Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Hopefully today is more than just an opportunity to drink green beer and fight over who’s “more Irish.” My father was 100% Irish-American and finagled himself Irish citizenship about five years ago. My mom is a little Irish, but not nearly enough to pretend away the German.

With only two hours left until the polls close here in Illinois I hope all of my American readers in participating states have voted. Despite my thirst for politics, this is the first primary I’ve ever voted in. I was on a 30-hour bus ride in the remote Xishuangbanna region of China during the 2004 presidential election and, with no permanent address or proximity to a US embassy, had no option to cast a vote. When I did finally get the results of the Illinois senate race I sent a postcard to Barack Obama from Cambodia, congratulating him on his win. I’m sure everyone can understand how exciting it is for me to vote this time around.

My local polling place is at the second largest church in America. Despite my grumblings about mixing church and state I voted and got out before signing a tithing agreement or being “transformed” in any way. This was the first time I used a touch screen voting machine. I was given the option to use one of the old butterfly style ballots (the workers said only four people had used them so far) but I decided to test the new technology. The screen was clear and layout surprisingly user-friendly for a government appropriated device.

Happy voting!

Longtime readers will remember how much I love Halloween. Last year I dressed up as a mountain climber and spent Halloween at the Mount Everest Base Camp. Just the other day Sui (the Californian I traveled with on and off in Tibet, Nepal & India) and I were reminiscing about our Halloween adventure. Now we’re both home and can’t believe it’s been a year since I woke up to her vomiting from altitude sickness! I also received a “Happy Halloween” email from Nargiza, my translator in Kyrgyzstan. I wrote her back to see just what kind of Halloween celebration happens in a former Soviet and heavily Muslim country.

Some of my readers requested I continue to post about my Halloween as early as last Spring. This one isn’t as in depth as my 2005 post but I don’t have much to talk about. Every year Christmas decorations go up earlier and Halloween is becoming overshadowed. My friends with apartments don’t throw Halloween parties and are too busy to put together costumes to go out in. Those my age that wear costumes inevitably put on something very inappropriate and not in the true spirit of Halloween. Even the ten trick-or-treaters we got were in uncreative costumes. If you can’t sew it’s still possible to put together something fun and not store bought.

On that note I mention my store-bought costume (made by hand but not by me!) of a Maasai woman. I liked the beadwork in East Africa but couldn’t find a good excuse to buy so much of it without Halloween. I spent an hour trying on different combinations of necklaces in a souvenir shop in Nairobi, Kenya the day before I flew to London. The staff was helpful in helping me choose which combinations worked best but didn’t quite understand why I was buying so much—they had never heard of Halloween.

The headdress and necklaces are from a shop in downtown Nairobi, bracelets are from various markets on the outskirts of Nairobi and both Kangas (cloth) are from Zanzibar. Most Maasai wear a red plaid cloth like a cape but I found the women around the Kenya/Tanzania border more interesting in their adaption of colorful Kangas like the ones I bought in Zanzibar.

My family’s new dog, Buster was more than willing to dress up and play watchdog for trick-or-treaters. I’ve never seen a dog who likes clothes as much as this one. Attentive readers will notice Buster’s cowboy hat from my souvenir page. I bought it in Thailand with the foresight that I would someday have a dog that would wear hats. His bandanna is also trip-related—I used it as everything from a scarf and towel to a wrap for leftover food during Phase II!

Every other year since 2004 I’ve been on the road for Halloween, usually somewhere remote where I can’t get a descent piece of candy. China’s improved leaps and bounds since my first visit in 2004 but it still lacks edible chocolate in the West. Wherever I am next year I can only hope for more celebration of my favorite holiday.

While checking email here in Alleppey, Kerala I’ve just learned that The Chicago Bears are going to be in The Super Bowl.

I remember the last one well… It was 1985/86 and I was in elementary school. Walter Payton was our hero, leading a pack of characters including “The Fridge” and “The Punky QB.” We went to my uncle’s house for the first of what would be many Super Bowl parties. I’m not a football fan, and it was probably the first football game I’d ever seen but I could tell it was something really important.

Since then the Super Bowl parties have become a tradition in my family—a celebration eclipsing Easter. I’ve always thought it was funny that The Super Bowl is celebrated by my Catholic family and not Easter, but that goes to show you just how important the 1985 Bears win was in my family and all over Chicago. The only sporting event that could possibly eclipse this is a Cubs World Series appearance.

I still own an original VHS copy of The Super Bowl Shuffle.

So, what am I to do when I am supposed to be at a yoga retreat in Southern India for two weeks starting Janurary 31st? I don’t even like football. But this isn’t just football, it’s The Bears. Some of you might not understand what the problem is, and maybe it’s only something a Chicagoan can understand. But somehow I feel it’s my responsibility to watch this game.

Once I decided to give up potatoes as a way to lose weight. My mom wouldn’t let me because it would be against my Irish heritage. Not watching The Bears in The Super Bowl is like giving up potatoes for me. It’s just wrong.

I haven’t written much about what’s been going on in my life besides the planning of this trip. One thing in particular has taken a lot of time away from my preparations—fashion design. I started taking classes at a local college a few years ago while working full time. My main goal was to learn how to draft patterns for myself and my Halloween costumes. Since I was home in-between phase 1 and 2, I decided to make good use of my time and take the more advanced level of patternmaking and construction classes. I would have loved to continue on this semester to tailoring or the senior-level patternmaking classes but they weren’t offered. Instead, I took textile design and wearable art classes.

The classes were very time consuming, which was partly my fault. For my final project I decided to make a dress out of rawhide. I was shopping at the local leather warehouse and found a bin of scrap rawhide pieces. I bought about 12 lbs. of scraps and dyed each piece with homemade dyes—blueberry, red cabbage, onion, beets, coffee etc. For a long time my refridgerator was full of tubs of dye.

After months with a utility knife, awl and a 20 ft. roll of artifical sinew I had a full length rawhide dress. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, but it’s ‘wearable art’ so that’s okay. The school recently had a fashion show for the students and my dress was worn by a fellow design student whom it fit perfectly. She didn’t complain once about the scratchy material or when she almost fell over trying to get into it. The dress was also featured in today’s Daily Herald ‘Neighborhood’ section.

Now that classes have wrapped up I will no longer be distracted by fashion or textiles and can dedicate all of my time to final trip preparations.

I met two friends for dinner the other day. We met at a Starbucks to decide where we wanted to eat and I arrived late. My friends were sitting at a table with two chairs so I sat at the table next to them. It wasn’t until I was getting up to leave a few minutes later that I noticed a teenage girl sitting at the table. Her boyfriend was walking up at the same time, gave me a disgusted look and said “That’s my chair!”

I walked away, amused that I never even thought it strange to sit at someone else’s table. My friends laughed and told me she was “starring daggers” at my back the entire time. First of all, everyone in America needs to calm down. I was almost assaulted at a grocery store last month for suggesting to the man in front of me in the checkout that life isn’t so difficult. He had exclaimed loudly that someone should put a bullet in his head because the cashier was a bit slow and having trouble with her scanner. Of course, irritable short men have never reacted well to my advice and even less so to smiles and suggestions that they recognize the important things in life. They also don’t like being told that you feel sorry for them.

My point is, America has become an increasingly hostile place. Maybe it’s just the area I live in, but everyone seems to take themselves way too seriously. The longer I travel the more I realize how distanced we’ve become from the basics of humanity. I suppose I should have asked the girl to sit at her table, but as long as the seat wasn’t being used I didn’t see the harm. Can we no longer share even what is not ours? Maybe I’ve changed too much over the years to relate to how people live their daily lives around me. Maybe I am the only person left in America who believes in helping the less fortunate and the concept of compromise. We have become so rich and isolated that we no longer relate to strangers and always think of ourselves and our own needs first. When you don’t have money or belongings, like many people in the countries I’ve visited, you share. Strangers eat side by side at roadside stalls and neighbors and shop owners look after the children of the neighborhood. A woman on a train in China once sat down next to me, handed me a rotten egg (quite tasty for the Chinese) and insisted that I eat it with my ramen as she was doing.

Maybe I’m finally turning into my dad, a man who enjoyed talking to the workers at Sam’s Club so much that he went every Sunday. I’d like to think that the ability to talk to strangers is not a quirk or a custom held over from the last century and the Americans are still the compassionate and interested people that fought in WWII and protested in the 1960’s. I love technology but let’s not lose our basic humanity as we rush toward the future.

Pay attention, America. You’re breaking my heart.

“There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security.”

–Senator Robert Byrd, West Virgina

Today I came across the best documentation of the red sweater in action. I would have included it in my original post, but I only looked through my regular photo albums for images. This photo is stored in one of the two photo albums I have of myself doing cartwheels. That’s right, for those of you who don’t know me well, I have over 150 photographs of myself doing cartwheels in different locations around the world. My ex-boyfriend shot this of me in Trafalgar Square, London.

Megan cartwheeling in Trafalgar Square, London, England–July 1999

Megan in Bruges, Belgium — January 1998

I don’t have my next entry ready for Myanmar yet (get ready for Bagan!) so I thought I would put up an old photo I came across. This is my favorite self portrait of myself traveling. It was taken on my first trip alone during my three week winter break from university in Newcastle, England. I was tired and worn down and wandering around a residential district of Bruges, Belgium when it started to rain. Ducking into an entranceway I caught my breath and waited for a break in the clouds. This was shot with my old point and shoot film camera, before I started carrying a tripod so it’s probably resting on my bag. Later that night I had Chicken Waterzooi for the first time and a glass of Banana Beer, which I have never managed to find again.

RIP Red Sweater

For some reason I have a history of becoming extremely attached to inanimate objects. Often the cheaper the item is, the more attached I am–which may be why I have so many pairs of socks. I have owned a red, zippered cardigan since my early college years. I love this sweater. It is thin, but warm; collared, but not hooded; zippered, but with no pockets. It is perfect for me. Granted, over the years it has shrunk in the wash, worn thin in certain areas and stretched out in others–but I still love it. I have tried to patch up some of the large holes to no avail. My mother has insisted that it is time to say goodbye.

Not only has this sweater stood by while I attended Geology of the National Parks and Monuments lectures my Freshman year of college but it has traveled with me to at least 20 countries. My favorite red sweater has followed me around the world and always been there when I needed it. Right now as I pack up my belongings to put into storage I have to say goodbye.

Watching the boats in AEroskobing, Denmark // Hanging out in Montmartre district of Paris, France // Eating McDonalds in Manchester, England // Touring the gothic quarter of Barcelona, Spain