Thursday, December 29, 2005

Home Again...Again

Well, I am back. I left the Caribbean coast on Wednesday the 21st, spent a night in the Murder Capital of Central America (San Pedro Sula, Honduras) and landed in New York on Thursday afternoon. As I'm sure you can imagine, going from 30 degrees Celsius to 30 degrees Fahrenheit in less than eight hours was quite a shock. Not to mention the dry air! My hair started standing on end due to static before the plane even landed! Plus, I was unprepared...having given away most of my clothes, including my hiking shoes, to charity on my last day (freeing up some space for souvenirs) I arrived in socks and flip-flops. Luckily, my dad met me at the airport with a warm coat and some shoes. We got to stop at Alison & Basil's and visit Henry before heading home and diving headlong into Christmas fever.

It was a busy one, with three days' or so of celebrations. On Christmas Eve, my brother Dan and I started what might hopefully turn into a new tradition: watching Clue the movie while playing Clue the board game; I won (it was Mrs. Peacock, with the knife, in the Ball Room). One other highlight: Dan gave me a book called Cities Ranked and Rated, which lists 331 major U.S. metropolitan areas and rates them in many different categories, like Arts & Culture, Climate, Cost of Living, etc. (this is to help me choose a city to live in). I was amused, if not surprised, to learn that the lowest-ranked city in terms of climate was...wait for it...Lewiston-Auburn, Maine. Looks like I should have gone to University of Virginia; Charlottesville was ranked the Overall Number One Place to Live in the U.S.

I am just now getting to sorting my photos and putting them online. This will give me a chance to re-live the past month or so of my trip, and I'll tell you a little more about the places I was as I post the photos. First up: Chiapas. At last, the long-awaited Zapatista photos, as well as colorful textiles, Mayan ruins, waterfalls and Christmas decorations, Mexico-style. Click on the Zapatistas to see them all...

Zapatistas