time to redefine what it is to get lost...

When I come to the city, it’s wonderful and horrible.  Wonderful is talking to my parents and my brother and Zoe, seeing other volunteers, using wireless internet, eating stuff I can’t get in site (U.S.-style ice cream!), watching cable TV, taking showers that aren’t inclined to get freezing all of a sudden, the lack of kids kicking the ball (inside) into my door.  Horrible can be doing errands.  Santa Cruz has several large-ish markets, you can find any necessity if you look hard enough.  The problem is really how crowded they are.  The people with pirated DVD/music video stands set up in the most inconvenient places, so all the magnetically drawn-in shoppers create bottlenecks.  It’s not just the DVD stands though, there are no stores that you really go in, so if something interests you, you just stop.  For some reason I feel that I’m particularly bad at anticipating when someone will stop walking, I feel so clumsy having to dodge or ram (haha…like the truck) someone every 2 seconds!  Lots of times people either don’t look or don’t care where they’re going (usually have giant blanket-wrapped parcel on back or over shoulder).  I make sure to look, but there’s only so much I can do.  Someone crushed my toenail today with her sandaled foot, because she wasn’t looking and I couldn’t move.  And what an evil look I got from her then…but I’m the one with half a toenail that I have to be sure to disinfect!  Shopping is made more complicated when you have no idea about the layout of the market.  You either can wind yourself through and throughout the markets’ crowded and crooked alleys until you find desired section with what you need, ask directions which usually are wrong or just tell you to keep walking “al fondo” –deeper—till you get there, or you can give up.  Giving up is kind of silly, because you’re already likely to be deep and lost anyways. Well, you could say you're never really lost because you're sort of always on your way to finding something (philosophical, yeah, blah blah).  Also imagine carrying awkward bundles like a 30-m roll of hexagonal wire fencing through the unseeing, uncaring masses.  So until I figure out these markets’ layout, or until I stop needing to buy things for my site, these visits will continue long and tiring despite my efforts to be efficient.  But shopping like this is as thrilling as it is frustrating and exhausting, with all the colorful clothes, spices, vegetables and plastic bins of every size, with the brilliantly shiny pots, pans and kettles, with the loud music and dvds attracting customers at every turn, and vendors asking you what you want to buy.  It’s one-stop-shopping, but not for the weak of heart, short of time or poor of directional sense!