Now and then

This weekend I climbed Volcano Maderas. Allegra and I and our guide began the day at 4 in the morning. We took a bus through a washed out dirt road for two hours than began the ascent in the rain. The entire way we fought the mud. It was very slippery and wet (although thankfully not cold). We hiked through a banana plantation, a cocoa plantation and through a coffee field. We then climbed through the jungle with butterflies and parrots and monkeys. It was beautful, exhilerating and extreamly difficult. We reached the peak and used ropes to descend into the crater where there was a misty jungle lake. Going down the mountain was as challenging because it was so easy to slip in the mud. It took us just over eight hours.

Challenges bring out the layers of a person. On the mountain I was reminded that who I am in this moment is an acumulation of all the selves I have been in all past moments. Sometimes I think it is easy to forget my personal history. I look around and I think, "Here I am, a young, educated women tromping around in the jungle of Nicaragua. Why am I here? How did I get here?" The desires of my own heart can be a mystery at moments but the more I think about it, the more I see the connection between my present and every step of my past.
My brother, Dan, wrote a song about how quickly time passes. I thought it was a very reflective observation for a twenty-two year old man. I agree with him that the passage of time seems particularly pogniant in young adulthood. We find ourselves in adult bodies, doing adult things but in many ways childhood is still very fresh and present. It is easy to blink and think, "what happened, how did I get here, where are my GI Joes?" Culture talks about putting childish ways behind us and growing into maturity, becoming an adult (like it is a very different thing). I do not hear much conversation about a consistent self throughout life. Perhaps it is too obvious, perhaps everyone else understands the reality that who they are now is who they have always been. I am still grasping it.

I thought about this while I climbed the volcano last weekend. It took guts and will to keep climbing through mud and rain. It reminded me my days as a defiant child when I was determined to do something regardless of what the adults said. I was a good kid but I have always had a strong will. When I was in high school my dad and I had a lot of conflict. In his frustrations, his most frequent accusations against me were 1)You will not take no for an answer and 2) You can´t do everything. I often did my best to prove him right on the first point and wrong on the second. I felt like that on the mountain. I felt like I was fighting against a restrictive force by saying, "You just watch me! I will climb this mountian! I will conquer it and I won´t be afraid in the process and then you will see what I am made of."

Climbing the mountain took my whole self. It took the defiance of the child inside of me, the energy of the teenager, the strength of the track star, the fearlessness of the cliff jumper, the balance of the gymnast and the surfer, the discipline of the graduate student, the sense of mysticism of the Christian, the passion of the musician and all the other parts that make me who I am.

As I live out my twenties I feel like I constantly ask myself who I am and who I want to be. I am in an exciting time when i have lots of choices and opportunties. I can dream big or choose simplicity, or a combination. There are times when it feels impossible to clearly articulate who I am. I get lost and confused and I forget. But on the mountain it was clear: I am an adventuer, I am a strong body and with a courageous will and I have always been this way. I have always been this person.

But you are married...

I have gotten a number of strange reactions from people when I tell them that I left my husband at home and came to Central America.
Of course it is very hard to be apart from Rob. Being away from him makes me feel like I am not whole, like a key part of myself is mission. I am a little more melancholy, a little more restricted. A little dulled..
One of the tricky things in marriage is balancing the unity and wholeness of the two as one with the fact that it is a union of separate selves. When I chose to be married, I chose to give part of myself over to a third entity- the space that is "us" - the section of the vine diagram where the circles overlap. Therefore, I am not my whole self when I am far away from Rob. A piece of me cannot really exist in seperation. This is the beauty of marriage and the pain of separation.

But, I hope that I will always continue to value my separateness. No matter how much I love Rob, I still experience the world through individual eyes. It is important to me to keep this individual part strong. I think this is a big reason that I like to travel. I really believe that my experience, insight, heart, passion, burdens, concerns and wisdom are the gift that I have to give to the world around me. Especially, my gift to Rob.
The stronger I am, the wiser I am, the more I care about the world around me, the better wife, friend, daughter, sister, Christian, psychologist- whatever- I will be. Being here right now in this way is the best way I know to cultivate who I am. Just as much as Rob´s love allows me to be here, so I am here for his sake.

Texans

Today Allegra and I went to Mobacho, a volcano in Central Nicaragua. It was a beautiful day for a little mountain climbing. We took a bus out of Granada and then walked three kilometers up a small paved road to the entrance of the national park. We purchached tickets to take the "eco-movil" up the side of the mountain (there was nothing "eco" about this movil). We were peacefully siting in the shade waiting for the movil to go when two truck loads of Texans arrived. It was so odd to encounter a group of Texans in the middle of rural Nicaragua. What was striking about this group is that most of them had no previous cross-cultural experience and they did not seem to have much information or training about Central American culture. Most people do not make it all the way to Nicaragua without some idea of what is normal in Central America (this group came for a week to help with a church building project). I have met plenty of lovely people from Texas and I don´t want to unjustly reinforce any stereotypes but these Texans fulfilled every Texas stereotype I have. They were nice enough as people, but as travel companions they were freakin´ annoying. They were loud and obnoxious and astute at pointing out the obvious like, "hey, there is a cow". I was so cranky about it. I do not mind if other people experience Nicaragua differently than I do but when their experience happens so audibly that I can not hear myself think I quickly become a travel snob. When Allegra and I got to the top of the mountain we decided to run the trail so that we could get enough ahead of the Texans so that we did not have to hear them.

When we set out down the trail is was like setting out into the Valley of the Elves in Lord of the Rings. It was green and moist with mosses and vines hanging from the trees. The entire earth was covered in green except for the trail and the bright butterflies and unusually large insects. There were wisps of clouds among the treetops which made the whole place feel mystical and surreal. At certain points we walked along the edge of a crater and we could see lakes and fields and a huge sky. At other points we were completely submerged in the forest canopy... Truely an amazing experience.
It turned out to be very fortuitous for us that we decided to run. As soon as we finished the trail and returned to the building, it began to rain very, very hard. We got a few sprinkles, but the Texans got soaked. After the peaceful walk I had more patience for the Texans which was good because wet Texans are somehow louder and more grandiose than dry Texans.
We all piled into the ecomovil for the precarious descent down the mountain. We hitched a ride with the Texans to the main road where we started walking in the direction of Granada waiting for a bus or some kind motorist to give us a ride. It continued to rain... and it rained... and no one came. A few people on motorcylces stopped to tell us that we should walk in a different direction and take a bus to a different town where it would be easier to find a bus to Granada. That did not really sound like a good idea given how far we had already walked. We figured that the worst thing that would happen is that we would have to walk the 10km back to Granada in the rain.
I was secretly hoping that the Texans would decide to visit Granada and stop by to pick us up. Apparently, being a travel snob gives you bad karma. We walked for a really long time and were sopping wet before a bus finally came. Such a sorry sight.
However, it was the first time that I have experienced the sensation of cold in several weeks and that was actually kind of neat.

I spent twelve hours in buses today. I woke up at 4am. I am dirty and stinky and exhausted.
We travelled from San Salvador to Granada, Nicaragua. It was a beautiful drive. The mountains, forests and sky of this part of the world are breathtaking. I enjoyed being on the bus excpet that the air conditioning was broken and the windows did not open. There were moments when the heat was stifling.
I had a wonderful time in San Salvador. I was able to stay with my friend David´s family and also meet a Fuller grad who is one of only three doctoral level psychologists in the country. I learned so much from my interactions with these people who I hope I will contine friendships with. The best way to experiene a place is alongside kind people with whom there is some kind of connection. My time in San Salvador was also interesting in that I learned a lot about poverty, saw a lot of poverty but also had opportunities to spend time with people from both middle class and wealthy backgrounds. I got many different perspectives about the history, present status and future of El Salvador.
Other highlights:
I went dancing and greatly improved my marangue (sp?).
I swam in the warm ocean at a black sand beach.
I ate coconuts.
I went to a soccer game.
I got to hang out with Katie, one of my favorite people, and her wonderfully sarcastic mom.

San Salvador

I am spending this week in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador. Allegra and I are staying with a family and attending a Spanish school. Our house mother, a woman named Ana Maria, is wonderful. Yesterday at breakfast she told us the story of her son´s disappearance during the war. When he was sixteen he was forcfully taken by soldiers while walking down the street. She never heard from him again. It is possible that he was killed right away. It is possible that he was forced to fight with the army and killed later. It is unlikely, but possible that he is still alive somewhere. She does not know. He was disappeared. (People in Central America say a person ¨was disappeared¨ to indicate their passive role). I can´t imagine what it would be like to loose someone so close and to endure the torrment of waiting, of not knowing. I expect that there is a piece of her heart that is still waiting for him to come home.

Ana Maria, like so many others, has had way more than her share of grief. Grief doesn´t get easier just because there is a lot of it. People don´t become good grievers. The more loss, the more pain. Ana Maria described her despression with tears in her eyes.

El Salvador is a country of beautiful landscape, incredible kindness and deep spirituality (the name El Salvador means The Savior).

The Spanish school that I am attending is part of an international political organization. The political bent is very strong towards the left. It is committed to revealing the international wrongs committed in El Salvador. Generally, it is a political orientation that I agree with, but I am currently growing weary of the constant negativity towards the US. I know, better than most, the shortcomings of our country, particularily in international policy- but bashing the country and refusing to vote because it indirectly enforces an imperialist system is not a solution (this was an argument made by one of the American students).
I am stuck. I consider it a point of fact that US policies and actions are amoung the major causes of the war, poverty, destruction, and entrapment of Central America. The US has consistently broken international law (an example is the Hauge (sp?) trial in Nicaragua), and has created fiscal policies that are purely to serve the greed of wealthy transnational coorportations. America has done some very, very ugly things in Central America and it makes me feel both angry and ashamed at my country.
It is difficult to know how to balance these facts and the corresponding reactions with my feeling of gratefulness that I am an American. I am grateful that I have had so many opprotunities. Opportunites that I would not have had if I´d been born in El Salvador. I don´t come from a wealthy, well-connected family yet I´ve managed to complete and master´s degree and am able to continue in education. This would not have happened for me in El Salvador, no matter how hard I worked or how smart I am.

How do I balance anger with gratitude?

How can I share the pain of Ana Maria´s loss knowing that my country directly contributed (about $3 billion) to the army which committed such atrocities?

Being here is to jump into a swarm of paradox and complication and it is hard to find my bearings. There are no simple answers, there aren´t even simple feelings.

Dangerous Psychology

During the civil war in El Salvador, dissenting opinions were not tolerated. In addition to the campesinos and disenfranchised, many priests and academics were killed for opposing the oppressive government. One martyr was Jesuit priest and psychologist, Ignacio Martin-Baro.
Last summer I read a collection of Martin-Baro´s writings, entitled Liberation Psychology: It is an integration of social psychology and liberation theology. His work greatly affected me, as it encapsulates many of my passions in one stream of thought- theology, psychology, research, politics, social consciousness, concern for the poor and desire to change the status quo. He advocated for the development of a bottom-up psychology in contrast to one that primarily serves the needs of those with wealth and power. A psychology that does more than alleviate individual suffering, but a psychology that seeks to change societal structures that produce trauma, war and discrimination. I wish I had his book with me, I would share with you some of his words... After reading it, I felt like I wanted to take a leave of absence from Fuller to go study with Martin-Baro. I am currently working with some other students to prepare a poster presentation examining Martin-Baro´s ideas that we will present at a conference in New Orleans this fall. So far he had been the writer that has struck me deepest.
Instead of coming to study with Martin-Baro, I came to El Salvador to visit his grave.
He was killed in 1989 alongside five other Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter. They were killed right here in San Salvador at the University where they lived and worked. They were killed by the Salvadoran army for writing and teaching and publishing thoughts against the regime that advocated for justice and redress for the poor and disenfranchised.
We visited the university which has a small museum and a garden in their honor.
It contains many photos, some of their belongings, and parts of the autopsy reports. Martin-Baro had a hand-written copy of Yesterday by the Beatles, with the cords marked. He loved to play the guitar.
I almost threw up after seeing some photos of their bodies. They were mutilated, and tortured. There were pictures of human flesh in the grass.
Martin-Baro was shot in the head and his body was mutilated.
It struck me that shooting him in the head was the best way to destroy what was most threatening- his mind. What a tragic loss. A man who brilliantly integrated his faith and his work into his whole life. A man I would have liked to talk to, to learn from, to sit with. A friend through pages. A man who lived simply and quietly with a great love for the people of his country and a desire to see peace and justice come to those who needed it most.
I went into the chapel and cried.
Trying to understand how love and care and innovation can become a martyred body. how psychology can be dangerous. how a beautiful human can become a bloody mess.
How is it possible?

Fear and sleeplessness

It has been a rough couple days. We traveled from Guatemala to El Salvador. Our journey was marked by a series of bad hotels, sleepless nights and situations where we felt less than safe.
One particularly bad experience was our visit to the Salvadoran beach town of La Libertad. We wanted to rest and sit in the sun and I wanted to surf what is touted as one of the best waves in the Americas.
unfortunately La Libertad was anything but restful. It was a dirty, dirty town. The beautiful black sand beach doubled as a garbage dump. Putrid sewage water drained directly into the ocean. We could not find a good hotel, they were all trashy and on loud streets with lots of people hanging around.
The biggest problem in La Libertad was the drastic absence of women. Apparently surfing is an exclusively male endeavor in El Salvador. We were there for 24 hours and we saw two other women. There were many young American surfers who looked at us like movie stars. There were drugs out in the open and everyone seemed a little drunk. Not a good situation for Allegra and I but it was too late to head back to the city. We settled on a hotel. At about 10 a huge storm hit which knocked the power out. It is extremely hot and humid in La Libertad and we were excited about having a room with air conditioning. No power, no AC. We laid in our tiny, hot room in the dark waiting for sleep to come. Sleep did not come, but a bunch of people did. The quiet hotel suddenly filled with people. People playing their radio all night, people talking loudly, people snoring loudly, people making other noise. It was unbearable to be in that little hot room in that unsafe city with all that noise. We put in our headphones and listened to Norah Jones, but there was no peace for us. If it would have been possible, I would have taken a taxi in the middle of the night to the nicest hotel in San Salvador, price no concern. But, it was not an option for us to leave that room.
As soon as it was light I took a cold shower and we packed up to leave. I didn´t sleep more than two hours and I had not slept very much the night before when we staying in Guatemala City.
We left La Libertad at 8 in the morning. I had neither the energy nor the desire to do surfing.
After the bad night. We came to a lovely little guest house in San Salvador to take naps, watch movies and eat pizza. I feel better now.

Xela

We are leaving Xela tomorrow.
I am sad. I have made friends in one week.
Ilsa: She is our house mother. She is a widow in her sixties who is about 4'10. She barely eats because of a stomach problem and her hands are shriveled with arthritis. She is warm and wonderful, the best parts of everyone's mother. She reminds me a lot of mine, especially because her smallness and sweetness doesn't mask the incredible strength of her heart. She pulls me down for hugs and smiles whenever she sees me.

Before every meal she prays. She thanks God for the food and for all his blessings. And she always prays for Allegra and I. She asks God to protect us and guide our lives. My eyes fill with tears every time. Her prayers are a gift of care and goodness. For some reason this gift is gigantic to me right now. Perhaps I appreciate finding so much motherly care so far from home. Perhaps her care reminds me of my simple humanness. I am not an American or a psychologist or a democrat or a whatever... I am another child that has wondered into her kitchen for a warm meal. I am sad to leave her house.

Mariana: She is Ilsa's eighteen-year-old daughter. She is dramatic and moody and completely beautiful. She is always in teen-age chaos about something.
The best thing about Mariana is that she laughs a lot during every meal. She teases me and accepts my teasing. Although she did make fun of my dancing... We both love the character Pus in Boots in Shrek 2. We practiced our pouty faces at dinner tonight. She is a good sport about my bad Spanish and finds ways to correct me without making me feel stupid.

Francisco: My Spanish teacher who reminds me of my brother, Dan. He is twenty-three and working his way through university. He is mellow and happy and loves music and beer. He is extremely patient with my mistakes. We manage to have fairly complex conversations about politics, religion and the comparative metaphysical qualities of the psyche, energy and soul. Yeah, I don't know...
He is also very warm and we laugh a lot, mostly about a kitten who falls asleep on my backpack everyday and the fact that I manage to spill some of my coffee everyday.

These people and a few more have made it very easy to be here. None of them speak English. None of them are familiar with my culture. Somehow, despite many differences, I have had moments of meeting with each of them. I've had real conversations, real laughter and an exchange of respect and concern and interest and care. Miracles.

Juice and graham crackers

We went to an orphanage yesterday. It was what one would expect in Guatemala: dirty, understaffed and overcrowded. I've been to places like this enough that I am no longer shocked at the conditions. There were about eighty children. They were all beautiful and most of them were naughty in that endearing child way. Allegra and I went armed with a hundred balloons and small pumps. The children mobbed us and we asked them to form a line. The first kid in line was smashed against our stomachs and our backs were to a wall. We were cornered by a mob of kids, our only defense was the arsenal of balloons. We inflated and we inflated. We got tired but we kept inflating because it was the best we could do to give these children a little joy. Most of their joy seemed to come from popping those balloons and then getting back in line to ask for a different color. I started to get claustrophobic and annoyed about giving new balloons to the same kids who just popped them. I started to feel overwhelmed by how many children there were and how many needs they had. I started to feel the weight of an unjust, upsidedown world that doesn't care fo the innocent and vulnerable. I started feeling bad... but then I made myself let go of the world's problems and just worry about the balloons.
I didn't do anything to change the lives of those children. I am not going to take one home. I did not give them money or clothes or food or anything very useful. All I did was find the strength to stand there for two hours between a wall and a mob, blowing up balloons. Sometimes that is all you can do.
It is like this:
"This is life's nature: lives and hearts get broken--those of people we love, those of people we'll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers" (Ann Lamott, Traveling Mercies, p. 106).

Taking a shower

A hot shower is a luxury in Guatemala, particularly in Xela. It is very uncommon for houses and even hotels to have a hot water heater. Most places that have hot water have a small heater attached to the showerhead. It is gerry-rigged to the electricity in the light. Yeah, it is a little strange to see wires hanging from the showerhead to the light. When the heater is on the light dims. It can be very tricky to turn it on. The heater heats the water as it comes through the pipe. The less you turn the water on, the easier it is for the heater to work. You have to find the perfect spot that allows enough flow and is still warm.
I use the term hot water very generously. It is enough hint of warm to sustain disbelief about the fact that the shower is actually cold. The water contains just enough trace of warm to prevent one from screaming and running back to bed.
Taking a shower involves a complicated dance. You have to quickly move your shoulders back and forth because the minute one part of your body is out of the water, it gets cold fast. (It is important to note that I am staying a city in the highlands. It is very cold at night and in the morning!) If you move fast enough, the water is relatively evenly distributed over your body and the exercise keeps you a little warm. You must clean yourself as fast as possible so you don't get too cold.
Of course there is not much water pressure. It is like if I took a shower at home with the washing machine, the dish washer, the spinklers, the jacuzzi, the two other showers and all six sinks on the property all running at once. (The fact that it is actually feasible that I would use all this water at one time may have something to do with the water shortage here in Guatemala. There is some perspective for you.)

What is striking about this diatribe is that this barely-above-freezing shower is a luxury. It is a luxury just to have running water. I hope it doesn't sound like I am complaining, because in reality I am very grateful for the fact that I am able to take a shower while I am here.

It is amazing what we take for granted. I wonder how many gallons of clean water I waste every week in the US? We Americans are amazingly wealthy even in the most minute aspects of our lives. It is a privilege and I think we need to acknowledge that with gratefulness and generosity. Really enjoy your hot shower tomorrow morning, and maybe get out a few minutes sooner on account of those of us in Guatemala.

Crazy gringa

One of the best things about traveling is taking yourself completely out of familiar surroundings. The newness often leads to various profound revelations about self and culture and the world in general.
But sometimes it makes you seem like a crazy person.
So far I´ve only had two crazy incidents.

The first wasn´t´t too bad thanks to the extreme graciousness of the Guatemalan culture. At 3:00 on Friday Allegra and I were sitting in front of a beautiful, ancient church in Antigua. For those of you who have been to Antigua, it was the yellow one.
Anyway, the bells began to ring and we decided that it would be a lovely afternoon to go to mass. It is a rich spiritual experience to participate in a service in an ancient, beautiful church in a language that somehow seems much more holy than English. So, we went in and sat in the back. We knelt on a bench and we prayed. We looked around at the beautiful architecture in an attempt to soak at the sacredness built into the stones. We smelled the candles and listened to the hallow echoes in the high ceilings. When the music began and the others around us stood, we stood and faced the back door expecting to see a cross and processional of priests. Instead we saw palbearers and a coffin! It did seem odd that most of the others in the church were dressed in dark clothes. We crashed a funeral! Talk about rude! Luckily we could make a quick escape. I assume that the other attenders chalked it up to our being crazy confused gringas.

My second traveling opps was a little messier. Allegra and I took a bus to a little village to see the oldest church in Central America (it was not at all exciting). We got on the bus and after a few minutes a man came back to where I was sitting. People walk around on busses all the time as the passengers shift for each stop. This man had a particularly crazy look about him... kind of like, "I had six beers for breakfast and I´m going to have you for lunch." I was a little scared of him. He came back stood right by me and pointed down directly at me as if he wanted me to move over so he could sit down. Given the crazy look in his eyes and the fact that there was an open seat diagonal to mine, I stayed sitting where I was and pointed to the other seat. The crazy-eyes guy turned toward the man sitting in that seat and had a brief conversation in which it became clear that the man sitting was not keen on paying for my bus fare. I made an ass of myself. The guy was just coming to collect the bus fare. I had to apologize to the guy sitting and the crazy eye guy. I felt really bad about assuming that the crazy eye guy intended me harm. Maybe he´d just been in the sun a lot in his life, maybe he has an eye disease, maybe he did have six beers for breakfast. None of these indicate that he is a gringa molester. However, in my defense, he assumed I didn´t´t speak Spanish and instead of asking me for the Quetzal (money) he just pointed at me in a very odd, non-descriptive way. It would have been different if he has held his hand palm up so something... An important part of traveling is learning to trust the voice inside, the voice that says what is safe and what is not. I probably made the wrong choice today, but it is important that I keep listening to that voice, in all areas of my life, but especially when I am in a place that is foreign.

Such are the crazy adventures of traveling. I am learning humility and to appreciate the graciousness of others. I guess these mishaps are not too bad. When I was in Ghana, my friends and I accidentally peed in my Ghanaian friend´s shower. That was hard to apologize for!

Days 1-3

We spent our first two nights in Antigua. It is like the Santa Barbara of Central America. Everyone and everything is beautiful. There are an abundance of cafes situated in lush gardens serving delicious coffee and pasteries. It is a city of relaxation and recreation. I enjoyed being there but I was a little restless. It was like beginning the trip backwards, going to a place to rest without doing anything exshausting.

Today (Saturday) was a big day of travel. We left Antigua at seven this morning for Panahachel, a city on the shore of the majestic Lake Atitlan. Bus rides are always interesting in Central America. I think taking a bus ride is probably the most dangerous thing one can do in Guatemala. I was somewhat suprized by the adventure of this bus ride. It was supposed to be a tourist class bus. It was a big, greyhouse style with cloth seats and reasonable leg room. It cost more than the normal bas ($4 instead of $.50) because it was supposed to go directly to Panahachel without stopping. It didn't go without stopping. it stopped a lot to pick up people and drop them off at various locations. That wasn't a big deal except that it extended the trip by a good hour. The style of driving was the most astounding part. The bus driver actually passed a bicycle on the shoulder. I know! I have no way to explain it. The guy drove like a bat out of hell, like the back wheels were on fire and he had to drive fast enough to seperate the front from the back. Yet, with all his hurry he kept picking up everyone on the road. Hmmm.
From Panahachel we took a second bus to Quezaltenango (also known as Xela, Sha-la). We will be here for the next six days or so. We being Spanish school on Monday. This city is very mellow and un-touristy compared to most of the other places that I've been. A little off the beaten track, as they say in backpacking lingo.
The second bus was a chicken bus, the typical mode of transportation in Guatemala so named for the feasibility of encountering livestock in the seat next to you. I usually try to avoid these buses. They are old Blue Bird school buses retired from the US. The one today still had the silver plaque near the rearview mirror stating, "Your children's safety is our business." The seats which are tight for three children are usually filled with three to four adults and whatever animals, children or luggage that didn't fit on top of the bus. However, this bus was not full and not stinky at all. It was full of fresh moutain air and families travelling together. Across the aisle from me was a young couple and their child. I mean young. I doubt the husband had had his first shave yet. The wife looked forteen, maybe. They had a one-year old. They were so sweet and young and tender. She fell asleep on his shoulder and the baby sprawled across both their laps. He kept kissing her hair. It was sweet in a way that reflected the gentle joy of young love and the hope of happiness together. I tried not to stare at them too much, but it was like trying to stop picking at a tasty brownie in front of me.

Safe Arrival

Allegra and I arrived in Antigua after a tiring but uneventful red-eye flight. We are resting and relaxing here until Saturday when we will head to Xela for a week of language school. Antigua is as bright and beautiful as I remembered. We are staying in a wonderful little 10-room hotel with an amazing garden.

Saying good-bye

Today I sat in traffic and went surfing. The worst and best of Los Angeles. The water was cold and the waves were small but consistent. I had some nice little rides. There were five dolphins playing just outside the breakers. When we got home I sat in the pool and watched the surf movie Endless Summer II. The surfers in the movie travel to Costa Rica so I was gather information for the last leg of my trip. I talked to my mom and brother on the phone. I called some friends. I took a hot shower. Rob, Allegra and I went out to Sushi. After dinner we ate cake and drank wine with David and Katie.
All my favorite things and many of my favorite people all in one day. I am so grateful for the wonderful things in my life. I live comfortably and with excess for pleasure. I am loved by my friends and family and especially by my husband. I cannot imagine a better life than the one I have been given. I am counting on the strength of this love and my overall of gratefulness to give me endurance and perspective during the next several weeks.
Six weeks is nothing in the course of a lifetime. However, it feels like a big deal right now.
I've been spending a lot of energy to remain calm. If I don't contain my feelings, I will erupt in anxiety or crumble in the sadness of being separated from Rob. Right now I am not able to describe what it feels like to say good-bye to Rob (even for a little while). It is too raw.

It is 10PM and time to leave for the airport. Next time I write I will be in Guatemala.

Thoughts about travel

"This is the magic of travel. You leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space.
You return a different person...
Many people don't want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people's lives while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them wherever they go , or try to re-create the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are...
To be a real traveler you must be willing to give yourself over to the moment and take yourself out of the center of your universe. You must believe in the lives of the people and places where you find yourself, even if it undermines your faith in the life you left behind.
You need to share with them, participate with them. Sit at their tables, go to their streets. Struggle with their language. Tell them stories of your life and hear the stories of theirs. Watch how they love each other, how they fight each other. See what they value and what they fear. Feel the spaces they keep.
Become part of the fabric of their everyday lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. Give yourself over to them - embrace them rather than judge them - and you will find that the beauty in their lives and their worlds will become part of yours.
When you move on, you will have grown. You will realize that the possibilities of life in this world are endless, and that beneath our differences of language and culture we all share the dream of loving and being loved, of having a life with more joy than sorrow.

But travel is not as romantic and exotic as it sounds. The familiar will always call, and your sense of rootlessness will not give you rest. Your emotions will fly crazily in all directions until sometimes you will feel that you have lost your moorings. If you travel alone, the warmth of families and couples will break you heart, and your loneliness will plunge you to depth you did not think possible.
And then, there are greater dangers. You may wake up and discover that you have become a runner who uses travel as an escape from the problems and complication of trying to build something with your life. You may find that you were gone one hour or one day or one month too long, and that you no longer belong anywhere or to anyone. You may find that you have been caught by the lure of the road and that you are a slave to dissatisfaction with any life that forces you to stay in one place.

These things happen. But how much worse is it to be someone whose dreams have been buried beneath the routines of life and who no longer has an interest in looking beyond the horizon?
I believe it is worth taking the risk. How else will you know the feeling of standing on something ancient, or hearing the silent roar of empty spaces? How else will you be able to look into the eyes of a man who has no education, never left his village and does not speak your language and know that the two of you have something in common? How else will you know, in your heart, that the whole world is precious and that every person and place has something unique to offer?
And when there are tragedies or great changes in your life, how else will you truly understand that there are a thousand, a million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind?
These lessons and more will have etched a new element in your character. You will know the cutting moments of life, where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it feels like to almost run, but instead to say. You will have come to the edge of a precipice and jumped, so you will always know what it means to say yes or no when another jump confronts you in your life.

These lessons and memories will remain with you always, and will serve as a comfort and a guide as you go through your life...
But more than that, because I have traveled, I can see other universes in the eyes of strangers. Because I have traveled, I know what parts of me I cannot deny and what parts of me are simply choices that I make. I know the blessings of my own table and the warmth of my own bed. I know how much life is pure chance and how great a gift I have been given simply to be who I am.
And when I am old and my body has begun to fail me, my memories will be waiting for me. They will lift me and carry my over mountains and oceans. I will hold them and turn them and watch them catch the sunlight as they come alive once more in my imagination...
This is why we need to travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances that the traveler has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end you will be so much richer, so much clearer, so much happier and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge and wisdom you have gained."

From Kent Nerburn's chapter on Travel (pgs. 111-115) in his book Letters to my Son (1999).
Thanks to Brooke for introducing me to this chapter.

Read this first

On Aug. 5 I will embark on my second trip to Central America. Last summer I spent a month in Guatemala and a few days in Belize. This summer I will be traveling with my friend Allegra through Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua and then meeting Rob in Costa Rica. In total I will be away for six weeks. Four of those weeks will be focused on learning and practicing Spanish. The last two weeks I hope to spend walking through the jungle, surfing, white water rafting and sitting on the beach.

I have decided to keep in touch with my friends and family through this blog. The idea of trying to keep a public journal is somewhat disconcerting. I am used to private journaling, writing things I do not expect anyone to read. My hope is that I can balance the honesty and clear communication so that you will get a sense of the places I am visiting and understand the experience of being there affects me. I expect that at some points my journal will address socially taboo topics such as politics and religion. It may be mildly offensive to some, full of grammatical and spelling errors, or just plain indecipherable. I ask that you read it graciously and forgive the shortcomings of a one-sided conversation to a diverse group and the technological challenges of being in developing countries.

I know it is uncommon for a young wife to leave her husband for a month to travel in third-world countries. It will be painful to be away from him. However, it is his love that gives me the freedom to pursue the fullest life that I can. For some reason, I am compelled to seek this fullness in the broken beauty of places where gratitude and poverty coexist in the midst of awesome landscape and a twinge of danger.

One way to articulate it:
I realized that I was not going just because it seemed like a good idea, but because those who love me most sent me on my way with affection, support, and prayers. The more I realized that I was truly loved, the more I felt the inner freedom to go in peace and let all inner debate about motivation subside...
Latin America: impressive wealth, degrading poverty, splendid flowers, and dusty broken roads, loving people and cruel torturers, smiling children and solders who kill. It is here that we have come to look for God's treasure.(Nouwen, Grasias, p. 9).

Henri Nouwen, a priest also trained in psychology, is my favorite author. He traveled and wrote extensively about Latin America. Last year on my trip I read the book Gracias. I copied these two quotes into my journal and they still resonate with me very strongly.