Turkish Tourism Industry 7/15/14

I haven't had good experiences with the tourism industry in Mexico. Having traveled to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Mexico City, among other places, much of the tourism industry seems to run on aggressively luring customers into shelling out money. Take for instance the process of merely having a meal out in Cabo San Lucas. I remember taking one step down the sidewalk of a main street with my family when we were abruptly and too energetically approached by a host of a restaurant. He spoke persistently to my mother and father as we attempted to get the faintest idea of what the menu had to offer. At this point in the trip we had already grown weary of this system of accosting tourists, so we just gave in and took a damn seat. The experience worsened as a guy who appeared to be a manager asked how our meal was. We mistakenly engaged with him, and soon he began his spiel about timeshares and how for two hours of our time we could get a fifty percent discount on parasailing or a thirty percent discount at a spa. When he finally left, leaving our mouths bitter for the food in this restaurant, a three person guitar band came to our table and played a song in our faces that none of us wanted to hear. Because the band had "entertained" us, they waited around for us to give them money. If I had my way, I would have stalemated them for the rest of the night, though I think someone in my family doled out some pesos to get rid of them. Throughout my traveling to Mexico, I wish I could say this meal was an exception to my experiences with the Mexican tourism industry, but unfortunately it is not.

So here I am in Turkey now, and yes, Turkey does have some similarities with Mexico. First off, parts of it look similar, especially insofar as its infrastructure. Each day Jena and I walk past an apartment building that is under construction. Bricks are being laid for an outside wall as far as three stories up. There are no cones to tell one to step around the immediate area below. There are not signs suggesting to watch for falling material. When we first arrived there was this humungous piece of see-through fabric covering part of the wall--as if that could save someone from a fractured skull--but it has since gone by the wayside. During the day, as bricks are being laid, buckets of gray sand (what I presume is an ingredient for the mortar) are hauled up by a jury-rigged pulley system. These buckets swing a little too wildly overhead. Because I haven't seen this sort of construction craziness in many other places, save Indonesia where things are actually a lot more dangerous, I don't blame myself, then, for presuming my interactions with the people here in Turkey would be similar to interactions in Mexico as well.

But today I'm here to say that my interactions are not similar, and I've come to realize that I am not giving the Turkish tourism industry credit where it is due.

Thus far, I have had many experiences where someone has spoken to me regarding their services, and while I have initially presumed the person has an ulterior motive of duping me out of some money, I have been quite wrong. Tonight for instance, Jena and I were walking through an alley on our way home from the waterfront. In our neighborhood there are a slew of little alleys where restaurants, bars, and coffee shops are crammed into interstices. These off-the-path establishments have a bit more character than the ones on the main pedway, and if I were a permanent resident here, these would be the places where I'd want to be a regular. The clientele doesn't necessarily look friendly, but they certainly look cool.

So we're walking through this alley, and a host outside one of these restaurants greets us in English. He says, "Hello" and "Welcome," and tells us that his restaurant has cheap prices on drinks and food. In our neighborhood Jena and I get this sort of greeting a lot from hosts on the pedway since we're obviously tourists, and hosts seem to have a desire to show us that they can speak English. My default reaction, which has become a habit from experiences in Mexico, is to a) ignore the person or b) say no thanks in whichever language comes out first--Turkish or English--and ignore the person. I feel like I've been hardened by all the tourism interactions of my past.

But this interaction is different. The host is telling us about the perks of his restaurants, and meanwhile Jena and I are ignoring him and walking away. And then the host tags something onto the end. He says, "If you want come in, I can help you." From his tone and his words it becomes clear that he actually wants us to make us a good decision for ourselves, and that if we have any questions, he'll be happy to answer them. If we want to have a seat at his restaurant, he's the guy to see.

I have begun to realize here in Turkey that my defenses are going up, somewhat unjustly, during the first moments of my interactions. The pattern seems to be that that hosts and others simply want to announce themselves to you. And once they do, you can just tell them what's on your mind like, "I'm just looking" or "No thanks" and they'll leave you alone. There's less badgering, chasing, and unwanted negotiation than I've experienced in Mexico.

Experiences such as the one that happened tonight has happened more times than I can count during our first two weeks in Turkey. I credit the warmth and respectfulness of the Turkish people at large. My intention is to make an effort to be a more fluid in my interactions with vendors, to lend them a little more patience because there's a good chance they won't be irritate me. They'll say what they have to offer, and I'll be free to say what I'm thinking. Then, depending on how I'm feeling and what Jena and I want or need, we can all go on our ways.

The Foreign Becoming Less Foreign 7/14/14

Jena worried that Turkey wouldn't be foreign enough. She lived in Cambodia previously. I never shared her feeling. To me anywhere other than the Western United States would be foreign enough. The otherness of Turkey hit me in the domestic terminal of the Istanbul Airport, with the throes of people, obviously Muslim; the food that was advertised without English translations; and the Turkish announcements of every flight. For Jena it hit when we were in Kayseri. It was apparent to me then, too, as I woke at three in the morning to the call to prayer from across the street.

Then we arrived in Izmir, a city that I keep likening to the Turkish version of Miami. Things are a bit looser here. We can't hear the calls to prayer, and Ramadan is not as widely observed, at least not in our part of town. A smaller proportion of women cover their hair, and a higher proportion of them are out and about on the bustling pedway that serves as a main street near our apartment.

We've come here to acclimate, and we're successfully doing just that.

About a week ago we went to the Sunday vegetable market and timidly bought a bunch of bananas. We had our phrasebook in hand. Yesterday at the same weekly market, we successfully had a number of service encounters using the Turkish that we studied over the past week in class.

As we walk through the crowded streets, I walk more confidently now like a city inhabitant. Previously, I put more cognitive energy into walking politely and cautiously through such crowded streets. In fact, the other day on the pedway a street dog was barking aggressively and momentarily halted a group of young men. Mentally scoffing, I walked right through the men. The dog turned and began coming toward me. It frightened me somewhat, but I didn't entirely stop. The best plan of action on that pedway is simply to pretend to have a destination and to continue on your way.

Each day the hundreds, or possibly thousands, of signs I pass are beginning to take on bits of meaning. Even when I don't know the meaning of a word, I can now see a morpheme or two at the end of a word which indicates its relationship to the words around it. The city's language-scape is like a picture being rendered, pixel by pixel, from the inside out.

It has become clear to me that Turkey, at least in our neighborhood, is relatively safe. By safe I mean something beyond its definitions pertaining to security. I mean that in the past week Turkey has become a place where I can feel comfortable without undue worry about what's going to happen to me next, whether that's during an interaction, while traveling, or while walking through the streets. Granted, I don't want this feeling to become a false aegis of invulnerability, but I do want to reap its benefits. I want to be happy that Jena and I have made a wise decision to move here, and I want to be happy that we're gradually figuring out how to assimilate. As we approach the two week mark of moving to Turkey, I'd say we're done a pretty good job.

Boat Ride 7/10/14

According to the Internet--as if it, in itself, is one cohesive and credible source--the best way to see Izmir is to ride the ferries. Izmir stretches around a bay, and from what I've seen, the city doesn't have much depth inland. It's not like, say, LA, where only one small section touches the ocean. The city of Izmir is like the crust around a slice of bread that is the bay.

The crust has some interesting features, too. Some of the hills are covered with high-rise apartment buildings, which seem quite out of place to me. Where, in America, there would be houses for the rich that serve as an escape from the city center, there are often twenty story apartment buildings congregated together in what must be a massive neighborhood. My mind goes crazy trying to understand why the buildings have been built in such unlikely places. My basic understanding of city layouts dictates that you have one or two-story homes in the outskirts and suburbs of a city. Then, as you move closer to the center, you see higher buildings, maybe ten stories tall or so. Finally, at core you see the tallest buildings. Here in Turkey, the cities don't work the same way. There are hundreds of these high-rise apartment buildings congregated in the strangest places, like on the tops of, on the sides of, and in the crevices between hills. Jena asked me what I thought of the ones we saw in the distance, and I explained how I was having a difficult time accommodating the layout of apartment buildings into my schema. I asked Jena what she thought of them. She said the ones covering the hills looked like the scales on the backs of dinosaurs.

In any case, I digress. How do I know I have a sense of what Izmir looks like, especially from afar? After all, it is difficult to see from the sidewalk along the waterfront. Why, it's from a ferry ride.

Tonight, after school, Jena and I decided to go to the ferry station to see about taking a ferry to another part of town where we might get something to eat. Unfortunately, however, after a look at the schedule, it seemed unlikely that we'd be able to get something to eat because the ferries don't run into the night. Our hunger put aside, we decided to go for a ferry ride anyway.

At the station, a rush of people was trying to board one of the boats, and Jena and I accidentally held up the line for a moment. Here, a Turkish woman stepped up and asked us in English where we were trying to go. I mumbled the name of a station, and the woman pointed me to a boat and continued on. Jena and I had heard from our friends that people often pop out of the crowd and can help you get oriented in Turkey, and it was a pleasant surprise that it happened to us. After she left, I did my best to use gesticulations to explain to the ticket vendor that I wanted return tickets, and thankfully, the ticket vendor understood me. Although I was fairly certain that the boat that had been pointed out to me was one not the one I actually wanted, an employee encouraged us to take it after I showed him the name of a station I wanted to go to. Jena and I ran to take the steps to the bow of the boat, and as we did so, we overheard a quick, lighthearted interaction between the station worker and the ship workers about the tourists who were holding them up.

On the boat, now, I went wild taking pictures--I was so proud that we made it onto the boat. We watched the familiar coastline slide on by, and Jena and I were in awe of the shipping container ships that we passed. They had stacks five containers high that looked like Lego bricks. When the path of our ferry became clear--it was traveling up the waterfront that Jena and I had seen by walking--I commented to Jena that I was a little disappointed that we hadn't accidentally boarded a ferry that took us to the opposite side of the bay.

We stopped in at two stations that Jena and I had walked to a couple nights before, and when we were on our way to the third station--one that was much farther than we'd ever gone, Jena reminded me that we might need to look into how we would get back our station. Upon arriving at the third station, I briefly conversed with one of the workers on the boat about where the boat was headed next (fortunately, he knew English). It wasn't headed back toward our station, so Jena and I hopped off, and we used our return ticket to get back into the station for our return ride.

Here, we spoke to a station worker who didn't know English, but we understood his Turkish well enough when he said the next boat would not be going to our station. This was disconcerting. When it seemed like everyone in the station was boarding the next boat, I asked again about the path the ferry would take. The station worker looked to the workers on the boat and asked them whether they spoke English. They didn't, but they told us to come aboard because they said we'd be able to get where we were headed on their ferry.

This ferry headed out across the bay, which was obviously not the direction of our home. Though with the belief that it would all work out, Jena and I sat back to enjoy our view of the entire bay. While riding on the open air second floor deck, the ship's vendor came around, offering tea and orange juice for sale. I was pleased with myself as I heard portakal (orange) since moments like this remind me that I'm slowly picking up the language. Other passengers seemed to enjoy the ferry ride as well. Some took pictures. Some couples sat close to one another, facing the sunset. Children watched the water churn behind the ship.

At the station across the bay, Jena and I sat tight, believe that the ferry would head toward our station after making a stop here. A quick pang of anxiety lit us up when we were the only passengers left on the boat. One of the boatmen came to the deck to tell us in some minimal English to get off the boat and to get another ticket and come back. Jena and I ran through the large and crowded station to do so. By the time we returned, we attempted to get back on our ferry, but the boatman pointed us to another ferry at the station. We rushed aboard. The workers on this boat seemed surprised by us and asked where we were going. We told them, and they let us proceed up to the seating area on the second floor deck.

We sat down, again noticing that we were the only people on the boat. We watched over the railing as the boatmen from the ferry we had taken there explained something to the boatmen on our current boat. We heard the word for foreigners, but it didn't seem like it was meant maliciously. For me, I was impressed by the curtsey of all the employees who had helped us to ensure that we had a way home. I can only imagine how much a taxi would have been. Possibly, thirty or more dollars. Instead, Jena and I were getting about an hour and a half-long ferry ride adventure for somewhere around seven or eight bucks.

We sat on the ferry for about fifteen minutes until it pulled away. (We must have looked quite silly when we first ran onto the boat as if it were about to leave that second.) In the meantime, we compared this side of the bay with ours. There was a grassy park, and like in ours, some people sat in small groups to watch the sunset. The boat eventually began the trip back across the bay, and we arrived back home at our station. I looked at Jena, thinking Ferry Ride around the Bay to See Izmir, check. Exhausted from the adventure, we forewent our plans to have dinner out. We needed a break from figuring out where we were and what was going on, so together we made a nice dinner at home.

PIT 7/9/14

"I didn't really bring school supplies, did you?"
"No."
(laugh)
"What? It's not like we're here to go to school or anything."

For the past two and a half years, I worked as an English language teacher for the Program in Intensive English (PIE) at NAU. Many of my students, particularly those from certain countries (I won't name names here) came to class unprepared. It seems now that the tables have turned.

On Monday, Jena and I began taking an intensive Turkish class. In the back of my mind, I call it the Program in Intensive Turkish (PIT). This is an exaggeration, though. It is not a pit. In fact, Jena and I are the only two students in the class, so it's very personalized. After merely two days of class, it feels like we have learned a lot. Already, for example, I have begun to recognize certain vocabulary words, and I have at least started to pay attention to the end of Turkish words, even if I don't know what they mean. (The Turkish language uses a lot of affixes, particularly suffixes and infixes.)

We have class for four hours a day. While we didn't necessarily bring school supplies to our first day of school, beyond one not defter (notebook), we did show up on time. Just that action seemed like it warranted applause. I can now see how some of my students must have felt coming from their countries to Flagstaff, Arizona of all places.

During our marathon classes, we have three ten minute molalar (breaks). At these times, our generous teacher gives us tea and sometimes coffee. Because I am not a caffeine drinker regularly, these beverages get me super high. Each sip has me hanging onto the teacher's words, although I rarely know what she is saying. By the end of our lessons for the day, my vision is going in and out of focus, and I feel like I'm going to collapse. This sensation, too, gives me new insight into the language learning experience that my students undergo.

It's a little rough being in a class with one's spouse. I have a hard time getting through the moments when I need more time to understand a grammar rule or those when Jena memorizes a word before me. My default, as has been my habit throughout my twenty years of schooling, is to hunker down and try to out-study my peers. This pattern of behavior is somewhat problematic, however, as Jena and I are here to experience Turkey as well as to study the language. I've found myself wanting to stay indoors the past two days and to try to memorize all the vocabulary that I can find. Somehow, I would like to find a balance.

Our class takes place from about two in the afternoon to about six, which isn't my favorite time of the day for school--I'm more of a morning person--but this time of the day is the hottest time of day in Izmir. The schedule allows Jena and I to come home after class and to take walks on the waterfront to cool down. Here in Alsancak, neighborhood in the city's center, there is a grassy park beside the water where hundreds of people congregate to watch the sunset. The people sit in little pods on the grass, smoke cigarettes, drink malt beer, and eat snacks. It's beautiful to watch. The street dogs (my favorite residents of Izmir) play on the grass as well. Some watch the people for handouts and others run around, playing with one another and with the leashed dogs that walk by.

For Jena and me, the walks on the waterfront are an opportunity to people watch as our brains organize the little shards of language that we've accumulated that day. After getting a handle on the word, akşamlar (night), I heard it a couple times as we strolled around. By the time we return, it's nearly time for bed, and we're exhausted anyway. From there, we go to sleep, wake up, exercise, do our homework, and then it's time for class again.

Don't Eat the Soup 7/5/14

Our boss told us that we shouldn't eat any soup or beans at the rest areas on our bus trip. He said they might have been sitting out for too long. Better to be safe when you're traveling.

Too bad I had soup for lunch.

My stomach was feeling a little off an hour before we got to the bus station. These symptoms continued once we got there and were waiting for the bus. I took an Imodium since it was the only thing I had for stomach sickness.

Then, Jena and I began our fifteen-hour red-eye bus ride from Kayseri to Izmir. Less than a half-hour in, I knew I was in trouble.

Initially, I thought that the bus with its air conditioning would be a cure. I thought I would be able to sleep through whatever curious chemistry was going on in my body. When we boarded the bus, it was hot, however. How hot? For better or for worse there was a digital display at the front of the bus that alternated between the time of day and the temperature. Thirty degrees Celsius (eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit). While that might not sound striking, mix that temperature with a crowded bus and somewhat cramped seats. Mix that temperature with cigarette smoke and exhaust wafting into the bus from the bus terminal. Once we began to move, it took at least a half-hour to cool to the mid to low twenties.

As for my stomach, when the nausea got worse than I had imagined it would I created a short mantra about how I could be strong and about how this would pass. I repeated it over and over, holding onto to the words like they were a railing on the deck of a listing ship. Meanwhile, I thought of another conversation Jena and I had with our boss earlier in the day.

"So how often do the busses make stops?" Jena said.

Our boss said, "Sometimes they might go for four hours without a break. Maybe longer if it's a long trip."

When we stopped after two hours, I took it as an act of God. I ran to the bathroom, which I had to pay for. I'm not against paying for the restroom, but it did halt me for a moment as I got change for a large bill. In the bathroom, I ducked into the first stall, and by another stroke of luck it was a regular flush toilet as opposed to the squat toilets which are very common here in Turkey.

I threw up a lot. It was miserable, and I felt like I was drowning. I wouldn't have been surprised if one of my vital organs had come up through my mouth. Afterward, I had the shakes and a floating feeling. My throat burned from the passing bile.

I stopped at a shop in the rest area to buy something with electrolytes. Unfortunately, Gatorade doesn't seem to have a very prominent presence over here, so I settled for some nectarine juice. The guy who sold it to me was friendly, asking in Turkish where I was from. I stared at him. He began listing nationalities in Turkish. I heard something that sounded like English, so I nodded. He said he liked one of the soccer teams there. I tried my best to smile.

Jena asked me if I needed to stop here for the night. Feeling better, albeit slightly, I said no. I think the prospect of going through the arduous task of using our limited Turkish to find a hotel and to re-book a ticket to Izmir for the next day seemed insurmountable to me.

Back on the bus, I quickly went back to the somewhat calming words of my mantra. Three hours or so passed, although I can't really be sure, given my delirium. When we got off at the next stop, I again fished out my one Lira for the bathroom, although before I went in, I realized I had left my backpack with my wallet and my passport on the bus. I returned for it at the exact moment that the bus attendant was attempting to fish my partially drunk can of nectarine juice from the pocket in front of my seat. I watched as the juice spilled onto my backpack. At the restroom, then, I again found a regular toilet, and this time all that came up was the water and juice I had drunk since the last stop. I honestly think there must be few unsatisfying feelings that compare with fruitless heaving.

The ride continued as we had somewhere around eight hours to go. My body, especially my chest, felt as if it had been shot repeatedly with rubber bullets. I need to stretch and sprawl to deal with the cramping; yet, I was confined to a bus seat which did not allow for such a thing. Jena was a saint, allowing me to rest my head on her lap, shoulder, and back whenever needed.

At the next stop, my stomach was stable, which made me feel better. Here, a young Turkish gentleman approached Jena and me, telling us that he spoke English and that if we needed anything we could ask him. At the following stop, Jena talked to him while I tried to sleep on our two seats on the bus. This guy is a student at the university where Jena and I will be working. He knew some of the teachers who we had met in the previous two days. He told Jena that when we arrived in Izmir he could show us how to get downtown on a free bus.

When morning arrived, I finally felt well enough to chat with this new acquaintance. Jena and I met a Turkish soldier who knew English and offered any assistance to us that we needed as well. After such a tumultuous night, I felt immensely grateful for the hospitality of the Turkish people.

As our bus ride slowly ended, leaving us with incredibly sore muscles, I thought of my age. I'm twenty-nine now, and for the past year I have been preparing for my transition into my thirties. Following the depths of my sickness on the bus, I told myself that I'm getting too old for this. Too old for telling myself that I'm strong enough to take on a fifteen hour bus ride while battling food poisoning. There's no need to be so stubborn in the future. When Jena asked if we should stop for the night after the first bought of sickness, it would have been prudent of me to say yes.

We arrived in our apartment in Izmir where we'll be staying for the next month at about ten o'clock in the morning. Jena and I quickly got into bed and slept until about five in the evening. We ventured out to the grocery store a couple hours ago, and we're now back in bed, trying as hard as we can to fend off the lingering fevers of the food sickness. Jena has it now, too. I intend to take care of her as well as she took care of me.

Life So Far in Turkey 7/4/14

So many things to describe...

Turkish Airlines

After an eight-hour layover in Istanbul, we boarded our first Turkish Airlines flight. In the background was Turkish instrumental drifty uod music, which (I think) is supposed to make you feel more relaxed. To me it said, "Alan, you're definitely not at home anymore." As I settled into my seat, I tried to make an effort to tell myself that this is going to be the soundtrack of my new life.

Oh my word, the food was awesome on Turkish Airlines. Lots of fresh veggies and olives with feta cheese. Dates and baklava for dessert. Although it wasn't my favorite I ate the pureed eggplant. It was kind of like savory applesauce.

Kayseri

Did anyone else play Sim City 2000? In that game, you can build high-rises. Lots of them. And you don't have to limit them to a central area like the end of Manhattan or downtown LA. Okay, so imagine those spread out high-rises are apartment buildings (just add balconies to every level and make the roof a little more rounded, rather than blunt), and that's what Kayseri is like. Tons of tall apartment buildings in a valley. There's a snow capped volcano very close to town as well, which is similar to Flagstaff. You can see the ski runs on it as well, which reminds me of Utah.

The city has approximately one million people. We've heard that there is a very low and possibly nonexistent joblessness rate. It seems like a safe place. Around town, we have seen more men than women. No one wears shorts, which might be important for me to remember. About half the women cover their hair, and about half of the women don't. These ratios of men and women and hair-covering and non-hair covering women seem really familiar to me after working at the PIE.

Melikşah Üniversitesi

The school where Jena and I will be working is small and in the hillside suburb of Kayseri called Talas. There are about 2,500 students, and the English program will have about 800 students this upcoming fall. This size reminds me of my undergrad college, although the campus is quite different. It's on a hill, and there isn't a lot of shade. It's a very new school, only four years old or so. The building we're teaching in has classrooms with projectors and audio systems. This is something I was hoping for since I make an effort to supplement a lot of my teaching with technology.

We will get free lunch every day in this very nice dining room for faculty members. Red table clothes. Chairs with high backs (I think). We're told the food is Turkish, so we can look forward to one authentic Turkish meal a day.

We will be living in an apartment building that isn't quite finished yet. It will house people working for Melikşah Üniversitesi, so we'll probably see our co-workers quite a bit. I think it'll be a ten to fifteen minute walk to campus.

Call to Prayer

On our first night in Kayseri, I awoke to the Call to Prayer from the nearby minaret. Again, it was a "You're not in Kansas anymore." feeling since previously I've only heard the Call to Prayer from my Muslim students' cell phones when they forget to put them on silent before class. The Call to Prayer certainly adds a layer of mystique to the air for me. It's actually quite pretty.

A Short Story 6/29/14

Toward the end of our packing on the evening before our flight, Jena and I went to my parents' house for dinner. We ate a good meal—hamburgers and hotdogs grilled by my parents. We chatted, and Jena and I tried to forget the lingering duties we still needed to tend to at home before we left our apartment and the city where I have lived for the past six years.

In addition to this being our last homemade dinner in America, it was the night I had to say goodbye to Walter, our family dog. Walter joined the household nine or ten years ago. Legend has it that the pound picked him up near the dumpsters at Arby’s in Heber City, Utah. At the pound, he had a euthanasia date that the employees overlooked because of Walter’s charm and their belief that he would find a good home. (They hadn’t actually euthanized a dog in four years or so because the dogs there were consistently adopted out.) Thus, Walter, the biggest dog in the place, went home with my parents after they began volunteering as dog-walkers after Calvin had died.

Walter began his life with us in Utah, and has since made the move to Flagstaff. He enjoys a pleasant life, though recently he suffered an injury due to a mishap at the kennel while my parents were on a trip. As I'm told, the handler who was bringing Walter out of the back took an alternate route through a pen that he thought was empty. Yet, as it turned out, a dog was in the pen, and the dog attacked Walter. He tore his right ear in three places. One tear near the head, one at mid ear, and one at the end, which was so bad that Walter had to have the lower end of his ear removed.

Due to the injury, Walter has acquired a plastic opaque, white cone that fans out in at least a foot around his head. At times it reminds me of a lion's mane, an angel's halo, or a dollar store's cheaply made funnel. Walter is still working on understanding how much room he needs to allow for his cone when walking though doorways, turning corners, and brushing up against human legs. When he catches his cone, and it scrapes and flops loudly as it rebounds back against his face. Inside the cone, of course, is Walter’s bandaged head, and only one ear is visible. Extra furry skin is pushed forward by his wrappings such that from certain angles, he slightly resembles a chow. He is a lab.

To assist him with the recovery, I had been visiting Walter frequently. I have allowed him to press his head, cone included, into my chest as I kneel in front of him. I have thoroughly brushed his coat so that he’s not too hot while sleeping through medicated dreams. I have carefully dug my fingers under his bandages where he isn't injured and itched him enough to make his rear leg go. His spirits was more than willing, then, on the night of my last dinner with my family, to go for a short walk.

After dinner, we went to Buffalo Park in Flagstaff which is a vast meadow surrounded by low mountains. Walter and I have spent a plethora of time there together over our years in Arizona. When he was young and full of unceasing vim and vigor, I’d take him to the backside of the park and throw a tennis ball down the hill there. He would promptly retrieve the ball as if the act were the most critical responsibility concerning his existence. Other times, we walked across the park to the network of trails on the backside. During these walks, I read Moby Dick and trusted Walter to guide me like I was blind. Once, I remember we took a shortcut through the long grass of the meadow only to find it was peppered by small cacti that broke off in little sea urchin-esque balls with one-inch white needles. Walter’s every step resulted in injured paws, so I grabbed the eighty-five pound cur into my arms and carried him the rest of the way back to the parking lot.

Now that Walter is a bit older and slower, he still enjoys Buffalo Park by walking the two-mile loop on the dirt path on a leash. Like many dogs, he urinates, defecates, and sniffs nearly every blade of grass.

In the parking lot on this night in particular, Walter first ran his cone along a stone entryway wall sniffing vigorously. He scraped the thing against each of the trash cans, making a sound to rival a plastic sound. On the trail, he scooped up dirt as if his cone were a trowel each time he bent to the ground. The grass is long and dry at this point of the summer, before the monsoons.  It was the type that is replete with those seeds that get stuck in your socks if you so much as glance at them. It was this grass, though, that made us laugh. When Walter stopped to scrutinize clump after clump, both he and the grass disappeared momentarily, leaving only the body of a dog, a wagging tail, and a cone.

We enjoyed the first half of the walk. We joked that Walter’s cone gave him extreme focus to his sense of smell. It must have been like wearing a permanent pair of binoculars for one of us. I wondered about Walter’s sense of object permanence, whether his body had ceased to exist because he couldn’t see it. I imagined his head like the giant one in Zardoz that floats above the ground.

As the evening darkened with the waning light, Walter trailed behind. It was then that he suddenly began sneezing explosively. Not just one, two, or three times. Five must have come out in rapid succession by the time I got to him. In his nose I saw two short spines extended from his nostril. I reached in immediately and pulled on one of them with my fore fingernail and thumb before Walter cringed downward in another sneeze. The spine bent, thank god, so I suspected it was merely grass as opposed to a cactus spine. I certainly hadn’t pulled it out, though, and Walter continued to sneeze.

Before and during his sneezes, Walter’s good—or, rather, ear-ed side of his face—contracted, beginning at his brow and continuing down to his lower right jowl. His nose pulled rightward as well, and his head lifted for a moment as if the sensation would pass. And then the sneeze inevitably shot from his snout like a bullet from gun.

More motivated and aggressive, now, I reached into the cone and grabbed the top of Walter’s snout as my father held his body. His mouth was wet with saliva, and my ring finger slipped between his molars. As I went in with my left hand, to make another grab at the spine, a sneeze ran through Walter’s face, and he closed his jaw like a vice. When yanked my hand from the cone, my ring finger began to bleed profusely where the nail meets the skin. The digit still moved, however, so I supposed it wasn’t broken. Standing back for a moment, I watched my father continue to work with Walter, trying time after time to pull the grass seed from his nose.

Although my father was unable to remove the seed from Walter’s nose, Walter’s sneezing eventually began to slow as we walked back toward the car. His cone was now covered in mud from snot, saliva, and dirt. Jena had given me a tissue that I kept around my throbbing finger, and my mother tried to keep the conversation up, but a sobering silence descended upon us.

Back at home, my mother made us root beer floats while I cleaned my wound and my father cleaned Walter’s cone. We ate the root beer floats with Walter’s belabored breathing coming from the next room where he laid on the floor.

When it was time to leave, I realized quickly that I had no idea when I would see him again as Jena and I will be gone for at least a year. But the goodbye was surprisingly easy. I simply sat on top of him, and bent over to him a hug. Walter and I have a thousand memories together, and some of the most memorable have been the ones where one of us gets hurt. Tonight it was both of us—him with the sneezing and me with the bruised and bleeding finger. There was comfort in the mutual discomfort.

I will miss Walter, but there I have no doubt that my parents will continue to tend to him well. In the car on the way to the airport the next morning, my mother asked if she could send us anything via email that would help to mitigate homesickness. Immediately, I suggested pictures of Walter.