Some Pics from the weekend

Here is our dinner being cooked:

We just bought a new pan today at the grocery store to replace the crusty scratched up dented one we were using.
Here is our completed first home-cooked meal:

That's canned mixed vegetables, chicken, potatoes, and an orange.

To Rabinal and back again (very long post)

*UPDATE: Did I mention that Hannah and I had a run-in with a tarantula in our room in Antigua? Yeah. Hannah hyperventilated while I caught it in a Pollo Campero paper drink cup and took it outside. We were both extremely jumpy for the next several hours.


Hello again! It's been several days since I had access to my laptop since I left it in the Habitat office for safekeeping while Hannah and I were off on our first build team excursions. Let's see what I can remember from the past week:

We spent Friday in the office getting orientations on Habitat work.

We met some other Habitat workers.

My allergies were really bad, but they're getting better as I get better at finding food to eat. The thing is, traditional Guatemalan food (i.e., beans, rice, corn tortillas, meat, fruit, the occasional vegetable) is almost entirely edible to me, but a lot of places serve wheat/milk/sugar-filled American food. But I am getting better, I'll be fine. I have a lot of supermarkets to choose from.

On Saturday Hannah and I were dropped off at the Oakland Mall, which is ENORMOUS. We wandered around and glanced into high-end American and European stores. Everything is high-tech and shiny. Overwhelmed, we had lunch in the food court and watched a World Cup match.

At 7:00 pm Saturday evening Luis dropped us off at the airport to meet up with Lauren and Kristen, two Habitat field coordinators, and wait with them for several flights to come in containing Habitat build teams from the US. Hannah and I waved Habitat signs as our groups trickled out of the airport, dazed and confused.

Hannah went with Kristen and I went with Lauren and their respective build teams.
My group went to Hotel Aeropuerto to spend the night. The next morning we took two private buses (my group contained 17 people, plus Lauren and I) approximately four hours away through valleys and over mountains on windy roads to the town of Rabinal.

My build team happened to be from Seattle, with a few people from Portland, which was great. I even got to chat with some of them about this year's Northwest Folklife Festival! My team was also led by an older woman with a lot of Habitat experience. She used to be a clown, apparently, so today (they are still in Rabinal) I am missing a carnival put on my her and the other team members. The team is varied in age, a few 14-16-year-olds, some middle-aged parents, and some grandparents. I love hearing all their stories, they are a great team and I plan on attending the goodbye dinner in Antigua this Saturday.

My beloved G9 camera seems to be shorting out somewhere between the lense and the screen, so I can see photos after they're taken in the preview, but I can't see what I'm pointing the camera at or how focused it is or anything :( I do have a viewfinder, but it's not very accurate. Help!

The road to Rabinal was ridiculously scenic, mountains and deserts and forests (Pine trees! Pine trees!) with lots of brahma cows, horses, mules, donkeys, black-headed vultures, and dogs, all in varying degrees of health.


Lauren and I stayed with the team in Rabinal from Saturday until Wednesday morning.
We all had Breakfasts at 6:00 am and Dinner around 6 or 7 pm every day at a restaurant called Angello's, and the restaurant spoiled us by bringing us hot lunches (chicken, rice and beans, tortillas, mangoes, and limeade) to the work sites every day (Apparently most build teams usually receive only crappy white-bread-and-some-jelly sandwiches for lunch) by motorcycle.

On Saturday evening at dinner we all gathered together for a welcoming ceremony with the team and the two families were were going to be building with/for. It was a little awkward but we had lots of eager Spanish-speakers and semi-speakers among us so apparently it went much better than it often does.

I went to both work sites, one on Monday and the other on Tuesday.

The first work site was about a kilometer away, so we walked. It was way out at the edge of town, and all day we were avoiding being run over by brahma bull-drawn wooden carts (EPIC!!!) hauling sand from the river into town to be sold. There were also a lot of little floppy-eared gray pigs, mules also drawing carts containing people and materials (Sometimes reeds, sometimes firewood), horses carrying people around town, and dogs.

I have divided dogs here into several categories: recognizable breed, mostly recognizable mixed breed, totally unrecognizable, Yellow Dog. I like the Yellow Dogs.
Some dogs here are pets, many are guard dogs, and way too many are starving, beaten strays. Not many cats.

People on bicycles and motorcycles also passed by a lot (we were on an unpaved, muddy road) as well as a few tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled golf cart things used as taxis.

At this work site I also saw a small tarantula (caught in a jar by some kids) and a rattle snake (being caught in a sack by adults, to be killed and used as medicine).

The second work site I went to on Tuesday was slightly less than a kilometer away in the opposite direction. Tuesday was much hotter than the day before, and I pinkified slightly but today it has just turned to tan.
There were a bunch of ducks at this site, all busy eating fallen mangoes and stalking flies like cats... except they're ducks, so it was hilarious.
There were also a lot of really crazy bugs on the trees at this site, I saw two very large well-camouflaged spiders that hardly moved all day and dozens of black-and-yellow ladybug-like beetles in various stages of their life cycle.

Some team members took to calling me Plant Girl. It's that obvious, apparently. Unfortunately, I know little to nothing about Guatemalan plants, so while I speculate much I have very little actual information and if anybody has a good book to recommend to me, please do so!


I worked hard at both sites, if I do say so myself, and I got really good at whipping out 20-foot-long rebar towers. I have the blisters to prove it.


Wednesday was Lauren's 25th birthday and the evening before our team surprised her with cake and ice cream, and in the morning, fireworks.
Last night Hannah and I stayed at another Habitat worker's very nice place in Antigua, and we had dinner and then went to a bar with a really great Cuban salsa band.


Right now, I'm back in the Habitat office in Guatemala City, utilizing the internet while I have nothing in particular to do.

I'm alive! We made it!

Yesterday morning Hannah and I took off out of PDX, on our way to Houston, Texas. Then an elderly gentleman fainted and appeared to be having a stroke, so our plane was turned around and we landed again in Portland. An hour later we were up in the air again, and four hours later we landed in Texas and had to book it across the airport to reach our gate in time, which we did, barely.
Three hours after that we landed in Guatemala, exhausted/excited. The owner of the hostel rooms we are renting and his adult son picked us up outside the airport, gave us a quick tour of the area and repeated several times the location of our apartment. They are very friendly and helpful.
Last night was a little rough. The hostel is right under the flightpath of huge jets into the airport, and we are only a few blocks away, so the planes are RIGHT OVERHEAD. The first time one roared over, Hannah and I both woke up startled. We woke up the next seven or eight times, too, but slightly less startled. Good thing we brought enough earplugs to choke a horse. I mean, if a horse would eat an earplug.
This morning our alarms went off at 7:30 but we snoozed until at least 8. I got up and took a shower with the amazing, if sporadic, hot water! We do need to purchase some toilet paper, however.
The hostel owner drove us the six blocks to the Habitat office at 9:00, showing us how we would be able to walk there on our own. It's sunny with some clouds here, 70s as far as heat, and large parts of the city seem to smell like food.
Hannah and I were introduced to everybody in the office. We got online as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Then we were hungry and we were accompanied to a nearby supermarket to find breakfast.
I'm going to be allergic to Guatemala until I figure out where to find food I can eat: for breakfast I had dry corn flakes and some peach juice, both of which contained sugar and the former contained some form of wheat. Oh well. I brought lots of allergy meds, and they are also readily available here. I won't die, I just won't be able to breathe so well for a while.
Now we're back at the office, bloggin' away. Here's Hannah's side of the story: You should check it out!

On the Road Again!!

My flight to Guatemala starts tomorrow morning.

This blog will be where I post photos and stories of my best friend and I's new adventure: She and I will be living together, renting an apartment (Actually, some hotel rooms) for one year while we work for Habitat for Humanity/Global Village.

She is in charge of this blog, which will also have news of our time in Guatemala.

Hurrah! ^_^

Today's Discoveries 2: INPUT

What I do instead of homework:

E-Primitive: The comments are perhaps worth more than the original post.

Animism.


God is not a noun in native America.
God is a verb.

Jason Godesky: This person does interesting things.


Dialogues Between Western and Indigenous Scientists.

Inedia: odd shit.

and

Language attrition.

Today's Discoveries

This morning I've been waiting for my friend to pick me up so we can go get ready for tonight's Senior Prom, passing time by doing what I often end up doing; wandering around the internet.

Holy shit!

- Insurance companies own billions in fast food stock!

- Agent Orange!

- Monsanto: The evil company that feeds you!


Anyway... Prom will be fun. My group is awesome, so we're kind of more excited about dinner (Sushi!!) and playing Bear in the Woods (form of tag) in the middle of the night after the dance than we are about the actual dance part.

Work Hard, and we'll buy you a nice coffin with your own money when the time comes.

I believe that hard work can do good things for the person working hard. It can do good things for the hard worker's family, community, and other things in the person's environment. I feel pretty safe in saying that the actions represented by the term "hard work" can work towards good results. But hard work does not automatically imply good things, good defined as beneficial to the person, community, and environment.

After all, I bet the nazis worked pretty damn hard on their project.

Last September the entire student body of my high school was called into the gym for an assembly on this year's new "P.O.W.E.R" program, an acronym-based motivational plan put together by the school administrators or somebody. I really don't think the posters, t-shirts, teams, and assemblies reminding us of this program have done much. I mean, I was never entirely clear on what the administration hoped to achieve in the first place.
Anyway, it bugged me when I noticed that all of the depictions of "Success" involved men... in suits. Wtf?

On that note, I have homework to do. Har har har. I'll blawg more later, possibly about school.

The Hermit Crab Ditches Another Shell

I felt pretty damn depressed today. I really did. I have never felt that depressed I don't think, ever. I think really I've felt down since January, when I went to the beach with some friends and clambered over the hills of sand and down to the water and back up cliffs. After that trip, I got depressed, and since then I've read some and thought some and it's just gotten worse and worse. Why? Because I live in a house. I live in a house in a neighborhood in a town. I have no way of entirely avoiding horrible carcinogenic materials. I feel compelled to check my email a lot. Other people essentially force me to attend mass-education factories. I eat food out of boxes.

And it depresses me.

And it depresses everyone else, too. If not their souls, then their bodies. Yeah, bodies get depressed.

I told my speech & debate coach that I'm not going to the state tournament this weekend. I'm giving up my spot in the event. She didn't fight me, but I feel pretty guilty and bad about it. I hate to let people down, and I know I did that by saying I just can't go.

But, I do not think I will regret it. At least not the part about not competing; I will probably regret the letting-my-coach-down part for at least a while. But this Saturday, I turn 18. I hope to attend my old school's Haru Matsuri festival in the morning for a while, then go to a concert put on by another town's environmental club.

When I got home after breaking the news to my coach, I checked my email (yeah... yeah, I know) and was happy to find an email from my uncle. He sent me an essay by Dmitry Orlov, someone I had never heard of before. Here is the essay.

I believe that I will get through this. Belief can be an unreliable thing, but what isn't, really?

Another interesting thingy I ran across today: James Cameron (creator of the movie Avatar) goes to the Amazon.

Yeah, I run barefoot. I'm cool.

In fact, I'm amazing! Or at least my body is.... But, in truth, I have discovered another important thing for myself to share: I was born to run barefoot. And then, more broadly, we were all born to run barefoot.

Now, hey, I ran track. I own fancy schmancy shoes. Professionals have to wear shoes, or they'd hurt themselves!

Right?

I think not!

If humans are animals (which they are) and other animals do not wear shoes (or, really, any clothes at all, although other-than-humans are better at sticking to their own natural habitat where whatever fur they have is perfect) and other animals run (I've seen it happen!), we humans don't need shoes! Whoa! Locura!

I've done a little research, and found that there are many communities, gathering online and off, of people who run sans shoesies. A lot of them are into barefoot racing and barefoot marathons, which I'm not ready for or even particularly interested in these days, but their words are clear: barefoot is the way to go.

I've been running with my buddy for the last month or so, never even thinking of leaving the house without my running shoes up until this last week, when I took them off before we hit the trail at the local park. I've been pretty happy with running at the park for starters, since the uneven ground and general forested atmosphere make me feel more like I'm running for fun and adventure and less like a rodent in a hamster wheel (although I'm sure hamster wheels have their merits... when you are a caged rodent).

When I run barefoot, I strike the ground with the ball of my foot. I can feel the ground: more specifically, I feel what the ground is composed of. This is important. Yes. And as I move forward the shock of impact goes unfelt in my legs and I ease my foot down, my heel barely brushing the ground. Then I spring back up, and KAPOW! I like that word.

I have learned that I am, in fact, contrary to popular belief, running correctly. My body is put together in such a way that sensitive nerves on the bottom of my feet, the bit between the ball and the heel, make ground-slapping gaits painful for a reason: I am not meant to run that way. The balls of my feet, however, are perfectly adapted to hit the ground and spring me forward. And sure, I have to look at where I'm running so I don't step on anything sharp, but guess what? Callouses aren't ugly in my book, and eye/foot coordination ain't a bad thing to develop.

Running barefoot I do not tire as I do running shod. Barefoot, I feel a connection with my running space. Without shoes, I am a runner. I truly run. I feel like a deer.

I recommend ditching your shoes next time you feel like running. You may find that you feel more like running once you try it barefoot! I don't know! But it's fantastic. Don't step on broken glass. Befriend the ground you're galloping across.

Welcome to the Future

Here again I blog. I've had a blog for many years. I've blogged a lot of bullspit. I haven't been very interesting. I do not intend to become any more interesting.

But my thoughts help me only so much, caught up inside my head: I like to at least pretend that other people will read these things.

An hour or so ago I finished reading a book: Rewild or Die, by Urban Scout. I know about the book since my brother knows the author, and I have always idolized my brother, so I caught on.

Various things have become clear(er) to me in the past few days...

1. civilization owns me.

2. my parents unwittingly raised me to be attracted by the idea of rewilding.

3. i could do anything.

I remember that when I was a little kid (as opposed to the big kid I am currently, of course) on a few occasions I would be running around the playground at my dandy Montessori School and pick up a piece of bark dust off the ground and ponder it briefly. I do not remember my specific thought process, but I then chased around my friends and asked them if they wondered what the tree had looked like, the tree that this piece came from. I thought of it sort of as being like the Shard from the Dark Crystal.

No one else seemed to care. Dramatic!

So I gave up. For a long time. I was weird on my own time, alone, and only slightly less weird in public. I pretended I was a tiger when I was uncomfortable with other people and burst into tears when I realized I would never actually be a not-human.

I wrote some very depressing, mildly creepy poetry.

I talked about myself a lot... oh, wait, I still do!

Anyway, you know what? People exist out there who think like me. I think like other people. And that makes all the difference.

I could go to college for three or four years, become a graphic designer, work hard and make money and do things with money.

Or I could go live in centroamerica for a while, live somewhere that is not here, come back, find some work, and find a community. Find a place to share. Find things to learn, find things to create, find good things.

I will not wait to gather the funds to flee from what there is. I would rather live a penniless life of grief and joy than a life of working to purchase illusions.