Update: I’ve decided to spend a few months in Canada. I’m heading back to Edmonton on Friday, where I will get a job and save up some money before heading back abroad. I’ve got an offer at a pretty nice school in Xi’an, China if I want it, but I’m also going to interview for [...]
1. Volcanoes. Sure, I know there are some volcanoes quite close to Mexico City, but I certainly can’t see them. In fact, I can’t even see the surrounding mountains, only a yellow haze on the horizon. I grew quite attached to some of Guatemala’s volcanoes, even though I didn’t climb any of them (besides Pacaya, [...]
Still 7 weeks until I arrive in Guatemala (but who’s counting.) Unfortunately, that means that until then I am experiencing little more than sitting at my computer, furiously typing out my last few papers before I finish my Masters. This probably does not make for exceptionally interesting blog posts. Regardless, I have been hit more [...]
When I was thirteen a sex ed troupe visited my middle school. A hundred pre-teens filed into the gymnasium and sat down in rows, our awkward skinny bodies uncomfortable again the cold hard floor. The innocent, sterile scene of our childhood games seemed inappropriate for a discussion of such an adult topic. This was the [...]
One afternoon in Ouaga I go to meet Dabson and “Mr. Baobab” at Zaka. They are not there when I arrive so the waiter (who now knows me) seats me at a table in the shade and says that my friends will be back in an hour. I order a Coke, and because I don’t [...]
I am writing a ridiculous travel novel, just for fun. Well, right now it’s just a dozen or so jumbled memories disguised as fiction through composite characters, but it feels good to write. Here’s a page I just wrote.
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When I get home later the same day, Adjara and Mariam are sitting outside my door. [...]
Kuna Yala, otherwise known as San Blas, must be one of the world’s most intensely relaxing places. The moment I stepped off the plane, my shoulders lost their typical hunch, my legs relaxed, and I breathed more deeply. Lying in a hammock on the deck of the Hotel San Blas, there was nothing to think [...]
Okay, so I’m going to skip back somewhat to our second week in Burkina Faso. As interns for the Fondation pour le Development Communautaire de Burkina Faso, we were ostensibly going to do research in community schools to compile a database of the organization’s 2500 students. It soon became apparent that “research” involved driving out [...]
These three kids might as well be called the Three Stooges. The boy on the left is five-year-old Tidi. The little one in the middle is his three-year-old sister Alindi. They are two of our neighbor Mme Ilboudo’s children. The girl on the right is four-year-old Aleah, the little sister of my friends Ruth and [...]
On Tuesday morning I received a message from a girl who is in Burkina Faso right now, working for the same organization as I did last summer. I had written her asking how all the kids are. “They’re good,” she said. “They talk about you all the time.” Upon reading this, I proceeded to burst [...]
