Lisa goes South

I had a moment today. I was sitting in a cafe this afternoon, touching up the battery of questions i´ve developed to interrogate prospective volunteer organizations (including the castellano versions of "profit", "vague"--particularly necessary as the position descriptions tend to be textbook examples this term, and "electricity"), when strains of "bizarre love triangle" filtered into my consciousness. immediately i was assailed by visions of the fez ballroom, red lights, pabst, my beloved friends, random dancing buddy strangers, shaking my booty like a madwoman, and bothering the hipsters with my malodorous, sweaty presence. i almost cried. i guess that´s what home sickness feels like. this feeling lasted about as long as it took me to realize that new order wasn´t playing in the background, just some cheesy latin pop. nonetheless, the moment was real--i missed portland with every fiber of my being for somewhere between 20 to 30 seconds. we will dance again. so let´s get down to business, now that i´ve shared my moment. where the "$·%(& am i and what have i been doing? well, yesterday i climbed a volcano, the day before i had diarrhea, the same the day before that. for the past two weeks i´ve been in quetzaltenango, guatemala (xela). i still have yet to be a volunteer for anybody, but i have definitely been looking. see, the volunteer scene here in xela is big (hence the inquisition-like questionnaire previously mentioned), but it´s not as easy to find something as you might think. for instance, it seems very reasonable that if one is to work free of charge for another, housing should also be free. not the case. most organizations that place the volunteer with a guatemalan family in a pueblo (i want to work in the countryside, farming) require the volunteer to pay for housing and food, and some even charge additional fees. as such, i´ve had a bit of a rough time trying to find the cheapest volunteer position. a strange situation to find myself in. but i´ve decided that enough is enough. this searching crap sucks, so i´m just going to choose an organization, suck it up and pay to work for free. but i also think i understand why the volunteer scene is like this: guatemalans are POOR, especially the campesinos and indigenous people. this means that the value of my free labor, hours of hard work, is worth LESS than the cost of feeding me. in other words labor is cheaper than food. pretty fucked up. so i´m just going to pick an organization that passes my little test, and work somewhere in the countryside for a few months. next week. first i´m going to lago atitlan and check out the tourist-volunteer-job scene there. one more week of vacation before work, now that i have a plan. the lake is supposed to be gorgeous. and i´d like to spend a little bit more time with some of the friends i´ve met here before we all part ways. there´s some fabulous ladies here, traveling just like me. most of the solo travelers that i´ve met so far are women! ah, just one more reason why we rock so damn hard. yeah, i´ve met some great french, spanish and italian women who want to plug in the same way i do. and it´s been wonderful for my spanish, they´re great teachers. in fact, yesterday i learned how to say "i´m going to take a crap." can you imagine living life without knowing how to say that? yeah, it´s been tough. i´ve also met travelers from portland who are pretty rad, a few of them hooked me up with a free place to stay in the jungle of northern guate, but that´ll be in a few months. what else, oh yeah. free yoga in this city too. really intense acrobatic, aerobic yoga that screwed up my leg for days. man, xela is full of surprises, like the clandestine, illegal bars i went to last weekend. apparently the guate government passed a law 10 months ago which forces all bars to close at 1am, to cut down on crime. what a load of crap! it just cuts back on the guatemalan economy. so now there´s all these speakeasies that are open until 3am. but of course none of them hold a candle to our very own and very legal paragon. other big changes--spanish school, hell no! just a waste of money. i´m learning spanish just fine talking to peeps. so that´s the past two weeks in a nut shell. they´ve been a bit heavy on the thinking side, and yes, there has been a little bit of inactivity-related depression for me, but i have a plan now. i feel alive and ready, all over again. you know what did it? Santa Maria, the volcano that i climbed yesterday. i got to see flowers, native guatemalan flowers, in the lush semi-tropical rainforest of guatemala! plus it was a grueling, tortuous climb. never in my life have i ever said to myself "i can´t do this", but that´s exactly what i said yesterday during the climb. but i climbed that goddamn volcano, and now i´m ready for anything. Not only that, but the forest itself reminded me of where i want to be-- i need to get to leave the city. so that´s what i´m doing, tomorrow. there you have it, the continual evolution of my "vacation" in its latest phase. i love you all. and don´t worry, i´m not traveling to london any time soon. lisa