Quetzal

I am making it a point to blog more than just once a month which has been the usual frequency as of late!

This is going to be a significantly long post compared to my usual blog length. I have so much to tell!

La Senda in Guatemala was such incredible experience that I can not fathom the words to fitfully describe. It will be etched in my heart forever, especially the children that I met there. They all were wonderful in their own beautiful way. Some with hearts like Lions, able to overcome any tragedy that has befallen then during their precious young lives. Others still with scars visible emotionally and physically. All of them with a life inside of them that exceeds that of men and women with ten times their lifetimes lived.

Each day we got up at the crack of dawn (well... it was for us Americans, anyway) to find work around the Children's Home that would keep us busy for that day.. and what an abundance of work to do there was! By the end of the trip we had moved (as Martha Lee calculated) 650 cubic feet of dirt and painted over countless tiny hand prints lining the walls. Each evening when the kids got out of classes we spent as much time as we could getting to know them all, playing games, and going to quiet prayer time.

I really grew attached to one little girl who I think grew attached to me too. Yeny was absolutely the most precious, amazing, funny, wonderful girl I had ever met. We would sit quietly together in quiet time every evening for a few minutes before going outside to play. That time was really a precious little moment that I will never forget, and it really put life in perspective for me. The whole experience did.

All the girls seemed to be fascinated by Brandon. I would always see them running up to him to ask him questions and giggling their little heads off.

The lives of these people, not only those who lived at the children's home, but those living in the surrounding city of Sumpango, were so radically different from mine. Their main concern was the survival of their family and all other things fell away. They did not notice when a new blockbuster movie came out and they didn't watch CNN. If they did have a tv it came on once a year to show the world futbol cup. Their world was what they saw around them. Their lives depended on how many avocados they could grow that year.

There were three gigantic volcanoes looming over the city of Sumpango. You could see them very well from the back yard of the children's home. Also, when we visited the town of Antigua, you could clearly see the monstrous volcano that had recently erupted, causing the deaths of many Guatemalans. Thankfully, it seemed that the rubble from the natural disasters had been mostly cleared and the most that remained to be seen from the roads were tall piles of ash and some small rock slides.

In Antigua I had my first experience with the people of the market, who were the most aggressive salesmen I have been solicited by since Mary Kay (especially if they knew you were American, which of course was obvious haha). Once I expressed interest in buying a necklace from one woman, what seemed like fifty of them swarmed on me, practically throwing their crafts at me. They followed us around the square until finally giving up on me, with very unhappy faces.

The last night at La Senda was an emotional evening, although we had only been on the compound for a few days. I realized that we had to leave the next morning and I would not re-unite with these people until next year.

They are all watching the World Cup and so am I, thinking of them every game. Especially my little Victor, the coolest kid I have ever met.

Transcontinental

I am officially going to Guatemala in a week and a half! I get to spend some time with some precious little childrens who live in a children's home and help them complete various tasks around the infrastructure that need to be completed. It is going to be one of the highlights of my summer so far! The children who live there (La Senda) are court-appointed children who come from either abusive or neglectful homes, or no homes at all, as I understand it. I believe currently their ages range from seven to seventeen years old. We are bringing toys and clothes to the young ones and

other various objects in attempt brighten their little lives.. and will be teaching some lessons and playing games with the young ones.

above is a picture from a previous trip that I have stolen of a boy that lives there named Gerson.

After spending a few days at La Senda, we will visit the beautiful city of Antigua where we will shop and eat for a while and check out the gorgeous Jade jewelry that is available for a good price. I love Jade jewelry so this is one (lesser) thing I am looking forward to doing while in Guatemala.

I can't wait to see their little faces. I have a list of their names and have imagined what they are like....

In other news, I am finally moving out again. My friend Erin and I found a townhouse and we promptly fell in love with it's little fenced-in mini-backyard and fireplace den. We move in on the 28th of June and are looking forward to having our first house warming party! It is going to be an extremely beneficial move for me since I will be closer to not only school and everything else I visit on a regular basis but also right down the road from the interstate so I can get to the city for bellydance class and such.

By The Way..... bellydance class at the little 5 studio has been entirely amazing so far. The perimeter studio was great, but there is something about this little studio, and that something is probably Dujana!! One of the best teachers I have seen thus far. My friends and I adore her and her day-brightening personality.

Many have given strange looks when they hear the word 'bellydance', and it's no wonder because it has, over the years, been thoroughly skankified by hollywood and it's popular image. It happens that it actually originated as a folk dance which would prepare the body's core muscles for child birthing (they didn't have the super pain-killers we have today), and was also used as a form of entertainment; but nothing really like the 'harem-sluts' that we see in movies.

It has been one of the most confidence-boosting, muscle-bending and fun experiences I have had lately. Plus it is fun to skate over to one of the bars or restaurants in the area after class is finished and celebrate.

until next tea time

Indomitable

Hello blog!

It has officially been over a year since I've written you. I suppose I was caught up in such a whirlwind of life experiences that I found myself having next to no time to remember to tell you... yes, this is my poor excuse. Since the last time I've written, worlds of changes have occurred. Such as life. I have gone, in just one year, on countless adventures and changed in ways that I never imagined I would. Yes, if I dare say, in just this past year since my last post, I have changed more than possibly any year in my lifetime.

I have made every effort to plunge myself into any and every form of mischief that extended it's invitation to me (yes, even some arguably stupid ones), and thus discovered that doing so is the fastest and easiest way to learn things. I've slept on the stomping ground of black bears; literally and figuratively. I have given way to change; no longer fearing it, but now craving and even inviting it. Where life once seemed like an average two-and-a-half star picture, it all at once seemed a grand adventure fit for Don Quixote himself.

Do I feel like this every day? If I did, I'd probably be somewhere wrestling some sort of amphibious reptile or getting some obvious part of me irreparably inked with the words of great minds. Fortunately, this hopeful, adventurous spirit that I never could subdue and that I for so long denied is a tame whisper unless summoned as of late. It has, however, been flaring up and distracting me from my scholarly duties from time to time. It also feels the need to convince me that I am trapped in the house of my fore-bearers. Like a wild cat it claws at the back of my mind until I become restless; convinced of my entrapment, all reason is eventually lost. The fact that remaining at home until I graduate is the more economically sound and logically conducive option is squelched with more furor than the devil hath.

So now that my extreme dramatization of my life is complete...

I should mention that one of the highlighted events of my life as of recent was a most exciting trip to a wonderful film festival in Athens put on by Robert Osbourne (AMC owner) in which my colleagues in the Cinema Society and I enjoyed with rapture and awe. We watched many great classic films such as "Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid (possibly my favorite of the trip), Stand By Me (which I should probably mention was followed by an interview with Corey Feldman himself), Double Indemnity, a midnight showing of The Shining and more. It was a great time...

All I am hoping for and putting my energies towards is finishing the semester with grades that are better than devastating.

and as always, "I get by with a little help from my friends".

Over and Out.

Jorwan

Have you ever, completely by chance, met a person that lives on the other side of the world, then discovered they were the same age as you and had many of the same interests? It's an unlikely circumstance, right? It happened to me last night.

As many of you are i'm sure, I have fallen victim to the social networking jungle that is Facebook. A few months back, I got a friend request from someone named "Shreyas". When I viewed his profile, we had no friends in common, and I was sure we had not met before. That, and the fact that he lives in Bangalore, India. But instead of immediatley ignoring his request as i usually do when i am sure I do not know the person, I just left it there. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to reject him. I guess I figured it was either a fake profile (many people make these in order to steal your login information... i still don't get what they get out of that haha but yeah..) .. or there was some other reason this person had tried to contact me. So I just kind of forgot about him, and then just last night I was on Facebook and I decided to send him a message asking if we know each other from somewhere or not. He wrote me back and said that his friends had hacked his account and sent random friends requests to many people. He seemed so sweet though that I agreed not to delete him from my friend's list and we ended up talking for a long while. He sent me pictures of Bangalore, and we discovered we had a lot in common. Then he told me that he goes to Oxford.... and I started to suspect he might be lieing, but it didn't make much difference to me.

A few of the most beautiful pictures he sent me are these:




Bangalore during a festival called Diwali.





Brigade road in Bangalore



Bangalore traffic


I think it's beautiful :)

First day of class was yesterday. The science class seems pretty easy. But the American History since 1890... the teacher is one of those harder-than-usual teachers that justifies his difficulty be claiming to be easier than "all the other professors". Seriously considering dropping... plus the class is at 6:30! i hate night classes >:O But maybe I should man up, right?

I am going to spend the night with Erena tonight. We are going to an Eritrean Barbecue. I can't wait for that. I love Eritreans :) AND Barbecue.

And I'm desperate for food :(

Feed me!

p.s. Jorwan means twin in Urdu. Fun fact.