government -- Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Deparatment of Defense, and Senate staffers. Also, we were worried about what this government shutdown meant for our country's economic and governance health. Thr energy flowing through the city felt like the antipode to another time that we came to D.C. almost 5 years ago -- President Obama's initial inauguration.

This time in D.C. -- there has been a lot of talk about government dysfunction and what the U.S. is doing wrong. How politicians are so scared of being "primaried" like Bob Bennet to Mike Lee in Utah, that they are just looking out for themselves rather than looking out for what is best for the country. That food stamps, WIC benefits and health bills seem to be games. That many politicians don't seem to care that real people in the U.S are going hungry and that real people in the U.S. are losing every last penny to health care costs that have been out of control for the last few decades. That President Obama really did hear, and hate, his mother fighting with insurance companies over health bills during the last few months of her life. Pessimism and anxiety felt real in Washington these past few weeks even though many programs in the government were able to find a way to continue. But some programs weren't.
I know that there are cogent arguments for a leaner federal government -- it should be trimmer but trying to "trim" government through crisis methods and late night bargaining is not likely to yield the best results for U.S. government's multi-trillion dollar budget. Best results have to be well-thought out and negotiated rationally. Best results are what we all should seek and I think that better results are possible. I have to believe in the hope that President Obama's election in 2008 stood for. The hope that: "The forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."
I hope that with yesterday's deal to get the government back up and running that we can find a way to make government more efficient while not losing sight of taking care of our fellow American citizens. The pictures in this blog post from January 2009 were of a time when people were literally dancing in the streets. Our friends are pictured below, bundled at 4 am, to brave the freezing cold to be out in the 2 million people strong throng to celebrate a truly historic moment in our nation's history.

I was glad to share in that time in D.C. and hope that these past few weeks will be the nadir -- a turning point towards a more cooperative and efficent government.

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Recommended Travels: the 9/11 Memorial in NYC

The rain has only increased intensity, and the powerful gusts of wind combine to give a real chill to the air. A chill that is easy to forget as I wander this moving space. I am at the 9/11 Memorial in downtown New York, and my tears are mixing pretty freely with the rain pouring down.

The memorials sit on the footprints of the two downed towers, making the sheer size of those twin towers manifest. The twin memorials are ringed with bronze metal sheets, with each of the 2,977 victims of the attacks memorialized. The names are arranged based on the buildings they were in when they died, the flights that hit the towers and the government agencies that lost their first responders that day. People have left bright white and red flowers in the names of their loved ones.

Beneath the memorial parapets, a cascade of water falls about 30 feet to a pool, with a smaller, central void of water falling away. Noticeably, you can not see the bottom of the middle void, and it feels like it may go down to the very center of the world. Captivated, I stand and watch the rain stream into the mesmerizing memorials until i am soaked to the bone.

My feelinGs at being in this space are raw, recalling the personal and human pain from that day and also thinking of all the history that has flowed forward. Running my hands along some of the names of the first responders and considering their ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of helping others. Walking slowly around the south tower footprint. Picturing the chaos of ground zero in the days after. It all feels so fresh, more than 12 years later.

How did I get there?

A few days ago, I had one of the most powerful travel experiences in these 14+ months. Somewhat surprisingly, it came in the hustle and bustle of NYC, a city I have been visiting my entire life and one we have visited at least once a year for extended trips over the last 6-7 years. Having ranged far and wide these many months, it was interesting to have this powerful experience in a place I like to think I know somewhat well already.

In this city we most certainly love, on a rainy Monday I ducked out for an afternoon visit to the 9/11 Memorial, which opened on the 10th anniversary of those attacks. I had read a few intriguing articles about the design of the memorial and wanted to see it for myself.

While it was sprinkling when I left the upper west, where we were staying, the clouds looked several orders of magnitude worst when I got out of the subway. The swirling and darkening sky contrasted with the shimmering facade of the enormous Freedom Tower, One World Trade Center. This building will be over 1,700 feet when completed and the largest skyscraper in the US (about 400 feet taller than the twin tower) . The entire area around the new tower and the memorial is still in a ton of flux and has the feel of a bustling construction site. Because it is.

I make my way to the ticket booth and get a free ticket for an hour later. But with the rain driving people away I can walk right in. Before getting to the memorial, each visitor must go through security checks akin to what was required for boarding a plane before 9/11. Not sure if that is at all intentional, but it is just one more reminder how the world has changed in the intervening years. Once the construction around the site is complete, the memorial will be completely open.

Then you walk through some of that construction, the new building rising from the ashes to this day and come out to the memorial space. It is big, 8 acres, and somewhat irregular in shape based on the arrangement of the buildings in the site. The green and stillness are huge contrasts to the constant activity out on Church St. There is one tree that somehow survived the devastation, but I did not really notice it as my eyes and heart were drawn to the memorials. And man did they deliver.

I can not recommend visiting the 9/11 memorial more highly. A must, even if it is nearly certain to bring you to tears too.

Postscript: Also want to thank so many of you for you warm comments here and on FB, the emails, calls and well wishes about our last post. It has been heart warming, and so touching. Has me even more excited about the next steps in our lives. Very exciting and all the better for knowing there are so many people following along and rooting for us. Much love.

 

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An update on the Dream: life in flux

Muriel and I have been traipsing around the east coast, visiting friends and family for the last week in DC, Balto, Philly and now NYC. All great cities, and all great people. While catching up and going out, there has been the nagging reality of our life in absolute flux, with a ton of possible outcomes.

Many readers, but not all, probably know i have been interviewing for a couple of dream gigs over the last months. The first has been a long, long process with Google.org, working in their sustainability program. All told, I did about 10 interviews for that job, including 3 on campus visits at their HQs. This process started while we were back in South America, for instance I did phone interviews from Quito, Cartagena and Bogota. The second round of interviews was the oral assessment for the US Foreign Service (aka the diplomatic corps). This was a high stress day of interviews and other assessment tools in DC, which I completed on Tuesday. For a little extra bonus, Mu and I had planned to fly to India this Monday (Oct 7th) to start a 5 month tour of that sub-continent and other parts in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

Throughout these interviews and prep, so many of you have been supportive. It has meant a ton, and helped me perform well in these high stakes environments. Thank you.

Well, over this last week I have gotten the results from these interviews and figured it would be easiest to share them on the blog instead of a ton of emails, texts and calls. There is some good news and some bad. I did not get the Google job, it came down to one other finalist and myself and they decided that the other person's experiences were a marginally better fit for the position. Very disappointing, but understandable. It truly was a great experience and an honor to be in the running.

On the much more positive side, I passed the Foreign Service oral assessment on Tuesday and received a conditional offer to join the Diplomatic corps. Still have to complete a background check and medical clearance, but the hard work is done. This is amazing news for us and we are so excited about the tangible possibility of the life and work that the Foreign Service offers.

Honestly, these last couple of months have been tough for me trying to navigate the interviews and preparations, all while seeing loved ones and getting after it in the outdoors. While hiking and driving and all those other fun things these last month, I have thought a lot about what has made it a bit exhausting and settled on two main ideas:

- Transparency: being open about what is going in our lives is one of the goals of this blog. That has led us to share stories along the road that might have gone by the wayside in another era. It has been such a joy for me when we visit friends and they recount a favorite post, which always seem to be different choices. Even back in at my last job, I was a tireless an advocate for being transparent about the work, both its successes and weaknesses, to the outside world. I believe in personal transparency. But in a job search, it might not be the best tactic, since so much of the outcome is out of your control.

At the end of the Foreign Service oral assessment, all of the people getting tested wait around to get told if they passed or failed the test. It is excruciating, so much nervous tension in a group of people who desperately want to succeed. Then, I took a long, solo walk down a office hallway to a closed door to hear the results. That was a long walk. You know what I thought in that hallway? Not the big picture, whether this would be our next step and the literally decades of life that could all trace back to the moment, oh no. I thought about how terrible I would feel not passing and then meeting friends for happy hour drinks, seeing people's supportive faces when I told them the news. For whatever reason, that is what I dreaded, not what failure would have meant to Mu and I.

This is a little microcosm of being transparent about all the interviews, jobs and possible outcomes. On the flip side, being transparent did yield so much support, which was amazing. Family and friends are the essence of a life well lived, in my book, and these last 2-3 months have shown that to be the case. But, sometimes I wished that we had kept this a little more private. I always had a nagging feeling of not wanting to disappoint. Perhaps transparency has a bit of an ugly belly when what you are sharing is rejection.

- Uncertainty: with all these interesting balls up in the air, our life these last couple of months has felt even more uncertain than usual since we left our jobs over a year ago. Instead of just uncertainty about the near or medium term, we have been talking and thinking a ton about our long term goals and opportunities. Having such divergent outcomes was tough, especially since all of them were so intriguing. Would we get on the plane to Asia? Did Mu need to find a job in Santa Cruz? Were we on track to get those coveted diplomatic passports? We never knew the answers to these questions, and many others, until this week. Now that we have resolutions on them, it feels good. We can take our objective situation and try to maximize, instead of trying (and sometimes failing) to embrace the uncertainty.

And that brings us back to India and Asia. You see, when we got to DC last Monday, Mu went to the India consulate and shockingly learned that we could not secure our visas there. Rather we needed to get that done in San Francisco, due to our home address. There was no time to get it done, since I needed my passport for the Oral Assessment and paper work in the event I passed. So, we had to bail on those plane tickets (not an issue, 100% refundable) and are now figuring out what our next travel plans entail. Literally, like today and tomorrow. The world is our Oyster, as long as British Airways has flights. Any recs for 3-4 months of travel, highly preferably places we have not been to thus far while living the dream?

We will keep you posted, and as always I would love to hear from you for congrats and support.

 

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Las Vegas: Stung by a Scorpion

View of Vegas Strip from Korol Seniors' Backyard

We spent a week in Las Vegas at the Korol Seniors' home -- basking in the comfortable space that they have created in the desert wonderland that is Vegas. Staying at their home feels far away from the debauchery of the Strip and closer to nature. Even though the Las Vegas Strip is visible from the backyard, a 10-minute drive brings you to bounteous hiking/climbing and the occasional 15 inch herbivorous chuckwalla lizard in Red Rock Canyon National Monument. (I would insert a link here to Red Rocks but many federal websites are currently suspended due the government shut down.)

When we arrived in Vegas, the Korol Seniors warned us about some unpleasant nature that had been frequenting their home -- Bark Scorpions. Bark Scorpions are the most venomous species of scorpion in the U.S.and the only species that can be considered life threatening. And according to Desert Musuem's animal fact sheet, the Bark Scorpion can also be "found in many places due to its ability to climb. It can be found not only under rocks or in rock crevices, but also in trees or high on rock walls. They also can be found inside of peoples dwellings trapped in sinks or bathtubs, climbing walls, or in a dark closet." The Korol Seniors ahd found three scorpions in a one- week period -- two scorpions in scorpion sticky traps and one on top of a tall dresser. The one on top of the dresser was alive and subsequently quickly squashed. The Korol Seniors' household is usually scorpion free but I guess that in the Fall and Spring, Bark Scorpions come out in abundance. These two shoulder seasons are scorpion mating season -- when the male forcibly inserts the sperm into the female's abdomen with his pincers. Lovely creatures.

I met one of these creatures in the garage on Saturday at 1:20 pm. I had just begun organizing some of our stuff and packing for our next adventure when I grabbed Wilson's timbuktu blue laptop bike messenger bag. I started to open the back, hookiing my fingers under the flap of the bag, when I felt an intense sting on my right index finger. The pain shot into my finger like a tylenol sized surge of lancinating zapping. I froze with pain and thought -- "wow, I am such a wimp, I didn't think that hornet stings hurt this much." I dropped the bag and saw something yellow and brown fling to the garage floor. I didn't pay attention to what I thought was a hornet because I was too obsessed with the electric shocks pulsing through my finger. I ran into the house and put my finger under cold water as I breathlessly told Wilson and Mrs. Korol Senior that I had been stung by a hornet. As the zaps ran up my finger into my arm, I went back to the garage to look for a hornet nest in the garage by the bag and I expected my "hornet" sting to subside. As the pain worsened and no hornet nest was to be found, it eventually dawned on me that perhaps, I had seen a yellow/brownish scorpion scuttling away when I had rushed to run cool water on the wound.

Sure enough, I began exhibiting all the signs of a scorpion sting as the tingly pain worsened and traveled from my right index finger to my armpit. I called my sister, who is an urgent care doc, and poison control. Poison control told me that scorpion stings are usually only life threatening to the very young, very old or very weak. They also told me that no emergency room visit was needed unless I began to shake, have my mouth close up and restrict my breathing, excessively vomit, and the other usual signs that something is seriously wrong. My sister adsded that the next five hours were the most serious so I should stay quiet, keep my hand quiet, and try to relax so that I didn't induce a more powerful response to the toxin. She also warned that I should have the Korols watch me for "foaming at the mouth". Delightful.

Luckily, no "foaming at the mouth" occurred and after 24 hours of icing and taking Alleve painkillers, the tingly pain and subsided from my armpit to my elbow. At its worst moments, the pain was somewhat intense and other parts of my body tingled. That night, I couldn't sleep on the bed and so I slept fitfully on the couch to control my arm position in order to minimize the pain. But after 24 hours, the pain had mostly become the sensation that you have when one of your appendages "falls asleep" -- a lot of tingling. After 36 hours, the tingling sensation was mostly restricted to my hand. This was a good thing since we took a red-eye on Sunday night to the East Coast. And now, 5 days and 107 hours later, there is slight numbness, heat, and itching on the back of my index finger but no mark. In fact, during this entire time, there has been almost no swelling and no visible signs of my unpleasant nature experience. Ah well, one bad experience in an abundance of good experiences in Vegas nature is not bad stats.

 

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