Travel Problems

While my hope is that this kind of post won't occur too often, experience tells me that there will be problems now and then throughout this year of travel.

Last night, after I posted, Mara, Justin and I went out for dinner to a Korean barbeque place they'd been to before. Our communication skills once again failed us when we asked for the beef meal and the waiter insisted that they had only pork. Their last meal there, Mara and Justin had had a beef meal, but we finally stopped trying to convince them and agreed to pork. Not ten minutes later, the waiter brought out two fried pork dishes, covered in a white sauce. I spoke up and insisted that's not what we ordered, and the waiter brought over the owner, who spoke a little English. We finally successfully conveyed that we wanted the barbeque meal with beef and they stared at us, shocked. They pointed to our fried pork dishes and nodded, and we shook our heads no. They frowned.

Finally, they took the fried pork away and got us the beef barbeque. The original waiter informed us, kindly, of the words we should use when we wanted to order barbeque. It sounded like "colby" and so now we know!

The communication barrier is one I know I'll run into often, since I don't know much more than a smattering of Spanish, even less Hebrew, along with English.

The other problem, however, I need to find a solution for. For those who don't wanna know all my personal business, you can stop reading here.

The other problem is this: chafing. I chafe and once it starts, it gets worse really fast. When I wear skirts or loose shorts, I tend to chafe my thights. I've found a semi-solution for this, which involves putting deodorant on my thighs, oddly enough. Vaseline or baby powder doesn't work for me, but deodorant does. My other chafing problem happens further up, along the panty line, and I haven't found a solutin for this. It occurs anytime I sweat through my clothes and walk a lot, which I anticipate will happen quite often on this trip. Baby powder soothes after the fact, but I haven't figured out a way to prevent it yet.

Some ideas I have:
1. Go without underwear, as it's the edge of the underwear that causes the chafing.
2. Bring an extra pair of underwear with me and change halfway through the day, to keep things dry.
3. (Mara's suggestion) Wear moleskin in the trouble spots.

Number three isn't gonna work: ouch! But perhaps one of the first two, or a combination of them. Anyone out there have any suggestions? Any preventive measures a girl can take?

The reason I write about this today is because I chafed awfully yesterday. By the time we left dinner, I could only waddle and even that was painful. We ended up taking a cab home to spare me the agony. This morning, there are still angry red lines and I've yet to put on underwear (don't worry, I'm in my pajamas). I've baby-powdered and aired out - how do you like that visual - but I'm still not quite prepared to tackle a day of walking around a lot.

Anyone out there have a solution for me?!

--Z