Checklist [X]

• Bus ticket to Peru [X]
  
• Whole wheat crackers [X]
  
• Good company for the ride - Jeremy, this is you [X]
  
• Old friends to catch up with when I get there - Bethany&Jordan, cheers [X]
  
• New friend to meet in a new place - Maureen, welcome to the madhouse [X]
  
• Theme song(s) - AudioAdreneline, The Beatles, Paul Simon [X]
  
• Team Name - [?]
  
• Guaranteed Epic Two Week Adventure - [XXXXXXX]

Buenos Dias, Rayita del Sol

To quote Cassie, I need to be a little sassy for just a minute.

Here´s what I woke up to this morning:

1. My looming trip to Peru has hit some roadblocks. i.e., 4 different flights for 5 people, and Jeremy is stranded in Cuzco for 2 days by himself.

2. All three of my potential classes for next semester are at the same time.

3. Trying to book a flight the day before you plan to leave is a bad idea and a hassle in any country.

4. I think I inadvertantly insulted the maid this morning at breakfast. I like water better than juice that is 136% sugar, sorry. It´s not personal.

5. My sister is 50% sure she´s pregnant with a baby.

Some Morning Reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24volunteerism-t.html

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/how-to-change-the-world/

Study Notes

The Decameron:
Hospitality
Should never be looked down on
it saves marriages

The Prince:
Machiavelli:
Better to be feared than loved
Be cruel when needed

The Renaissance:
Medici´s: Patrons
Humanists loved the classics
Questioned religion

The Art of War:
No war is best war
Fewer battles, the better
Skew advantages

Marco Polo:
saw lots of cultures
money, hookers, war
did he really go?

The Ramayana:
Vishnu, born ¨Rama¨
Demons, monkeys, adventure
Lost his wife for pride

The Arabs:
Land is unfertile
Mecca, Muhammed, Islam
Trade routes abounding

Nero:
Nero, you nutter
killed your opposition
all so you could sing

Byzantium:
A.D. three-thirty
Justinian and his wife
Constantinople

Satire #3:
To Hell with the Greeks
No room for Romans in Rome
Drinking, brawling, crime

Satire #6:
Marriage: Suicide
Marry for wealth, never pleased
She-tyrants abound

Postmarked to Viña del Mar

Hablamos con Beth
Para planear Peru
viaje bacan

Atlantis City
Wikipedia that ish
crazy, I tell you

The Loch Ness monster
is better known as Nessie
she lives, I believe

Atlantis? Nessie?
When I arrive in Heaven
these are my questions

Lost ancient knowledge
burned and destroyed for revenge.
That, truly, is crime

Yo tengo el tos
no me gusta jarabe
soño horrible

Fish men stone carvings
scientists think they mean much
I think they were stoned

I wonder if they were high,
those ancient artists
that would make some sense

Yo tengo frio
bastante, como hielo,
como nieve

I am freckley.
Revoltant development?
Me cae bien.

This pen may not live
all the way to December
You´ve served well, old friend

We both wore v-necks
such good times in Mexico
The V-neck shirt song.

[We were talking about Atlantis and lost knowledge in World Civ...]

Dear Aiden,

Your mom said you liked looking at some of my pictures, and I know that she reads this almost everyday. Here are some pictures of you from our fun times this summer. I wear my fast fast shoes a lot when I go to school, and sometimes I wear one of my tie dye t-shirts too. It´s not as cool as your tie dye spiderman cape though. I can´t wait to come hang out with you, your mom and dad, and sookie when I come home for Christmas. I bet you´ll be almost as tall as me by then!
I love you!
Charlie

Puerto El Morro

I spent my Saturday chasing dolphins in a motorboat.

Meet some of my new friends:

They´re really friendly. Our guide said sometimes as many as twenty will swim around a boat.

This one chased our boat!

Some Things Never Change

This is my neighbor´s car.

That little black box in the rear windshield is a Star Wars sticker.

In Spanish.

I feel like my world just got a little smaller.

Faithful Followers

Good Grief. I feel like a cult leader after typing that...

I added some photos to previous posts.

¨Empece a Conocer este lugar.¨

and,

¨I´ve always imagined Ecuador smells of coffee...¨

Enjoy.

Preguntas

¨I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, an elephant´s faithful, one hundred percent.¨

- Dr. Seuss

Some questions, as promised.

¨Why should Venezuela (or anyone else) have to do what´s best for the U.S. ? Shouldn´t Venezuela do what´s best for Venezuela?¨ - Brought on by The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I highly recommend it.

¨What´s the appropriate response to my anger at injustice?¨ - sure I can let off some steam on a blog, but what steps, however small, can I, the individual, take to help alleviate the situations I find myself faced with?

and finally,

¨Why am I so quick (and so content) to throw up my hands and say, ´I can´t do everything, so why should I try to do anything?´¨

Confession

I have been in a funk for the past few weeks.

Thanks in part to Cassie P., I think I have found the source.

Somewhere along the line I stopped asking questions.

The combination of cultural overload, mundane school stress, and the realization of how far from home I really am, all worked together to bring this about, I think. That´s not an excuse or a justification, merely a self-analysis.

Therefore, I, Charlie B., do hereby commit myself to choosing:
Curiousity over Saftey (within reason, parents, promise.),
Culture over Comfort, and
Questioning over Complacency.

Hold me to it? Thanks.

Capoeira

I spent yesterday afternoon with these people. I´m almost this good.

One Week

[Cue Barenaked Ladies here]

(Relax dad, it´s just the name of a band)

Some words for this week:
quick-moving,
studious,
cultural,
culinary.

Some reasons:
I swear yesterday was Monday,
I had finals and presentations,
I learned merengue, capoeira (see previous post), and the symptoms of culture shock,
I ate cow intestine (Guatita) and meatloaf within a 48-hour period.

Needless to say, I had pepto bismol for breakfast the day after.

Dear Diary

I´m sorry that I´ve been neglecting you.

I wish I had a good excuse, some sort of exotic illness, mysterious romance, or grand adventure to share that would make up for my absense...

But alas, no, all I have are final exams and writer´s block.

The World Needs to Hear the Conversation I Just Had

In my kitchen, with my host mom and sister (stefie):

Me: ¨Mañana unas amigas van a visitar despues de las clases para estudiar la Biblia. Muy tranquila. ¿Está bien?
Tomorrow some girlfriends are going to visit after class to study the Bible. Really calm-like. Is that okay?

Stefie: ¨Viernes depués de las clases voy a charlar y farrear con unas amigas. Muy tranquila también. ¿Está bien?
Friday after class I´m going to get drunk and do some wild partying with some girlfriends. It´ll be really calm too. Is that okay?

I honestly think that this might be the funniest thing that´s ever happened in my life.

Stockholm Syndrome

I think I should be worried.

Some people picked me up from a bus stop in the middle of the night.

They keep me in a solitary room.

They feed my strange things.

They don´t speak my language.

When they really need me to understand something, they act it out.

They say I have to stay here until December.


And yet, I´m loving every minute.

A Story for Beth

Alternatively titled, ¨Why My Heart Calls Mexico Home¨

One day, a year and a half ago, my hermanita, Michelle, unknowingly turned my life upside-down. She asked me at lunch, ¨Hey, hermana, any chance you want to go on a mission trip to Mexico for two weeks this summer? Point Loma has a trip.¨

To which I replied, ¨Y´know, no. Not really. ¨

Background: The previous year I had traveled to Panama with a group from my church. It was a good trip, I had no complaints, but my heart wasn´t ¨in it¨ so I didn´t feel like I was in the right place, thus, I didn´t feel that mission trips were for me.

My dear hermanita let it go at that, even though I knew she was disappointed.

It wasn´t until almost a month later, as I was driving to school, that I thought again about her offer. I was driving along, listening to my ipod, singing along obnoxiously, like you do when you´re driving to school alone and only cows can see you. The lines of the song went something like,

¨Jesus I believe in you, and I would go to the ends of the earth for you...¨

Pause.

This is where God said,

¨Really, Charlie? Do you mean that?¨

To which I replied,

¨I´d like to think so?¨

And the divine creator of the universe responded with,

¨Oh good. Let´s start with Mexico, shall we?¨

Now how am I supposed to argue with that? And if that wasn´t enough, just to spite me, the next song on my ipod was ¨Mexico¨ by James Taylor.

So then I was faced with a few difficult conversations:

1. Hermanita. "Hey, you know that trip? The one I turned down? Is it still open?...." -- turns out it was. Because Point Loma extended the deadline at the last minute. Oh yeah, my higher power covers his bases.



2. My father. More difficult. "Hey dad, you know how I said I didn't want to go on any more mission trips? About that....."


Fast forward three months.


I'm sitting around a table in the PLNU cafeteria with hermanita, Brittaney [another high school friend] and some new friends, all headed to Baja California early the following morning. Mary, a 40-something woman from the midwest who somehow found herself headed to Mexico with 25 teens from SoCal and 77 Mexican students, was telling us her story. Afterwards, she asked us, " What about you? Why are you here?" Listening to my new friends tell their stories, and listening to myself tell my own, I had an overwhelming feeling that God was about to open his mouth again.


" Charlie, you're going to find your heart here."

And I did. Not in the way I originally expected to though.

I assumed that ¨finding my heart¨ meant that I would hop off the bus and instantly know what God wanted me to do with my life. This was the summer before I started college, and so naturally majors, careers, callings, and life goals had been heavy on my mind. I became a woman possessed. Every city we drove through, every stop we made, I waited expectantly for something magical to happen. It was as if I was looking for a billboard in every skyline saying, ¨Charlie. This is where I want you to be.¨

Loca, right?

It wasn´t until over a week into our trip, while sitting next to hermanita during our customary evening worship service in Cabo, that things began clicking. We were singing a song in spanish:

¨Hoy te rindo mi ser
Te doy mi corazon
Yo vivo para ti
En cada palpitar
Mientras haya aliento en mi
Dios haz tu obra en mi.¨

which translates to:

¨Today I surrender my self to you
I give you my heart
I live for you
in every heartbeat
while there is breath in me
God, work your masterpiece in me.¨

Pretty deep stuff, yeah?

So as I´m listening to myself say these words, and their meaning is hitting me, I realize that THIS is what finding your heart means. It´s not about places, or careers, or even callings. It´s about motivation and surrender. Knowing what (or who) you´re living for.

As I started scribbling these things down in my journal, 2 Corinthians 5:17 was on repeat in my brain:

¨Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!¨

I copied it down at the bottom of the page, and just as I finished, the remaining blank pages fell out of the binding. Time for one more divine conversation:

¨Charlie, this is a new beginning. Trust me. You´re not walking with me anymore. Let´s dance.¨

¨Lord, what about the whole ´finding my heart´ business? I mean, did I hear you wrong?¨

¨Charlie, sweetheart. I told you that you would find your heart. I didn´t say I you were ready to know where to put it.¨

And he still hasn´t told me.

That trip started a domino effect in my life that I´m still feeling today. I´m sitting in front of a computer in an Ecuadorian house partly due to it. I ended up transferring to Loma almost a year after the trip, largely due to it´s impact and the people I met there. And some of those people, those strangers around the table, I now count among my closest friends, including the lovely lady to whom this post is dedicated (who will also be my roommate in January).

I can´t say for sure if I´ll ever get to go back to Mexico long-term, though I can think of few things that would please me more, but I do know that it´s where I found my heart, and that for that reason it will always feel like home.

Empiezo a Conocer Este Lugar

After walking to and from the bus four times a day for over a month, I´m beginning to ¨get to know¨ my neighbors. In a manner of speaking.

It´s something like this:

When I walk out front, if it´s morning, there is a boy, about 12-13 years old, sitting on the pavement directly across from our gate, holding a bottle of coke and a stopwatch, staring at me.

This used to make me nervous, but then I saw my next door neighbor, a boy a couple years older, running every day with his dalmation. My guess is that they´re brothers, and older brother gives younger brother sugary goodness to sit on the pavement and time his runs.


In the morning there are also a couple of ladies who are out jogging together. It´s a scene that helps me understand why Guayaquil is called ¨Guayami.¨ The ladies have matching jogging outfits, ipods, perfectly done hair, and are laughing together as they run along a sidewalk shaded by palm trees. Someone should really get a picture for some ad brochures.


This same stretch in the evening is occupied by a different crowd.

There´s an old man who stands in front of his house, in the dark, for his 7:30 smoke every night, like clockwork.

There´s also a house under contruction. During the day the men play loud reggaeton on their radios, and in the evening a television can be heard from inside the half-finished concrete walls, blasting telenovelas.


After that it´s just me and my nose for a few blocks. I hold my breath while I cross the street that inexplicably reeks of sulfur, until I reach the Catholic school that has the giant jasmine bush growing along the fence, and I can breathe again.



And finally, the guardias. I live in a gated community, and there are 2 or 3 guards at each enterance, as well as a few patrolling on bicycles. I count them among my amigos here. They´re always incredibly polite and cheerful with me, which is nice.

It´s nice to reach a point of at least partial familiarity. It feels almost like a movie set, with all the stereotypical background characters in place. And now I´m one more extra, the gringa with the green eyes and the purple shoes, walking to the bus stop, same as usual.

Mañosa

-- means ¨picky eater¨

I´m having an ¨off¨ morning.

The maid is back.

The fact that that alone is making me have an attitude should be cause for concern, I think.

I, for one, feel that I am ungrateful.

But I´ve fallen into a routine. I wake up in a foreign country, wash my face with soap from a bottle that I can´t read, say good morning to my host parents who are watching the news in a language that I can´t understand, and then I go to the kitchen, and make myself a mountain of scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast, and soy milk.

And after that, I can face the world. I can handle the honks and cat calls on the way to the bus, I can deal with the stares and giggles of my fellow classmates when I pronounce words wrong, I can eat 70 pounds of rice a day, I can stumble through catching a taxi that [hopefully] won´t kidnap me. But first I need to make my own breakfast.

Like I said, ingrate.

I´ll be working on this. Independence is great and all, but I really wish someone would tell me how obnoxious I am. Example:

Dear Charlie,
Someone is making you breakfast. And then washing the dishes afterward. Shut up and deal with it.
Love,
The Mature Person You Hope to Someday Be

The Country´s Back to Normal

ish.

The police are back to work, the streets are calm, and I can go bolwing with my friends on a Saturday night without worrying.

The politics behind Thursday´s events are still being debated, but as far as my day-to-day life in the Ecuadorian suburbs, things are settled down.

Welcome to Latin America: massive nationwide unrest on Thursday, family get together to watch the national soccer team play on Sunday.

Beautiful Words

A new favorite from an old favorite:



Read along here:

May the Grace of God be with you always, in your heart
May you know the truth inside you from the start
May you find the strength to know that you are a
Part of something beautiful...

And I thought that I saw a light Shine,
I thought that I saw a light shine
Yes, I thought that I saw a light Shine
I think I see a light shine, now...

[repeat as necessary]