The first REAL post

I had the first "Kazakhstan moment" of my trip today. The place where I am staying had some old razors that I pilfered for shaving. These things were old. Nice, double steel blades and a handle that must have weighed a pound. This wasn't any of your wussy Mach 5 moisturizer strip stuff. This was straight up blades on your face. But they didn't fit on the handle right: I could only fit them on upside down so that I had to shave by pushing the blades up the side of my face to make them work, and even then, they constantly popped off the handle and wouldn't fit back on so I had to keep using new blades, even though the previous one was still sharp. It was a highly frustrating shaving experience exacerbated by the fact that the water faucet handles were installed backwards, so that turning them to the right would open them and turning to the left would close them. I was highly confused, shaving upside down and constantly turning the water off when I meant to open the valve more.

"I guess this must be how they shave in Kazakhstan", is all I could think.

But I'm not in Kazakhstan. I'm in East Texas.

The razor blade and handle probably belonged to my dad 30 years ago, as I had this unique shaving experience in his old bathroom at my grandpa's house in Palestine, TX. Not Kazakhstan. It is the first stop after leaving my home in Austin last night.

It's appropriate that the first stop on my 'round-the-world trip be in Palestine. This is my second home, where I've been coming to visit family, feed cows and shoot pigs since I was a little kid. If my trip were depicted as concentric circles, Palestine would be the innermost cirlce just around the bull's eye. I like that my trip is starting out small. Aside from the fact that I get to shock people by telling them that the first stop on my world trip is in Palestine (first a shock of horror, then, as I explain it's Palestine, TEXAS, boredom) stopping here first lets me ease into my trip, blurring the lines between the life I left behind yesterday and the life that I'll be leading for the next nine months. Technically, I'm on my big adventure and I'm treating this stop-over at Grandpa's as such, but my brain just feels like I'm up at the ranch for the weekend. I'm tricky like that.

I helped Grandpa feed the cows this morning by cutting and removing the bailing twine wound around the bales of hay that he was setting out for the cows. Later on, my uncle Robert came over and we got started smoking four racks of pork ribs - Robert's pork ribs are one of my favorite forms of meat on earth. I have been seriously spoiled by excellent food in the past week as everyone has stuffed my face in preparation for my journey. They seem to think that food does not exist beyond the borders of the United States and I am happy to harvest the consequences of this delusion.

From the beginning of one food chain...


...to the end of another.


Palestine is a great place. As we were leaving the grocery store this afternoon after our rib-run, a guy about my age in an apron came running out to us and offered to assist us to the car. I did not know that American grocery stores still offered this service. It'll be interesting to see how today's trip to the grocery store compares with the one that I'll inevitably take in Almaty - or Tbilisi, or Guangzhou or Ulambatar! So many menial adventures to have. I can't wait.