Hey fellow bloggers!  Sorry I'm running behind, my internet access at home has been sporadic.  As a result, expect some more saved up posts from me coming soon, and I am excited to read your wonderful words and leave comments!

In de Botton’s second chapter, he writes extensively about transitory experiences and airports. Personally, I felt a lot of anxiety leading up to leaving for Paris, all the way to the flight itself. I don’t think I wear my religion on my sleeve too much, but there are two times which, regardless of my company or circumstances, that I cross myself. The first, which happens more frequently, is whenever I see an ambulance go by with its siren on. There’s something mystical and eerie about ambulances – conversations stop, cars pull over, everyone looks. It’s this public acknowledgement – one of us, no one knows who, might leave soon. Who are we loosing? How might the world change because of it? This is the sort of thing that, for me, just instinctively calls for prayer.

The second is whenever I see a plane take off. Especially so if I’m in it, or if someone I know is in it, but I often feel the impulse to do so even if I have no personal investment in the flight. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of flying – I’ve never had a panic attack or hyperventilated or had to be removed from a plane, it’s never been a serious problem for me the way it is for some people. And besides, I wouldn’t describe it as a fear. I would say that a fear is generally against something that isn’t a real threat, (like spiders,) and that it’s against something avoidable that you can actually control (again, like spiders.) This I would describe as a terror, which I see as something different altogether. A terror I would define as a sort of transcendence, when something occurs that makes you register, in a very direct way, your own mortality. You’re not afraid of whatever the basic occurrence is, (in my case, the ambulance going by or the plane taking off,) but what suggest, what they point to.

Joseph Campbell, (author of Hero with a Thousand Faces, among other excellent works,) theorizes that all narratives have at their core The Hero’s Journey, a basic narrative that he believes describes the emotional process of making a major life change. That is not an excellent summary of his work, and I highly suggest you read his books if you haven’t yet had the opportunity, but my poor approximation will have to do for now. I tend to agree with Campbell, and I have always been especially drawn to his conceit of the Whale. Campbell states that all journeys, or life changes, require one to destroy a part of one’s self that is no longer useful, sort of like shedding your skin, in order to reach the next phase of life. The most obvious application here would be that, in world views which believe in an after life, one must shed one’s earthly existence when one dies in order to pass into the next life. But Campbell also suggests that one must, for example, sacrifice a certain amount of innocence and dependence on others in order to achieve adulthood, and in a deeper way, any change – quitting a job, moving away from home, getting married or divorced, becoming a parent – requires us to descend into a deeper part of ourselves, sacrifice an aspect of lives that we no longer consider essential, and, freed from our previous limitations, move more confidently forward to face the trials this change has wrought for us.

Campbell says that within our narratives, we often make this experience physical as well as psychological, and as evidence he turns to the Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale. (Seriously guys, I didn’t think this post was going to be super Christian – I honestly don’t usually talk about religion this much.) Jonah gets devoured whole by an gigantic whale, and he lives inside the stomach of a whale, who is swimming through a turbulent storm, in the middle of an enormous ocean. He’s about as deep as you can get. He spends several days in the whale, and finally something in him changes, and he prays to God to save him and he promises, once rescued, to do whatever He commands (Jonah had, before being devoured, been fleeing from God’s orders on a ship sailing to a distant land.) God saves him by making the whale vomit Jonah up on a distant shore, and Jonah returns home, having found a deeper faith in both his God and himself to be able to accomplish what God asks of him.

But to do this, he was SWALLOWED BY A WHALE. If you get eaten by an animal, you die; even ancient people knew that. Campbell argues that Jonah’s doubts, about both God and himself, had to perish inside the whale so that the better version of himself could go free. There are many other examples: Odysseus and Theseus and Aeneas and Hercules must all venture into the underworld, effectively die and reemerge, before truly attaining the glory that is their destiny; they all must descend into darkness, suffer in turmoil, before they can move on to the real challenge. The plane, the ambulance: these, I think, are our whales. To get to wherever we are now, I’m pretty sure at some point all of us walked right into the mouth of a huge metal bird, which flew long and far, then vomited us back up, exhausted and disoriented, on a distant shore. And it is this, I think, which inspires my terror on planes: not only that flying can be dangerous should something go wrong, but in a deeper sense, that even if I arrive wherever I’m going just fine, some part of me will still die during my journey. When I return home, I will be most likely be different, be altered. Who am I? Because very soon, I may not be so sure – you better take inventory now. What will I be loosing? No way to know. How will my world be different? Completely unanswerable.

Another reason to read Campbell is this anecdote (which must have been popular in the second half of the twentieth century because Robert Bly stole it later): there are tribal communities, around the world, which share a common ritual for marking the passing into puberty of males. Boys in these communities will often sleep with their mothers until they are eight or nine. Then, on a pre-appointed night which neither mother nor child have been informed of, the father, who does not normally sleep in the same lodging, will paint his face and clothe himself as a monster, then burst into the mother’s home and drag the terrified child into the night. There he will meet up with other men of the tribe, and the group will ritualistically circumcise the boy. That is the embodiment of the terror though, that fear of the unknown when the unknown if being irrevocably hoisted upon you: a monster, oddly familiar somehow, that wakes you for sleepy comfort and drags you screaming into the night.

I found this terror missing from de Botton’s description of the anticipation of travel, and for me personally it’s an integral part of travel and definitely my study abroad experience. So the questions which I now ask others: do you have other places of terror, other whales, other monsters in the night? And what are you afraid of loosing – what are your foreskins? (Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself – how often do you get to write that sentence?!)

"I love nothing, I'm Parisian" (Photo by Monica Burton)At the start of The Art of Travel, de Botton talks about how the beauty of a different place, its allure or even the distraction of its novelty, can’t change certain facts about how we’re feeling, what we worry about, or the flaws and imperfections and dissatisfactions that are an inevitable part of who we are at a given time. This, to me, is a really brilliant and important conclusion, one that I’m beginning to learn.

The thing about Paris is that it has to be wonderful. Always. Since I arrived here three weeks ago, I’ve received so many eager emails from family and friends, all asking how fantastic it is to live in Paris, what a magical city it must be. It’s a lot of pressure. Of course, Paris is fantastic, and even though I’ve only begun to explore the city, I do think I’m going to love living here. But liking a city doesn’t mean the city alone can make you happy. De Botton , for instance, writes about his own anxieties and petty arguments set against the idyllic backdrop of Barbados. I wander the cobblestone streets of the Marais or trek uphill in Belleville; by the end of the day, my knees hurt and I’m too tired to make dinner. I walk to school along the Seine and down a charming little street packed with boulangeries, but I’ve never been so stressed about trying to organize my class schedule than in this past week, and so overworked from a simple preliminary course that I still don’t feel like I know Paris at all. And, after my first week in Paris, my boyfriend came to visit from Copenhagen, and left at the end of the weekend as only my friend. It’s more difficult to motivate myself to go out on adventures in the city and simply have a good time when, despite seeing the Eiffel tower glittering from my balcony, I don’t feel happy, and even a basement jazz concert or a box of macarons can only put me in a good mood for a little while. I’ve begun to think that Paris is simultaneously the best and worst city for someone with a broken heart. But I also think that as the way I feel changes, my relationship to Paris will as well, and I think that’s going to be a really fulfilling experience.

Though unrelated, I also liked how de Botton talked about the signs at the airport in Amsterdam, how they were unfamiliar and what their differences meant to him. When I first landed at Charles de Gaulle, I noticed that the arrows suggesting “forward” or “straight ahead” point down. In the U.S. they point up. I’m not sure of the cultural significance of this difference; perhaps it has something to do with the clichés of American optimism versus French coldness, though that might be a bit of a stretch. (Before I arrived, my Parisian friend warned me that Parisians are mean, but I haven’t really experienced much of it since I’ve been here.)

The sky above Paris

It is shockingly easy to take yourself thousands of miles away from home.

Truly, to accomplish the thing you need only visit a website, pick your dates, provide credit card information, print a boarding pass, pack a suitcase, and show up on the appointed date at the airport.

As I turned to look for the last time at my boyfriend, waiting behind the security checkpoint, and walked towards my gate, I thought about my feet carrying me forward. I became aware the weight of my backpack and the laptop case in my left hand. I pictured my luggage, probably tucked in the plane’s belly by now. It was all so simple, so minimal really: the act of extracting myself from my life in New York and relocating to Paris came down to a few suitcases and little old me, walking towards the open door of an airplane.

De Botton, in Chapter II of The Art of Travel, reflects on the awe and power that a plane’s departure can inspire. For one, he describes the almost magical ability of the plane to bypass all “impediments” of life on the ground, from steep hills to restrictions of view. Looking even further inward, he also writes, “The swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation.” It “can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives[.]”

In the case of my departure for Paris, the flight itself actually was part of a “decisive shift:” the shift of my existence (temporarily) from New York to Paris. Given the magnitude of that decision, I expected the actual leaving to be long, arduous, and nearly impossible to carry out. Instead, the combination of my unnervingly simple exit and the plane’s facility of motion left me in shock for most of the flight.

In the months and weeks before September 5, there had been countless conversations: is now the right time to go abroad? Is this really what will make me happy, or is it a purely cerebral decision? On the micro level, there were considerations of housing (how to find an apartment?), set-up (should I open a French bank account?), and of course, packing. Down to the very last hours, in which we weighed and re-weighed my suitcases on the bathroom scale to meet airline restrictions, the to-do list seemed truly endless. At any given point, so many details and tasks stood in the way of my getting to Paris that part of me, I think, didn’t really believe I’d get here. And maybe I wanted it that way—maybe the to-do lists also helped make leaving seem farther away.

The fact, then, that all (or most) of the necessary tasks had been completed, that my suitcases had finally been zipped and locked, and that my feet were moving towards the plane, was almost unbelievable. And as the plane set off, so smooth and nonchalant, it was almost maddening to remember the exhausting journey that had led me to this one.

Train adventures "No reminders that those eyes were intimately tied to a body and mind that would travel with me whenever I went and that might, over time, assert their presence in ways that would threaten or even negate the purpose of what the eyes had come to see" (On Anticipation). Something occurred to me the other day as I was trying to find various Florence activities to fill up my weekend. If I’m honest with myself, I spend more time looking up places to go- reading about them, looking at pictures, finding their locations, seeing how much it costs- than actually actively going and exploring. My list of “places to see before leaving Italy” exponentially grows every week and the overwhelming feeling that I might miss something worth seeing has me in constant anticipation. So in my efforts to actually follow through with my plans, I have been dubbing certain days as “Florence day” dragging my friends along on my excursions. After quite a few of these “Florence days,” I found I was not quite as impressed as I thought I would be after reading the descriptions of certain sites. In fact, on a few occasions I was left thinking “That’s it….?” and was eager to move on to the next thing on my list. Perpetually in the future, I think I could take a lesson from the Europeans who enjoy each moment as they come and just RELAX. "No sooner had [Baudelaire] returned to Paris from his Mauritian trip than he began to dream once again of going somewhere else.... this question of moving is one that I'm forever entertaining in my soul” (On Traveling Places). My New York mentality of “always on the go” is in quite a conundrum here. Or perhaps it’s my entire life of constantly being on the move, never quite settling down enough to let things soak into my core. Instead, my mind is already onto the next unknown destination, knowing that my stay is short lived anyway. As Baudelaire stated how “this question of moving is one that I’m forever entertaining in my soul,” I’ve never had problems with moving. People always ask me, “Wasn’t it hard growing up like that?” Honestly, I never had any real issue with it; I would actually get a bit antsy after about a year and a half and have this urge to uproot and move on. As a side note (and a possible explanation for my own behavior), my dad is also the type that never truly settles. The last time I visited my parents for winter break in Hawaii, my dad was already talking about the next place the army might send him. My parents had only been in Hawaii 3 months at that point. Yet, he was already looking ahead, absolutely at peace with the inevitable, even welcoming the time of departure. "What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home” (On the Exotic). I’ll let that line speak for itself. Although, one thought about it… What happens when you don’t even think you have a home at all? A question that has been a constant in my mind these days as I look for this “exotic.”

Looking out the airplane window: By Greg Wilson

While studying abroad is inevitably a different experience for everyone, I feel that my experience has been particularly strange. I guess it originates from my childhood. I grew up in New Jersey, in an average suburban town, with an unreligious Jewish family. We always traveled over the holidays because there wasn’t much to celebrate. When I traveled to Disney World or California, it was an escape from a place where I was clearly an outsider. I always anticipated these trips for that reason.

As I got older, my family situation became different. It was strained. I started to recognize things that I didn’t like about the religion and culture I was raised in and would no longer accept religion and culture as excuses for negative actions. I was now an outsider in both my community and my family. When I was 13, I started taking French and fell in love with the language. Suddenly, something felt like it fit. The way the language sounded, the way the culture embraced la laicite, the way they savored life. Everything the French did from birth, I wanted to make my own.

So I decided that as soon as I could I would make my grand escape to Paris. I would run away and become someone new. I would be the person I desperately wanted to be. I anticipated being that person. For the next 7 years, the anticipation continued as I planned my escape to this kind of alternate reality. I dreamt of escaping my Jewish mother’s guilt and my father’s expectations.

Seven years later, I was on a plane to France. I was prepared to begin a new chapter of my life. I was ready to finally feel like a free-willed adult. Still, my parents were not. As I looked out the plane window, my anticipation was no longer wrought with excitement, but tarnished with bittersweet fear. I knew that I could never escape my mother despite time changes and sheer distance. I knew that I could never erase where I was from. I knew that my father would always have expectations for me that I could never meet. So as I sit here after 4 weeks in France, I can’t help but feel that I came here for the wrong reasons, but that I need to stay here for the right ones. I think that it is time for me to use travel and my studies here to learn what makes me happy and fulfilled, not to escape the things that don’t.

L’Amitié,

Sam

better times on the roadLying in my bed the day before my Journey to Buenos Aires my mind was racing with thoughts of what I was to encounter in my seven months in South America. First I expected to be speaking fluent Spanish within about three months, sadly that hasn’t come true yet. I envisioned a completely exotic world and my mind was creating places that didn’t even exist. I refused to look at pictures of Buenos Aires, nor the rest of South America. I didn’t want to fill my mind with images of what was to come, I loved the reality of unreality, the images that my brain were conjuring up surely would come to life as soon as I stepped off the plane, unfortunately they didn’t and they still haven’t.

Why do humans anxiously pace back in forth in their brain anticipating what is to come next? It would be so much easier if we never knew what was coming or never even thought about it, living completely in the moment, like that cheesy book that was one of Oprah’s book club selections. As I sit writing this blog entry I’m trying to concentrate on my life in Buenos Aires, my new friends, the beautiful weather, the adventures I’ve had and the new ones to come, but sadly I can’t get my mind off the fact that after next semester I will be graduating. The hard truth that I will be entering the real world dominates my every waking moment, so intense at times that I go on two hour internet binges looking at jobs that I have no interests in. I read and reread my resume and though it never changes-my perspective on what I’ve done shoots off in random directions- at times I feel I’ve done great things and that the best is yet to come, but other times I think I haven’t accomplished anything at all. One of the themes that de Botton discusses is his book has come to exist in my own life- I made the mistake of bringing myself on my vacation. Most people will never get to do a semester abroad, or live in another country for seven months when there only 21 years old. I’m grateful for having the opportunity to be here but unfortunately most of the time only by body feels like its here, my mind is wandering in realms of anxious anticipation. I constantly repeat the question over in my mind, What am I going to do with my life? I’m thousands of miles from home in a beautiful foreign country but somehow I managed to drag my life with me. Id love to be living completely in the moment here in Buenos Aires, but somehow I can’t escape my own nervous ponderings on who I am and what I’m doing here. At times I completely love my life in Buenos Aires but I feel that what I’m doing here is somewhat pointless. I think I should be in the US, looking for jobs, planning what my life will be like, not partying in Buenos Aires, kind of learning a different language. I wish I hadn’t brought myself to Buenos Aires but the truth of the matter is that I’m here and I should make the most of my experience as I can.

little bed

The bigger the expectation, the bigger the letdown. Fact, but it is so hard not to daydream, to imagine and create the glorious world in which we want to escape to. Yet, is anything what we dream? Alain de Botton describes the element of anticipation and expectation in his book The Art of Travel. When de Botton recounts the gloomy story of Duc des Esseintes and his pessimistic outlook between imagination and reality, he strikes the most appropriate response for the situation. De Botton responds to des Esseintes opinion that reality is always disappointing stating, “It may be truer and more rewarding to suggest that it is primarily different” (pg. 11). Nothing is quite how we picture it. I tried my best not to let my dreams go wild and build a world of expectations before I came to Buenos Aires. But it was impossible not to think about the journey I was about to go on. Clearly, I pictured everything as perfect, especially my house. For some reason, I have a fixation on homes. I rarely thought about the city I was about to live in; to me a city is a city. But home is where the heart is. Based upon my host mother’s description via email, I pictured a beautiful building in a quaint West Village type neighborhood, a big garden, a nice bathroom connected to my big bedroom (with lots of bright colors of course to go along with the South American vibe), and a big homey apartment. Well, I was right when I pictured homey, and that’s about it. Every wall in the tiny apartment is white, half of the electronics are broken (it takes our bathroom light about 30 seconds to turn on after you flip the switch), and you have to dodge the stacks of books wherever you go. Our shower curtain rod falls just about every time I shower, I have to stand on a wobbly antique chair to semi look at myself in the mirror before going out, none of the outlets work in our room besides one, our AC is broken, our ice-cream is frozen in a giant ice-cube in the mini-freezer, and everything smells like mold. Oh yeah, and not to mention, I am seriously bigger than my bed (my feet hang off the end, and I couldn’t even begin to roll over, I’d fall off). And though, none of this fit into the images that I had created in my head before coming, I am not disappointed. It is all just different. And now that I have gotten used to my “semi-ghetto” lifestyle (as my roommate and I like to call it), I wouldn’t have it any other way. Expectations and reality kind of remind me of books and movies. When you read a book, you create the world in your head, from the clothes that one is wearing to the kitchen the characters are eating in. Then the movie comes out, much to your disappointment, because it is nothing how you imagined it. It is different, all of it. Harry Potter’s scar was supposed to be bigger, and Dumbledore looks completely wrong. Reality is just an alteration from our imaginations. But, who is to say that is a bad thing though? I am glad that my home isn’t as picturesque as I had imagined it; it is, in a sense, more real. Just as de Botton says, “The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present” (pg. 14-15). Life isn’t always cake, and neither is travel. 

Goucho The part of Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel that relates to me the most is the theme of the difference between anticipation and the actual reality of the place our visiting. While anticipating my arrival to Buenos Aires, I imagined a city much like any other city. In addition, I imagined lots of tourists with cameras and cowboys riding in the streets. Not really, but kinda -- you know what I'm saying. I thought that because I lived in a home-stay, I would miraculously learn exponentially more Spanish. I thought that one semester would be enough to see all of Buenos Aires. Now reality sets in and you realize that there is meat and tourists, but there is also crime, homeless people and corrupt politicians. One thing that is universal about cities is that they have almost everything.

Chamfort's dictum states that a person should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead. I think this is great advice when it comes to anticipation. While anticipating what will be of your travels, I find it prudent to not anticipate all the good that will come of it, but all the bad that might become of it instead. In other words, set the bar so low that there would be no possible way for your trip to not reach expectations. I recommend this, because it prevents you from having false ideas about the place where you will be going. It is so easy to characterize places with the generalizations that people tell you before you go. Today I opened up my guide book of Buenos Aires and read the itinerary for people staying in Buenos Aires for one day. It includes a Goucho show, a tango show, a parilla, and a trip to Casa Rosa. When I thought of that, I realized first of all that might be tough to do in one day and also that doesn't begin to enlighten a traveler about what is Buenos Aires. My one day itinerary would include a trip to Boca to see how the poor live in shanty towns, then a trip to Belgrano to see how the upper class lives. Then I would take them to eat at La Corbisos (a parilla). If there was time, I would also take them to Casa Rosa just cause I think its cool, not cause of its touristy allure. I guess my point is: This city is too small to see in one day.

“Carriage take me with you! Ship, steal me away form here! / Take me far, far away. Here the mud is made of our tears!” ~ Charles Baudelaire When I was very young, my parents would occasionally visit college friends in Chicago. One of them would stay behind in New Jersey with me and the other would go out for a few days to revisit old Northwestern haunts and do something school spirit-esque with their buddies. My love of airports began then. I remember waiting for my mother at the gate (back when you could do such things,) and staring at the arrival and departure boards and thinking that I wanted to go EVERYWHERE even if I had no idea where or what Albuquerque or St. Louis were. De Botton’s chapter, “On Travelling Places” pretty much sums up my entire desire to travel. I love rest stops, airport terminals, train stations, bus depots, and the experience of motion, of going from one place to the next is a thrill I have yet to find in looking at a beautiful building or landscape, or touching the oldest grave in Prague or anything else. I’ve been here in the Czech Republic for just short of four weeks now. Last weekend was the first time I’ve left the city yet. I wanted to orient myself, get accustomed to new surroundings, new routes to class, new public transportation. But last weekend, I was feeling the need to move, to get out of Prague. Complacency is the only enemy. So a friend and I boarded a bus to the city of Liberec, near the northern border of the Czech Republic. He wanted to go, he had planned the sights to see and things to do; I was just along for the ride. The bus ride was literally the best part of the trip. Not that there was anything bad about the day, it was very nice, a calm, beautiful day in a quiet, historically rich city, but as soon as we reached the bus station, at the last subway stop on the B line, I was ready to go. It was a fascinating place, Soviet influence clear in the rundown structure of the building and graffiti covering the walls. Severe and concrete, the people waiting for the bus, already dour looking because they were Czech people out in public, had the distinct Hopperian air that de Botton refers to. The loneliness of isolation, of being in transit, not at home surrounded by compatriots, gives a distinct tinge to everyone and everything. The bus, by far the nicest bus I’ve ever been on, with plush seats, a free cappuccino, and headphones for watching the movie being screened on typical tour bus screen units, was quiet as we boarded. Seeing the plants along the highway being to blur into the familiar green stripes of fast travel brought on my adrenaline. My friend and I have never enjoyed an episode of Friends so much in our lives, and it brought calm, with the thought, “I’m going somewhere, I’m doing something, this is right.”

The Welcome Babylonian: He was everywhere, grinning at us.Junk on Display: This was a case of "technologia" (I think) by the entrance to the "IQ Park." Which was supposed to be a bit like the Imaginarium.

These photos are from Liberec, they’re of a crazy place called Centrum Babylon. Talk about an, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” moment! It was a mall/amusement park/exhibition center/casino/dance club/hotel (I guess) but really, words cannot describe. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

Marilyn at the Bowling Alley: James Dean was there too.

Contrast of the villa and metropolis

I found De Botton’s first chapter on the anticipation of travel extremely interesting, because in the months leading up to my departure for Buenos Aires, I constantly tried to both imagine Buenos Aires and imagine my life here. I tried to draw upon my previous travels in Latin America, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, but while they’re both Latin American countries, they are Central American and extremely underdeveloped, as opposed to this South American metropolis.While I had heard so many great things about this city from many people, about how I was going to have a wonderful time, the fact of the matter was that I didn’t really have a concrete image of this city, just that it was going to be great. I pictured only the good, and in many ways, idealized this place. I’d dreamed about coming here and been excited for so long, that I just assumed that I would be happy and everything dandy the moment I stepped off the plane. However, the first day I was in the Capital Federal I began to realize how much I had idealized Buenos Aires and thought it would be a perfect place. This is an incredibly imperfect and unequal city and country. There's a constant struggle between classes (the poor in this country are actually referred to as "los negros de mierda" i.e. the “blacks of shit”) as well as a lot of open racism. One of the rich “barrios” wants to build a wall between their area and a “villa miseria” (shantytown). Additionally, while Buenos Aires is a full-fledged modern city jam-packed with chic boutiques, incredible restaurants, and limitless cultural diversions, Argentina is a 3rd world country and the wealth distribution is horribly skewed, both geographically and per capita. While all of this is obviously bad, learning and seeing these things has vastly deepened my understanding for my new home. Now, having been here for a month, I finally have my mental image of Buenos Aires, and while I will constantly be updating it for the next 10 months, it’s a good start. All in all, I'm becoming settled here, in my new Argentine lifestyle. This place is incredibly unique, in both good and bad ways, and all the experiences I've had, positive and negative, have been extremely thought provoking and educational.