Rocking that *International* Paradise

It is insane to me the amount of preparation goes into the Christmas holiday.  I had never stopped to think about it until this year, but when you compare Christmas to the other holidays we celebrate, it is absolutely mind-boggling how much prep there is before Christmas day. Think about it.  For example: Halloween: You create (or buy) a costume.  Buy some candy for the trick-or-treaters.  Maybe go to a party to show off your costume (and when you were young, you went trick-or-treating).  The preparation  and celebration takes no more than a few hours. Birthday: You plan a party, buy a gift, make some food, celebrate.  Again, totally possible to prepare in an afternoon. Thanksgiving: You could argue this one takes more than 1 day to prepare for, depending on the type and amount of food you’re making if you are hosting.  But still…you spend a solid day making food, cleaning the house and maybe decorating, and then you spend a day eating ...

The last weekend before I left to go home for Christmas, I took a trip to Honduras, checking my fifth Central American country off the list.  Chris and I left at sunrise on Saturday morning in what would be my car’s first international trip. Gas tank full, passports in hand, and Chris’s machete in the trunk for good measure, we were off.  The plan?  Drive to the small colonial town of Copan Ruinas (just over the Honduran border), find a place to stay, and wing the rest.  The drive should have taken us 3 ½ to 4 hours, but because a landslide dropped traffic to one lane at one point of the drive (and I am not the type of person to swing into the left lane and pass 50 stopped cars), we were halted on the road for nearly 45 minutes.  The one good thing about this stop was that it is the reason we have a soundtrack to our trip.  Don't mind the glare or the waterstains on the mirror... I still like the photo. Anytime traffic backs up in Central Amer...

My life is good.  I am supremely blessed to have the opportunities, lifestyle, and friends that I possess.  But sometimes it’s easy to forget that and get caught up in life’s petty issues.  This weekend, many activities and thoughts culminated in that reminder. Yesterday was a “typical Saturday” in the city, inasmuch as there can be such a thing.  Amy, Carrie, Michelle and I hit the trails for a run in the morning.  The day was glorious—bright blue skies, a slight chill in the air that made running comfortable, and not a hint of rain.  Still, there were moments in our run that Amy and I wished it was simply over.  As we chugged up a hill, Amy chanted, “I’m thankful for my body, I’m thankful for my health, I’m thankful that I can run.”  It’s a simple thing, but one we have to remember: there are people in this world who wish they had the ability to run.  Or walk, for that matter.  And there are people in this world who don’t have ...

I was talked into going to Costa Rica over our 4 day Thanksgiving break.  Not that I needed all that much convincing, of course; I think Amy said something to the effect of, “I’m going to Costa Rica.  You should come too.  Here’s the flight I booked.”  It was just more of that peer pressure business from my last post again.  I don’t have anything against Costa Rica.  Yet given the short nature of our break and my frugal mindset, without the prodding from friends, my first choice for the weekend’s travel plans probably would have included going somewhere that I haven’t been yet in Guatemala.  But I’m glad I made the decision (and shelled out the cash) to go to Costa Rica.  There ended up being four of us in our group, which is really almost the perfect number to travel with.  Amy, Shannon, Analisa, and I got along well the entire trip and complemented each other’s styles too, I think.  I feel like we packed a lot into our four da...

My students are currently working on debates in class, and Annette and I gave them topics which relate to what they're currently studying during their Middle School Issues unit in Life Skills.  One of the teams was set the task to argue that "Positive peer pressure is more powerful than negative peer pressure."  A lot of them were having trouble with this.  They immediately whined, "How are we going to debate this?  It's not true!  You never see positive peer pressure...only negative."   Their strong reactions surprised me a little bit.  I could immediately think of times in my own life I'd been influenced by positive peer pressure dating all the way back to high school...but very few times that negative peer pressure has worked on me.  So I've come to this conclusion: it all depends who your friends are.  When I was in high school, I never touched a drop of alcohol or was tempted to try smoking.  The reason was only partly b...

One of my best friends here in Guatemala, Chris, works as a project manager at a silver mine.  For the last year we’ve known him, he has wanted to take us out to the mine so we can see the “other half” of his life.  He finally made it happen (for the first 3 of our friends at least) on Saturday. As we got closer to the village where Chris lives 5 days of the week, he asked us to lock our doors.  A lot of the locals are in opposition to the mine, for many reasons.  From what Chris told us yesterday, a lot of their unrest is based upon ignorance.  They are scared of pollution and contamination from the mining chemicals.  What many of them probably don’t know is that Chris’s mine is one of maybe only 5 in the world that uses a new filtration system which enables them to use water on something of a “closed circuit”—meaning that there is no contaminated water being discharged into local streams.  Some of the locals are also against a US company coming ...