We are testing students for a study abroad program this week. There is a study abroad program which allows students from European Universities to study in Asia, Europe, North America.

It’s remarkable.

Candidates must pass a language test and a ten minute interview. As each candidate walks into the room, I can’t help but feel a little envy – to be young, in university, and looking forward to travelling and studying abroad. Fantastic. Ten minutes later, as the candidate walks out of the room, I am generally overflowing with one of three emotions:

1. Joy
2. Abject irritation
3. Despair

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The Pants Rule Enforced

It’s 8:25 pm, I am at home, and still wearing pants.

Don’t freak out. If you’ve ever read this blog, you know that pants at night normally signals some sort of emergency that requires visiting firemen or an asbestos reader.

But no.

If you, like me, harbor a long-held hatred of pants, you might think it’s a special occasion, unrelated female company or colleagues over for dinner.

But no.

I am wearing pants and have been home for 6 hours. I’ll explain…before my anti-pant friends disown me.

For many moons the first thing I did upon arriving home was strip off my pants. The. First. Thing. If I was carrying four bags of frozen goods into the flat and found that the cat was on fire, I’d strip out of my khakis before smothering her in frozen peas. I’d spend my days post-work in pajamas and lounging on the couch like an Egyptian goddess. Uh, I mean, god.

But it wasn’t all comfy sunshine and cottony rainbows; there were some issues. In the first place, it occurred to me that I was spending like 80% of my week in pajamas. If you’re not a mental patient or 94 years old, that’s a lot. And while I fall into neither of those demographics (shut up), I began to feel like both.

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Debre Damo: The Climb

Whenever I decide to take a trip somewhere, it becomes my world to some extent. Like many travelers, I try to learn as much as I can before going somewhere in order to enhance the experience.

So, recently, my world has become Ethiopia. I read about it, watch documentaries about it, and scan the news for bad things about it. Reading my travel guide and having just finished a travel narrative, Lure of the Honey Bird, I am learning an awful lot about my next travel destination, which I chose in search of a good adventure. And in terms of that, Ethiopia will not disappoint…maybe frighteningly so.

Ethiopia is very well-known for its archaeological sites. The country is simply teeming with history and people flock to the rock-hewn churches, mystical cities like Harar, obelisks, and monasteries. And I will soon be one of them.

One of these is a 6th century monastery called Debre Damo. It’s on top of a flat-topped mountain (the actual Debre Damo), known for its manuscripts, and has never been visited by a woman. Even female animals aren’t allowed up there.

Oh yeah, and it’s only accessible by climbing a leather rope up a sheer cliff as monks help you with a goat-skin harness tied around your waist.

Since reading about this I have been assaulted by visions of several monks dragging me up a hill as I collapse into a juicy bag of sweat and tears. Moreover, since reading that while entrance to the monastery is 150 Birr, the goat-skin harness is an additional 50 Birr, that vision has included the monks bringing me halfway up and then demanding their 50 Birr before they bring me the rest of the way. I guess these monks know how to turn a Birr in this joint.

It seems that the people who write about Ethiopia mention the wildlife in a very casual manner. Oh and some hyenas disrupted our lunch in Harar and we were forced to shoo them with brooms and sticks before dessert.

Um. What?

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Dick Pic

I am chatting with my friend when she tells me a Tinder story. We share Tinder stories. Some of them are funny, some of them are frustrating, and some of them have us praying to deities we don’t believe in to save the human race.

It seems that she’d been chatting to a young man a few months ago and he went MIA. This is nothing new, people disappear all the time in the online dating game, sometimes they have met someone in person, sometimes they get cold feet when they have to actually meet another human face to face.

So today, after three months, the guy writes a random text message just to say hi. My friend responds with a hello, and then he sends her a picture of his penis.

OK. I am not judging. I mean I don’t understand how “hi” naturally leads to “here are pictures (4 in total) of my genitalia,” but still, not judging.

Also, I am no prude. And I have done my fair share of naughty textual interactions. But those interactions involved people I was intimately involved with and, moreover, there was a clear understanding on the part of all parties involved exactly what was happening.

My friend’s experience is far from isolated. According to many female friends who have been on Tinder or OK Cupid or any other number of dating sites, getting a picture of a penis is not an unusual occurrence. Often these penises are attached to men they have never met or seen before in any way. Women can apparently expect to be greeted with several anonymous members whenever they log into the site in question.

I am just wondering if I have missed a memo or something. Have the rules of the dating world completely changed? This would not be the first time I was late to the dating party and I have learned many dating lessons five months too late. So the idea that I am out of touch on this one is not out of the realm of possibility.

But if this is the new norm, where does it fall in the line of dating steps? Is it now: first date, kiss on cheek, second date, kiss on lips, between second and third date, send picture of junk, third date, depends on how picture was received, pack a lunch for your interrogation.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not preaching and I refuse to color this post with anything close to a “In my day!” or “We used to have values…” theme. It doesn’t matter when you lived, live, or will be living, people have always been and will always be horny and stupid. And the laws of physics state that the hornier you are, the stupider you get. Is it just that now we have technology to help us share our stupidity in photographic naughty form?

If this is the new way of the dating world, what’s next?

A few weeks ago Europe celebrated the anniversary of VE Day, or Victory in Europe. There were little celebrations around the city, there was a tank in Dejvice Square.

On this day, which marks the partial end to the largest conflict in the history of mankind, I found myself wandering around the Million Marijuana March. This was a music festival held on Štvanice Island advocating the legalization of marijuana. While I have always felt that marijuana should be legal, I am not exactly an advocate, but rather I went to the festival to see friends who were there.

I have not been reminded of late spring college days more than when I wandered through this festival. There were hundreds upon hundreds of people, mostly young, drinking beer, playing games or lying about on the grass in little circles of their friends, listening to the great bands that played throughout the day. There was, as you’d imagine, a mushroom cloud above the park grounds, about 5,000 smiles, and 10,000 bloodshot eyes.

And me.

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“So, which vaccinations do you need?”

“Um.” I unfold the paper and hand it to him.

“Ah.” He winces. I take this as a relatively bad sign. “Where are you going?”

“Ethiopia.”

One of the realities of travelling to Africa is the preventive medicine involved. There are a slew of over the counter medicines to combat diarrhea, headaches, diarrhea, stomach issues, and diarrhea.

There are anti-malaria pills and I feel like Father Merrin about to confront Pazuzu in The Exorcist. We first met 20 years ago in India. If you have taken anti-malaria pills then you know that these pills give you the strangest, most vivid dreams imaginable, like Tim Burton taking LSD with Salvatore Dali in your subconscious. In India, we’d awake every morning and glare around the room, sweating, panting, and wonder how one brain could create the roller coaster we’d been on all night.

And just like anytime I am waiting to get on a roller coaster, I am not looking forward to it, but I am.

Primarily, though, there are vaccinations to get sorted out and there are a lot of them to consider. This is reflected in my list, which is comprehensive. Distressingly, I have noticed that the list of illnesses you can potentially come down with in Ethiopia is about 20 times longer than the illnesses you are required to vaccinate against before going there.

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