Chapter 1

I awoke at 4 am packed, boxed, and ready to board an aircraft of any size, prepared to spend the next twelve hours sitting either alone in an airport on a computer ("Is that Joel Miller? He must be very busy and important--he's on a computer in the airport," I think they're saying), bumping elbows on a small aircraft with my neighbor ("Why are Joel Miller's limbs so unyieldingly long?") or being harassed by airport security. Again. 

I arrived at Portland International Airport at about 4:45 am for my 6:55 flight, childishly obeying the FAA's advice about arriving two hours early for international flights. After checking in (which took all of two minutes), I made my way to the security checkpoint, where I was greeted by an old man who immediately tagged me as a terrorist. 

"Hello, sir, please place your belongings in the bins and step right this way. Sandals too." 

I noted that he didn't direct me towards the metal detector. I followed him to an area secluded from the world by white plastic walls with red "DO NOT ENTER" signs and symbols plastered upon it. 

"This is a machine that detects for explosive material, please stand with your feet on the mat inside." 

Like an usher from hell, he motioned me into the machine that had red lights and glass doors, and it was about this point that I realized that I wasn't going to like this. I looked at him for a second hoping maybe he'd offer that he was actually kidding and that I could indeed proceed to the metal detector. His angry accusatory stare told me otherwise, and I stepped inside the box. Glass doors shut behind me and the room suddenly became very small. Out of any sci-fi movie, a robotic female voice chimed in. 

"Air sensors activated." I then realized that he didn't tell me something he was supposed to, and the voice inside the box wouldn't offer me any answers. Seconds later, I was blasted on all sides by what felt like Nerf darts, each area of my body being shot within a fraction of a second of the other. With each blast, I naturally reacted by flinching in the area the shot originated, and since I was being shot from all angles, I appeared to be seizing in all directions, shirt and shorts blown up because of the incessant strength of the air darts. Within seconds the entire process was over and I pulled my shirt down from its perched position on my left shoulder. The red lights turned green, and the glass doors in front of me automatically opened. 

Upon reflection, I have a complaint for the TSA. Instead of "air sensors activated," consider warning passengers with a quaint message such as the following: "hello valued customer. We appreciate your patience as we test your patriotism with air guns. You'll soon be shot from various angles with regular outdoor air, and please avoid humiliating yourself by flinching each time an air gun shoots you. Thank you." A calm reading by Sigourney Weaver may do the trick for me. 

The TSA devil in front of me smiled. "Fun, isn't it?" He asked. After catching my breath, I shot him an angry glare, wondering how anyone could think that being shut in a tiny glass box and blasted with air numerous times within a few seconds would be fun. "Well, no... That is a machine from hell. That was horrible!" He cackled at what he took to be a joke and I made my way to the next harassment checkpoint without giving the evil man the satisfaction of realizing I may have needed defibrillation had my heart not soon slowed. 

I was complete with the whole process by 4:52, and cursed the FAA's advice about arriving two hours early for international flights for all of those two hours while taking deep sweaty breaths to slow my heart rate after the TSA Torture had concluded.

The rest of my series of flights went relatively unremarkably, until I arrived in Mexico City and was warned to adjust my watch to reflect the current time, which was two hours ahead of Portland. Having successfully pried my long ring fingernail into my Target watch dial, I entered into Mexico City International Airport to thousands of ads for duty free alcohol and cigarettes. Luckily, when I return, I’ll know that such places are available, but I thought it best to avoid public humiliation where more than language barriers are separating the people. As of right now, street smarts, general whereabouts knowledge, and how to get through customs are on the list of things I cannot currently claim to have mastered.


I wandered the airport for ten minutes before somehow stumbling upon customs, assuming that I’d have to leave the security checkpoint in order to gain my boarding pass for my final flight to Oaxaca. The line for customs took about 40 minutes, which I spent nodding and turning around to listen to an overweight Oregon man tell me about his last time in Oaxaca:


“Oh, a pre-medical internship? When we were in Oaxaca, we stayed with a couple of guys… I’m pretty sure they were a couple of flamers, and one of them got real sick and had to go to the hospital. I’m wondering if it’s not AIDS related, being that he was dating another guy and all.”


“Hard to say,” I conceded, and turned around again, hoping for a second he would cease his ramblings.


I got out of customs at 4:51 and my flight was scheduled to depart at 4:50, so I frantically ran up and down the corridors having no idea where I’d find a sign that said “If you just got to this county, and need a boarding pass, this is the place to be” in another language. Through my frantic search, what kept running through my head was the annoying fact that I once again relied on myself when I shouldn’t have, remembering that I didn’t write down any emergency contact phone numbers because I pictured a perfect trip. I finally found a check-in location for Mexicana airlines, only to be told in all-too-fast Spanish that I was at the incorrect check-in location, and that I’d need to go to the domestic check-in location. Luckily, one of the young cute customer service agents (who didn’t speak a word of English) felt sympathy for me and rushed me through countless corridors and curves, during which all I could say was, “gracias, gracias, gracias mucho.”


I finally arrived at the check-in counter, and told the man that I had missed my flight by ten minutes in a hurried Spanish. He slowly poked away at the keyboard and handed me a boarding pass as he directed me to the gate, saying, “It’s not time yet.” It was at this point that I realized my mistake: not buying a digital watch. I’ve never been able to read an analog clock, and I thought that purchasing wearing a small watch around my wrist would make me seem more worldly and knowledgeable.


“Look at that young man,” they’d say. “I bet that he can tell me the time should I inquire, seeing as he’s wearing a minature clock on his wrist at all.” I thought with this dignified demeanor I’d naturally pick up how read an analog clock.


I sat for fifty minutes at the gate waiting to board while remembering that I made that cute customer service agent rush me through the airport for nothing, not to mention being permitted to completely skip the declarations portion of customs. I was wondering why everyone looked so confused when I told him or her I was late for my flight.


My host mother, Claudia, and her daughter, Monica, greeted me at the airport and on the ride we discussed Oaxacan weather, traffic, and points of interest. Upon entering the house, I was greeted by my first cockroach (see photo), and met the rest of my host family. For the first four weeks, another student is staying in the house, a sixteen-year-old from Alabama that doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, which is rough because the host mother Claudia doesn’t speak a word of English. Much of the first night was spent translating house rules and food allergies.


Monica, 20, is a second-year medical student going on to her third year. Upon hearing this I immediately began considering ways I could gain access to a Mexican medical school, and when people asked why, I could say, “Oh, the states just seem too fast for me,” which would make me sound wise in my decision to do what a relaxed professional should do. Monica’s older sister Claudia is a therapist. We also live with their 14-year-old sister who is a student. I now see the problem with American society: parents should feed and house their children well into their children’s careers.


The second night in Oaxaca after I soberly and willfully ate fried pig skin and boiled pig intestine for lunch. (I remember thinking, it’s Mexico, why not? and then finding the skin tasted like Wheat Thins, while the intestine tasted more like heaven. Later when I went out to dinner I asked the waiter to hold the worm from my Tequila and the grasshopper from the Mexican BBQ chicken.). After lunch, the sixteen-year-old from Alabama and I met some of her friends from her program for a night on the town. I found this a wise decision because we, as college students, usually read emails with instructions like “please email your fellow program participants and arrange a time to meet on Sunday” and say, I’ll leave it in my inbox for now. I’ll just play a quick game of MarioKart and I’ll email everyone afterwords! We then find ourselves surprised when we find ourselves with no Internet in Oaxaca except at the language school, which we don’t attend until Monday and end up at a bar with high school students. This was after we sat through a two-hour movie in French with Spanish subtitles that involved a woman in love with atomic bombs and Hiroshima and an Asian man that slapped her. There may be more to the story, but I fell asleep by the time the second subtitle flashed upon the screen due to my inability to remain conscious when reading. Thus, I’m pretty sure it was horrible.


During the movie, one of the sixteen-year-old from Alabama’s friends thought only she was listening and looking at her when she said, “God I can’t believe you’re living with him.” Such a phrase can be taken two ways: either she hates me, thereby accenting the “God” or she loves me, and would accent the “can’t.” I gathered that she loves me, but still said “I’m right here,” which led to giggles and whispers throughout the night, soon followed by a forced partner salsa (contrary to popular belief, I’ve never salsa’d before in my life, and it was a humiliating excursion) at a loud bar that played Daddy Yankee. The only problem is my painful yearning to escape the techno and lighted flooring

In case you're wondering, my Mexican phone number is 011-52-1-951-150-6431. (You may have to dial 1 before all of that, but in my opinion, why include one more when you already have a country code, a wireless phone prefix, an area code, and a number? It all just seems a little excessive.)