Home

For the first 20 years of my life “home” was our house in East Texas. Then I moved to Colorado and slowly but surely the transition happened and “home” became Durango. What about now though?

I have been in Guatemala for about a month and a half now and my definition of home has been turned on its poor little head. Over the past 3 weeks I have come to realize and accept three relatively different definitions for the word.

A definition that just kinda misses the mark

1: A space of one’s own: This is what I longed for when I left Antigua for the apartment in San Raymundo. I remember walking in the door and seeing the living room, and the corner that we will call a kitchen, and the dining room and the bedrooms and bathroom, and the whole thing was going to be mine! Of course over the course of the next two weeks I realized that having a space of one’s own might be a little overrated if one is always there, always alone and never experiences the outside world. I want to clarify that I’m not whining about it, I’m just being a little critical of my own definition of home.

A slightly more accurate definition

2: A familiar and friendly place to lie one’s head: This is what I longed for as I checked out of the hotel yesterday with all of my bags and the warning signs of a cold. Augusta helped me lug my luggage the 6 blocks to my host family’s house. I cannot even begin to express how thankful I am that this is the same host family I had before. If you have ever tried to function in a foreign country with a cold, you might be able to comprehend how out of sorts I was. My nose was running, I was starting to get a fever, I was homesick (for nothing in particular, just had that feeling of missing something) and until Elizabeth opened the door I was bedless and had a very bleak outlook on the world. No worries though, it all turned golden when that door opened and I got a big ole’ mom hug and was led straight to my room where I promptly dropped my things on the floor and myself on the bed and called it quits for the next 18 hours. (Ok, so I went to get lunch with Augusta and David…but after that I called it quits). As I lay in bed wrapped in jackets and blankets listening to you-tube videos on my phone (because I couldn’t keep my eyes open) I couldn’t help but smile a little to know that however many thousands of miles away from my previous homes I was, I could still find a place to be welcome.

The definition that I think hits the mark

3: A place one dreams about every other night one is gone: I think my second definition is useful and accurate most of the time. We can be happy in a lot of places if we just have a welcoming spot (welcoming implying that one actually leaves said spot unlike in the first definition) to lay our heads and call “home base” for a time (however short). This third definition though gets to the heart of the issue. Home is that place you have left your heart. I dream about Durango almost every night. If the dream isn’t centered around it, it takes place there. Every now and then I dream about my Parents’ house in East Texas too, because in a lot of ways every version of myself between birth and 20 still lives there.

In conclusion (because everybody likes conclusions)

 I still can’t believe I am on this adventure. I know myself, and sometimes I am confused as to how exactly I got myself into this. This is something my hero would be doing, not me. I would be back in Durango, working and envying this person…but here I am. Every day I just have to remind myself, yes Sara, you are doing this, and this is just the beginning. Imagine what the rest of your life has to hold.  Every morning when I wake up though, I remember that one day (who knows when) I will go back. And maybe my love will have changed, and undoubtedly I will have changed, but no matter what, Durango will be home to every version of me that happened between 20 and 24…and that version is the one that is on this crazy adventure.

So here’s to places of one’s own and places to lay one’s head and places to dream about all the while one’s gone. 

My Week as a Make-Shift Pharmacist

A lot has happened in the past week. I have been trying to think of the best way to get the whole week down into one post and I just don’t think I can do it. I’ll keep it simple then.

My mom and I volunteer (mostly my mom) for a nonprofit called Refuge International who has clinics set up in three different villages in Guatemala. There are three week-long trips to each location every year, and during that time the volunteer group sees patients of all kinds from surrounding areas, they perform surgeries, and provide medication (hopefully enough to last the patient until our next visit). That is the simple version. Refuge also heads projects to drill clean water wells in various villages across the country, to deworm the entire population of the country over the course of a few years, and to get children like Misael (whose feet were turned almost completely backwards from birth) to Scottish Rite in the United States for corrective surgery so they can return home to live their lives more normally and to help their families.

So you probably guessed this is mostly a medical thing. If you know me at all, you know my medical experience doesn’t reach much past my ability to put on a Band-Aid and take allergy medicine twice a day. They found a place for me though. The pharmacy is set up in such a way that really anyone can do it. So I did. For a whole week I was a make-shift pharmacist. I counted thousands upon thousands of white pills, pink pills, orange pills, bright blue pills, pills for diabetes or high blood pressure, pills for pills that smell like they could kill everything in your body that isn’t supposed to be there and maybe even a few things that are. I counted them all. I counted them, bottled them, bagged them, labeled them and then I explained (IN SPANISH) how to take them, when to take them, what to take them with and why you are taking them in the first place. Did I mention I have no medical experience whatsoever? I learned a LOT this week.

So that’s it. For the sake of simplicity and brevity and preserving everyone’s sanity, I’m not going to write anything else about that. I probably passed out drugs to between 400 and 500 people this week. It doesn’t sound like a whole lot when you think about it terms of the quantities of customers passing through an American pharmacy on any given day, but this was a little different.

I’ll get my act together and tell a few medical stories from the week here in the next few days. 

Facing the Facts...It's time to move on

Alone: described in the dictionary as:

1: having no one else present; on one’s own

2: indicating that something is confined to the specified subject or recipient (it was meant for her alone)

So clearly this blog post will be about things being confined to a specified subject, being as I’m here, and confined to…ok who are we kidding? My closest friends the past four days have been Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I haven’t shaved my legs in three and a half weeks and I can’t stop eating toast and pancakes because that is actually all there is to eat in the house (that’s a lie but just go with it…it’s not far off) and I’m too lazy to leave. But being alone isn’t bad. There is g-mail chat. I have spoken on the computer to 5 different friends the past 4 days. How cool is that? Yeah. Woah.

Anyway, my binge eating and deteriorating social skills aside, being alone has taught me a few things:

1: When I watch too much of something, I actually start acting like the characters. I don’t know if you have ever seen 30 Rock, but if you have: I have become an awkward combination of Liz and Jenna. I’m actually a little disappointed I didn’t pick up any Jack. If you haven’t seen 30 Rock: I have become an awkward combination of the girl who was princess Leia for Halloween too many years in a row and the girl who was forced into too many beauty pageants as a child. I’m actually a little disappointed I didn’t pick up some of the self-important businessman. I have no footage. You’re welcome.

2: One simply shouldn’t look in the mirror during these phases in life. When your activity level is almost negative, your calorie (specifically carb) consumption is excessively…positive?, and your general concern for appearance and/or hygiene is blatantly non-existent, what could you possibly hope to accomplish by looking in a mirror in a room with blue curtains and florescent lighting?

 3: The internet is not a replacement for real human interaction. I know it kind of feels like you are hanging out with whoever you are video chatting with, but you aren’t. Real people don’t suddenly disappear when the internet connection gets bad…usually. They also don’t make your eyes hurt a little bit if you stare at them too long…usually. And real people don’t sound like robots programmed by alien life forms trying to immolate human speech patterns with only every third word…usually. What I’m getting at is, I did see my friends on the screen this week, but it actually made me a little more homesick when the conversation was over.  I love technology, but it’s time to stop being alone.  

I guess the point of this post was to give myself an opportunity to think positively about my situation the past week. I definitely hit a few low spots, but it’s better if you can laugh about them. It’s time now for me to reach out and start trying again. A medical mission group from the States will be arriving tomorrow to work for a week in a clinic here. The time alone has been…enlightening, but I’m ready to meet new people, have new conversations, and re-start this adventure of mine. 

Ode to Instagram

I set up an instagram account yesterday (no this picture isn't from it but it's the same basic concept) and suddenly everywhere I look I see not just a candle holder, but a potential picture. I don’t see my earrings lying on the table, I see a potential picture. My world isn’t a 3D space in which I exist, it’s an infinite stack of 2D pictures waiting to be taken, to be captured and frozen and shared forever, or for an instant.

I consider myself a writer before a photographer or visual artist. I prefer words. They are my comfort zone. I know how to challenge myself with words and to challenge my readers if I so choose. I enjoy seeking out the perfect synonym or setting up a clever ambiguity. I enjoy the task of presenting in black and white horizontal lines the depth and color of the world around me and within me. Why then am I obsessed with this very visual sharing technique? I could make my facebook status say that I’m having homemade corn tortillas with my lunch, or I could just take a picture and put it up.

I think the answer lies in a few things:

1. Loneliness. The longer I am away from home and my friends, the more I wish I had someone, anyone, everyone to share this experience with. I could describe it, but an image feels so much closer to a shared experience. This is what I see. You can see it too and describe it for yourself if you see fit. I picture is worth 1000 words, or so they say. I’d say a picture is worth 1000 miles, or the distance it closes between me and you.  

2: Ease. Granted, while I do find writing relatively easy, it’s still somewhat of a chore.  When I want to share something, I want it to be effortless (again, as if my friend were here). A picture is so comparatively simple. A few seconds, a few pushes of a few buttons and there you have it. My moment is captured and I can go on enjoying it or wallowing in it as I see fit.

3: Novelty. It’s just fun. It’s fun to look around and to find something interesting in your surroundings that you might not have otherwise noticed. It’s fun to take that something and to lock it into a little box, and to manipulate it into a little visual taste of where you are or what you’re doing. It’s fun to know that somewhere out there someone will see what you’ve done, and you can see what they have done. It’s fun that our imaginations can all be connected like that.

Travelling long term is hard. But I set up an instagram account yesterday, and I’m glad. It brings me that much closer to my friends, wherever they may be. And, if nothing else in a day, I can look for ways to share little pieces of my world. It may be just another silly AP, but it’s a silly AP that makes the world that much more beautiful, that much more friendly, and that much more fun.  

Random Notes from a Temporary Recluse

I know I’m supposed to be writing about my adventures but right now I’m not having a lot of them and the ones I am having are shrouded in a cloud of the dust particles rising off my shattered Spanish. Ok, that might have been an overstatement. I’m not completely terrible at communicating. I’m just not fluent which, coming from a girl who prides herself on an above average mastery of the English language, is like saying I can’t speak at all, nor think, nor even breath properly. How am I supposed to enjoy the beauty of the natural world when I can’t breathe for choking on all these words that aren’t mine yet?...

Anyway, my point is, my adventures in the physical and linguistic worlds are slightly sore topics at the moment and I don’t really feel like conjuring up the energy to make them anything else. I’ll cover instead a random array of…stuff (for lack of a better word) that I’ve learned, or observed, or just pulled out of my ass out of a complete inability to think of anything else.

1: I CAN’T HIDE! I have always prided myself on an ability to blend and melt into my surroundings. I try to look as little like a tourist as possible every chance I get. Not so much because I don’t want to be thought a tourist, as because I just don’t want to be noticed. Of course there are certain times where I want to go out like a peacock and I do, in full color, but this is not one of those times. I want to blend in so badly. If you blend in you can walk down the street and soak up the sights without feeling like a sight yourself. If you blend in you can walk past the stalls of men and women selling things and they won’t literally follow you trying to convince you to buy something. Edy, who has been showing me around and being my occasional friend laughed yesterday and said, “Tus palabras favoritas son no gracias. Siempre es No gracias. No gracias.” They are NOT my favorite words. I don’t want to go to any of the beautiful tourist destinations here because I am so tired of hearing over and over again the same words and seeing all the same beautiful things shoved in my face. Actually that might be a sore topic too. I’ll move on.

2: I’m not a coffee snob anymore. I am living in a country known for coffee production and I have been drinking nothing but instant and Folgers. So sue me. I’ll put some sugar in it and, yes I’ll take cream, and I’ll drink it and I’ll like it because I want it and I don’t care.

3: I have always loved traveling alone. Ok, I wouldn’t say I am a seasoned traveler by any standards so to use always might be a bit of an overshot. What I mean to say is that I am perfectly comfortable alone. The problem with that is that I am completely comfortable. I want to leave my comfort zone. I want to learn new things and experience new things and be forced to do something I don’t want to do, but in the long run I really should do.Unfortunately, I will only take myself so far toward that goal. I’m here. I’m in another country, in a little village where tourism isn’t a thing and there is no one who really speaks English. I am here and I refuse to leave the house. That’s a lie. I have left the house, but not much and I was never out longer than I absolutely needed to be to buy whatever it was I left to buy. I can’t help but think that just having another person with me would make walking down the street so much easier. So I love the freedom of traveling alone, but I think I need the challenge of travelling together.

4: Platanos fritos  (fried plantains) are where it’s at.

5: The Guatemalan people are obsessed with love. I don’t know that definitively, but I do know that they sure ask about it a lot. “¿Tienes un novio? ¿Porqúe no?” I only barely have the linguistic ability to explain in Spanish that I don’t have a boyfriend because no one has asked recently and the last thing didn’t work out, and it’s hard to have a boyfriend when you are however many 1000s of miles away. I’m afraid if I tell anyone here though that I’m not dating anyone because no one has asked, that that excuse may quickly become invalid. I’ll stick for the moment to “no, yo no sé.” I guess I really don’t know why anyway.

I would like to know why they always seem so taken aback by the fact that I am single. One man told me it was good for your soul to care for someone and to be cared for back. One man explained to me the importance of fidelity and how one man and one woman is the only way it should be. Yet another man explained to me that it was very rare for a beautiful woman to be single and asked me again why I didn’t have a novio. I want to know why they think it’s so easy. Maybe they know something I don’t know, or maybe the men are just more straightforward here. Whatever the case, I guess I can add “No, yo no sé” to my list of palabras favoritas in Guatemala.

I think that’s enough for now. If I make this any longer you won’t want to keep reading. I know this hasn’t revealed much about my adventures or lack thereof, but this is it for now. These are some of the things on my mind. My ability to think in English has been slightly impaired by my constant attempts to think and speak in Spanish.  I’ll keep working on it though, so keep an eye out. I’m sure I’ll have a story for you soon enough. 

Fiesta! Or little white girl out of her element

Well, I’ve done it again. I have moved…again. I’m still in Guatemala, just in yet another different town. San Raymundo. This one is a little more “permanent” for lack of a better word. I’ll be here a month instead of one or two weeks. That’s exciting. In other news, I know of only one other person in this entire town who is fluent in English…neato.  I have some adjusting and exploring to do, but that’s part of the fun. Of course I say fun. What I mean is I am going to want to cry so badly at times that it will physically hurt…but after that it will be fun. Like Yesterday:

I went to a fiesta. Woo! Fun right? Allow me to elaborate. Little white girl (who tends to be taller than most of the population of this country) enters scene. Two picnic tables on a back patio and a TV with the big game on. Fútbol. (Madrid and Barcelona were playing. This experience was so disconcerting that I actually don’t know who won…I think it was the white team but I don’t even know which team was which color.) There were probably 5 people sitting around one of the tables plus Edy who drove me here to San Ray and who invited me to the shindig, plus Joy whom I met once 2 years ago. Good start.

This isn’t so bad. There aren’t that many people. I can start up a conversation at some point. Enter: 3 more people. [I should stop and explain here that this is a fiesta for Edy’s fútbol team who won the finals match on Wednesday.] I’m not going to go into explaining the enterings and exitings of every person at the party. All I’ll say is we filled 4 picnic tables…and all but four of us were dudes…and Joy was the only other woman who would talk to me. About half way through eating whatever foreign part of the chicken I ended up with and the chunks of deep-fried fat, I wanted to cry. I couldn’t seem to think of anything to say to anyone in Spanish, English or otherwise. Everyone was laughing and joking and carrying on around me, and all I could do was stare at the TV screen and wonder when it would be polite to bow out.

*****

Two hours later: About half the party had split and I had moved over to the other two picnic tables in the yard under the big awning. Me (Joy occasionally) and two picnic tables full of Guatemalan men. It took a few more minutes but I think I started to feel a tiny bit more comfortable when they started making fun of the youngest, skinniest one for having a crush on me and for having the most outrageous sunglasses (I actually used to have a pair just like them but I’ll keep that to myself.) By the end I had carried on something of a bumpy conversation with a few of the older men, and had been lectured on the value of the quintessential Guatemalan man. I had also been asked, by the entire table, if I preferred facial hair or not; skinny, fat or muscular; white or brown skin; and if I could guess the ages of about half the guys. IN SPANISH! AH!

By the time I got home my poor brain was so tired from listening so hard that all I could do was lie on the couch and watch TV (in English).

I think I’ll be hanging out with that group again sometime (hopefully a smaller version). I’ll be sure to get a good night’s sleep…and read the Spanish dictionary before then. 

How to Climb a Volcano

How to Climb a Volcano in Guatemala

1: Just go with a travel agency. I know. Lame, but when your teacher says that her brother is a guide and she will talk to him for you, don’t do it! She will only talk to him a little bit, but then she will get the bright idea that this will be a perfect opportunity for you to practice Spanish. She will give you his number (over the phone…boom! More practice) and now it’s all you. Sure I guess you could just not call, but then what kind of student would you be to put your teacher out like that then not follow through? Yeah, you don’t want to be that person…and actually, you are going to end up going with an agency anyway because her brother works for one. You just took the longer more complicated way.

2: But really, just go with a travel agency. I for one totally understand the allure of climbing a mountain (or better yet, a volcano) alone or with a couple of friends. In fact, that’s really how I prefer it. Never before though was there a very high chance of being robbed at gun point on the trail. (Don’t worry, I climbed the safest one and we had a guide with a gun and all, but the one I really really really wanted to do…oh! ¡Tienes cuidado!  Hay muchos ladrones y es muy peligroso. Or at least that’s what everyone I talked to said).  So yeah, just put your pride back in your pocket and go with the agency…or carry a gun…or go climb a volcano somewhere else.

3: Don’t go during the rainy season…it rains. I mean unless you dig that whole soggy hiking experience. The rainy season ends in late October/ early November…

4: If you must go during the rainy season, go in the morning. The rain tends to blow in in the afternoon and evening. My class isn’t over until 1 PM. I might have thought to go on a Saturday if I had gone with rule number 1. Granted our group got all kinds of lucky because the rain stopped pretty much as soon as we arrived at the base of the mountain, but just because the rain stopped does not mean the clouds will take their leave. Certainly it’s pretty cool to say you climbed a volcano in a cloud…but the cool factor depends a whole lot on what kind of view you were hoping to get. (Also a good reason to have a guide: You can get turned around when everything is the same shade of gray)

5: Bring a flashlight. It gets dark in the clouds after dark…That sounded redundant but I meant that the moonlight isn’t really there to help you out so it’s not quite catacomb dark (which I know by the way) but it’s sure no full moon adventure either.

6: Definitely talk to the other people in your group. They are after all climbing a volcano so they must be at least kind of cool. They are probably not from your home country either. It’s cool. Just do it.

7: Keep your expectations at bay. This goes for most experiences really. Or rather, keep them very very low so that it can only get better in real life. I had such an awkward and unfortunate day leading up to the hike that by the time I realized we wouldn’t be able to see anything, I didn’t care anymore. I was so happy it wasn’t raining and that I was doing something active. Not saying you can’t enjoy things if you have high expectations, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to find the good in something when it hasn’t first disappointed you terribly.

8: And finally, in conjunction with rule number 7, just have fun. Your experience will be what it will be, whether sweeping, breathtaking views, or cloud-incased apocalypse dream. If the later, the experience can be improved greatly by talking about dinosaurs, any book or movie involving a decimated earth, or the fact that God smokes a big ole hookah (the clouds…the hookah thing was a joke about how cloudy/smoky/ misty it was).

The end. Now go do something awesome.