the Nonsense in Between

every answer leads to more questions.
like ink spilled on a blank page, inky rivers trailing off into a million branches...

Nope, just one big blotch. a giant mess. the kind that just gets messier when you try to clean it.

Not sure how or why I'm making time to post on my blog right now, maybe its the masochist in me? The same masochist that insists on postponing things until the last minute just to see how much it hurts to squeeze it all in to an impossibly short amount of time.

Aside from all the pain I've been putting myself through things are actually quite good right now. Just this morning I sneaked in a couple of minutes of quiet under the morning sun -- actually, it wasn't my idea, I stole it from Oni-dog -- it was really peaceful. I took the opportunity to appreciate life and how it's exploding all around us right now.

If my brain doesn't implode over the next week I'll be fortunate enough to experience some really great changes in my own life. I'm really looking forward to having my frame of mind overhauled in Mexico. Just the thought of being with the people and living how they live has already affected my perception. Just the other day I made a bean burrito for lunch and found myself in that conundrum where the burrito was full but there were still beans left in the container but not enough for a whole burrito. Usually, I'd end up throwing away the 9 cents worth of beans but on this day I stopped to think about the people in Mexico and what they'd do (they don't throw food away. If you're lucky I might one day share with you what my Abuelo does with food). I just couldn't rationalize throwing it away knowing that in a couple of weeks I'm going to be in a place where food is often scarce and 9 cents worth of beans could satisfy a starving person. I saved it. When I went to make a meal the next day I used a rubber spatula to scrape every last bit out of the container, and you know what? it made the perfect burrito!

This might be a practice I'll have to adopt for practical, and not just philosophical, reasons too. As you may have heard/read we're moving to California, Officially! Honestly, I haven't had the time or the energy to put into thinking about it and it just might be a good thing. As disorganized and flighty as I am, I happen to be the "planner" in our relationship, well maybe not the "planner" but the less impulsive one. Dominic, on the other hand, is the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. So this whole pack up our lives and move to LA thing without a plan? That was his idea. And since I'm so busy right now I can't really freak out about it or take the time to convince both of us that it's a bad idea (i'm not saying it is, but i'm sure i could come up with an argument). The good news is that we'll probably move right after I get back from Mexico so if we end up living out of our car for a while it just might feel like luxury to me. And since I now know how far you can stretch 9 cents worth of beans, I don't think we'll go hungry either.

This is the worst case of spring fever I've ever had. I keep telling myself to "just hang in there, it's almost over" but the sun came out today and all I want is to go out and play. Dominic and Oni went to the park without me and I'm stuck at home "studying", which looks a lot like if you put an ADHD kid in the middle of a video arcade and told him to read Moby Dick. It's torture!

Four more days. Just four more days.

As it turns out, internet access in rural Mexico is almost non-existent. There is, however, one computer with internet access in a teeny tiny library in the “big” town of Rayones, Nuevo Leon, where we are currently staying. Unfortunately, the hours of operation haven’t allowed us to really access the internet but today is probably the last chance I’ll have so here is my very long blog post from Mexico...

Currently, we are staying in “big town” Rayones but on Monday we are heading up to the mountain villages where there are no phones or computers and virtually no running water or electricity either. As excited as I am to get to the meat of what we’re doing here I’m a little nervous to be so far from the outside world. Even though we haven’t had much time to use the phone or the internet here in Rayones it has been comforting to know it is there.

Since we’ve been here most of our time has been spent on orientation, training, and setting up. Our main focus has been on tourism because the nonprofit we’re working under has been asked by the Governor of Nuevo Leon to give a report on issues and suggestions regarding tourism. Basically, the Governor has decided they ARE going to start advertising and pushing tourism so Fifth Sun has gotten involved to help identify potential issues and suggest possible solutions. Our job has been to go out to potential tourist sites and report back on problems we see both from an American tourist perspective and from an anthropological perspective.

I personally wish tourism wouldn’t come here because I fear tourists may cause more culture change and damage than the revenue could ever make up for. Most of the students believe the same but Fifth Sun justifies our involvement by saying that applied anthropology is not going to stop tourism from happening but we can mitigate change.
Since being here I have learned so much and am beginning to understand how anthropology can (and can’t) save the world.

Since we can’t save the world in three weeks I think I may return home, with a group that is leaving a week early, and come back for the second session at the end of summer. I truly enjoy being in the field and I think I may have found my calling, its just unfortunate that my calling doesn’t pay in dollars, or pesos, or money of any kind. Fifth Sun hopes to be able to pay project leaders in the future so my hope is to stay involved in whatever way I can and maybe one day they’ll be able to hire me.

My main focus here is the literacy project and since the organization hadn’t previously done any work with literacy I’m starting with nothing, which is wonderfully frightening. So far I’ve discovered some major barriers to teaching literacy, for example: locals believe that “school” and “classes” are for children only so we have to find a way to teach literacy to adults without asking them to attend a “class”. I have some ideas but we have a ton of research and surveying to do before anything actually happens, which means nothing is going to get off the ground during this session.

By this point many of you have stopped reading because I’m breaking Dan’s number one rule of blogging: Don’t make long posts. Sorry Dan-o but I’ve only got one chance to get all this out there. And there’s more…