Flying in the first trimester

We planned our trip to Portugal before I found out I was pregnant. When I checked the calendar, I realized I would be there on weeks 10 and 11. 
No big deal, I thought. After all, I hadn't had any symptoms or gained any weight. This will be easy. The only thing I need to worry about is avoiding certain foods (liked cured meats and soft cheeses - not so easy to do in Portugal!). 

Little did I know that the worst was yet to come: Morning sickness. 

Typically arriving in the 6th week and lasting until the end of the first trimester (weeks 12-13), this symptoms can range from nonexistent, mild, annoying, debilitating, and life-threatening (you can dye from dehydration due to morning sickness).

For me, the sickness manifested in an intense nausea and vertigo that lasted all day and got worse at nights. Sleeping was challenging. I would throw up multiple times and day and when I wasn't throwing up, I was feelings like I needed to. 

My taste in food completely diminished. I couldn't eat anything except potato chips and coca-cola. The smell of cooked food, especially meats, was repulsive and gag-inducing. I ran from the smell of coffee. None of my usual foods could be consumed anymore. It was a bland, terrible diet of white bread, chips, and coke every day. 

I started to really worry about my trip to Portugal. I worried I wouldn't be able to eat anything, be able to walk around the explore, and the able to survive the place ride over. 

In the subsequent posts, I will be writing more about my trip to Portugal, but in this one I want to address the worst on my mind: flying. 

I already hate flying and hate being on planes. My hatred of flights is well-documented in other posts, and now with my pregnancy and new symptoms, I was dreading the flight even more.
My fears:

• throwing up on the plane
• being unable to handle the smell of plane food
• having to pee at take off, landing, or during turbulence
• getting jerked around in my seat due to turbulence 
• being unable to sleep or rest
• getting deep vein thrombosis

The nausea was my worst concern, so to combat that, I did a lot of preparation. Check out how much anti-nausea stuff was in carry-on bag:

• dried prunes (natural Chinese remedy)
• dried plums (natural Chinese remedy)
• dried ginger (natural Chinese remedy)
• Zofran (prescription drug used to treat nausea in chemo patients)
• Ginger tablets
• Prenatal vitamin (not for nausea just for general health)
• Vitamin D (not for nausea just for general health)

After all was said and done, I ended up needing none of these on the plane. Ironically, it was while we were walking through the streets of Lison and Porto that I had to bust out my emergency anti-nausea remedies. 

The other thing I did was buy some compression socks. I loved them and they made my legs feel so good during the flight. 

One rookie move I made was to carry a large backpack on my shoulders. I figured it was fine because I wasn't that big yet and it's it my belly that grows? Wrong. Having to bend over and pick up such a heavy bag was taxing. As was carrying the weight long distances. I wouldn't do that in any stage of pregnancy. 

All in all, flying was not bad except for the nausea. Without that, it would have been almost a completely normal trip. 

Taiwan Style

I went to Taiwan in the fall, but it was typhoon season and there was a heat wave for almost the entire two weeks.

I ended up not wearing most of the clothes I packed since they were too tight or too hot, but this  striped tunic has saved me time and time again. 

It fit me nicely when I was about 40 lbs lighter and pretty well when I was 6 months pregnant too. 

Top: Nordstrom

Pants: Motherhood Maternity 

(yep, finally wearing maternity pants)

Shoes: adidas

Tote: from the Taipei MOCA

Lisbon Diaries

One of my most vivid memories from Lisbon is going to sleep in the early evening, and once darkness fell around 8:00pm, hearing my neighbor practice Fur Elise on the piano, the notes wafting through the night air. We stayed in a renovated apartment on the second floor of a building on a small street in the Estrela neighborhood. I would hear the piano music every night, either beckoning me onto the streets or deeper into a dream.

I wish I has written this on my trip to Lisbon, but now it appears on the page as a memory. I didn’t write a single word in my diary during my entire trip to Portugal. I thought I would. The purpose of this trip was meant to reawaken me to the world’s variety and refuel me to start my new business. At critical junctures of my life I’ve quit my job, traveled to another country, and returned to start something completely new. This would be one of them, and Portugal would be part of that transition. But what I had not anticipated was that I was in the 10 and 11th weeks of pregnancy, and at the height of my morning sickness. Fatigue and nausea overtook most of my days, and distracted me from writing, reflecting, or even processing my experience.

Every day in Portugal I awoke at 8:00am and was in bed by 8:00pm. 12 hours of sleep was nothing for me – I could have slept 16 if I didn’t feel guilty about wasting my time in a foreign country. I did manage to leave the room each day, to go out for walks, to photograph a few things. But the physical discomfort never left me. I was always only partially present, with the other part of me trying to flee my body away from all the sickness I felt.

It’s hard to know what sort of experience I would have had in Lisbon if I saw it from a different body, or from a different time in my own body. But this was the time and this was the body, and this was the Lisbon I experienced.

Lisbon through the written word

Because I had never been to Lisbon, I decided to learn about it through the city's most famous writers. I had about five or six booked checked out at the library, all famous novels that took place in Lisbon and written by Portuguese authors, but only two of them really left an impression on me, enough to share a few quotes from each.

The First is The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s most famous writer.

Indeed everywhere I went there were cafés named after him, figurines of him for sale in gift shops, and even a monument where he was buried at the Jerónimos Monastery. I could think of no equivalent American writers who were so venerated in society.

The Book of Disquiet is one of his only works translated into English, and it reads more like excerpts from his diary. He makes frequent reference to the Rua dos Douradores in Lisbon, where he lived in a small room overlooking the street. There were a few passages I found from his book that really captured the essence of the city.

Installed on the upper floors of certain respectable taverns in Lisbon can be found a small number of restaurants or eating places, which have the stolid, homely look of those restaurants you see in towns that lack even a train station. Amongst the clientele of such places, which are rarely busy except on Sundays, one is as likely to encounter the eccentric as the nondescript, to find people who are but a series of parentheses in the book of life (Pessoa, 1).

In the plausible intimacy of approaching evening, as I stand waiting for the stars to begin at the window of this fourth floor room that looks out on the infinite, my dreams move to the rhythm required by long journeys to countries as yet unknown, or to countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible (Pessoa, 1).

In these lingering summer evenings, I love the quiet of this the commercial part of town, all the more because it’s such a contrast with the noisy bustle that fills it during the day. Rua do Arsenal, Rua da Alfândega, the sad roads that reach out to the east where the Alfândega ends, and the long, solitary line of quiet quays: they comfort me with sadness on those evenings when I choose to share their solitude (Pessoa, 22).

Praça da Figueira, replete with goods of various colours, fills with customers and peoples my horizon with vendors of all kinds (Pessoa, 28).

As the mask of veils fell away, the features of the city were reborn. The day, which had already dawned, dawned anew, as if a window had been suddenly flung open. The noises in the streets took on a slightly different quality, as if they too had only just appeared. A blueness insinuated itself even into the cobblestones and the impersonal auras of passers-by (Pessoa, 32).

Know that I have only to raise my eyes to see before me the sordid skyline of the houses, the unwashed windows of all the offices in the Baixa and the empty windows of the top floor apartments and, above them, around the garret roofs, the inevitable washing hung out to dry in the sun amongst flowerpots and plants (Pessoa, 94).

The second book that really impacted me, perhaps even more than Book of Disquiet, was the Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Saramago. Ricard Reis is another famous Portuguese writer, and the fictional  story follows him from Brazil back to Lisbon after the death of his friend Fernando Pessoa.

Here the sea ends and the earth begins. It is raining over the colorless city  (Saramago, 1).

Several bars were open, side by side, murky, their viscous lights encircled by shadows, the silent image of a dirty wineglass on a zinc counter. These façades are the great wall that screens the city, and the taxi skirts them without haste, as if searching for some break or opening, a Judas gate, or the entrance to a labyrinth (Saramago, 7).

When one awaits sleep in the silence of a room that is still unfamiliar, listening to the rain outside, things assume their real dimension, they all become great, solemn, heavy. What is deceptive is the light of day, transforming life into a shadow that is barely perceptible. Night alone is lucid, sleep, however, overcomes it, perhaps for our tranquillity and repose, the peace of our souls (Saramago, 23).

What I ate in Tijuana: An homage to one of the world's most delicious cities - 2018 Edition

After venturing to Tijuana in 2017, I new immediately that I would have to return. Not only did the city call me back for soul-searching, but my food list was still too long! There were many things I did not get to eat on my first trip and I simply had to satisfy my curiosity before too much time passed. So I returned to TJ about 3 months after my first trip. 

There were some restaurants I visited again (Alma Verde) and some I tried for the first time (Mision 19). Now that I knew the city better and did more research, I could be more selective in what I ate and where I went. Here's the list:

1.     Food I wished I had but didn't:  Tacos El Franc, the most famous in the city

2.     Food I had but wished I didn't:  a tres leches cake which was sickeningly sweet

3.     What should have been on the list:  Octopus pizza at La Justina – the best thing I ate!

4.     Biggest surprise: how messy it can be to eat Birria when it doesn't come in a pre-wrapped taco...

5.     Most delicious meal: Mision 19 Chef’s tasting menu

Street food

Crickets in hot sauce (again!) 

Street tacos

Biria La Mejor

Pozole (seafood soup)

Gastro- Mexican:

La Justina's Octopus Pizza

Traz Horizonte

Alma Verde(again!)

Cesar’s famous Cesar Salad

Mision 19

Oryx Capital

Desserts

Cake at Puestro (again!)

Carrot cake from Container

Tres Leches Cake from a bakery

Teponieves (famous ice cream place)

Western

Telefonica - fried chicken burger and fries

Portugal outfit 3

The theme of my wardrobe in Portugal can be summed up in one word: comfort. It was hot and I was pregnant and sick and walking around all the time. So I needed to be comfortable. I'm worn vintage HM denim  shirt on so many trips because it is versatile and comfortable. This was my go-to style in Portugal as well. 

Denim shirt: gift from mama

Tank: Target

Pants: Uniqlo

Tijuana Diaries 2018

I thought I would return to Tijuana with a head full of new information on the city from all the books I would read. But instead I returned knowing only more about myself, not the city. Perhaps that was the topic that would be most relevant to my journey back. That it was really about me all along, not the city. And that until I knew more about myself, I could not embrace new knowledge of the city. I needed my new eyes and ears and mind to be able to grasp it, and hold on to it, and live it and dream it.

I needed to form my own impression of the city, my own narrative before I could understand and learn from the narratives of others. Their perceptions are not insightful or alarming until I have a perception of my own. Until I have some context in which to understand the city. The images and smells and feelings color my own story. And I weave the stories of other’s through that.

I woke up today at 8:00am when my friend left for work, then I decided to go back to sleep. I woke again at 10:00am and ate my leftover pasta. Then I went back to bed and woke at 11:30. I cannot remember the last time I allowed myself to sleep in so much. 

This morning, it was as though I was sleeping-in three different times, three days in a row. It was glorious. It was mine. The bed was so comfortable, the room so dark and cool and quiet. And I am free. 

Yesterday at the San Diego airport I was overwhelmed with this sensation of freeness. It is a feel that only comes to me when I am alone, and when I am traveling.As I was walking through the airport to go to the rideshare pick up zone, I realized suddenly that I was free. I had not one with me to consider, no where to be urgently, nothing that I must do. If I wanted, I could have taken a seat by the cinnamon role stand and sat there for as long as I liked. I could have walked slowly past the tree that stood in the center of the sky bridge to see if they really were fig trees, as I suspected. I didn’t have anywhere urgent to be. That's how I felt again when I awoke this morning. The sun would be waiting for me when I woke up all the same. The lavender coffee would still be delicious. And, because I know it’s Mexico, the cafe would not be busy until night and lunch doesn’t even start until 1:00pm. I could have stayed n that bed all day if I wished. I had no one else to consider but myself and it was glorious.

I stepped out onto the street at a quarter past noon and the fierce sun greeted me with onyx shows and gold-plated neighborhoods. It is a sun I only know on this latitude.

I am so happy to be here. I am smiling without anyone looking at me. Smiling not out of kindness or human connection, but out of joy. That’s not all too common of me, I’ve realized.

 I asked my friend later why he lived in Tijuana. He recited a line from a church song he learned as a child, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bare.”

When he lived in other cities, he had a fear-of-missing-out all the time. He felt like he needed to go out every night or else the world would continue on without him. But in Tijuana, because the partying happens every night consistently, he feels like he is not missing anything. He gives himself permission to get off and back on when he wants. The party will still be there for him. This city gives the illusion that every opportunity is available to you all the time. Time and age and experience and circumstance will never eliminate the choices you have. This is perhaps the fantasy. In everywhere else in the world, it is known that if you wait too long you will miss your chance. But here, the options will be handed to you, tonight, and overnight, but not in endless monotony or repetition, because the city reinvents itself constantly, so the choices are forever new….

- Except from my diary, January 12, 2018