How Inappropriate

It is someone's birthday party, and we wander in from the streets to a darkened room. Before a get much of a chance to look around, Kathryn exclaims, "I know, let's go swimming!" I think, "Great!" and when I turn around, everyone has started to climb into the bathtubs of varying shapes and sizes that line one wall, on tiers. Kathryn has taken off her pants already (and is wearing some modest black briefs underneath), and climbed into the highest tub already. I look around and everyone else has started climbing into the remaining tubs, still clothed. Groggily, I stand there wondering what to do, and it finally hits me that everyone is going to have to take off all of their clothes eventually. I go, "No... no, this is really inappropriate..." trying to remember what underwear I am wearing.
A boy about fifteen years old catches my eye as he passes by. I start up a conversation, trying to avoid seeing all of my friends taking off their clothes. Then I find myself kissing the boy. (AGH! How disturbing is that.) When I look over to the bathtubs everyone has fallen conveniently asleep. Then we fall asleep on the floor.
When the boy and I wake up, everyone else is still alseep, so he whispers to me that we should go get coffee at a cafe he knows of in the Faubourg something-or-other, just around the cover. This doesn't make sense to me because we are on the Ile-St.-Louis, and I thought all the Faubourgs were on the west edge of Paris. He gives me directions and I start to follow them. For some reason he does not come with.
I am surprised when the directions he gave me lead to real places, because all of the street names were Italian. Eventually I come out on top of Montmartre (this does not make sense, given the direction I was travelling), into a cirlular place (une place, not a place) with a large sculpture in the center that I have never seen before. It is covered with black grime, but I can tell that it was carved from bright white stone. As I get closer, I get the chilling sense that it represents something terrible.

Art

Kathryn and I board a spiral contraption sitting on the surface of a river. It is dull red cylinder enclosing a spiral staircase that descends into the interior of the contraption. There are other people inside who come up and crowd the staircase as we try to get on. Then it twists down into the water. I expect water to come pouring in from above, but when you cannot see the sky, the water cannot get to you.
The machine transports us down the river a ways, then reemerges. I climb to the top and make some remarks. Then it descends again.

Later, in the modern art museum I surprise a man after a suspended look and kiss his behind a glass wall. I am surprised that I did not notice his unshaven face in the seconds before, and he is a terrible kisser.

Global Warming

I am on vacation with my family and the Kolpacks. We stop and park our van behind a cedar-shingled house and one-by-one go inside. I think it must be a gift shop, because there are lots of distracting object hanging down at eye-level, making me repeatedly forget what my goal is.
Eventually I make it back out to the van, and now my mother is impatient because we are going to be late for Christmas. I remember that the reason I went in was to retrieve her.
We make it home in time, but I get impatient waiting for Christmas to get there, and all I want to do in the meantime is take a nap, but the door to the spare bedroom will not close.
I end up in the basement, sitting at a circular table next to the piano. Kris and a girl that resembles Beth, Sarah, and Deb from Napoleon Dynamite all at once sit across from me. We are having a conversation about my plans to rent a house with Kris and some roommates. We are all giddy. He is saying, "I just don't know why we have to live there as separate couples."
"What do you mean." I say.
"Well why couldn't we exist as one relationship? Because I love you-" At this point he leans across the table to kiss me, but I'm starting to feel less giddy."And there's no reason for you to be jealous, and I love her too."
"So what then, Kris? All I need to do is love her-"
"No!" he cuts in, as if that is the silliest thing, but what he is suggesting is not. "You just have to be okay with us. Look!" And he kisses her shiny pink gloss-coated lips tenderly. She giggles.
My reaction is the thought "Do it again". I'm not sure if this is because I don't know yet if I feel jealous; or if I mean it as a threat. He's watching my face, I'm watching her shiny pink lips. "Do it again, Kris." This time it's sounding more like a threat, but I almost say it as a request, when he leans in and kisses her again anyway.
I feel it physically that time, as if I'm swallowing vomit and getting the wind knocked out of me at the same time. I jump up, crying out, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else!" and run away.

Now I am in the Art building, room 301. I am collecting my things now that the quarter is over. There are a few grad students there, doing self portraits, and the model Robert, just taking a nap, not wearing clothes. Lucas from my class comes up to him and examines his face as he sleeps. Robert wakes up and asks if he needs anything. I feel bad and want to tell Lucas that now that the quarter is over he's not modeling for drawings anymore. Lucas says, "Man, I need to work on facial features." He shows Robert his point drawing, and it's very good, so I don't feel as bad.
Joel is over on the other side of the room, curled up on a couch reading. Remembering what just happened with Kris, I go over and say, "Joel, I wonder if maybe you can help me understand something." He says sure, and I begin repeating the conversation with Kris word for word. As I repeat it, I begin to realize that when I said, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else", that has and always will be true for me, no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise. I tell Joel and he nods, but then I wonder what "can't be in love" means. I'm still wondering that, actually.

I stand on a beach with many of my friends, I think it is graduation. I am skipping stones. Then: some powerful figure ( possible my geology prof) has declared that there is no possible way to stop Global Warming. I watch that shoreline and think, "Well then if we can't stop it, why can't we at least stop it from dragging out so long and get it over with? We could all use a little adventure."
The air warms, the alpine glaciers melt, and the sea lazily rises. We all skip up to the parking lot where are two orange VW camper vans are waiting for us, ready to transform into houseboats. The water is rising more quickly now, and we all pile on top of the vans. Matt gets annoyed with Kellen or something and decides he doesn't want to be a part of our van, so he jumps off, but I grab him before he can float away, because we had a deal: I need him to tend to the sails.
We've got quite an assortment my friends on the boat. No one over twenty, all vaguely acquainted. When the water stops rising we float around, observing the new landscape. No one knows who exactly survived, if our families survived.
Some people who formerly lived on a cliff in Normandy park now have a volleyball net set up where people on jet skis joyfully play a game in the "yard". Even though there is a potential for tragedy, starvation, and suffering, everyone shares the air of giddiness, and we soon discover that oral sex is actually the best way of sustaining ourselves. No, really.

Goat Car and Another 'Semireal Unfortunate Scenario' Dream

My brother is taking me out to Burien to get lunch with one of his friends. To get there we take a route down Ambaum, and when we get to the Baskin & Robins, which is a shady taco joint in the dream, we must take the most direct route through it before the owners get back. We walk briskly through the seating area and into the dirty back room, which is tiny and triangular, but with high ceilings. The only way out is through the small drive-thru window, which is very high up on the wall. Nick's friend goes first, then Nick, and finally I crawl through, contemplating Rikyu and the humbleness-inducing crawl-through entrances to his tea houses.

When I emerge, Nick and friend are nowhere in sight, but I am almost bowled over when a booming "EH-EH-EH-EH!" echoes through the neighborhood, and a giant old station wagon decorated as a goat barrels down the hill sans driver. It drives past me and turns to go up the next hill, periodically making goat noises. As I look around an obese black man steps out from behind some bushes on Kathryn's old street with a jolly chuckle. He clutches a crudely made remote control with a joystick, and tells me, "It gets 'em every time, and the fun never wears off!" My shock wears off and I laugh with pleasure at the man's joke. Nick and friend emerge from around the corner the goat wagon just passed, exclaiming at the genius of the social experiment.

The man directs the goat wagon over to us and parks it, and we all drink glasses of milk from the roof of the car. The man says he can't stand that watery milk, he needs something of more substance, and pulls out a carton of heavy cream. I jump up and pour it into a cup for him, but then he pulls out a stick of butter from his pocket to mix in. I stir the milk, now more than a little revolted, and wonder about the moral implications of serving pure fat to an obese man.


I am on vacation with Kris and his entire family, including the cousin I haven't met. His sister wants to go for a bike ride, but no one else is ready to leave yet. I don't plan on going, so while she is waiting she asks me questions about school, and then Julie says something that implies Mali was an art history major. Then she pulls out an envelope that supposedly includes her final grades, but the name on the envelope is not Mali, but an alternative spelling of the name Rebecca. I say, "Wow, I'm really embarrassed now, but I honestly thought your name was Mali and you majored in something like archeology or classics."

Then suddenly Kris comes up and says, "I want to get back together" and starts kissing me before I can get a word in. I find myself kissing him back, and realizing how wrong that is I halfheartedly try to get him to stop, mumbling his name. After about a minute of this I start to wonder why he hasn't stopped kissing me, so I say louder, "Stop! ...Beth!" Woah, wait, have I been saying everyone else's name but Kris' this whole time? "Why.. did I ...just say ...Beth's name?" I ask. "I mean... Stop! Kris!" Finally he pauses and I struggle to find words. I say something stupid like, "There's absolutely no reason I should allow this" and then trail off, wondering what I'm trying to say.
Kris is very persistent, not by saying much (other than "I want to get back together..."), but we still end up on the ground. While I know Kris doesn't actually want to start a relationship again (and neither do I) I don't have the energy to call him out on it, or the will to make him stop kissing me and END ALL INTERACTIONS IMMEDIATELY type of thing, so I decide to go along with it for the moment. I tell Kris that's fine, and get up to get breakfast, while he goes off to take a shower.

In the kitchen, I contemplate the English muffins, more than a little pissed. In the bag there is one half of a muffin, on top of the last whole muffin. I decide I want a whole muffin, so I take it out and cut it in half. This is when I notice that there is also half a muffin sitting at the bottom of the bag and I could have taken that and not cut up the last whole muffin.
That pushes me over the edge. As I stand there staring at the muffins with a knife in my hand, getting angrier, I decide Kris needs a taste of his own medicine, and if he's going to pretend he wants to be in a relationship with me, he's going to have to live up to the responsibilities. I am disturbed from my thoughts when his mother comes up and asks me if I've seen him recently, and I say I think he's in the shower. She asks if I will go tell him she wants to talk to him, and I say yes, quickly forming a plan in my head.
It goes something like this: If Kris wants to get intimate under the false pretense of wanting a relationship, things are going to get real intimate- and real inconvenient too, as goes with the responsibility of a relationship, right?

So I march down to the basement, planning on barging in on his shower time and demanding intimacy, but when I get down there, I can't barge in because the door to the bathroom, and the shower for that matter, are wide open. I am caught off guard, so when I get to the bathroom door, I stop and say, "Hey Kris."
And he says normally, "Hey. What's up?"
I'm feeling comfortable and say, "Not much."
"Really?" he says, kneeling down in the shower, as if posing for a gesture drawing. I am about to respond when I see he has some serious bruises on his legs.
"Yeah, hey- what are those bruises on your legs?" He looks down and examines them. "-If you don't mind my asking-" He looks at me and opens his mouth, and I can tell he could answer me if he wanted to, but instead he's about to tell me something completely different, and be open and honest for once. I know that as soon as he says this thing I am going to be able to talk to him about knowing he doesn't really want a relationship but being ok with that as long as he's honest; and we will be able to talk about what we really want without saying anything wrong.
But just then his mom comes up behind me. I didn't realize she had followed me down there, and so I quickly say, "Oh yeah, and I just wanted to tell you your mom wants to talk to you," and leave.

Sudden Decisions

On the playground at Shorewood I discuss family with Matt. We decide we should create a new family, and wonder who else we should invite to join, but in the meantime we make out, because in the situation it was the right thing to do.

I go back to visit my original family; we are on a road trip headed west. We get off the ferry and my mom drives us over a bridge and along a road winding up the side of a mountain. She decides we should make our new home up among the boulders on the mountain, so we all climb over the treacherous rocks and settle ourselves along a ledge. Then I notice my grandma is with us, and feel annoyed that my mom chose such an inaccessible spot to live, but she explains that grandma won't ever be leaving anyway.

I browse through a small store on the Ave. The walls are covered with jewelry of varying degrees of quality; they seem to improve as I move towards the back of the store. I stop to admire a silver pin, and as a do so my beau comes up behind me and remind me that I need to pick out something for him to buy for me (at this point my semi-conscious mind cringes). I carelessly pick out a diamond-encrusted necklace- my beau seems pleased (CRINGE). I turn around to the racks of plastic jewelry and then walk up to the front of the store. As I am about to leave I remember I need to buy a pack of cigarettes, although I have never smoked.
I make my way along the same wall that was previously covered with jewelry, now examining the different brands of cigarettes. Again, they seem to improve as I move towards the back wall, but after a certain point they are all the same brand, only with different art nouveau covers, like collectible cards. I wonder if there is any difference between the beetle pack and the daisy pack.

Famous Figures

The flashlight with no batteries works.

I make out with Michelangelo/Chewbacca in a secret cupboard in the basement of the house where I live.

I am recruited by Laura to be part of a new fashion show. I learn at the rehearsal at Burien Dance Theatre that it is a modern dance fashion show, and my theme is "happy". The first time through I am really bummed to have such a stupid theme and dance rather poorly, but afterwards I realize the awesome possibilities of the show.

I go outside to sit down with my dad on the curb by a huge solid blue fence, which is about fifty feet high, enclosing a large portion of the street. Water splashes over the top, which I conclude must be from the waterslide on the other side, and this is the Burien February Carnival. Anna walks by and asks what I am doing in Burien, but listens uninterestedly as I tell her about the improvisational modern dance fashion show.

I go back inside for the second rehearsal of the day, and this time feel really connected. The musicians seem rather impressed and the stage hands send out the other dancers. They are all breakdancing men. Feathers fall from te ceiling near the end of the number and inspire me to try to fly again. I can't believe I almost forgot that I fly.

After rehearsal I ride the 125 through Shorewood with Kathryn. It is almost Christmas and I haven't done nearly enough shopping, so I stay on the motionless bus for a long time, hoping it will go back downtown. It is a very sunny December. In fact is is alot more like June. Kathryn informs me that my mother has decided that when my lease is up in Fremont at the end of February, I will move in with her family because I will be less likely to catch the bus in the morning. This is a terrible solution, and I get off the bus and walk back and forth, east to west along some streets in Arbor Heights, trying to see which one will lead to Roxhill Park, where my mom is walking the dog. Teenagers look at me strangely as a pace the street.

At the park I worry about getting my shoes muddy wading through the swamp, but they have fixed that. I catch up to my mom, who walks hurriedly in the direction I just came from. A group of young Latino boys in purple jerseys plays soccer nearby, and when the ball comes in our direction my mom kicks it back to them neatly.

Back in Shorewood my parents have a Chelan condo, which my mother shows to the Kolpacks, who will be staying with us. I show a friend the coat closet, and then switch into narration mode. I am Chrissy, the youngest child, who can't help but dance, regardless of the consequences. I come out of the closet dancing to some really good indie pop, and meet my dance partner in the living room. This is another part of rehearsal for the fashion/dance show. My partner is in his twenties, and I wonder about the implications of dancing like this with an older man, but in the true character Chrissy, I feel compelled to keep dancing (plus he's really good).

When we are through with the rehearsal the man mentions that he was supposed to enter into a simulation like the one I had with Michelangelo/Chewbacca, and that other one with Descartes, only in his he is supposed to be Nicole Kidman's husband. Subconsciously I am aware the Nicole Kidman's husband is Daniel Craig, and I try to tell the man it will not work, because I'm fairly sure he's already a movie star, and I don't think movie stars are allowed to participate in simulations of movie stars.

He doesn't think it matters, and, determined to complete his assignment, begins the simulation anyway. I am supposed to supervise, but I have trouble telling which man sitting at a nearby table in the smoke-filled club is my dance partner and which men are part of the simulation, because they are all incredibly handsome and masculine-looking, and they are all making kissy faces at Nicole Kidman, who is sitting at the table across the way.

I notice the band playing on stage, and get really excited when I recognize the profile Count Basie at the piano. I think about this a bit, and decide that it can't really be Count Basie, but some lookalike they hired for the simulation. It dawns on me that Nicole Kidman isn't really Nicole Kidman either.

I never believed in an afterlife

I sit in front of the coffee table preparing rootbeer floats with my dad for Doan's birthday party. First I have trouble finding glasses. We have pint-glasses, but then all I can find in my grandma's dishwasher are like giant martini glasses with no stems. We use these anyway. Then, the only ice cream we have is Godiva chocolate raspberry truffle. I am not convinced this will make the best tasting rootbeer float, but my dad starts scooping anyway because it's melting. Then, I start slicing orange poppyseed bread from work to put in there as well, because we have to use it before it gets stale. Finally, we run out of ice cream entirely, so I head up to Kathryn's to borrow some from her.

As I pass by Shorewood, I pause by the basketball courts to rest. It is starting to get dark. As is sit there, a shadowy figure crosses the field and steps up to the fence by te sidewalk with a vendor's tray and a ziplock sack. He whispers to the nonexistent passersby the goods he is selling, which include candy such as pixie stix and cocaine. I start to worry that if he notices me he will think I intend to tell the police and maybe kidnap me or something. I decide to try and continue on indiscreetly.

I slowly start tiptoeing down the hill towards Kathryn's house. When I start walking more normally I hear footsteps, but i can't tell if they're mine or the drug dealer's. I walk faster and the footsteps get louder. Finally, as I turn the corner, practically running, I turn halfway around and say,"Can I help you with something?" to the guy, but keep walking at a slower pace. He is probably younger than me, but is seriously tough-looking with cornrows, a black bandadna, and I think a gun as well.

To my surprise he asks me some totally innocent question that I don't know the answer to. We're still walking towards Kathryn's but it is so dark now that I am completely blind. The drug dealer, on the other hand, is completely fine (because those drug dealers, you know, they have night vision). I stumble and grab his hand, and he guides me the rest of the way to Kathryn's house. By the time we get there he's really friendly, which makes me really uncomfortable, but when he reaches out to hug me goodbye I comply because he has a gun. Then he kisses me twice on the lips, and once on the neck as I take his arms off me and turn away.

He stands in the driveway for a few moments to make sure he's brought me to the right house, and finally leaves. I walk up to Kathryn's basement window, looking to see if anyone is up before I knock on the door, since it's 3:30 AM. Then i figure, if it really is 3:30 AM it would probably worse to be spotted suspiciously looking in windows. Then I realize that none of this is relevant because it's actually 8:30 PM and I knock on the door.

Kathryn's dad answers and lets me in the front door, but leaves me enclosed on the landing behind a waist-high gate. I wonder if it would be rude to just step over this small gate. Kahtyrn comes upstairs before I can finish wondering and lets me through. I turn to her and say, "Kathryn, you won. You know what this means, right?" She nods and says, "Yes, and I haven't changed my mind either. I want you to have it all." It is understood that Kathryn has won a huge sum of money, and she cannot accept it for moral reasons, but she wants me to have it because I will do the right thing. I'm not entirely sure Kathryn has the right idea, but I don't argue, because, as I tell Kathryn, "Aaron, Holly, and Sally are already on their way." She nods and I turn around to lock the door. I get the gate locked, then try to lock the door, but can't reach it. Instead of stepping over the gate again I unlock the gate, lock the front door, and the relock the gate. Aaron Smith is already in the driveway, and he will claim he prize for his own religious purposes if I do not get to the prize office with the official scroll. Kathryn tells me we can escape through one of the barbershops on the east side of her house. She leads me through a hallway, and I start to ask her again if she is sure of the decision,when we enter the kitchen and I finally look around her house. It is a wreck. All the furniture is broken, the applicances are all gone, the linoleum floor has been ripped out, and everything is covered in filth. Kathryn and her family have been living in poverty, and I didn't even realize it because I hadn't seen them in so long. I tell her, "Kathryn, you know you have to take some of this money, right?" She nods and leads me further back into the house.

By now Aaron is in the front door, and working his way past the gate. I open a door and see room with a window leading outside, so I go inside. Kathryn says, "No! That's Robert's bedroom! You have to go through one of the barbershops!" But I'm already halfway out the small window. Kathryn soon emerges outside from a room next door. Aaron is coming down the hallway, has almost found us, so we toss the scroll I had been carrying into the bushes and rush across the street. There is a giant cedar tree in the neighbor's yard, so I leap up, seize the end of a branch, and swing into the tree, pulling Kathryn up with me. Just then, Sally and Holly pull into Kathryn's driveway as Aaron comes out through a window. He tells them, "No sign, but there's still time." As Sally and Holly respond, I swing unnoticed over their heads on a particularly springy branch and pick the scroll out of the bushes. As I fling myself back over to the branch next to Kathryn, Devin walks down the street and informs me that the party will not take place until next weekend, because Kellen and Doan are both out of town. Sitting next to Kathryn on the branch, I unroll the scroll to see that it has already alotted Kathryn her share, appropriate for buying a new house and repaying er family's debts: $119,000,000.00. I don't remember the exact amount of my share, but it was something like $439,500,000.00. I ask where Kathryn thinks her family will live now, and she points across the street to a house like a grey cement wedding cake and says, "Well the neighbors have a nice house for sale." I try to confirm that I will perform the appropriate deed with her money, but I can't remember what it is.

Next we are standing in a room I have never been inside before in the care home where my grandma last lived. I am crying, and when Kathryn asks what's wrong, I say, "She had a stroke. She was supposed to be dead, but she had a stroke." Two nurses with a defibrillator move away from the bed, and reveal my grandma laying there. My dad is nearby and the rest of my family is around somewhere. I am hysterical. "Where have they been keeping her since she died?! What have they done to her?!" My dad looks a little hurt, but then gives me a small, understanding smile, which I do not return, and gets up and leaves.

My grandmother rolls over, gets out of bed, and puts on her robe. She walks out of the room, past my brother in the hallway, to a nearby kitchen. There she turns on the stove and bustles about, making breakfast. Apparently a few months dead have cured her of Parkinson's. I'm standing there next to Kathryn, who looks at me questioningly, and Nick, who is calm. I ask him if he knows what is going on, and he just shrugs. My grandma hums to herself and flips a fried egg of the griddle. Then she serves a scrambled eggs to my dad, and a poached egg to my mom. Then it looks like she's trying to flip another egg, but has trouble. She turns around, glancing at me briefly and saying, "Look at me, I can't even make a proper grilled egg for you." I realize that she has made each member of my family our favorite type of egg. She pries open a waffle iron to reveal that my egg of choice is a waffle-egg. I start crying.

Now my mother is taking our entire family and many friends on vacation to Gig Harbor. We paddle up to the floating dock at the marina in our tiny rowboat and hop off. I have the directions and lead the way to our motel. To get there we go up to the street first, which looks like Pac Highway, where there is a strip club across the steet with huge plate windows. However, all we can see from the outside are sleezy men sitting in chairs. The dancers, it seems, are encased in mirrored columns. I assume they are the two-way mirrors, (which doesn't make sense, because then the dancers would be seeing out and the viewers wouldn't be able to see in.)
I puzzle over how that works and continue leading the way to our motel. The directions lead us out onto another floating dock, with components that look like a combination between a giant put-put golf course and a playground castle. This is the motel. "Thanks, mom," I say sarcastically. "Another great choice. This one is right up there with Hotel Diva". As we reach the end of the dock, we meet the manager, who is the grandpa who died when I was 5. To get into the hotel we have to climb over the tiny castle rooftops and through an opening.

At this point our mission becomes clear. My grandpa has been holding my grandma captive, under heavy sleeping pills, but we can wake her up and must take her away. My mom and dad distract my grandpa while Laura and I make our way to the bedroom. There we each kiss my grandma on the forehead, like we did when we said goodbye for the last time. Her eyelids flutter, and she opens her eyes and smiles, in a very Sleeping Beauty-esque fashion. She gets out of bed, and puts on her dressing gown, very similar to before, but now she is much younger, probably in her forties. She begins to feel like our mother; I think Laura becomes Aunt Vicki and I become Aunt Anne. In any case, we are in a hurry to get away, but not because grandpa might find out she's missing. Now we just have to make the next ferry from Bremerton to Seattle. I run down to the dock where my brother has my grandpa's old rowboat ready, with my sister's friends Michelle and Modessa inside, and My mom has some kind of small barge, and a tiny one-person floating pod ready. I want to ride with my grandma, but my brother tells me that to balance the weight out, Laura and I must go in his boat and our grandma will go with my mom.

I get in the boat last, and am surprised when I step up to my knees in opaque black water. Nick says the boat works fine like this and tells me to sit down. Now I am up to my waist in black water, getting ready for a long boat ride, but when Nick starts rowing, the boat submerges, and becomes an unenclosed submarine. There is a window in the bottom, and I watch several clumsily-drawn silhouettes of manta rays swim underneath. I want to make a joke to my mom about manta rays being "strictly underwater", but she is too far behind. Then a clumsily drawn silhouette of a shark swims underneath. I point it out to my sister, and she makes a remark about what a shame it is that we're no longer able to make art projects like that. The view under the boat becomes thumbtacked to the wall as a watercolor painting that one of us had painted at grandma's house years ago. The shapes of sea creatures are still moving, and I see another shark coming closer. It opens its mouth to reveal messy, but sharp white teeth and almost eats me.

We quickly surface and enter the Bremerton ferry terminal, which is organized like an airport, and decorated with giant wreaths with purple bows. I direct my mom and dad through the food court, where everybody from our group picks something to put on our tray. We end up with Vietnamese-Mexican-Greek food, among which I am proud to point out to Kris' cousin Clayton is my family's own homemade hummus.