Back Keeping Austin Weird

Happy Holidays! It has been a whirlwind being back in the US. I got here on the 20th and I thought it would be a shock to be back but nope, reentry is no biggie. Sometimes in Peru I miss home so much that I forget all of this: my family the support and the um... dynamics, my amazing friends and their eccentricities, ginormous grocery stores with strawberries and tomatoes in the middle of winter, Target, bagels, my goddaughter and bathtubs with scented bubble bath are all here and really always will be. Right now I'm where I need to be znd it's beautiful, especially when it's hard and I'm looking forward to the next year of playing with the kiddos and talking about trash with the mayor.

Las Ladies, my New York girls who are now scattered to Los Angles, Toronto and Harlem get here tomorrow. I'm so looking forward to seeing them and showing them my town. I just realized that the friendly neighborhood homeless transvestite in Austin, Leslie is listed in Wikipedia. I hope that he's not actually still homeless as so many people know him and try to support him. Some friends of my parents actually hired him to jump out of a birthday cake a la Marylin Monroe for JFK a few years back. It's these things that pinch me with a nostalgic twinge as I consider moving back here when I finish Peace Corps. There are pros like my family, delightful and quirky fun, and an enticing music scene but also cons, like so much laid back-ness my anxiety around not being chill enough keeps me drinking copious amounts of caffeine and listening to Asleep at the Wheel all hopped up is just incongruent. I'm not actually built to be this laid back. I'm told that I'm way too much of an overachiever for this town. Overachiever is incredibly un-hip here. In fact I think that you get kicked out of the east Austin bar scene for admitting to having taken the Foreign Service Exam while refusing to wear vintage. Fortunately, I do like vintage so I pass. Sneaky, eh? There's also DC to consider.

Here's one classic Austin oddity with excellent breakfast tacos:


Other recent events in my life include the Lima Mid-service Medical Checks Extravaganza, meeting my goddaughter, family style holiday fun in St. Louis, and spending Christmas in Austin with the family.