Back to the East.

Current location: Atlanta

Yesterday evening I arrived at Ruby-Beth's in Atlanta. It's nice to be here, even though I was a bit sad to leave Cali. I had a great week of exploring the bay area. I went to Muir Woods and hiked around a bit and then watched surfers at Stinson Beach. I also did a lot of walking in Berkeley and Oakland, checking out the public librarys and posing as a college student at Cal. I went out with Fred with some of his frat/volleyball friends and went to Habitat with Andy. Altogether, I was pretty busy and saw lots of cool stuff. The bay area is really beautiful, especially with the beach and all the plants. Jonah and I were walking around Oakland and we just stopped in our tracks to watch this ruby throated hummingbird flying around.

I mean this in a local way, not a political way, but the South West and the West coast also seem much more unapologetically bilingual than the north east. Like in Austin, the public buses made their announcements in Spanish and English. And when I was at Habitat, a number of people just came up to me and started speaking in Spanish, even just listening to conversations or the radio, you hear people going back and forth between English and Spanish a lot.


Yesterday was the only non-land travel I've had so far on my America tour, San Francisco-Atlanta. It treated me well and I got to watch the snow fall in the Denver airport. Tomorrow, we pick up Alex and then continue on to New Orleans by car, so it's mardi gras prep-time. Steve, our waiter last night, was telling us about his experience at Mardi Gras and he described it as "mass ecstasy". It's going to be fun and get your glasses ready for some www.ethanmoses.com/3d