I’m sitting in a pub in the beating heart of The South. College football is playing loudly on the televisions over the bar as the server frantically serves drinks and food. I get my delicious burger and start to dig in, but I cannot help but pause to take notes, as the football fans in the room are roaring at another touchdown and dancing and cheering in ways that I have never seen sports fans do. The anthropologist in me needs to take notes. A cranky older man taps me on the shoulder, looking absolutely scandalized. 

“Let me ask you somethin’,” he says, his southern accent making him nigh incomprehensible to my northern ears. “Y’all came down here to enjoy a nice beer, good food, and friends, right? So why in the hell are you writin’?!”

I smile and almost feel a little sad for this man who believes that writing could not possibly be fun. My friends snigger and continue working on their drinks, amused that the Canadian has managed to garner further attention for her weirdness.

I excel at confusing people. I think it’s gotten to the point that they get so mixed up with what my plans are that they just ignore it until I update my Facebook profile to let them know I’m not dead.

Phase 1 of my very indirect route has been completed, reader. I have this friend, y’see, that has been my pen pal since I was twelve years-old. Well, several months ago, she invited me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. She lives all the way in South Carolina. I really wanted to be there, but her wedding is five days before I am supposed to be in Tokyo. So I had to figure out a way to get there and back again.

Kyiv Pasazhyrs’kyi (Київ-Пасажирський), aka Central Railway Station.

So to start, I was in Athens, Greece. I flew out on a nice sunny afternoon from El. Venizelos Airport (ATH) to Borispol International (KBP), which is located just outside of Kyiv, Ukraine. Why the heck did I go to Ukraine, of all places? Well, Ukraine International Airlines recently started a very reasonably priced flight from Kyiv to JFK Airport, in New York. From there, it was just a small hop to get down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! As a bonus, I was able to enjoy Kyiv for an evening, as I had an 18 hour layover there! But after eating pierogies and borscht and meeting some amazing people at one of the local hostels, it was time to move on.

The flight was amazingly smooth, barely any turbulence, and even though it was ten hours long, it seemed to go by in an instant. Before I knew it, I was landing in New York. I had to switch to LaGuardia Airport (LGA) for my next flight, so I had pre-ordered a ticket for a shuttle bus (NYC Airporter), which was fantastic because it meant I would get to skip the agony of backpacking through the metro during rush hour. It even had wifi onboard.

Unbeknownst to me, Hurricane Hermine had decided to crash into the east coast earlier that day, killing two people and spraying debris and chaos all over. It hit fast and was downgraded to a tropical storm, but it meant that the flight preceding mine had been diverted to another place, so they took a very long time to get back. The flight ended up being delayed by close to an hour, which given the circumstances was very impressive. However, other flights had also experienced hiccups, and LaGuardia had a lot of construction going on. So we ended up taxiing on the tarmac for an additional hour, watching the sunset from our little windows.

By the time I finally made it to Myrtle, my poor friend and her fiance had been waiting for me, having driven three hours in a tropical storm to pick me up. I’ve never been more grateful.

A menu in an ‘Asian/Mexican’ fusion restaurant, clearly displaying Inuit art over an image of Mt. Fuji. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Out of any country in the world that I have visited thus far, I never feel more like a fish out of water than I do in the United States. Perhaps it’s the fact that performative patriotism is strongly encouraged, so there is much evidence to support the suggestion that Americans feel the need to assert their identity, i.e. flags on everything, signs on businesses claiming to be ‘American’, etc. It’s everywhere down here, and if you are not American, like myself, then you feel a little out of place. I can’t help but keep notes on everything that happens while I’m here, because people are very outspoken and even though we’re only a few hours away by plane, the US and Canada are vastly different.

It is also good training for my upcoming year in Japan. Sometimes I seem to get a swelled head and think I know how something is going to go down in a cultural setting, and then I am surprised when it goes differently. I have to remember to basically stop being a know-it-all and go with the flow, as I suggested in my last post. It will hinder my capacity to learn if I don’t. So I’m grateful that my friend chose now to get married, and gave me an excuse to enact my ‘indirectness’ resolution to be able to take such a crazy path leading up to Tokyo. It’s helping me grow as a person and preparing me for many more surprises.

I’ll be here for the next week, then I’m off. Of course, I can’t fly directly to Tokyo from Myrtle Beach. Tune in next time to see how Phase 2 works out. Hopefully this time with a little less hurricane!