Tonight I met with a close friend.
After meandering through a few dramatic moments in our lives these past few months, I began to quickly realize that she was not asking me any questions about my experience in a foreign country, and so I began instead to ask her about her life here back in Cananda.
We did all the regular things we used to do, make dinner and watch some television, but as we did so, I was on the verge of tears to realize that someone I felt so close to could be so disinterested in my life as to not be the least bit excited to hear about a potentially life changing situation. I was shocked to find how easily we slipped back into routine as if life had never changed.
I want life to change.
Margeaux and I are discussing right now that perhaps as Christians, the aim of loving people is not for self gratification, meaning to get something in return, but simply to love people for the sake of loving them, for the sake of realizing in them that they are a worthy creation of God. Although we often coin the term "love your neighbour as yourself", we often expect that if we do this, our neighbour will in turn take the same initiative to love us back equally. This is certainly not a reality that most relationships will achieve.
I struggle with the notion of staying in friendships that are not equal for the sake of loving people who need love. Kerri and I have often debated if certain people in our lives were only there to take our love and not reciprocate it, and if we as Christians are supposed to be ok with that. I would say yes, but it is a hard yes to agree to and to live out.
The people of Guatemala seemed never to tire of each other. Every day was a day spent taking interest in the lives of their loved ones, and perhaps it is this type of loving and community that I am dearly missing right now. I pray that in time, I can find or create that type of community back here in Cananda. It might not be so easy as I thought...
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Freespiritedness under fire
So, I've been questioned by a good friend about my hippy-hippy tree hugger post, you know, the one about loving stuff and running in the rain. And although it hurts to be questioned, at the same time it is what I value most in real friends, people who want to question and challenge, even if it hurts. Entonces...
I want to clarify that my love of life is not a rejection of the knowledge of God, but rather, it is a recognition of God in every moment of my life. It is a constant state of amazement that I find myself in, loving the things God has made.
Jesus does not just say, "hey guys, wait around till you die and then everything will be fine", but instead wants us to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth RIGHT NOW. God did not just design us to wait around till we die to experience him, but lovingly crafted us to interact and be inspired by our environment.
I was only trying to state that there is too much love of God in the world to waste our time pondering over things our brains cannot comprehend, things our history books will never reveal, worrying over things we cannot control, and criticizing things that are not ours to critique.
It is not that I desire to be ignorant of God, but I desire to be knowledgable of God as creator, not just as a presence in a biblical story, not just as an unknown, incomprehensible figure that is living somewhere beyond the stars...I was never attempting to discredit biblical knowledge, for surely our entire lives are built around who and what we find there, but now that I've found it and have knowledge of scriptures, it's time to put the book down and put the words into practice, no?
I want to clarify that my love of life is not a rejection of the knowledge of God, but rather, it is a recognition of God in every moment of my life. It is a constant state of amazement that I find myself in, loving the things God has made.
Jesus does not just say, "hey guys, wait around till you die and then everything will be fine", but instead wants us to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth RIGHT NOW. God did not just design us to wait around till we die to experience him, but lovingly crafted us to interact and be inspired by our environment.
I was only trying to state that there is too much love of God in the world to waste our time pondering over things our brains cannot comprehend, things our history books will never reveal, worrying over things we cannot control, and criticizing things that are not ours to critique.
It is not that I desire to be ignorant of God, but I desire to be knowledgable of God as creator, not just as a presence in a biblical story, not just as an unknown, incomprehensible figure that is living somewhere beyond the stars...I was never attempting to discredit biblical knowledge, for surely our entire lives are built around who and what we find there, but now that I've found it and have knowledge of scriptures, it's time to put the book down and put the words into practice, no?
Monday, August 20, 2007
The Final Fin De Semana: prisons, boobs, and starving artists
So, this is what my final fin de semana (weekend) looked like:
Saturday
John and I are supposed to meet at the front bridge of the town at 5:50 in the morning to catch a bus to a prison about 2 hours away, to take photos and videos of this guy who is making hammocks for the fair trade stuff that our program is going to sell back in Canada (via fair trade parties hosted by people such as myself and Jenna!). So, I get up at 4 in the morning, thinking that i will take a shower before we leave, as we are supposed to go to the prison, come back, and then directly get on a shuttle bus with the others and head for this gigantic garbage dump where thousands of people live in poverty, and I figure I'm going to want to be slightly less disgusting at the beginning of the day...but then i realize, hey, it's 4 in the morning, it's pitch black, and there is no way i'm showering in my cement hole in the dark...so, i remain dirty.
Entonces, John, Myself, his spanish teacher (who knows the dude we are visiting in prison) and Anna Julia, the local baker-ess, and mother to Nick and Cam, head off on our adventure, and 2 buses and 2 hours later, (after witnessing a woman getting goat milk squirted fresh from the teet into her coffee cup, and having the feeling that more and more we were surrounded on the bus by potential prostitutes heading for the prison) we were standing outside the prison doors while a guard told our guatemalan companions that they did not recieve the letter of permission to allow us into the prison with our cameras, PLUS it was women's only day and so even without cameras, john was not allowed in...Now, this prison is pretty much in the jungle, at the end of a dirt road. There is a line up of hooched up women coming to see their men, and then there is john and I, with all our camera equipment, not knowing whether to hop on the next bus (as at this point we were quite sure there was no way we were getting back on time to meet the group for the dump) but instead, we waited it out, and lo and behold, determined Anna Julia got us in, but by very bizzare circumstances...
She said we were from her church, and that she knew the pastor (which was true) that worked at the prison, and that we were coming in to hold a worship service...who the heck knows why we'd need our camera stuff for that...but it worked! However, we actually DID have to hold a worship service, and so, as soon as we got into this prison, we were wisked off to the church building, a little shack in the middle of no where, where teh pastor spoke on goodness knows what for about 5 minutes (through a very loud microphone, i might add, as is customary for churches here...even if you don't go to church, you pretty much here every single church service within 50 miles) and then all of a sudden, he made john come up and say a few things on the microphone as well! Afterwards, Anna Julia sang a worship song into the microphone, and our duty was done. We could now move on to why we were REALLY there.
So, the most bizarre part of this whole experience was the prison itself...Although it was enclosed by two sets of barbed wire fences, once inside, the prison was virtually it's own villiage. People owned tiendas (small convenience stores), people were cooking and selling things on the streets, everything was open, no real enclosed spaces at all. There was a giant football field where men with matching jerseys were playing an intense game of soccer. People's families actually lived in the prison with them, and during the day, there were small little shacks where the families would all hang out (and all furniture was entirely hammocks, because there were no real floors to be had) and at night the prisoners would return to their cells to sleep, and the families, i'm assuming, would go elsewhere to sleep as well. There were small acres of corn and other vegetables that people would tend to, and a large open rec-room area full of foozeball and pool and restauarant-type areas...it was un-real. If i ever have to go to jail, may it be in Guatemala...
So, we had a great time getting a tour of this not-so-prisony-prison, and hopped back on the bus, knowing full well at this point that we had missed the shuttle, but we resolved to make the most of our day, and headed back to Tizate, where I showered and John ate, and headed back into Antigua, where we had a great day full of icecream and exploring the market. Later that night, we met up with everyone at Juliana's GIGANTIC HOUSE where we had pizza and home made pie, and where Andrew and I promptly had ridiculous amounts of fun using excercise equipment at the same time and finding ways to climb out onto the rooftops of julian's house, and reveling in the phrase "pop and piss" for quite some time.
SUNDAY
I don't quite have enough time to explain everything that happened sunday, but it involved art galleries and taking photos of beautiful doors with Jenna, and finding this new cafe called "cafe no se" (cafe don't know) where the menus had bob dylan on the front, and bob marley on the back, and this beautiful starving artist played random songs on the guitar right in front of us. John and I were inspired by his mullet-hawk, and so last night I cut the same hairstyle for John with the ever so popular safety sisscors. Talking to this "starving artist" later when he was done his "set", we learned he was from california, and the love of his life had just gone back to Austria to start med school, and he was supposed to go back to California to start med school as well, but had decided to screw it and start working at that cafe the next morning....an attention seeker for sure, but interesting nonetheless. We then had a chat outside with a just as beautiful australian boy who worked at the cafe as well and was trying to help sell books from the attatched bookshop next door...He had come to Antigua a few weeks ago, and while frequenting another restaurant, was offered a job there, and then, just that day, cafe no se had needed more staff to help out, and so, ta da, he gets another job. I don't know how people just live day to day like that, but I sure would love to know more of them...
I'm sorry I never post photos anymore, it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience...ooooo, one of the spanish teachers just came in and told me that my spanish teacher is not here today because her kid is sick...score? sorta?
Ok ok, so i have more time to finish this post. Last night, before the hair-cutting and watching "The Last King of Scotland"(in a very uncomfortable position as we tried to squish 7 people on a single bed) we had a birthday party for my brother Anderson (who turns SIX in a few days, but we'll be gone by then). We all piled in to their relatively small kitchen and played silly games and laughed at Diana, my youngest sister, being an absolute mental, like normal. It was a happy, loving environment that night, and it just made me love my host family more, if that is even possible.
Certainly a wonderful last weekend. Yo quiero Guatemala. Pero, yo pienso es tiempo para regresso a Canada. Es una bizzare sentir, yo quiero esta aqui, pero a mi me gusta Canada tambien...ridiculo.
*side note, john and i figured out that basically we only need to use about 9 verbs here in guatemala: want, need, like, have, go, eat, sleep, buy, say, think. h'amazing.
Saturday
John and I are supposed to meet at the front bridge of the town at 5:50 in the morning to catch a bus to a prison about 2 hours away, to take photos and videos of this guy who is making hammocks for the fair trade stuff that our program is going to sell back in Canada (via fair trade parties hosted by people such as myself and Jenna!). So, I get up at 4 in the morning, thinking that i will take a shower before we leave, as we are supposed to go to the prison, come back, and then directly get on a shuttle bus with the others and head for this gigantic garbage dump where thousands of people live in poverty, and I figure I'm going to want to be slightly less disgusting at the beginning of the day...but then i realize, hey, it's 4 in the morning, it's pitch black, and there is no way i'm showering in my cement hole in the dark...so, i remain dirty.
Entonces, John, Myself, his spanish teacher (who knows the dude we are visiting in prison) and Anna Julia, the local baker-ess, and mother to Nick and Cam, head off on our adventure, and 2 buses and 2 hours later, (after witnessing a woman getting goat milk squirted fresh from the teet into her coffee cup, and having the feeling that more and more we were surrounded on the bus by potential prostitutes heading for the prison) we were standing outside the prison doors while a guard told our guatemalan companions that they did not recieve the letter of permission to allow us into the prison with our cameras, PLUS it was women's only day and so even without cameras, john was not allowed in...Now, this prison is pretty much in the jungle, at the end of a dirt road. There is a line up of hooched up women coming to see their men, and then there is john and I, with all our camera equipment, not knowing whether to hop on the next bus (as at this point we were quite sure there was no way we were getting back on time to meet the group for the dump) but instead, we waited it out, and lo and behold, determined Anna Julia got us in, but by very bizzare circumstances...
She said we were from her church, and that she knew the pastor (which was true) that worked at the prison, and that we were coming in to hold a worship service...who the heck knows why we'd need our camera stuff for that...but it worked! However, we actually DID have to hold a worship service, and so, as soon as we got into this prison, we were wisked off to the church building, a little shack in the middle of no where, where teh pastor spoke on goodness knows what for about 5 minutes (through a very loud microphone, i might add, as is customary for churches here...even if you don't go to church, you pretty much here every single church service within 50 miles) and then all of a sudden, he made john come up and say a few things on the microphone as well! Afterwards, Anna Julia sang a worship song into the microphone, and our duty was done. We could now move on to why we were REALLY there.
So, the most bizarre part of this whole experience was the prison itself...Although it was enclosed by two sets of barbed wire fences, once inside, the prison was virtually it's own villiage. People owned tiendas (small convenience stores), people were cooking and selling things on the streets, everything was open, no real enclosed spaces at all. There was a giant football field where men with matching jerseys were playing an intense game of soccer. People's families actually lived in the prison with them, and during the day, there were small little shacks where the families would all hang out (and all furniture was entirely hammocks, because there were no real floors to be had) and at night the prisoners would return to their cells to sleep, and the families, i'm assuming, would go elsewhere to sleep as well. There were small acres of corn and other vegetables that people would tend to, and a large open rec-room area full of foozeball and pool and restauarant-type areas...it was un-real. If i ever have to go to jail, may it be in Guatemala...
So, we had a great time getting a tour of this not-so-prisony-prison, and hopped back on the bus, knowing full well at this point that we had missed the shuttle, but we resolved to make the most of our day, and headed back to Tizate, where I showered and John ate, and headed back into Antigua, where we had a great day full of icecream and exploring the market. Later that night, we met up with everyone at Juliana's GIGANTIC HOUSE where we had pizza and home made pie, and where Andrew and I promptly had ridiculous amounts of fun using excercise equipment at the same time and finding ways to climb out onto the rooftops of julian's house, and reveling in the phrase "pop and piss" for quite some time.
SUNDAY
I don't quite have enough time to explain everything that happened sunday, but it involved art galleries and taking photos of beautiful doors with Jenna, and finding this new cafe called "cafe no se" (cafe don't know) where the menus had bob dylan on the front, and bob marley on the back, and this beautiful starving artist played random songs on the guitar right in front of us. John and I were inspired by his mullet-hawk, and so last night I cut the same hairstyle for John with the ever so popular safety sisscors. Talking to this "starving artist" later when he was done his "set", we learned he was from california, and the love of his life had just gone back to Austria to start med school, and he was supposed to go back to California to start med school as well, but had decided to screw it and start working at that cafe the next morning....an attention seeker for sure, but interesting nonetheless. We then had a chat outside with a just as beautiful australian boy who worked at the cafe as well and was trying to help sell books from the attatched bookshop next door...He had come to Antigua a few weeks ago, and while frequenting another restaurant, was offered a job there, and then, just that day, cafe no se had needed more staff to help out, and so, ta da, he gets another job. I don't know how people just live day to day like that, but I sure would love to know more of them...
I'm sorry I never post photos anymore, it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience...ooooo, one of the spanish teachers just came in and told me that my spanish teacher is not here today because her kid is sick...score? sorta?
Ok ok, so i have more time to finish this post. Last night, before the hair-cutting and watching "The Last King of Scotland"(in a very uncomfortable position as we tried to squish 7 people on a single bed) we had a birthday party for my brother Anderson (who turns SIX in a few days, but we'll be gone by then). We all piled in to their relatively small kitchen and played silly games and laughed at Diana, my youngest sister, being an absolute mental, like normal. It was a happy, loving environment that night, and it just made me love my host family more, if that is even possible.
Certainly a wonderful last weekend. Yo quiero Guatemala. Pero, yo pienso es tiempo para regresso a Canada. Es una bizzare sentir, yo quiero esta aqui, pero a mi me gusta Canada tambien...ridiculo.
*side note, john and i figured out that basically we only need to use about 9 verbs here in guatemala: want, need, like, have, go, eat, sleep, buy, say, think. h'amazing.
Friday, August 17, 2007
I'd rather be a fool
When we focus more on knowledge of God than on just loving God, we lose him.
We lose him in between the pages of theology textbooks.
We lose him behind the stacks of new-wave Christian writers.
We lose him in the endless debates about which denomination is more correct than the other.
We lose him in the ponderings over which translation of the Bible is more historically accurate.
We lose him in the pride that comes with being able to spit out Bible verses like they are the A B C's.
We find him in the times when we notice how three different coloured leaves have landed symetrically next to each other on an abandoned tire.
We find him when we look into the eyes of another and somehow know what they are thinking.
We find him in the moments that we desire to give physical affection to another person so badly we feel pained when we must let go of them.
We find him when the sunset seems so beautiful tears sting our eyes, and the pain reminds us that we haven't cried in a long time, and we wonder how it is that a tear is not shed daily for the glory of the Lord.
We find God in love.
I would rather be a foolish girl,
dancing in the streets, wrestling with a 5 year old, running through the streets in a rainstorm, showering under a drainpipe, wearing half a moustache, admiring people on the bus, putting flowers in my hair, hugging and laughing and biting..
than have all the knowledge of Christianity the world can offer.
We lose him in between the pages of theology textbooks.
We lose him behind the stacks of new-wave Christian writers.
We lose him in the endless debates about which denomination is more correct than the other.
We lose him in the ponderings over which translation of the Bible is more historically accurate.
We lose him in the pride that comes with being able to spit out Bible verses like they are the A B C's.
We find him in the times when we notice how three different coloured leaves have landed symetrically next to each other on an abandoned tire.
We find him when we look into the eyes of another and somehow know what they are thinking.
We find him in the moments that we desire to give physical affection to another person so badly we feel pained when we must let go of them.
We find him when the sunset seems so beautiful tears sting our eyes, and the pain reminds us that we haven't cried in a long time, and we wonder how it is that a tear is not shed daily for the glory of the Lord.
We find God in love.
I would rather be a foolish girl,
dancing in the streets, wrestling with a 5 year old, running through the streets in a rainstorm, showering under a drainpipe, wearing half a moustache, admiring people on the bus, putting flowers in my hair, hugging and laughing and biting..
than have all the knowledge of Christianity the world can offer.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Don't worry my darling, the sun is coming out
So, I've got 8 days left. I must put the Golden Dogs on my Ipod on hold to write something coherent here.
In the past few weeks, I've been:
angry,
heartbroken,
inspired,
loved,
deliriously happy,
and constipated.
More and more my thoughts turn to Toronto and my plans for the fall. Everything is up in the air, yet I have faith that this next section of my life will be just as eventfull as the last 4 months.
I find it amazing how life simply transitions itself from one thing to the next. One day I will be here, in Guatemala, wrestling on the floor after dinner with the most beautiful children in the world, and the next day I will be back in Ontario in my small room at the Ark, wondering how in the world I am going to leave the 12 people whom I've spent every day with for the last 4 months. And then, suddenly, that will end too, and I'll be potentially moving in to a new home with people I don't know, and that too will end up being a situation I'll feel deeply attatched to.
I wonder what it feels like to settle down.
In the rental van the other day on the way home from Semuc Champei (our destination for our weekend off), a tropical, jungle-like place with clear water pools and dozens of small waterfalls which Kris and I spent the day climbing up, and likewise found some rocks to climb up and jump off of AND which also had this sweet cave tour where Nick, myself, Steph, Dale and Cam had to swim through an underground cave holding only candles in our hands for light while we did things like climb up waterfalls and jump off rocks into dark unknown pools....amazing....but i digress...back to the discussion...
So yeah, we were talking about love, and there were different opinions expressed throughout the short-lived convorsation, but some things that stuck out to me were this:
Kris saying he knew he loved Char because when he was around her, he just felt like he HAD to tell her that he loved her, as if love needs to proffess itself whether the person wants to or not.
Interesting.
Nick saying that love cannot rely on romance or feelings, because neither are constant...Interesting tambien.
What then ARE we to base love on if not feelings? Is love more than a feeling? Is love more of a knowledge? Is love a surrender? I used to think I had love all figured out, and certainly I know how to SHOW love to people, but I have lost the ability to know if I am in love or not...perhaps it is only because I am not in love, or that the people that I could love are not in love with me?
And as much as I seem to like romance, I find more and more that romance just freaks me out, and that what I really want is someone to make me laugh, someone to inspire me, someone who is as much in love with life as I am. Life and God give me all the romance I can handle. I want someone who wants to share in the romance that we've already been given...yeah, that sounds about right. There is nothing new under the sun...no songs that could be sung to me, no flowers that could be given to me, no fancy dinners that have not been eaten before. And so, may my life be filled with the un-ordinary, a new type of romance that does not feed off the set standards, but creates its own, and revels in the simplicit beauty that we've already been freely given to enjoy together.
In the past few weeks, I've been:
angry,
heartbroken,
inspired,
loved,
deliriously happy,
and constipated.
More and more my thoughts turn to Toronto and my plans for the fall. Everything is up in the air, yet I have faith that this next section of my life will be just as eventfull as the last 4 months.
I find it amazing how life simply transitions itself from one thing to the next. One day I will be here, in Guatemala, wrestling on the floor after dinner with the most beautiful children in the world, and the next day I will be back in Ontario in my small room at the Ark, wondering how in the world I am going to leave the 12 people whom I've spent every day with for the last 4 months. And then, suddenly, that will end too, and I'll be potentially moving in to a new home with people I don't know, and that too will end up being a situation I'll feel deeply attatched to.
I wonder what it feels like to settle down.
In the rental van the other day on the way home from Semuc Champei (our destination for our weekend off), a tropical, jungle-like place with clear water pools and dozens of small waterfalls which Kris and I spent the day climbing up, and likewise found some rocks to climb up and jump off of AND which also had this sweet cave tour where Nick, myself, Steph, Dale and Cam had to swim through an underground cave holding only candles in our hands for light while we did things like climb up waterfalls and jump off rocks into dark unknown pools....amazing....but i digress...back to the discussion...
So yeah, we were talking about love, and there were different opinions expressed throughout the short-lived convorsation, but some things that stuck out to me were this:
Kris saying he knew he loved Char because when he was around her, he just felt like he HAD to tell her that he loved her, as if love needs to proffess itself whether the person wants to or not.
Interesting.
Nick saying that love cannot rely on romance or feelings, because neither are constant...Interesting tambien.
What then ARE we to base love on if not feelings? Is love more than a feeling? Is love more of a knowledge? Is love a surrender? I used to think I had love all figured out, and certainly I know how to SHOW love to people, but I have lost the ability to know if I am in love or not...perhaps it is only because I am not in love, or that the people that I could love are not in love with me?
And as much as I seem to like romance, I find more and more that romance just freaks me out, and that what I really want is someone to make me laugh, someone to inspire me, someone who is as much in love with life as I am. Life and God give me all the romance I can handle. I want someone who wants to share in the romance that we've already been given...yeah, that sounds about right. There is nothing new under the sun...no songs that could be sung to me, no flowers that could be given to me, no fancy dinners that have not been eaten before. And so, may my life be filled with the un-ordinary, a new type of romance that does not feed off the set standards, but creates its own, and revels in the simplicit beauty that we've already been freely given to enjoy together.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
A lovely weekend/ a really long post.
So, a lot has occured since my last post. I've been trying not to write about it because I wanted pictures off of other people's cameras, but clearly I am too unorganized to wait around for that to happen.
Last weekend, the boys surprized us with a girls appreciation day/night. Originally, we were told to meet the boys in Antigua at this Ice Cream shop at 2pm, where they were going to buy us icecream and hang out for a bit. We figured this would take maybe an hour. However, when we all finally arrived at the ice cream shop, we were greeted with John actually BEHIND the counter with the other workers! So then I figured, ok, John is just being cute and serving us the ice cream, but no no, he hands us ice cream cones filled with encouragement notes and a riddle to figure out our next destination and then bolts. We quickly realized we were on a scavenger hunt of some sort, and in fact at first I thought it was some sort of race, so I literally ran to our next location for fear of "elimination". However, when I arrived and found Andrew, he told me elimination was voluntary along the way.
So, we made our way around the city, finding boy after boy in different locations (although i should mention that when it came to the clue where Nick was, which entailed telling us that he was at an old ruined church, there are MANY old ruined churches, and we went to every stinking one of them before finding him at the very FIRST one that we went to, which we thought was closed...). Ashley and I opted for a double date with Kris, which consisted of pre-bought white sombrero-y tourist-y type hats (which we wore for the rest of the day), liquados (smoothies) and a horse and buggy ride around the city. Magical. Each of the other girls got their own individual dates with the other boys, some consisting of making and handing out sandwiches to homeless people, others consisting of being serenaded by violin in a cigar shop. The day was just wonderful.
To top it all off, the boys that week had gotten us girls to do small video clips to say hello to Robert and Carolyn and Dan back home on the farm in Canada, which we thought were going be collaborated into a nice little video to be posted on You Tube. Well, that vision is still happening, however, they ALSO made a second video, one in which they dubbed over our voices with their own and had us saying ridiculous things, along with their own individual clips of memories that they have of us (weather those memories were REAL or not is another story), and also interviewed one person in the town who is close to us to say some nice things about us. This video will be up soon.
So, that was last weekend. Yesterday, our spanish teachers and the girls got up early and took a 7 o clock bus to this place called Chimaltenango, or as I call it "chicki chicki mango" to wander around an animal market. It sounded like fun, but I could not have anticipated it would be a place where I would take some of the best photos of my life. I don't have time to post them now because I've got a photography student sitting next to me right now colouring, so I have to go.
However, let me end with this: Last night, John, Jenna, Nick and I took photos against one of the newly painted walls of my room (Jenna, Steph and I are painting a room in my families house as a present...full of vines and roses and beauty) and then we finished watching "Motorcycle Diaries", a movie I had always wanted to see but always thought it had Freddy Prince Junior in it, so I figured it wasn't worth watching. Now I know it is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, and was enthralled with from start to finish. After having a spanish lesson with the girls on Che Guavera last week, and having convorsations with Nick before on his time in a leper colony, I can't imagine a better movie to watch at this point in my life. Amazing.
More pictures to come!
Last weekend, the boys surprized us with a girls appreciation day/night. Originally, we were told to meet the boys in Antigua at this Ice Cream shop at 2pm, where they were going to buy us icecream and hang out for a bit. We figured this would take maybe an hour. However, when we all finally arrived at the ice cream shop, we were greeted with John actually BEHIND the counter with the other workers! So then I figured, ok, John is just being cute and serving us the ice cream, but no no, he hands us ice cream cones filled with encouragement notes and a riddle to figure out our next destination and then bolts. We quickly realized we were on a scavenger hunt of some sort, and in fact at first I thought it was some sort of race, so I literally ran to our next location for fear of "elimination". However, when I arrived and found Andrew, he told me elimination was voluntary along the way.
So, we made our way around the city, finding boy after boy in different locations (although i should mention that when it came to the clue where Nick was, which entailed telling us that he was at an old ruined church, there are MANY old ruined churches, and we went to every stinking one of them before finding him at the very FIRST one that we went to, which we thought was closed...). Ashley and I opted for a double date with Kris, which consisted of pre-bought white sombrero-y tourist-y type hats (which we wore for the rest of the day), liquados (smoothies) and a horse and buggy ride around the city. Magical. Each of the other girls got their own individual dates with the other boys, some consisting of making and handing out sandwiches to homeless people, others consisting of being serenaded by violin in a cigar shop. The day was just wonderful.
To top it all off, the boys that week had gotten us girls to do small video clips to say hello to Robert and Carolyn and Dan back home on the farm in Canada, which we thought were going be collaborated into a nice little video to be posted on You Tube. Well, that vision is still happening, however, they ALSO made a second video, one in which they dubbed over our voices with their own and had us saying ridiculous things, along with their own individual clips of memories that they have of us (weather those memories were REAL or not is another story), and also interviewed one person in the town who is close to us to say some nice things about us. This video will be up soon.
So, that was last weekend. Yesterday, our spanish teachers and the girls got up early and took a 7 o clock bus to this place called Chimaltenango, or as I call it "chicki chicki mango" to wander around an animal market. It sounded like fun, but I could not have anticipated it would be a place where I would take some of the best photos of my life. I don't have time to post them now because I've got a photography student sitting next to me right now colouring, so I have to go.
However, let me end with this: Last night, John, Jenna, Nick and I took photos against one of the newly painted walls of my room (Jenna, Steph and I are painting a room in my families house as a present...full of vines and roses and beauty) and then we finished watching "Motorcycle Diaries", a movie I had always wanted to see but always thought it had Freddy Prince Junior in it, so I figured it wasn't worth watching. Now I know it is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, and was enthralled with from start to finish. After having a spanish lesson with the girls on Che Guavera last week, and having convorsations with Nick before on his time in a leper colony, I can't imagine a better movie to watch at this point in my life. Amazing.
More pictures to come!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
"Flowers" By Anne Michaels, from "The Weight of Oranges"
If there is one other person to affect my heart and my thoughts other than Jesus, may it be this woman...
There's another skin inside my skin
that gathers to your touch, a lake to the light;
that looses its memory, its lost language
into your tongue,
erasing me into newness.
Just when the body thinks it knows
the ways of knowing itself,
this second skin continues to answer.
In the street - café chairs abandoned
on terraces; market stalls emptied
of their solid light,
though pavement still breathes
summer grapes and peaches.
Like the light of anything that grows
from this newly-turned earth,
every tip of me gathers under your touch,
wind wrapping my dress around our legs,
your shirt twisting to flowers in my fists.
There's another skin inside my skin
that gathers to your touch, a lake to the light;
that looses its memory, its lost language
into your tongue,
erasing me into newness.
Just when the body thinks it knows
the ways of knowing itself,
this second skin continues to answer.
In the street - café chairs abandoned
on terraces; market stalls emptied
of their solid light,
though pavement still breathes
summer grapes and peaches.
Like the light of anything that grows
from this newly-turned earth,
every tip of me gathers under your touch,
wind wrapping my dress around our legs,
your shirt twisting to flowers in my fists.
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