That's Country Living Fer Ya!

So I went to New Paltz this week (no, not to get married) to teach a whole boatload of highschool freshmen the glories of DNA fingerprinting in a hands-on lab that generally tends to be a little more advanced than your average 9th grader. Except for a few minor disasters (a blown fuse and a few spilt samples) the lessons went well, in fact better than I'd expected.

But anyone who knows me knows that I can't go anywhere without having an Adventure. I honestly don't know where to start. The lady bugs? The aligator? The pillowcases? So I'll start at the beginning...

My colleagues (Brian and Deirdre) and I left the city on Tuesday night and it was then that we found out that the teacher arranging for our visit only booked us one room at this "Resort and Spa" in the Catskills. Right off the bat I am none too happy. We make the trek North well into the mountains. It's snowing. I'm not dressed for snow. It's dark. We can't see where we're going in the mountains. But somehow we make it. Pulling around a turn we see the hotel, a monolithic stone slab rising above the barren trees. With no lights on. At all. I'm a big fan of Kubrick so I know all the wonderful things that can happen when you're the only ones staying in a snowy mountain hotel off-season.

But we aren't staying in monolithic giant. We're staying in the cottages across the street. #10 to be exact. Don't worry, our instructions say, the door will be open and the keys will be on the table. Uh-huh. That's country living for you.

Yet it was true. The keys were on the table. And the place didn't look so bad. Two beds in the bedroom and fold-out couch in the living room. That's liveable. Brian and I decide to take the bedroom so Deirdre can have the living room to herself.

Now, "country living" apparently not only means leaving doors open and keys on tables, but also that maids simply need to pile sheets and blankets in the vicinity of the bed as opposed to actually making them. But first I decide to get rid of the lady bug crawling over the bare mattress. Apparently lady bugs are a problem in the New Paltz area, as evidenced by the random reddish, bug-sized smears that dot the walls. Oh, yeah, and by the infestation crawling around the window.

But it's fine. Cuz we're finally there and we have sheets. But no pillowcases. Deirdre, who has been going through her pile of sheets, calls into the bedroom. "Hey guys, I have a few extra pillowcases here," she says. "How many?" I ask. She answers four. Wait, five. No, six. She continues to peel pillowcases off of the top of her stack of sheets in the living room. Seven, eight, twelve, sixteen. Thirty-five pillowcases later she is faced with a bare table. Damn you, Resort and Spa gods! You have fooled us with your sheet stack shaped pillowcases! If only we'd had a needle and some thread we might have been able to make Deirdre some sheets.

Perhaps, I suggest, we should call the hotel office. Surely they can help us. I find the number on one of our e-mail communications with our hostess, which I'd left in the car so I have to run out in my pajamas, in the snow, to get it. Not that having the number actually helps because the phone is dead. And you'd think that with three different cell phones with three different service providers, at least one of us would have service. Ha! Fooled you again, you silly New Yorkers!

As we lament our situation, I find out a brand new definition of "country living": the country has no need for those little bars of soap and shampoo bottles we city-folk are used to in our "fancy" hotels. Jeez, you want the beds made and be able to not lug your entire bathroom with you? Eventually we find an nearly empty bottle of Suave coconut shampoo under the sink so at least we'll wreak of something other than sweat when we go out in the morning.

After a rather unpleasant, uncomfortable and sheetless sleep, we make our way to the highschool, stopping at a deli for breakfast on the way. Apparently "country living" also means crappy coffee and no comprehension of the word bagel. But now I'm just bitching, probably because I had to wash my armpits with shampoo.

The school is a typically suburban/rural highschool, 96% white. The students are poster children for Abercrombie and Billabong. And a lot more scantily clad then I remember when I was in highschool.

The science classrooms, however, are like zoos. Literally. The classroom I'm teaching in has a few rodents, some turtles, a couple fish and some snakes. Not to mention the skeletons and caracasses of approximately four thousand different species. Oh and let's not forget the rat with a tumor the size of a small grapefoot hanging from its neck.

Oh but the room across the hall! Now that was a zoo. I swear I am not making this up; this classroom had two parrots, two scorpians, a chinchilla, a moniter, an albino python, a boa constrictor and a full-sized caiman. A caiman! In a tank. In a classroom! Ah, country living... I wanted to feed the diseased rat to the python but they wouldn't let me.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Our hostess took showed us her two hunderd year old house and her dog that apparently came with it. The area itself was gorgeous and reminded me a lot of Hanover and its environs. It was nice to get out of the city for a little while, but when you're the only customers in a restaurant and it takes them twenty minutes to make four sandwiches or when you find out the reason you can't get cell phone service is because no one wants those "ugly towers" to go up in their precious valley, it's time to go back to civilization.

Well, as they say, that's countyr living fer ya.....