I am always thinking about my stomach.

Nerves, stress, and the tetris game that is packing to head back to Czech. I'm so sad that I'm going to miss Eid at home but my family is sending me to the airport with some goodies (kue nastar, kue kering biji pala, putri ayu, and some chocolate).  I miss a lot of foods from home while living in Czech so I've had to become a little more resourceful and make these things from scratch. What kind of thing do you miss Ariana? Well, I'll tell you, Ariana. I miss bagels like crazy. Soft, squishy, toasty bagels with peanut butter or cream cheese or as a breakfast sandwich or bagel pizza when I'm too lazy to really cook anything. Bagels aren't really available in Czech. My former flatmate, Kristy, said she knew of two places in Praha but that's about it. One of my students who visits his American father in New York every summer and I had a bonding moment when discussing traveling. It went something like this:

Me: What foods will you eat this summer when you're traveling?
Lucie: I will stay home and eat ice cream!
Marek: I will eat pizza in Italy!
Ryan: I will visit my dad in New York and we'll have some good bagels.
Me: *pause* My sweet child, thank you! You understand. Bagels. Kids, listen to Ryan.

So because bagels are amazing rings of goodness clearly sent for the betterment of mankind, I will share the recipe (courtesy of Emeril Lagasse) I have been using for the past couple months. They're not quite like store-bought bagels but they're still delicious and have a nice crunch when you toast them up:

2 cups warm water (appx. 110 degrees Farenheit/43 Celsius)
.5 ounces of yeast (roughly 3 tsp)
4 tablespoons of sugar
5.5ish cups of flour
2 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons oil
cormeal
toppings if you want. I like onion or plain but do whatever feels right.

1) Pour the water into your mixing bowl. Stir in the yeast and only 3 tablespoons of the sugar. Make sure the water isn't too hot because then you'll kill your yeast. I made that mistake the first time I tried the recipe. Let it sit for 5 minutes.

2) Start adding in 4 cups of flour and the salt. Don't add it all at once, do a little bit at a time.

3) Mix in the rest of the flour by hand.

4) Place on a floured surface and start kneading as much flour in as you can. Do this for about 5 minutes.

5) Put 1 tsp of oil in a large bowl and spread it evenly around. Put the dough in and turn it over so it's covered in oil. Cover it and let it rise for an hour. Meanwhile grease a baking sheet or two with the remaining oil.

6) Take the dough out and punch it down. Cut it into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and then into a log about 6 inches long. I just figure if it can wrap around my hand that's long enough. Make the logs into circles and pinch the ends. Put them on the baking sheets, cover, and let sit for 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 400F/ 200C. Also, start boiling a large pot of water (I use a 12-cup pot) and add in the last tablespoon of sugar.

 

7) Boil each bagel for about two minutes. As I put the bagels in the pot I throw down some cornmeal so the bagels don't stick to the baking sheet. If you're putting on toppings, dip the tops of the bagels in the toppings now.

8) Bake the bagels for 20 minutes. And then you eat them with your mouth.

How's the weather, Irving?

Whenever I discuss the weather with someone, I feel like I should be an old man in a fishing boat complaining about kids these days and my trick hip acting up but I think being from the east coast of the U.S. it's a big thing for us because we do have such wacky weather. It's really unpredictable sometimes and can really mess up plans for a day out. Some of my Czech friends make fun of me for commenting on the weather so often but I guess it's kind of part of culture here. As I jokingly said to Jenda, "We all complain about the weather and that's what unites us among all our differences: religions, class, race, sexual orientation, etc. There are no politics involved in the weather."

The weather here at home really makes me miss the predictability of Czech weather. And the lack of humidity. Sure the humidity can make my hair feel like I have an afro of crunchy spaghetti but for someone with a history of asthma, it goes beyond physical appearance. The humidity (no matter what time of year) makes it difficult to breathe and causes me to get a string of migraine headaches. Having a migraine makes it a little difficult to enjoy your vacation, especially when there is a very vocal 11-month old around.

All that aside, I am enjoying my time at home. I get to play with Anas for hours, relax, catch up on reading, do some well-deserved internet surfing, etc. I'm heading up to Boston for the 4th of July. I'll get to visit some friends I haven't seen for a while and hang out in quite possibly my favorite city in the U.S.

Kitschy kitchens and Elvis collector's plates.

I never realized how strange American culture is. Foreign friends have pointed out to me time and time again that I’m so strange, weird, a “hippy hipster lady”, crazy, etc. I never really understood why. I think compared to many Americans I’m quite calm. Yes, I have my own idiosyncrasies but I am far from the most eccentric person in America. Very far. I think I’ve begun to realize why people think this. I was out for a walk at the theater festival with my friend Jenda and I spotted some abandoned tea cups on the ground next to the trash. I thought they were quite pretty and considered picking them up, washing them and taking them home. Of course, Jenda yelled at me, saying they were dirty and anyway they were very kitsch (he also yelled at me for taking a picture of the bird skeleton we came across). Jenda doesn’t understand my fascination with kitsch. I told him, “You say kitsch, hipsters call it vintage.” While I was only joking I realized that it’s actually quite true. I think maybe that because America doesn’t have this long history full of ancient battles and old kings and we don’t have any castles that are thousands of years old, we are making our own history through kitschy items. We have this fascination with uncovering some semi-lost past and making it trendy and cool and exciting. I was pondering this as I was trying to sleep last night and came to some realization but of course I didn't write it down and it doesn't really make sense to me anymore. It was something like this: our obsession with a somewhat meaningless past is like stuffing a twenty-dollar bill in your pocket, forgetting about, and they fishing it out of your jean pocket after washing it and storing it in your closet for two months. It’s a pleasant surprise but we obsess over it and tell the story to our friends over and over. Yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that. Half-asleep logic is weird. 

But we do cling to the things from our recent past in search of some identity that we don’t really have as Americans. Or at least I feel I don't really have as an American. America used to be known as The Great Melting Pot and then morphed into a politically correct salad. I think that’s great for those who maintain their original identities and cultural practices but what about the following generations of those individuals? They don’t fall into the same category as their parents and are forced to form this new identity that is patched together from so many different scraps. It’s kind of a Frankenstein’s monster sort of deal. I guess that means we’re all freaks of nature.

O heaven, who ordered the beautiful?

What an absolutely gorgeous day. I've almost finished my errands and I'm leaving HK on Monday evening. I'm almost all packed and the apartment is (semi) clean. Have you ever experienced such a perfect evening when the weather is great, the music playing in the background is just right, and you couldn't be in a more perfect mood? That's pretty much how everything is right now. It reminds me of summer nights in Boston when I'd walk home through the Public Garden late at night and the air smelled so sweet and I would just sit for a little while and listen to this one street performer playing a little flamenco music. Beautiful.

It seems so surreal that I'm heading home in two days. American soil. Home. I can already tell you tears will be involved.