2013-02-27
Every passerby stares. Even a brief passing calls for double takes, especially with groups of children. Staring. Gawking. Examining. Even through my shades, my eyes alternate between looking straight ahead and a random object that I suddenly find oh-so-interesting. My hand adjusts its grip on my bag strap and I continue forward. Is there anything...
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2013-02-27
I walk into the small beauty boutique with my sister and as she starts to bargain with the storekeeper for better prices my mind begins to wander. I look around, and I start comparing this store to beauty shops back home. I’m not talking about the differences like concrete floor to impressive sparkling tiles or...
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2013-02-27
Senegalese girls are very strong—both physically and mentally. Every morning before school, my thirteen-year-old sister Saly does a good amount of chores—whether it be running errands for her mother to buy twenty cents’ worth of baguette and powdered milk from a boutique (shop) for my breakfast, or sweeping a dirt-covered cement porch to smoothness. She...
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2013-02-27
I have never sweat like I sweat in Bahia. The beating 6 am sun jolts me awake, the overcrowded bus leaves tears of sweat dripping down my back, but nothing competes with the gym, where I could nearly flush a toilet with the sweat of a single workout. But oh, how it is good. Last December, after months...
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2013-02-26
Dear Reader, Below I arranged a combination of rules, guidelines, and recommendations on how to make friends. These skills were learned in a local market in a city of 100,000 in northern Ecuador. They are results of trial and error, embarrassment, laughs, and smiles. Most steps were learned while making friends with food vendors in a market. For example, a...
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2013-02-26
Learning Spanish through immersion is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Not that I’m done, but it’s pretty amazing to be doing. You notice more about your own language, too. For example, English is pretty rigid, sentence structure-wise. In Spanish, you can put words all over the place and it still makes a decent sentence. It’s great...
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2013-02-26
When I first got to site in Mboro, almost five months ago now, my 12-year old sister was totally OK with me taking pictures of her. She even took my iPad and took pictures of herself with it. However, as I’ve spent more time here, and as she had her 12th birthday in October, she...
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