Close enough....

Some girl in my building is blessed because she is loved madly... but she's going to have to remove some of them so she can get home.

Poetic Justice.

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

A Whirlwind Update

So.... Antigua was positively awesome. First, it's a lovely town, very colonial, inhabited by locals, of course, but also by many foreigners who go there for the lovely, laid back lifestyle it affords. In the park, people sit on the floor, play the guitar. It's not uncommon to come across a giant blond rasta-endowed European.

Here are the pics. No blond rastas, though. I'm including a teaser pic below.

I went there using the local transport system, against all prescriptions I'd been given, and have no regrets. It was dirt cheap, remotely comfortable, and the people were nice. I spent Saturday night at a backpacker hotel that was absolutely horrible, but in truth, I didn't care. It was nice to be out of the bounds of work. I think I'm getting tired of those fetters. I shall break this glass prison, and descend from my ivory tower, she says decisively.

My return to reality was harsh, though - mostly because.... horror.

I'm not going to Bolivia. Instead, I'll be cooking in Benin and Niger. Joy unbound. Sure, I'm at ease in West Africa. Sure, it's French speaking. BUT I LIKE LATIN AMERICA. And well, the amount of time I spend in this area of the world is directly disproportional to the amount of time I've overall spent in Africa in my life. Oh, the irony.

I had dinner with the BFH tonight, and my cute childish pouty lip was ignored, so it seems I have no choice but to abide.

I feel cursed.

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

Interlude

Well, I'm off to Antigua for the weekend to hang out with some backpackers. I'll be back soon with some stories, but in the meantime, let me celebrate the return from cyber-silence of a few rather missed bloggers:

Tina's "Just Breathe" blog... her "release valve on life" as she puts it. She's considering resuming her writing, and I think it's a great idea, so let's welcome her back!

Amias' "Liquid Plastic" blog, thoughts about the human condition, and beautiful poetic thoughts. She's a published writer, and we can never be thankful enough.

G's "Library Bitch" blog, the world of a next-gen librarian.

Peace,

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

A Nights' Tale (I still got it)

I had a mind to travel to Antigua this weekend, but I had work to do, and well… I was feeling a little bit lazy. So instead, I stayed home and did a few things, though I promise myself to go this coming weekend, since it will be my last occasion to go.

On Friday night I went out to dinner with my colleagues. Our leader’s husband came to spend the weekend with her, and it was lovely to meet him – though I kind of felt like I was out to dinner with parents, seeing as everyone was twice my age.

To shake it up a little, I decided to go out for a drink at the Irish pub on the corner, and ended up chatting with a legal assistant and her friend, a business man. All this of course happens in Spanish, but it goes well, until they leave and a man starts chatting me up. Not that I mind, actually – it’s nice to have some attention once in a while. But it turns out he is an auditor for another organization, and though he wasn’t unpleasant, it was a bit blah to be (again) with auditors.

Saturday was spent working and lazing away, though I did take a long walk in the afternoon in the hopes of alleviating my ever painful back ache. My idle feet took me to a shopping mall and I ended up buying a white sweater and a black shawl, and reserving a pair of black ballerinas. I need those for Bolivia anyway – my standard packing habits don’t take into account colder climates.

Later on in the day, I opted to go out for a drink again, and ended up chatting it up with a high-ranking French official and his wife. I daresay that aside from the fact that they were charming, it was nice to speak some French. Later on that night, I decided to scout a club, just to see what was happening on the night scene, and ended up being pursued by a young man who was 10 years my junior... and a pleasant dancer. To quote one of my good friends, “You still got it, girl!”

It’s nothing truly yeehaw, but it’s nice to know I can still be pleasing to the eye.

Blah

Blah. That's how I feel. I'm late on my work, unmotivated, and somewhat depressed. I'm also noticing the low level of activity/comments on my blog. I feel lonely tonight.

I'm going to have a glass of wine, a shower, and try to get some work done. This is turning out to be a catastrophe. I'm never taking a three month break again - I'm way too distracted to be able to produce anything.

Hopefully, I can turn things around.

Blah.

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

A lil Vid....

Not mine, but indeed, this is Rabinal, wherre I spent a part of the week. Enjoy!

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

First CSMeet in Antigua, an unlikely jam and those dang frijoles

So… I’m back from Antigua, and had an absolute blast. The people I met on the CS network are simply amazing. Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Canada (coast to coast, with Nova Scotia and BC represented at the table), the UK, Poland and of course Guatemala all had representatives onsite, all wonderful and interesting and stimulating.

I’d love to say “Hey, I took some pics of Antigua, here’s a link”, but… I don’t. We arrived at night, left at night, mostly because some of us had to be back in Guate in the morning, yours truly, amongst others. Instead, I'm borrowing from Ryan Fox one of his pictures:But I had a great time, and plan on doing it again, if I can – it’s wonderful to at last meet some like-minded people.

Curious about what the CS Network is? Click here.

Oh, another little anecdote from the field:

In Rabinal, I met a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers, and we went out to lunch. Amusingly, we decided to test out a new place… that had a total band set up, with battery, keyboard and guitar. Turns out the owner is a one man band, and he was more than willing to jam.

So between a stock card count and a discussion about accounting systems, I actually jammed on the keyboard with a PC volunteer who missed his battery direly.

How cool is THAT?

Last but not least....

"Frijoles Volteados" - Refried Beans from Guatemala

Category:		Side Dishes & Condiments
Style:		Latin
Special Consideration:		Vegetarian
Servings:		4-6

Description:
Here, a recipe for the famous frijoles. I'm not a big fan, but maybe you will be...

Ingredients:
· 3 cups (or two cans) cooked black, red, or pinto beans with liquid
· 1/3 cup chopped onion
· 1-2 cloves of crushed garlic
· ¼ cup chopped green pepper (optional)
· ½ teaspoon ground cumin

Directions:
1) In a blender, crush (or puree) all the ingredients above except for the ground cumin.
2) Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a medium frying pan and add the pureed bean mixture from above and the ½ teaspoon ground cumin
3) Simmer all the ingredients uncovered, over low heat, stirring occasionally. Let the beans thicken (this will take about 10-15 minutes).
4) Place beans on a serving plate with rice and tortillas.
Or use in burritos etc.

*Option: mash beans with a potato masher or fork. Saute veggies in the oil & add the mashed beans & spices. Cook as directed.

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

La Ferria....

So I've been awol again, because it's so difficult to resist the call of the field... Anyway, here's the deal: I have a few pictures to share, not as many as I'd like to, because I ran out of battery. (New set is here.)

There was a Feria (a fair) in Rabinal while I was there, and so I had a chance to take some pictures that were rather typical.

But mostly, it was hard work and long commutes between Salama and Rabinal - the drive was one hour in the morning, one in the evening, and many twists and turns that made my stomach churn a little.

It was great, though - the people I worked with were wonderfully helpful, and I'm happy to report I didn't have to survive on beans (frijol) and atoll (some sort of maize oatmeal), which is a good thing. As much as I adore the people, I'm still struggling with the food, for the first time in a long time. I do get fried plantains, though, and for that, I am incredibly grateful. (Thank you, Guatemala Solidarity Network for posting the photo.)


On another note, my ability to express myself in Spanish is increasing at mach 3 - something else for which I am beyond grateful: there is nothing more frustrating, than being able to understand what's going on, but not to be able to contribute to the discussion... particularly when the group actually *wants* your opinion.

Anyway, I'm not back in Guate, and this weekend I'm going to Antigua with the Couch Surfers, so stay tuned for more adventures !

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

Chitomax!!!

So I've been gone a little. It wasn't my fault, it was for work, possibly the most fascinating part of my job. I attended a food distribution. (For pictures, click HERE.) I'm exhausted, but in truth, it was worth it, even if 24 hours later my back remembers the long hours of driving to, and from my destination.

So now, at long last, I can really say something about Guatemala. For one, it's a country with a lot (and I mean it) of mountains. My poor body certainly remembers the pain of the road, the slight nausea at all the twists and turns, and the back pain for all the sitting.

Secondly, Guatemalans are wonderful, warm, pleasant people. I like them very much - not only is it a pleasure to work with them, but it feels almost like being with family. I feel constantly huge, though. Sometimes, I don't dare stand, for fear of insulting them with my freakish height.

Thirdly, it's amazing what being bathed in a language will do to you. My ability to express myself in spanish is increasing at Mach 3. I'd studied it in school as a teen, and not practiced it - but I'm amazed at what my long term memory retained. I hear words, and they make sense, even if I couldn't come up with them on my own.

Fourthly, God bless subtitles. Thanks to the spanish subtitles, everynight, I get a bit more vocabulary. All in all... life is good.

The Beaver
P.S. Congratulations to Lynn, from California, for being the first reader in six months to post on my guestmap.
P.S.2 Belated thanks to Forever Restless and Pine River Spirit for linking to me !

A forklift saved my life...

Ok, not my life, but I might have had to spend the night sleeping on a pile of CSB if it hadn't been for the forklift...

Here's the deal.

I'm afraid of heights. I've been steadily trying to vanquish this very irrational fear for the last 2 years, especially because occasionally, I have to climb on stacks of food.

Well... I did, and it was all well and good, until I had to go down the ladder. I froze. It hadn't happened to me in YEARS. They had to get the forklift to help me down, and I was a bit mortified.

The good news is... well, I have a sense of humor. Thank god. Otherwise, I'd have died of embarrassment.

On the upside, I now can see life from the point of view of a bag of rice.

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

Reflections on First World Contemporary Art

This is much belated. I’ve been having trouble with chronicling my life recently, for reasons I won’t discuss here. But it looks like cath up is coming at me. So here goes. This blog will not be only about Guatemala. I’ll also be catching up on stories of the past month, as they bubble up in my mind. Poof.

While I was home, I spent an afternoon at the Modern art Museum of Montreal. It was... odd. Modern art always does that to me. Three artists were presenting. A Brazilian whose art is basically... err.. huge pictures of representations made of epheremeal material. That's the best way I can put it. There was a Raft of the Medusa, in chocolate sauce. Weird.

But anyway, what he had to say about his work was this: "The object in the picture seemed to satisfy an eternal longing for its own sublimation. A body, freed from infinit materiality, meeting its own spirit." This is a note he made on a series called Individuals, basically 60 sculptures made of plasticine, though he recycled the material, so one had to be destroyed for the creation of the next one to be possible. So I guess, in his case, the final work of art was the photograph. That was the original. The things the human mind can come up with. Maybe I should start making strange, very odd things with paper clips and quit my day job. Or maybe not.

There was also a German fellow called Tomas Hirschhorn who exposed a... gods, I don't even know how to describe it. A giant set that I guess would qualify as a sculpture, except it took a whole room. The darn thing (I didn't like it, it was grisly, disturbing, depressing) was an allegory for globalization, I guess. I still took notes on it, at the time, wanting to discuss them with you - then, well, life got in the way. But here they are.

So... the thing is called Jumbo Spoons and Big Cake, and the "big cake" is our society of excessive consumption, while the "jumbo spoons" represent 12 twentieth-century utopias that have failed, in the artist's view. Examples include Fashion, Rosa Luxemburg, Degenerate Art, Rolex, the Chicago Bulls, the Moon, Nietzche, China, Venice. You know, I think in theory, I agree with him. But the presentation itself was... yuck.

Anyway, he did say something that I liked : "I realized that I had to make the choice to be an artist because only as an artist could I be totally responsible for what I did. The decision to be an artist is the decision to be free. Freedom is the condition of responsibility."

I guess I liked it because it resonated with me. I feel the need to be free. I'm slowly learning to accept to take this responsibility.

The Beaver

My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !