Solitude as a Companion/Solidão como um companheiro

Part of the reason my posts became less and less frequent while we were living in Gwangju was because falling into a routine meant that there was less to write about on a weekly, or even a monthly basis. Everything was very exciting as we packed, got ready to go, started our jobs, and settled in, but once normalcy kicked in there was little to hold a potential audience's attention. That changed, of course, with our whirlwind world travels, and the various ups and downs of readjusting to coming back home. Six weeks and zero jobs later, I have fallen into a different kind of routine: going to daily Mass, applying for jobs on the internet, and watching whatever my mom has playing on TV.

It's not so bad, honestly. I can sleep in if I want to, I have plenty of time to read the news, and I can chat with friends on the phone or online any time I want. I have gotten back into an exercise routine, partially motivated by my desire to train for the PHS Commissioned Corps - though I'm not complaining about having extra incentive to drop my vacation weight. I blog and catch up on international development news. I've explored my eligibility for public assistance (unfortunately, I can't get unemployment or Medicaid, but I do apparently qualify for food stamps - more on that in another entry). It's nice to spend time with my family, too - I chat with my brother and his girlfriend, go out to lunch with my father, swap yoga pants with my mom - and I even got a pat on the shoulder the other day from her normally stoic husband. And now, thanks to Netflix, I've watched all three seasons of Scandal and seen just about every episode of seasons eight through twelve of Law and Order: SVU.

I will admit that things have been pretty lonely without my other half. After spending a week with a couple we know in Dallas, Joel headed north to spend some time with his own family, which has been good for him, too. He reconnected with his brother, who is currently in his last year of med school with the Air Force, and has been working as a garden slave helping out in the yard for his parents. This week, he went with his folks out to Wyoming to see his grandfather and Dr. K's side of the family. He'll be back in Texas for his birthday, which I am obviously excited for - the next ten days can't pass fast enough. We talk and text every day, but after spending five years of marriage together, you kind of forget how to keep those marathon phone conversations from your dating days going...and seeing as how I am too careful/prudish/paranoid to send racy pics or messages that seem to be so popular among today's teens and politicians, I suppose I'll have to wait until he gets back to feel young again.

Ah, well.

On the flip side, my idleness has allowed me to make up for lost time with my mom's menagerie. In addition to begging forgiveness from my own cat and slowly working my way back into his good graces, I spend a good deal of time talking and playing with the other four cats and two dogs with whom I share the space. (The two mice aren't terribly cuddly, and I never really warmed up to guinea pigs.) Naturally, this comes with photographing and occasionally videotaping them.

Throw in daily Masses and rosaries, neighborhood runs, push ups, sit ups, and some occasional yoga, and you've got my daily life in a nutshell.

I don't really mind being back here so much. I wouldn't say I am proud of having to stay with my parents at this age, but neither am I ashamed of it. For one thing, it's completely normal in my mother's Brazilian culture for people our age to live with and/or be at least partially financially dependent on their parents, even sometimes after getting married and having kids (which thankfully means my mother doesn't resent it at all). It's also an uncomfortable but necessary rite of passage for a lot of my peers that have come home after living abroad. Even the brilliant Maya Angelou, who passed on today, went back to her mother when she faced difficulties - and considered herself stronger for it. Sure, we could have taken all of our severance pay, come straight home, and been able to be financially independent for a little while, but I firmly believe that our travels made us better people and brought us closer to each other (despite my tendency to take out my anxiety at being in this very situation on my poor husband). Debts can be repaid, but missed opportunities rarely come back around.

Interestingly, the solitude has been a strange comforter through all of this. Many people I know are uncomfortable with loneliness and silence and empty houses, but I find in them a familiarity that puts me at ease. Those who know me will undoubtedly understand this, as I have been known to seek out quiet corners at parties and social gatherings - being alone is a welcome antidote to the social anxiety that I inherited from my father and work so hard to hide. I do miss being around friends while Joel grills by the pool (and it's quickly getting into that season), but there's also something nice about sitting on the back patio for a few hours and watching a good old-fashioned Texas thunderstorm - and using my phone camera's macro function to take pictures of droplets on my mother's wind chimes.

Jobless Malaise/Mal-estar de desemprego

Nobody ever tells you that coming back home is harder than going abroad.

I've already covered re-entry shock. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about picking your old life back up, or starting a new one - coming back with no plans and having to depend on the generosity of family and friends to feed and house you while you look for work and watch your savings, so carefully squirreled away, dwindle.

I was in a great place when I first came back. Right off the bat, I got to fluff her dress and straighten her veil as my best friend got married, while answering polite questions about my travels and our plans now that we are back. I had five job interviews lined up in the next two weeks, I explained, and smiled modestly at the congratulations that were offered at having so many opportunities in my field when the job market is so hard. It seemed like employment, housing, and a new life were just a few short weeks away.


It's now Friday, post interviews. The phone interview for the PHS Commissioned Corps was a success, and I am now professionally boarded, but I still need to secure a federal position, which would take several more months - so it's not an option in the short term. On top of that, I still need to submit a mile-high stack of paperwork to get medical clearance, which is going to cost a fortune to obtain, particularly now that we don't have insurance. I've been notified of my rejection from the job with the city of Austin and one two of the three state health department jobs I interviewed for. I'm expecting answers from the other two last one either today or early next week, but (as usual) my tendency to expect the worst has already begun to set in. I have another interview in San Antonio next Monday, but working in San Antonio while Joel goes to school in Austin is already less than ideal, and I know that the competition for these government positions is really stiff. I have been doing my best to fend off the despair, but sitting around in my mother's house doesn't give me much else to do.

It hasn't been so bad in the meantime. Obviously, I am still applying for positions. I've spent time with my parents (and my aunt, while she was here visiting my mother from Brazil) and seen a few friends around Austin and Houston. My brother and his girlfriend took me to a local soccer game. Joel has been spending time with some different friends in Dallas (and reconnecting with their dog, who absolutely worships him). While we don't have as much mobility as I had originally hoped, since we don't have our own car, I can move around the city freely since my mom lets me use hers.

But it doesn't feel like a life. I have always prided myself on my ability to be independent, to figure things out on my own and make my own way. Learning to depend on Koreans was hard but, in hindsight, understandable. This is different. There is something deeply unsettling to both Joel and me about depending on the generosity of others that we have no way of paying back in the foreseeable future. Obviously my mother would feed me until the day she died, and my father rented a car for me to go to Austin for my interviews last week to help me get back on my own two feet. I know they're my parents, and that they give freely, but all I have are visions of the two of us living a Fantine-esque nightmare wherein we are reduced to destitution or desperation or perpetual dependence on the grudging generosity of our loved ones. Or something.


In truth, I've never been a "the Lord will provide" kind of person. One of my missionary friends likes to tell stories of how the exact amount of money that she needs at specific moments seem to kind of materialize right when she needs it, but I've never had such luck. Money has always come from overtime, cashed-out vacation days, and shrewdly-filed tax returns. I am trying to have faith, but this is quite literally the first time in my life since I was a college freshman that I've been looking for work while unemployed, and I am losing patience. I know people are trying to be supportive, but if I hear "Well if you didn't get the job, it wasn't meant to be" one more time, I may just set myself on fire.

Welcome back: The joys of re-entry shock/Bem vindo de volta: As alegrias de readaptação cultural

"Like, I remember the summer I started my period, like, she started hers around the same time, and, like..."
"This must have been a soup kitchen!"
"I have no desire whatsoever to pay money to sit in a 105-degree tent and stare at a fucking hole in the ground, like, I can sit at home and look at pictures on the internet..."
"I mean, look at this! This was someone's job to make these!"
"I've been going on cruises for over 20 years. Over the last few years they've become a lot cheapter, which is great, but there are just too many common people on them now..."
"Is there a buffet here?"
"I know someone who gets Starbucks coffee three times a day. She is absolutely obsessed with Starbucks."
"That's the tomb of the unknown soldier. It's, like, a huge honor to be buried there."

I'm always amused to hear Americans complain about Americans when they are abroad. Joel and I are no different, I suppose - we roll our eyes when we hear inane commentary or conversation and complain quietly to ourselves when we hear a fellow countryman saying something mildly inappropriate really loudly. Americans are undoubtedly not the only ones who disparage their compatriates, although I am relatively certain we do it more frequently than people from most other places, but I like to think - on my part at least - it is good-natured. As obnoxious as us Yanks can sometimes be, I've never met a fellow American abroad who was rude or nasty, and they are unfailingly helpful if we happen to be in need.

Unfortunately, the abundance of them in Europe this time of year led to the beginnings of my re-entry shock somewhat sooner than I expected.

Culture shock is a well-known phenomenon (although some, like Joel, seem to be more or less immune to it), but re-entry shock seems to take more people by surprise. The idea is that you develop a heightened awareness when you live abroad and grow accustomed to having to put a lot of effort into doing everyday things like going to the grocery store or the bank, because the system is different from the one you grew up in and everything is conducted in a different language. Culture shock consists of getting used to that extra effort being required; re-entry shock is the process of coming home with that heightened awareness and toning it back down because the sensory overload makes you realize that you don't need to try that hard to do things anymore. You don't have to speak extra slowly, you don't have to gesticulate wildly to get your point across, and you don't have to use your fingers to communicate numbers.

For Joel, this means remembering that quantities go in front of nouns, rather than behind them, in Western languages - for all six weeks in Italy, he was ordering coffees in Italian using Korean syntax (i.e., "Caffe, due" instead of "Due caffe"). For me, it means mental exhaustion halfway through the day, which results in a desire to lock myself in my room and stare at job vacancies that I have already applied to.

Suffice it to say that I have had a bit of a rough time. After spending nearly two years in a place where I didn't understand any of the conversations happening within earshot, I can now understand all of them. Which means that my brain tries to listen to all of them. At the same time. Joel and I can no longer have private public conversations, because we can be understood by the people around us. Unlike beggars in Korea, who are very discreet and quiet, gypsies and peddlers in Europe are extremely aggressive and in-your-face, which is now very unsettling to me. Customer service personnel suddenly seem incredibly rude and inefficient.

Basically, my senses are completely overloaded. Everything is new again, which feels weird because it shouldn't be new, which is even more unsettling. I'm hyper aware and slightly jumpy. And when I realized two days out that I was going home and would have to deal with this while being surrounded by old friends and people that I know and have to socialize with at a wedding, I practically had an anxiety episode.

I am sitting in the Newark airport as I type this, writing in a Notepad document while waiting at the gate for my flight to Houston, the third leg of four to Dallas for the aforementioned wedding. In just over three hours I will see my mother for the first time in two years. I haven't looked forward to anything so much since my honeymoon. I am sure it will be great to see everyone, and that the wedding will be lovely, and that seeing my father and brother and stepdad and cat will be equally joyful and not make me want to punch any of them in the face.

But I probably won't be seeing anyone else after that for a while. Don't take it personally - I will most likely just be hiding in my room until the re-entry shock has passed.

Life's Little Letdowns: Seeing the Pope and Finding a Job/Pequenas decepções da vida: vendo o Papa e arrumando um emprego

Life is full of little disappointments. I remember my first visit to the Vatican, when I came to Italy to visit Joel when he was studying abroad in 2006. I was still a very green Catholic, and enamored of all things connected to the faith, so naturally I was super excited to finally see Saint Peter's and all that jazz. Alas, I was ill prepared for the tourist trap that it actually is: crowded with people elbowing each other out of the way for pictures, talking loudly, and generally lacking any respect or reverence for a holy place. They herd tour groups through the Sistine Chapel like cattle, shouting "Silenzio!" and "No foto!" every thirty seconds or so while people jabber away loudly and try to sneak pictures anyway. Joel told me that he was horrified during one of the papal audiences he attended inside St. Peter's basilica, when people were climbing onto seats and sculptures like apes to get a better view of the pope (who - Benedict XVI at the time - looked just like Emperor Palpatine and wasn't that great of a pope anyway).

The papal address we attended two weeks ago was a similar affair. We mailed in a request for our tickets beforehand, just like we were supposed to, but when we went to pick them up the day before - after waiting in line for two hours, because you must pick up your tickets in person - they didn't have our request on file. Lucky for me, the guy at the counter felt sorry for me and gave me two tickets anyway, but when we showed up the next day over an hour early, the square was still jam-packed. We were in the middle of a gaggle of French Catholics who were deliriously excited to see His Holiness, and had colored flags to wave as he drove by in the popemobile to prove it. It was raining. I stood there in the drizzle, listening to a simple ten-minute speech on vocations get summarized in eight different languages (rather than just providing subtitles on the screens) and watching people stand on their toes just to see him (because obviously seeing him - and filming him on your smartphone - is way more important than anything he might have to say), and wondered simultaneously how an organization like the Vatican could have such piss-poor administrative capacity and why I had missed an opportunity to sleep in. After all, I can read Pope Francis' writings from the comfort of this lovely apartment any time I choose and look up his face on the internet.

Speaking of the internet, the Vatican really should learn to use it. But apparently, so should I.

I have been diligently looking for work for about a month now. Federal, state, and local government positions, as well as jobs with private firms and government contractors. Unbeknownst to me, however, these efforts have been a waste...because I was unaware that, in order for my resume to even reach a pair of human eyes, I apparently have to outsmart a fucking computer.

Call me stupid, or ignorant, or old-fashioned. My first "real" job was a fellowship that I applied for by sending in paper materials; for the position after that, I simply sent in my resume and a cover letter, and got a call a week later. We got our positions in Korea by using a recruiter. I have done the job application dance plenty of times and have always had at least one or two interviews each time; there were plenty of positions I never heard back from and lots of rejections, but I always figured it was because of my relative lack of experience. This time, however - with five years of solid work experience under my belt - I was wondering why I was having the same experience. I chatted with a former colleague from the Texas health department who got an interview, and she told me that you have to copy and paste words and phrases from the vacancy to get past the computer that screens your resume.

I dug a bit further and discovered that apparently every major company and government agency uses resume screening software to filter applications using "key words" from the vacancy announcement, then rank the resumes according to relevance. So if, for example, "oral communication" is listed as a required skill in the vacancy, listing that I was a teacher for a year and half will do me no good unless I write ridiculous sentences like "Used oral communication extensively to fulfill position requirements." Need to know how to use Outlook? Never mind that an ape could use Microsoft Outlook, or that any time in any government agency means that you have used it; if you don't use the words "Microsoft Outlook" in the list of responsibilities, your application gets tossed by the software. Don't list an address? Tossed out. List your contact information in a header? The software can't read it, and your resume is tossed. "We'll keep your application on file"? Don't bet on it.

To a certain extent, I understand the need for this. I read one anecdote of an engineering job that received 25,000 resumes. The internet means that now, quite literally, anyone can apply for any job, regardless of whether or not they are even remotely qualified. In fact, from what I read this weekend, about half of the several thousand applicants per vacancy don't even have the basic qualifications listed in the announcement. So if you are having trouble finding work, blame the newly-graduated psychology major who is sending off his resume to every single vacancy that he can find during his wine-soaked late-night trolling of job vacancies on Monster.com.

Like me, I think a lot of people don't quite believe it, but I tried it anyway just to see if anything would be different. On Friday, I applied for three positions with the Texas health department, carefully copying and pasting words and phrases from the job posting into logical parts of my resume. Lo and behold, today the website tells me that I am currently being "screened" for one of them, which is more than I can say for the other 30-some-odd jobs that just say "Application Complete" or "Not Selected."

Progress, I suppose, but it doesn't fix the dozens of resumes I have already sent into various HR black holes before I figured this out. My goal now is to secure a permanent government job where I can be slightly inefficient, get awesome benefits, and never be fired. I have been lighting candles in churches all over Rome in prayer for such an opportunity.

If all else fails, I suppose Korean hagwons will always be there.

We're Going Back to Texas - For Now/Voltamos para o Texas - por enquanto

In Italy the Communists have met & decided they’re not Communists
They’re gonna change their name to be more appealing to the Socialists and the Greens
But for the time being they’re calling themselves simply The Thing
The Thing! Personally, I’m planning to vote for -- the Thing
For the time being For the time being
There’s nothing left anymore except for the time being
You live your whole life for the time being
While meanwhile -- there is no meanwhile
Bob Holman, "1990"

Apparently, the road to DC goes through Texas.

After an agonizing month of waiting, American University finally got back to Joel with an admissions decision. Well, that's not entirely correct - they got back to Joel, but not with an admissions decision. He has been wait-listed. After sending out a smattering of acceptances during the second week of March, their admissions panel has been dragging their feet while applicants wait and fret and tear their hair out (at least, that's what it sounds like from the grad school forums that Joel has been perusing). Meanwhile, UT'S LBJ school has already returned with a financial aid offer (including some grant money - woo!), so it seems that the question of where we will be going has been answered for us, at least in the short term.

Unfortunately, I still do not have a job.

Up until yesterday, I had been applying to vacancies in both Austin and DC like mad. Now that Joel has decided he is going to UT, I can focus my efforts on Texas, but I will need to cast a wider net and start applying for jobs in Houston as well. If I can't get a position in Austin, I can always live with my family in Houston. I always swore I would never move back in with my parents, and the prospect of only seeing my husband on weekends is unsavory at best, but it is a financial net zero, at least. And on the flipside, my mother will be over the moon.

However, there is now another opportunity/complication in the works. On a whim, I applied for a position with the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps back in February (many thanks to my super-organized mother-in-law, who collected all of the materials and mailed them off for me). For those of you who don't know, the PHSCC is one of the (apparently) seven uniformed services of the US government, which - along with the NOAA Commissioned Corps - consists only of commissioned officers and is a non-combatant service (so my mother doesn't freak out). They got back to me last week, requesting an in-depth medical exam, which my friend (who currently works for them) tells me is a good sign. If I pass the interview stage, I'll be professionally boarded and commissioned once I get a federal position. I have already started training for the physical fitness test (in case you missed it, I am terrible at pushups) and will need to schedule my medical evaluation when I get back stateside. The catch, of course, is that there are no available positions in Austin or Houston, so I will probably wind up taking a position in DC, since that is where Joel will find work after he finishes his degree anyway. Either way, it is looking increasingly likely that we will be separated soon, and may have to spend a year or two living apart. Pooh.

For the most part, though, I am just glad that we have some sense of direction now. The anxiety of not knowing where we were going was really getting under my skin.

Meanwhile, we have been enjoying our quiet life here on the outskirts of Rome. Some days we stay in; on others, we go sightseeing. Yesterday, we went to St. Paul's Outside the Wall, one of four major basilicas in Rome (and, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful). We have been to the Borghese and Barberini art galleries, plus a modern art gallery on this side of town, and a handful of churches and basilicas and public parks. The weather has been lovely, and all the trees and flowers are in full bloom. The only thing our spring is missing is cherry blossoms, but I say the wisteria makes up for it.

Re-discovering Yin and Yang in the West/Re-descobrindo equilíbrio no ocidente

Quite a while ago, I prayed a novena to Saint Rita, and my petition was granted. One of the conditions of the novena is that you must publish it if your request is granted. Recently I remembered this, so I am publishing the fact that my petition was granted.

---

Joel and I have been in Rome for about ten days now.

Now that all the dust has settled, things are looking a lot better. Both my phone and Joel's ring have been recovered. I still maintain that I knew it was in his bag the whole time, since he had it the night before and didn't leave the house with it, but he was without it until our third or fourth day here. After a few days lounging around this fabulous apartment, we finally took all of our dirty laundry to a laundromat by the train station and cleaned it. The next day , I pulled the clean clothes out of our backpacks and began folding my laundry to put into the dresser in our room. After emptying Joel's pack, I turned his backpack upside-down to empty it, and suddenly there it was. I stared at it in disbelief for a moment, lying there on the bed next to a rumpled undershirt. And then I began to laugh, kind of like a crazy woman.


Getting my phone back was more straightforward. The day after we landed in Milan, I e-mailed the lost and found department (the "fundbuero") at the Frankfurt airport, describing what my phone (and charger, and converter box) looked like and precisely where we'd lost it. They responded asking for the passcode to verify, and then responded promptly that they'd found it and requested an address to send it back to me. After filling out a simple shipping form, I got my beloved Galaxy S2 back for the bargain price of 32,70 euro.

I think our time in Italy will be a nice interval between leaving the Orient and going home. We very conveniently stumbled into an Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Bartholomew's Cathedral in Frankfurt, and then looked around the church after the service. It was beautiful, but Joel and I both agreed that it was extremely weird to walk around on a wooden floor without first taking off our shoes. I have particularly enjoyed returning to Rome and being able to wander into random basilicas (they are everywhere here) or see paintings and sculptures of saints whose stories I know and can actively relate to. Moving from passive observer to active participant in places of worship is a fascinating transition, but more than anything I am grateful to be in a place where I don't feel so incredibly distant from my own faith. Objectively, I know that God is omnipresent and Christ is always with me, but it was harder to keep that in mind in Japan, where every tree, statue, and mirror is an object of worship.

Speaking of divine providence, Joel and I scored a really sweet deal here in Rome. After our reservation in Venice fell through, we scrambled to find another place to stay and eventually settled on a much cheaper arrangement in Rome. The listing on AirBnB described it as a room in an Italian couple's house, which was not at all what we had envisioned, but we stood to save some money, so we bit the bullet and just took it. When we arrived from Canazei, however, we discovered - to our delight - that we would have a separate apartment, shared only with an older Argentine woman who mostly keeps to herself (and occasionally does our dishes). Definitely for the best, since the couple has a newborn and two noisy dogs!

The apartment is spacious and gorgeous - fifteen-foot ceilings, a massive library of old hardcover books in the living room, a four-fixture bathroom, and a small balcony with a view of the Tiber river. The weather has been perfect - nothing but sunny days, and we don't need our jackets anymore. The neighborhood is a suburb on the north side of the city, near the Villa Borghese. There is a massive pedestrian bridge just down the street where I can work out in the evenings, and we are close to public transportation.

It's an idyllic space for us to be in limbo. When we are not sightseeing, I quell my anxiety about finding a job by trolling job search websites and obsessively editing my resume. (I think I have updated the resume I sent to USAID six times.) Meanwhile, Joel checks his e-mail constantly as he waits for an admission decision from American University in DC. I am applying to jobs in both places, but it only makes sense to apply for government positions this far ahead of time; meanwhile, I am freaking out over the fact that I will be home in less than four weeks and we still have no idea what city we are moving to. But life goes on. We mailed our tax return off yesterday. Joel's bank card got eaten by an ATM. We buy groceries, we cook, we watch TV and eat gelato and drink coffee and wine.

I suppose there are worse places to be.

Skiing in Paradise, Part Two: Regression to Snow Bunny

Our first attempt at the Sella Ronda (going clockwise) ended in a very expensive cab ride after we took a wrong turn down a black run, which I finished by sliding down the mountain on my ass. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Sella Ronda is a 42-km ski circuit going around the Sella massif. It is a collection of lifts and runs that can be taken either clockwise (the "orange" route) or counter-clockwise (the "green" route) through four valleys and three provinces.

The ski route.

Sella mountain, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The entire route is supposed to be either easy or intermediate in both directions, so we chose the clockwise orange route at random. I didn't learn until later that, while they are approximately the same length, the orange route is considered "sportier and higher altitude," while the green route is slightly gentler.

Oops.

Day Three, Monday: Disaster
We started our journey at about 8:30 after an unsuccessful battle with the hotel's crappy internet. Joel was anxious at our late start because (as you can tell from the map), once you start and get far enough along, you are in a sticky spot if you can't finish by the time the lifts stop running around 5. Unlike Korea, Italy does not do night skiing. Once again, I was slow getting started, but by mid-morning I was doing okay. We were slightly behind schedule at lunch, since we'd only done about one third of the route, but we were optimistic that we'd be able to pick up the pace after a quick meal and be back in Canazei by five.

And then we got lost.

There are signs indicating the route for both Sella directions, but at some points it can be confusing to figure out which lift you are supposed to take to move on. Joel is a much better navigator, so I let him try to sort it out and I just followed...until, after battling down a hideously steep slope and wondering why something so difficult was on a supposedly intermediate route, I noticed the black signs and skidded to a stop.

"Joel!" I shouted. "This is a black run!"
"I know!"
"What do you mean, you know?!"
"We took a wrong turn somewhere!"
"What?!!" I slipped down the slope some more and fell over. Joel squinted grimly in the sun.
"We're lost. I got confused back there and took us on an alternate route. We have to finish this one and then I can get us back on track."
"Are you crazy?" I shrieked. "I can't ski down a black run!"
"Yes, you can," he insisted gently. "We have to."
"You don't understand! I can't!" And then, right there in the snow, I began to cry.

Somehow I got back on my feet and began to battle my way down. I am not ashamed to admit that it was extremely rough. I looked absolutely ridiculous, but about halfway through I gained some semblance of momentum and did something that looked like real skiing...so I suppose I can now say that I have actually skied on black runs. But as the sun beat down on us, it also melted the snow, and soon I noticed that everyone else was struggling, too. When I got to the final stretch and saw everyone falling down as they battled through the slush, the last of my courage evaporated. I watched Joel stumble and, for possibly the first time in my whole life, gave up on something completely. "Ai, foda-se," I muttered to myself in Portuguese. "Vou não."

I took off my skis, unlooped my poles from my wrists, and proceeded to slide down the slope - on my ass. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Joel shout, "Are you serious?!" but at that point nothing mattered. I giggled at the sheer absurdity of it, imagining how ridiculous I must have looked to the dozens of skiiers on either side of me.

At one point, a German speaking woman approached me and kindly made an unintelligible suggestion in German. Through a series of gestures I figured out that she was offering to take my skis down for me. "Okay, va bene," I said. Upon seeing her confusion, I switched from Italian to the ten words in German that I know. "Ist gut," I assured her. She nodded, took the skis, and took off. "Danke!" I shouted after her.
"Bitte!" she replied.
I walked/slid the rest of the way down and finally found Joel, who had ordered two coffees for us at a restaurant at the base of the slope. We made our way back to the slope, wondering if we could somehow finish the circuit in time, but after failing three times to get on a chairlift and struggling down a bunny slope, I knew it was over. We jumped into a cab and took a very scenic (and ridiculously expensive) ride back to our hotel in Canazei. In silence, we put up our gear and hobbled back to the room.

I know when I am beaten, but somehow it didn't take the edge off of the defeat. I collapsed into bed and sobbed.

Bitterly, I marveled at how I could have been so pathetic at something that, strictly speaking, I wasn't even all that bad at. I kicked myself for letting memories of learning feed my fears and insecurity. I hated myself for letting my fear of heights paralyze me. I writhed in self-pity on the soft down comforter of the bed in our four-star hotel. Joel handed me a glass of grappa and put a gentle hand on my back. "Jessica," he said gently, "let me tell you a story." I sat up.

"When I came here the first time and took lessons, it snowed the night between our first and second days. The first day I did alright on the bunny slope, but there was six inches of powder on the slopes the next morning - which is great if you're experienced, but really hard if you're a beginner, because you sink into it. I struggled all day, and at the end we were supposed to do that run down to Pecol - you know the one, with the really steep bit at the very end. I didn't finish."
I sniffed. "You couldn't do it?"
He shook his head. "I was terrible. I couldn't turn correctly, I kept falling down, and at the end I looked down that slope and just knew that I was going to die." He smiled.
I stared at the amber-colored liquor. "And you still came back?"
"Yeah. I was determined to come back and try again." He stroked my hair and smiled. "I know you can do this - we can even get you more lessons back home, so you can work on overcoming what you're afraid of. You'll get better. It just takes practice."

Day Four, Tuesday: Success, of Sorts
We started off the last day with more modest goals: to do a portion of the Sella going in the opposite direction, and then to turn around at lunch and make our way back the way we came. Despite a slightly later start, we made good time and decided to forge ahead. By lunch, we were halfway around, so we decided to try to push through, reasoning that we could always take another scenic (and expensive) cab ride home if it didn't work out. We continued at a decent pace, however, and finally made the full circuit. I was exhausted by the end - my legs simply would not obey me, and I probably slid pizza-style through the entire last kilometer - but somehow I finished.

That trip was probably enough skiing to last me for the rest of the year.