Everyone warned me about the Italian men, but no one said anything about the German women. I was thoroughly groped by an absolute stranger who spoke no English and carried a heavy black metal detector wand. This isn't that bad in and of itself, but when she asked me to take off my shirt I hesitated. Turns out my new bellybutton piercing set off the metal detector. She threw it a very suspicious look and let me pass. "This," I shouted back at her as I walked off, "is definitely not a bomb."

I live in a former hospital high up on a cobblestone hill. Half of the building belongs to a crew of retired priests, and I woke up to hear them singing Mass this morning. My broken window unfortunately afforded me no view, so while I showered I thought about the dinner I'd had the night before.
I've heard it said that wine is like sex, in that "when it's good it's great, but when it's bad it's still pretty good." In my opinion, this is not true of wine. The house red I drank last night was a hundred times better than my father's imported Merlots. The pizza had a crust as thin as paper, it tore apart when I picked up a slice.
When I got up to photograph the view, I smelled hyacinthe and pizza and shallow, muddy water. The one thing I realize, when I travel, is that the US doesn't smell like much. India smells like people and sewage and jasmine. Costa Rica smelled (to me) like fried ham and crushed guavas and wet, dark dirt. Whenever I leave the US it's as if my twitching nose is waking up from 20 years of sleep, and I'm almost overwhelmed.