Musings before dinner...

When day gives way to night
And guards kindle fires
The thoughts of other times
Come alive within me.
- Yoshinobu Onakatomi

I write about simplicity a lot when I travel. Everyone of course can recognize the theme. We leave our homes, we pack the essentials, and we spend our time there rather than here. I think for most people travelling is rather like holding ones breath. Some can hold it longer than others, but eventually there comes a time when you just can´t wait to get home and... ¨ahhhhhhhh.¨

But what happens when you left home 9 years ago and can´t go back?



So inevitably I realize that I think I spend a lot of my life holding my breath. It´s not that I´m waiting for something per se, rather that I never know when I´m finally going to be ¨home.¨ But alas, I´m talking about simplicity. The one connects to the other because when I always feel like I´m moving, I never feel the need to unpack. Simplicity is more of a vice than a virture sometimes.

I hope one day I can stop holding my breath.

In the meantime life down south is going great! I made it through Thanksgiving without contracting any terrible parasties, on the contrary I had some wonderful tofurkey! I have some fun stories to share but I´m out of time to do it, so I´ll leave this post rather incomplete. I did, however, manage to capture a few pics with my ipod. You´ll notice I don´t have too many pictures with other people, and this is not, as you might assume, because I´m a total troglodyte, but because I´m weary of flashing around a piece of equipment that costs more than many people here make in a year.

But I´ll leave you with these...




This here is a friend I made one of the first nights in Chilimarca with Dan and Rachel. I thought we´d be maintain our friendship but after rejecting my facebook friend request and then promptly attacking the pencil I was using in lieu of an olive branch I was forced to swat him with my sandal.

Such is life.









This is the view from my front door. That´s Kodi, looking completly innocent, although he´s probably chewing on someone´s car keys...















This is also the view from my front door. I sleep on the left and study on the right. Aaannnddd I´m one of the luckiest guys I know! That green package at the base of the picture is full of lemon waffers. Emmmm..... sooo good!

(the Hershey pillowcase is a shoutout to... ohh... 6th grade?)









And props to Kodi for making it into TWO pictures! This is him inside my room. He´s super obedient until you tell him to do something he doesn´t want to do, then he pretends like he doesn´t understand Spanish. Unfortunately for him I know that trick.