Georgia...

Well, friends, I’m back. For those of you who I have shamelessly not called or emailed recently, I'm sorry! I had to hibernate a bit, but I'm back. I’ll try to sum up the past month or two. I came home in December for Christmas and to spend time with my grandmother, who has had advancing cancer for the last few years. Her health began to get worse shortly before the holidays, and she was staying in the bed by the time I got home. To put it simply, I decided to stay indefinitely when I realized how bad things were. My mom and aunt had been staying with my Mimi full time, and my sister was starting to spend most of her time at her house too, and I didn’t exactly feel like jetting off to play in Guatemala with all of my family here dealing with such serious issues, so I stayed to help. We cared for Mimi in her house until she passed away on January 15th. Then there was the funeral, endless rounds of family and friends and loved ones, and I finally ended up back here at my parents place to re-center.

During all of that, I was having a lot of trouble adjusting to life back home. I experienced a lot of different things while I was traveling and went through some major personal changes. I spent a lot of time by myself, some of it pleasant and some of it more difficult, while I was on the road. Coming home to such a chaotic and emotional scene was hard – I felt really overwhelmed by all of the noise and activity, and at the same time, really isolated. I also had to deal with my grief – I knew that my Mimi was going to die and that it was good and right for that to happen – she was in a lot of pain and was ready to go – but knowing that was different from watching her struggle and being with her while she died.

So I have been trying to relax and get my mind right again, and thinking a lot about what I want to do next. The original plan was to go to Columbia and start working my way around South America. But, a few nagging things were making me question that course of action, so I decided to stay still and think for a bit before I rushed off. I came to a few conclusions.

1. I was having a lot of trouble dealing with the past 9 months’ changes. I hadn’t really let myself think about it too much, honestly, but I seem to have been/be having a bit of a personal crisis adjusting to all of these changes. Namely, I left my job. Maybe my career. I left my house. I left my friends. I left a serious relationship. And I did it all casually, happily – no big deal! It didn’t occur to me that it might be hard, that it might cause me to question a lot of big things, like my identity, and what I place value on, and what I value about myself. Silly me! That was a tough one, and I’m sure it’s not over, but I think I’m on the downhill side. For now. It seems like these are probably life-long questions, but anyway…

2. I realized (and admitted to myself) I am not going to find utopia bouncing around in the world. I didn’t really think I would, but I have to admit that I had a glimmer of hope. And I found some really good things, some interesting things, and some instructional things. But not utopia. All of the same problems, dramas, and issues are being enacted in every place that I visited just like they are here in Georgia and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Different details, although some people are handling them better than others. Same issues. Guess I had to really experience that for myself.

3. I really want to do something real. I have always felt that so much of life (mine, my friends’, the people’s around me) is made up. Maybe that’s not the best way to describe it, but I can’t come up with a better term. Maybe like a lot of our everyday lives are contrived. We’re all driving around, running back and forth, filling up our schedules with scheduled work and play and TV and sleep and wishing we had more time that we would surely fill up with more things that we don’t really find fulfilling. In our social time we talk about superficial things. Lives of people we’ve never met, global and national issues that are important, but lots of times things that we don’t directly experience or feel like we can influence. I’ve surely experienced this – don’t know about you guys. This is not meant to be a political statement, just a statement I’ve felt really disconnected. And that’s something that I haven’t felt as much recently, especially when I’ve been here (or in other countries) working with a team of people on something real that we were all going to enjoy the benefits of, like working in a garden. That’s real, and it’s fun. It’s work, and it’s play. I’m enjoying where that train of thought is taking me. I'm currently looking into different types of sustainable working communities, like ecovillages. I think I may focus on visiting and working in these kinds of places when I leave again.

4. I still want to travel, but maybe not alone. And probably with more of a plan. Haphazard can be fun, but it gets old when you realize that you are just bouncing along a tourist trail, made for tourists like you. Lots of people speak English, and you’re more likely to have a conversation with a Californian than a native person in the country you’re in. And while I really did enjoy being by myself sometimes and I really did appreciate the time for self-reflection, I was less adventurous in wandering off that tourist trail than I would have been if I had a partner. So, I’m going to plan a little more this time. I still have my little travel nest egg, and I plan to use it, but I’m not in any hurry. I think I’d value a little more planning and maybe some companionship over the first strategy. There are some amazing places I want to see in South America, but I’m not in a big hurry anymore.

Being in a hurry is the one thing that’s been the hardest for me to let go of. Even though I didn’t have a schedule, I was constantly asking myself what I was going to do next. This even applies long term – I’ve been thinking (partly sub-consciously) that I can go ahead and finish up this ‘year of travel’ and try to do it really efficiently so I can see everything I want to and oh-by-the-way while I’m traveling I better be figuring out what I’m going to do NEXT because everyone keeps asking and…on and on and on. And not to get too new-agey, but I’m starting to actually understand that there is no next. It’s all right now. So, I’m going to stay here for now, do some planning for the next steps in my trip, and work on some projects that I think are fun and rewarding. And travel again when I decide where I want to go most and what I want to do there. There’s no reason that I can’t do fun and rewarding projects while I’m traveling, and I did experience some of that, but in my experience, it wasn’t intrinsically ‘better’ than doing those things here. It also takes a little more planning up front to find that kind of arrangement while you're traveling, and here I have the extra benefit of having network of people that I know and love, and a place to stay – always a plus :)

I’ve had a lot of conversations with different people over the past few months (and years, really) about the various problems in the world and our frustrations, mainly centered around not knowing what to do to make things better and feeling powerless to do anything at all. I’ve gained a lot of new perspective and read a ton of interesting books on those feelings and issues over the last 9 months or so, so if you’re interested, feel free to shoot me an email – I’ve got everything from economy to the environment to clinical psychology on my bookshelf right now. I can’t say that I have any world-saving advice or ‘the solution,’ but I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction out of finding ways to connect with something concrete in the world, and I think one of the easiest ways to do that is through food. So if I have any simple advice (and if anyone is even interested in that advice) it’s this – in some ways, your whole life is about nourishing your body and that of your family. That’s what you go to work for (along with paying for your house, water, and various toys, etc). If you can find a way to connect with where your food comes from, you can get a lot of satisfaction out of that connection and ‘do something’ without having to make any huge life change or feeling like you need to save the world. So find out if there is a Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) farm near you. Plant a garden. Invite your neighbors (and friends!) over for a potluck. That’s all. Love you all.

Aura

A little bit of introspection, and on to Granada

Hello!

Well, sorry for the depressing post earlier this week, and thanks for the words of encouragement. I am learning a lot on this trip, and much of it is about myself. I used to get a lot of pleasure out of anything social, including going out with tons of new people and talking a lot, even if it was about nothing. These days, rather unexpectedly, I´m finding that I don´t automatically get pleasure from social activity. I still like to be around people, but I´m spending more time alone than usual. I no longer really find it satisfying to talk and drink just to talk and drink, to fill the space, you could say. And there is a lot of that to be found on the Gringo Trail in Central America, not surprisingly. I´m not sure where the new attitude or awareness came from, but I´m sure it has something to do with throwing myself into a situation where I don´t know anyone, and even the culture is unfamiliar. It´s easy to segue into questioning/reevaluating everything... It´s a little hard to adjust to these emerging feelings, but I think overall it´s a good thing for me. I´m learning how to just be with myself, more than usual anyway, and I´m valuing the experiences I have with genuine people more. Some days are better than others, but overall I feel very positive and strong.

I stayed at the organic farm and found a really nice group of people there. After a few days of getting accustomed to the neighborhood, bus schedule, local businesses, etc, things were a lot better, especially with the local people. There ended up being several musicians in my hostel, so that was fun. We had a couple of jam sessions with a ukelele and two guitars...I really wished I had my mandolin. I took a capoeira class on the beach. That was interesting... Fun, but I don´t think it´s my passion in life! I also went horseback riding with one of the French girls. That was great. The horses here are trained a little differently. I haven´t asked anyone for the details, but the most distinctive thing I noticed was their trot. Visually and while you´re riding, it´s noticeably different. The horses we rode had a really slow, smooth trot - virtually no bounce at all. At the farm, I slept in my hammock for 6 days. It was awesome, cool and comfortable (thanks, SNL friends :) ). I stayed in a dorm my last night, and I missed the fresh air.

Now I am in Granada, and I have a feeling I am going to like this city. It´s small, with old colonial style architecture, and a really busy main street full of markets. I have a closet obsession (okay, not so closet) with markets. To top it off, there´s another city a 30 minute bus ride away that´s known as the city for craft markets. Yay! Supposedly, they also have several music stores, so I´m going to see what kind of interesting instruments I can find. Tomorrow, I´m going to go for a run in the morning and try to get oriented here. In fact, I´ll probably just spend the whole day wandering around. Then on Monday, I´ll probably go to Masaya, the craft-music-rocking chair town. I´m really excited! On Thursday, I head to the airport for my flight home, which is at 2:00 in the morning on Friday. Kind of a pain, but oh well. I´ll let you know how the craft scene is...

Beach to present, and beyond!

The good...
Well, I´m a bit behind on blogging. It´s about an hour to get to internet where I am now, so I haven´t been online much. The beach was very nice and relaxing overall, although the tourists were starting to come in droves as I was leaving. It´s the beginning of the high season, so it will get a lot busier. I felt like I really got to relax there, and I gained some new perspective. I read some really good books. I stopped drinking beer :) I spent a lot of time with my Argentinean friends, who are some of the most genuine people I´ve met traveling, and let me stay with them for a week. And - my Spanish is really good these days. Not perfect of course, but I can communicate generally without any trouble. When people ask me if I speak Spanish these days, I say yes (instead of ´kind of´). Strangely, I keep getting asked (by several locals and 2 Germans) if I´m from Germany. I don´t think I have a German accent in Spanish! Either way, I take it as a good sign. Maybe, at the very least, it means I don´t have a screamingly obvious American accent :)

Thanksgiving was a huge success. I started cooking the night before, making cold salads and stuff, and cooked all day on Thanksgiving. We had about 19 people show up - 3 Americans and others from France, Belgium, Italy, Costa Rica, Argentina, Israel, England, Holland, and another little bitty country that I can´t remember the name of! There was plenty of food - I´ve never cooked for so many people in my life. Everything went really smoothly too, until about 5 p.m. I had been running back and forth from the house to the grocery store to a neighbor´s (because she had an oven), and about 5 or 5:30, she got home and ran down to tell me that the oven was out of gas. I had stuffed chickens inside it at that point and two casserole dishes waiting to go next. Eek! Fortunately, the Belgians own a bakery, so two of the guys left, balancing the chickens and the casseroles on their laps on a four-wheeler, to stick them in the oven at the bakery. What a trip :) They made it back safely and we all ate and drank wine. Overall, it was probably my most interesting Thanksgiving yet. Everyone thought it was really cool - a lot of them commented that the only things they new about Thanksgiving were from the movies. After that, I hung out for a few more days and then headed north. I did my first payed work before I left the beach though - I worked in a surf shop on the beach for 3 hours. They paid me $6. It was actually my friend Noe´s job, but she couldn´t go that afternoon, so I went for her. Crazy, huh? I don´t know of anywhere else in the world where you can send a friend to work for you if you can´t make it...

The bad...
After I left the beach, I spent a night in Liberia and then crossed the border into Nica. The border crossing was LONG and hot. First I had to stand in line for a couple of hours to leave CR, then I walked across the border (maybe a third of a mile?), then I had to stand in line to enter Nicaragua. Then I had to cross through a gate to the border town, where I got on a crowded school bus to go to Rivas. Tourism has done some not so nice things down here. The main aspect of it that I find frustrating is the people constantly trying to ¨help¨ you. It drives me crazy. When I crossed the border, every time I got to a new location, about 5 people would surround me to offer their guide services, taxis, etc. And they all talk at once, and get too close, and it´s really nerve-wracking. I think it´s worse too because I´m a girl, traveling alone, so the offers are usually mixed together with suggestive comments and lots of kissy faces. Yes, truly - lip-puckering. No kidding. By the time I got to the border town I was frazzled, and when I got accosted there, I looked up and said in Spanish rather forcefully ¨Look guys - leave me alone, I don´t need any help, or a taxi, or anything, thank you very much, excuse me!¨ That worked pretty quickly. I felt bad for shouting, but geez! I was definitely channeling someone more assertive than myself :)

The ugly...
Well, it´s not really fair to call lay all of the ugly blame on Isla de Ometepe, where I am now. All of this was fairly common in Costa Rica as well. In fact it´s really gorgeous here - the island was formed by the two volcanoes that are still here, in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. It´s way calmer and safer here than it was in Costa Rica. There are some nice beaches, and yesterday I climbed the smaller of the volcanoes. But...the harassment continues, and it´s making me feel quite alienated. I can´t walk around by myself without people coming onto me - maybe it´s a common part of Nica culture, but it really makes me uncomfortable. To top it off, the other day this kid followed me home in the dark as I was walking back to my hotel, and seriously wouldn´t leave me alone. He was 16, for christ´s sake! I told him I didn´t need help, I knew where I was going, etc., but he just kept on saying he could ´accompany´ me. Then he started trying to put his arm around me, asked me to kiss him, etc. If I wasn´t so agitated I probably would have busted out laughing. I literally had to remove his hand from my waste tell ask him not to touch me or bother me because it was pissing me off. Then he was like, ¨Oh, sorry, I didn´t mean to make you angry. Do you want to give me a tip for walking you home?¨ I just walked off. I figured it wasn´t much use to try to explain to him why I most certainly did not want to tip him for making my walk home extremely unpleasant.

So, I´m feeling a bit isolated. I can´t really blame the Tico (Costa Rican)/Nica (Nicaraguan) culture for all of it. Honestly, there are plenty of people who show up in the smallest towns down here, don´t speak a word of Spanish and have no desire to take a bus, and they want someone who speaks English to lead them to a taxi. So there is a demand for this sort of thing. To top it off, although there are some well-intentioned ex-pats and travelers, there are also plenty that are arrogant assholes, so I guess I might not have that much respect for me either, if I was from here, and I didn´t know me! There are some other travelers to hang out with - yesterday I hiked a volcano with some of them. There´s a French couple in the hostel/farm where I´m staying that is really nice, but other than them, I haven´t really connected with anyone recently. I think that I will leave here on Tuesday or Wednesday and go to Granada, which is a decent sized city. It´s supposed to have beautiful architecture, and I´m sure there´s plenty to do there. I´ll probably stay there until the 18th, when I´ll head to Managua for my flight home for Christmas.

Sorry for the downer post, I´m just feeling a bit disillusioned this week. Como siempre, estoy segura que solamente necesito tener paciencia. Espero que todo esta bien con ustedes :)

Nicaragua...and Christmas!

Well, I made it to Nicaragua. I haven´t ever walked across a border before! The trip was interesting, but I haven´t got good internet right now. I´ll blog about it later this week. For now, I´m on an island called Isla de Ometepe, place called Venezia, which is in Lake Nicaragua. I´m going to spend a week here exploring and then we´ll see.

In other news, I´m coming home for Christmas. Long story, but I kind of already had a ticket, so... I´m flying to Atlanta on Dec. 18th, and I´ll be flying to Guatemala on Dec. 30th. If anyone is still thinking about joining me around the New Year, I plan on being in Guatemala for several weeks, starting the 30th. It´s really cheap to fly before the new year! I´m not sure what I´m going to do for New Year´s Eve yet, but I´ll find something.

Staphylococcus

Well, I went surfing 4 days ago, which was so ridiculous you wouldn´t believe it. It was really hard, but fun. I laughed a lot, at myself, because there was nothing else to do. I did manage to stand up once, for about 2 seconds. Glory! I´ll try again one of these days. However, I violated one rule of surfing unknowingly. I wrapped the leash around my hand a couple of times in an effort to hold on to the board as the waves were trying to rip it away. As a result, I noticed the next day, I had a nasty rope burn on the side of my hand. Swollen, pussy, the works, but I wasn´t too worried about it. However, yesterday, my friend Noe asked me why I had red streaks running down my arm. I hadn´t noticed them before but we decided they must be from the same incident. Later on last night I a guy in my hostel pointed out that those lines can be a symptom of potential blood poisoning. Hmmm...it did look rather nasty. I googled it, called my mom the med-tech, and well, I ended up being escorted through Mal Pais to the closest emergency clinic on a 4-wheeler by a Belgian guy with 30 inch dreads, plowing through the dust like we were in the movie Wild Hogs. I´ve never actually seen this movie, but I imagine it has scenes that resemble last night. His friend accompanied us on his own 4-wheeler, and they both did a little tire-squealing and engine revving. It was classic. After a long consultation with the medic in Spanish (I was so proud of myself!), I went home with instructions to take Amoxicillen for a week and to keep an eye out for blistering down my arm, which could indicate blood poisoning, in which case I should proceed directly to the emergency room.

Besides contracting a potentially fatal infection, everything is going great. I´m running again (yay!), reading a lot, and generally enjoying the beautiful sunsets and gorgeous beaches here. I forgot that I haven´t blogged since I got to the beach. I´m in Santa Teresa (near Mal Pais), visiting my Argentinian friends that I met at the ranch. I´m staying at a quiet little hostel with a few other folks, which I like. There are a lot of tourists here, and I really didn´t like the first hostel I was in - lots of loud, crazy, young people drinking all day long. Now I´m a lot happier, although I´m still anxious to get away from the crowds and actually meet some local people. I´m finding that a bit tough to do in Costa Rica! I think I´m going to stay another week or so, then go north to meet a group of friends from the ranch, then continue north to Nicaragua. A Swedish friend is going to meet up with me for a couple of weeks in Nicaragua. I´m thinking about coming home to Georgia for Christmas.

Hope everyone is well! More to come, including pictures...

Aura

Aura's Unintentional Abuse of the Spanish Language

Ahhh...if only some of you bilingual people could have heard the things I've managed to say this month without meaning to. I think it's time for some comic relief. Here are some of the funniest slipups I've had with Spanish in the past month:

Aura (to Mosco): Me quieres hacer algo en el compost?
Literally, 'do you want to do something to me in the compost?' What I meant to ask was, do you want me to do something in the compost. Mosco almost lost it when I asked him this one day after lunch. It became a running joke from then on out...

Aura (to Noe): Que significa chino? Entonces, por que ellos dijieron que querian comprar un chino?
Literally, 'what does chino mean?' Noe tells me that chino means a chinese person. I then proceed to ask her why her friends said they wanted to buy a chinese person. Everyone laughs hysterically, even me, although I have no idea what we're laughing at. Turns out, I overheard the argentinas and another guy talking, and I thought they said they wanted to buy a chino (chinese person). What they really said was they wanted to buy something in a chinese store, like food.

I'm working and Jerry and Lolo walk up. Jerry looks at Lolo and says, 'Ovejas?'
Lolo: Si, si. Las tengo.
Jerry: Se vende? Are they for sale? Aura, can you translate for us?
Me: Sure, sure, but I'm confused. You really want to buy ovejas from Lolo? (I'm laughing)
Jerry: Yes. (He's not laughing).
Aura: Are you sure?
Jerry: YES!
Aura: Okay, okay. What do you want to know?

I proceed to translate for about 10 minutes. Lolo describes his ovejas, signalling with his hands how big they are and how old they are. We discuss when they can meet so Jerry can see them. I'm completely incredulous - Jerry is the volunteer coordinator, and he works with bees. I can't figure out for the life of me why he wants to buy a sheep from Lolo, but I play along, trying not to giggle. They agree on the details. They leave. I shrug and continue working. The next day, I hear Jerry talking again about this issue, and well, basically I figure out in front of about 10 people that they were talking about 'abejas,' which are bees, pronounced suspiciously like 'ovejas,' especially since Jerry doesn't really speak Spanish. Hilarity ensues :)

Pictures from the ranch

Here are some pictures from my last couple of weeks at the ranch. I changed my mind yesterday and ended up going to Montezuma. It went something like this: bus, bus, bus, ferry, bus, bus... Argh. Anyway, I'm chilling now and I'm going to visit some friends from Argentina tomorrow in Santa Teresa. More about the journey later - now I'm going to visit a butterfly garden and relax on the beach!

Aura