Rocking that *International* Paradise

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 ...

I went to the Festival de Bariletes Gigantes in Sumpango, Guatemala last year for Dia de Todos Santos, and I was impressed.  It was a good day.  But when Chris, Michelle, and I went today, it was one of those rare wonderful days that combined good friends, adventure, culture, spontaneity, new experiences, and laughter.  Michelle started the day off on the right foot by bringing breakfast burritos along for us to enjoy on the drive.  Chris set the tone with good music in the truck.  Even the fact that we spent probably half an hour stuck in traffic waiting to turn off the highway into Sumpango couldn’t get us down.  When we got close to the turn-off, Chris rolled down his window and shouted to the gent' manning the parking lot across the street to find out if there was a spot.  “Una!” came the response.  “Para MI?!” Chris entoned enthusiastically.  When the guy nodded “sure,” Chris popped the truck into 4 wheel drive, checked that th...