Honduras Always Wins, And Has

Amongst the teachers at Day-Star School, there is a little phrase that is liked in order to make the difficulties we face in Honduras more of a game:  Honduras always wins.  It's pretty well documented in my friend's blog No Hablo Espanol where he keeps a running account of the gringos vs. Honduras.  (It's actually pretty hilarious, I suggest reading it through.)

I never really jumped on board with this because I moved to a developing country, I expected living here to be difficult.  Well, different and something needing adjustment.  And besides, thinking of it in terms of us versus them seems pretty combative in a way that isn't productive.  There are a lot of very beautiful things about being here, and I have met some pretty amazing people.

I have, never the less, decided to leave Honduras.

It is not the country, no.  This really is an amazingly beautiful place.  The people who are amazing I've met are not just my coworkers, but also some of the locals are excellent people, and so giving and helpful.  I have decided to leave because of my job, which is why I was here in the first place.  That, and learning how to speak Spanish.

My job is incredibly frustrating in a way that I do not want to deal with for an entire year.  At first, I told myself that once I adjusted it would be easier.  All jobs have their difficulties and seemingly arbitrary rules, it's just what you have to get used to.  In this job, though, the difficulties became harder to deal with and more frustrating, sometimes to the point were I couldn't teach my classes any of what I had planned.  The rules were never consistent, and what we learned in our training changed many times.  The hardest one for me to handle was the discipline of the students.  We were told constantly to be as strict with the kids as possible, but then later I was told that these kids have very important family members and you have to be careful how you treat them.  Read: be easy on them.  It isn't just me.  One of my coworkers had a consistently bad student and he was told, basically, to alter his rules for this one student.  No child left behind at it's worst.

Grading, too, is pretty crazy.  Honduran law dictates that if more than half of the class if failing it's not the students, it's the teacher.  How is it the teacher's fault that more than half of the class is talking and/or not paying attention during class?  Even if you have a well behaved class, like myself, no one pays attention, and I figured that out once I gave them a quiz and most of my students in every class failed it.  And not just failed.  Got 5 out of 15 or less failed.  For someone coming from teaching/tutoring college students, I was under the mindset that if you're spending money for your education and aren't going to bother trying in class, that's your problem.  Even though these kids are paying for this, they did not have that mindset.  I don't think I can emphasis more that these kids are the privileged, and I really don't know how to deal with that.

The younger kids are the worst, though, because they expect you to hold their hand through everything.  When kids would have a question on a test I would literally just read the instructions and they would get it.  But I wouldn't have any problem walking these kids through the assignments and tests and going slower if I had 20 students per class instead of 30, and for longer than 45 minutes every day.  I think that's why my 9th graders were so much more successful: there were 20 students per class and three days per week I had them for 1.5 hours instead of 45 minutes.

But that's pretty much just me bitching.

I don't think I'm the kind of person that can handle being a teacher.  These problems are the same sort of problems teachers have everywhere in the world.  Maybe not all at once, and maybe yes, all at once, but in either case, there are talented people that are not only good at this but love this.  I am just not one of them.

As far as my Spanish goes, it is inching, getting better slightly, but I've been here for 3 months and it is barely better at all to when I came.  Well, maybe instead of beginning 1 level I'm at beginner 2.  Not going to say it's not frustrating, especially when I'm on my own and tired and am talking to one of the less sympathetic inhabitants.

I feel that because my Spanish wasn't up to snuff coming here, I had a harder time keeping up with the vegan and as-local-as-possible lifestyle that I very actively try to keep, as I feel it is an incredibly important part of my life.  I am all but addicted to cheese again, and have definitely felt like an asshole when I order food in a specific way or send it back when it has ham.  I have had many meals of potato chips and accidentally eaten things that I really should not have due to my language problem.  This year  has been filled with cases of my not being prepared enough and needed to learn how to be more prepared, but the last 3 months of being unprepared were 3 months of being slowly chipped away at with very little support.

I knew this was to be the case, too.  I was excited to take every moment as a teaching opportunity.  I wanted to get into conversations with the waiters and waitresses about why I don't eat animal products, and learn about how food is made and transported in this country.  I was excited to teach my students about what it means to be vegan and vegetarian and open their minds a little to alternate ways of thinking and acting in this world.  I was especially excited to teach them about animal rights, at least.

But alas, I am not good at teaching.  I would rather do, I suppose.

I will, without a doubt, have a place in my heart for Juticalpa, Olancho, indefinitely.  But now is not the time for me to be here.  In the future, if my path takes me back to this place, I will welcome it with joy.

Good Teacher on Fridays

Fridays are the best days.

Not only is it the last day until the weekend, but I also only teach 5 classes instead of 6 on Fridays, which gives me time to do all the other things I need to do during working hours... Or go on facebook, depending on how I feel.

Yesterday was Thursday.  Thursdays are not the best days, and I was very harsh with the kids.  It's just so tiring knowing the the weekend is coming but you not only have to work today, you have to work an entire day tomorrow.

But not on Friday!  I know that I have only another # classes before I can go home and take a nap.  Or go drink a beer.  Or grade all the stuff I need to grade... No, I have all weekend to do that.  Today is Friday.  Today I do nothing.

But on top of all this relaxing and awesome free-time after a stressful week of teaching, I have found that I am also a much better and more patient teacher on Fridays.  Maybe it's the knowledge that I am soon to have 2 whole days of doing whatever I want, maybe it's the fact that I get so many breaks, maybe it's the classes I have on Friday, or maybe it's that the students are really happy to be almost done, too, but I will teach the same lesson on Thursday much differently than on Friday.  I will also be much harder on my students Monday-Thursday.  Way more warnings are given out on Fridays.  A lot more jokes are made.  I will hum and sing to myself.

In conclusion, Fridays are great.

--------------------------------------------

Advice to anyone wanting to teach in a foreign country:  Learn the bad words and the insults of where you're going.  One of the students could call you an insulting word and you would have no idea, when really he should probably get expelled for a few days for calling a teacher a "faggot" to his face.  Well, a maricon, but you know.

Coffee In Honduras

If you are a snob like me, you know that coffee is one of, if not the most important sustenance available to humans.

I am also a purist when it comes to coffee.  If I'm drinking espresso, that's what I'm drinking, and the same goes for drip or french press or socks... I believe that if you are going to order a "coffee" and buy something that's mostly milk, you probably don't like coffee.

This is how most people make coffee in Honduras: socks.

My main consumption of coffee in the United States is at home from a drip coffee machine, using filtered tap water.  Sometimes I use really expensive, local, fabulous coffee, and sometimes I use Foldgers, depending on the money available to me at the time.  That, or I dirnk from my parents' amazing coffee machine that grinds whole bean coffee for every cup.  It's amazing.  Then, in the afternoon/noon time I would get a venti iced coffee from Starbucks.  This was the hardest part, coffee-wise, of coming here: no iced coffee.  In fact, no drip coffee, either, unless you buy a machine or know someone who has one.  Luckily for me, my neighbor has a drip machine and I bought a huge hot-liquid container, so my life in the past week has gotten back on track.

Coffee in Honduras is not what you would expect.  Well, I guess it's only if you expect that coffee isn't exported for the rich and not really drank by the communities that make it.

The majority of the coffee I've had here is the shittiest coffee I've ever had: at my job.  Given, they probably don't put too much money into buying quality coffee (especially considering they won't even copy all the tests you need for your classes in order to save money), but keep in mind that this is coming from someone who loves gas station coffee.  So there's that.

Texaco: also one of the best places to get coffee.  

Gas station double Americano.

The best coffee I've had, by far, is when we went to Lago del Yagao, where there are coffee plantations right there, and so the coffee is really fresh.  Fresh to death.

Apparently, this is because the majority of the really good coffee plantations are more in the north and the west, and I'm in Olancho.  In the west, it's Copan, and since this is the final place in Honduras I truly want to see, maybe I'll be able to experience the fabulous slightly sweet and low acid Honduran coffee the region has to offer.

But there's also a little stand on the street on my way to school where I stop to get my breakfast of two baleadas.  Next to the lady with the baleadas, there's a lady with coffee, which is really good.  Unfortunately, I had to stop going there because she refused to give me coffee without sugar in it.  I tried for a week and every time there was a nice, thick layer of sugar at the bottom of the cup.  I'm starting to think that drinking black coffee is really strange to them, or maybe just to see a gringa do it is strange.  Either way, it has been a confusion many times.

I'm really looking forward to visiting a coffee plantation some time soon.  Hopefully.  And buying and drinking really fresh and delicious coffee.

Camping!

We decided to go camping!  We went to Parque Nacional La Muralla, which is obviously a National Park in Honduras about 2 hours away from Juti.  After leaving the city about 3 hours later than we intended and arriving at the cabin after dark, four of the boys worked on the fire, and everyone else ate sandwiches.  And yes, cabin, two people slept in a tent, and that's only because the man who owned the cabin highly suggested I not sleep next to the fire.  So, we weren't real camping, but the best part of camping is sitting around a fire drinking beer, talking, and every so often singing, so we got that right.

I took these in the morning.  A beautiful morning it was:

  

"The Earth is all of ours.  Some have already died, others are living, but the majority have not yet been born.

We protect our outdoors."

In the morning, we realized we had accidently run the battery all night and had to find someone close enough by to help us.  One of the gringos had taken his motorcycle out there, so he was able to find a farmer who lived nearby and who could lend us the battery out of his truck.  Funnily enough, though, the first people he found were Americans, refused to help, and ended up at the same cabin were we were waiting to get a jump.  It was pretty awkward.

This car has already taken me on some pretty great adventures, thanks to my neighbor.  Looking forward to the rest of them.

Recently, I've been having some very socially satisfying interactions with locals.  For example, I needed something from the local store (I'm not sure what to call it because it's a cross between a pulperia and a grocery store), but it was closed.  My friend and I asked some people at a near by shop if they knew were to go and they did, but they also walked us there!  And spoke to us in Spanish!  And helped correct us when we said something stupid!  They were some of the nicest people I've meet, but the thing is, after this happened, this sort of interaction is pretty consistent.  It's probably because my Spanish is getting better, and I'm absolutely loving it.  Well, my Spanish isn't that much better.  I told a woman "Vamos a un ATM" when I meant "Voy a ir un ATM."  I must sound so silly all of the time. 

But I'll get there.

Music and Art

"But, to be honest, you're only teaching an elective.  The kids are supposed to have fun in your class.  I mean, it's not like you're teaching something serious like math or history."

Recently, I've been hearing this sentiment a lot about my classes.  Being said to someone who not only takes her job seriously, but also both of the subjects she's teaching seriously (considered pursuing a career in both of those fields at one point in her life), it doesn't really sit well.  I refuse to be a glorified baby-sitter that these kids have for 45 minutes a day where they get to sit around and not learn anything.  My job is not to waste time before they have to go to their other classes... Unless I read my contract wrong...

And that's not to say that I don't want my students to have fun in my class.  Of course I do.  All teachers want their kids to have fun because when they're having fun they learn.  And when you're having fun with them, you are a better teacher.  I just don't think it's my responsibility to have the kids cut out shapes of paper and glue it on other paper, not learn any skills or new information whatsoever, while being rowdy and disrespectful to me, my class, and the school without any punishment for bad behavior because, Hey!  I'm supposed to be the chill art teacher that doesn't give a fuck?

No.

The average American, or at least the ones I've talked to for the most part, know the basics of music and art.  They know who the famous composers and artists are, more or less, basic music theory (like what a quarter note and a rest are), and what primary vs. secondary colors are.  These are some of the subjects I've covered in my class so far, and the majority of the students didn't know any of it.  But that's the thing: we take advantage of our education of music and art in the United States daily, and so we don't think it's difficult or meaningful or important material.

The idea that right-brain knowledge is not as important as left-brain knowledge is a learned mindset.  The history of Western civilizations' values holds logic as the be-all and end-all of intelligence, and mainly this logic that humans have is what sets them apart from the animals.  People who are more right brain oriented were considered inferior to those who were left brain oriented, and that belief has persisted to this day for many Westerners.  Basically, this thought process devalues a full half of what makes humans human as important, and in effect ostracizes entire units and subcultures of populations.

Personally, I'm an egalitarian, and I believe every part should have have equal import to the whole; learning what to think and learning how to think and how to feel and how to emote and how to rationalize are all important.

The idea that teaching art or music is a joke is absurd because it requires valuing one subject over another.  To think about this logically, then: math is another language, like Spanish or music, and helps you communicate something to another person, like any language or music, it's universal, like emotions and music, and it stretches your mind in a different way than other subject... like music.  Actually, music more than any other subject in school, it's been shown that students that participant in this one subject are more likely to do well in the rest of their subjects.  Music is a language, an arithmetic, an expressive, creative field, and more, yet math and Spanish and philosophy are more highly valued.

But, we do value travel.  People who have seen many parts of the world have a lot of cultural capital, and why?  Because they've experienced other cultures, saw art, heard music, tasted food, talked to friendly people they don't know; not because they did math with a guy in India.  Well, unless it was a meaningful experience or interesting story, then that would be cool... but then the math part would have very little to the message of the story.

Why would public education have dedicated so much time and money into teaching elementary students these subjects at least once a week for 7 years of their lives if it isn't important?  Why would public schools even continue to allocate money toward funding any music or art programs at all if it's such a joke, bullshit, fuck off subject like so many people are bound to believe?

Let's do an activity: in your mind, make a list of all of the geniuses in the world, throughout history.  Add to that list people who are the main holders of cultural and social capital, through time.  How many of those people are either artists or musicians?  And how many of those people are considered both geniuses and holders of cultural capital?  I'm willing to bet that it's somewhere between 70-90% of the list.

Someone would have to have an incredibly good excuse for why people like Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Picasso, Dali, and DaVinci, to name a few, were not geniuses.  I would also like to hear someone's explanation for why modern music and art, like music from the 1960s and hip hop and street art, are not legitimate forms of social expression and how that is not a legitimate thing to learn about.  We have old letters and writings and excavations, but the artistic remnants of a culture can tell us something nothing else can.  Viewable art and audible art are expressions of the human experience, which any human should find valuable.

Interestingly enough, I've recently put into words what my thesis is for my classes this year:

"The students will learn about part of the human experience through the medium of music and art in the historical and cultural context in which it was created."

I will not stop being hard on my kids.  My job is to teach them something and I cannot teach them when they are not receptive to it, and they have to be both physically and mentally receptive of what I have to teach.  That, for children aged 12-14, means discipline and hard work.  It means being taught respect and empathy, and how to think more deeply about subjects they know, and being introduced to subjects they've never had to opportunity to be introduced to before.  It means that these kinds are hopefully going to expand both their skills and their knowledge, and hopefully they will be more fluid in how they think about the world.

Music has consistently been a very big and important part of my life, and I will share with them my knowledge and teach them that language.  I have had many friends and family members who have been artists or have taken art seriously as a passion, including myself with photography.  I will never consider these subjects to be just electives.  I am surprised and disappointed in anyone who does.

Corn Festival and Lago de Yajoa

Two weekends ago, a few of us went to a Corn Festival in a town called Danli.  Every year, every town in Honduras has a week-long celebration of their town, and Danli combined corn with theirs.  Juticalpa is going to have ours in December and according to the Administrative Assistant that works for the school, my boss's daughter who drove us there, the Juti celebration is mostly just drinking and stands selling clothing and nic-nacks.  There were planty of nic-nacks here, too, and suprizingly not very much corn.  In fact, there was only one stand grilling corn!  Not pictured that is a big thing here is this corn pudding thing.  It's supposed to be more like a warm corn smoothie, but what we got was more of pudding.  If they hadn't put sugar in it, it would have been really, very good.

One of the parts of the festival was a horse and cow show...  I'm sure there's a more legitimate name for that, but I can't remember.  The second ones you see are the stereotypical cows.  Dairy cows.  The first are another kind I've only seen in those 50 cent tattoos you get from grocery stores, but I think they're more for meat.  Also, these guys I'm pretty sure were entered into fairs.  There were also about 30 horses, and people could pay to take a ride.

The army had a booth set up.  I think mostly just to show how much power they have with their weapons, because, when there's a stop in the road on the highway (which is pretty frequent) every army dude is carrying an automatic weapon and have at least one of these, shown. 

When we got to the more corn-y part of the festival, the streets were decorated with fancy corn-husks.

These stands were basically biscuits made out of corn that you eat with coffee.  The free samples were really good.  There was a spicy one, though, which I cannot see being very pleasant with hot coffee.

Vino de Maiz!  Corn wine!  It was really good.  Very sirupy, which means that it's more of a sipping, one small glass kind of thing rather than a dinner drink that allows for multiple glasses.  There's another kind of alcoholic corn drink called chicha, which was not as thick and a lot better.  Both, though were very good.  Had I any cash, I definitely would have bought some chicha.

Like all Central American-based festivals, there was a group of kids ding a traditional dance.  I've always loved those outfits.

Ok, on the hill, if you can find it, there's a cross.  Almost all towns and cities have a cross on the hill above the town in order to protect against evil.

These are the traditional cups used by traditional people in Honduras.

This is what pupusas look like.  They aren't as green as these look, obviously.  Just a tortilla filled with beans or beans and queso or beans and queso and carne.  I get just beans.  The salad that comes with it is mostly cabbage, and the other is chile.  So good.

We went to the town's museum.

Traditional grinder for making corn tortillas, for any of those anthropologists out there.

Part of the festival was a cultural presentation.  Shown here is a Japanese school in town doing a traditional dance.

I love these shelves.  How clever to use forty bottles!  More likely that not, these bottles are Imperial...  I would love to have something like this some day.

Honduras.

 Every day when school is over, this is what we see.  One of the things that we need to be consistently aware of living here is now beautiful it is.  This view is a wonderful, daily reminder.

~Two weeks later~

Lago de Yajoa is the biggest lake in Honduras, that according to the travel books, has just recently gotten a lot of tourist attention.  The main reason we went was to go to the only microbrewery in Honduras called the D&D Brewery, and the beer was mostly pretty good.  The only thing that I wanted to do, which apparently is a very big deal, is go to Los Naranjas, an un-excavated archaeological site on the lake that was found around 1998.  There's a 4 mile hike, an awesome museum, and the site itself.  Unfortunately, everyone else was going along with what some of the other teachers wanted to do, and a group of us ended up hanging out at a waterfall for a few hours while everyone else paid to go under the fall.

Next to the brewery was a coffee plantation, where they brewery buys their coffee.  This was the best coffee I've had since being in Honduras.  Nothing beats fresh coffee...

For breakfast on the second day there, I had two cups of coffee, a baleada, and a glass of pale ale.  Nothing wrong with that.

Pana Blanca is the town next to the lake, about a 20 or 30 minute walk from where we were staying.  There's only one ATM, which was broken, so I was very strapped for cash during this trip.  Maybe for the best, then I wasn't able to go to Los Naranjas.

 The waterfall was very beautiful!  Pretty big, and interesting thing to see.

This is just a tree that has roots that start above ground, which is very cool.  I also love that one of the roots that was cut just started sprouting more roots... Like a little alien creature.

One of my co-workers was mot feeling very well on this trip.  The rest of us did what we could to make her feel better.

 Once we got back to the Cabañas Ecológicas Paradise, where all 13 of us were staying in one cabin, we got pretty creative with how to drink our guaro and Fresca drinks.  Guaro is basically Honduran Everclear made from sugar cane.

We finally got to see the lake as we were driving back.  The man in the boat is dragging a certain kind of plant that was foreignly introduced and has been killing all the fish by sucking up all of the oxygen.  They now use the plant to make things like bags and hats to sell, some of which have recently been being exported.

Apparently, pregnant women at this rest stop need their own parking space, too.  The most confusing part is how small the parking lot is.

First Tegucigalpa Weekend

Friday - We left Juticalpa at 5 pm on a charter bus to Tegucigalpa, which took about 3 hours.  I was expecting something a little more trashy or dirty, but this was pretty nice.  The buses in the US are probably grosser, but I've never taken one, so they're probably pretty nice, too.  We got to the hotel, Hotel Granada 1, got ready to go out and ate dinner at TGI Friday's in the MultiPlax mall.  I got this pasta thing that definitely didn't do good things to my body, but everyone else really wanted American food.  What I really wanted was a good beer at a good bar, and this was fulfilled on Saturday.

After this, we went to a bar that was called something that had to do with Mexico.  The performers had a Blues Brothers dance routine and sang in a karaoke style.  It was really fabulous.  This bar also completely reaffirmed my thought that Spanish men are way more aggressive and space-invading while dancing than Central American men.  This is why:  I went onto the patio to smoke a cigarette and started to talk to this younger, Spanish man.  An older (in his 60s) Spanish man came out and started talking to us and eventually a song came on that he wanted to dance with me to.  The way he did this was by licking his finger and rubbing it down to his butt.  I thought he was joking until he started unbuttoning his shirt, licked his fingers again, and rubbed his chest while bending his knees.  I tried to tell him I was going to go dance with my friends, but he followed me.  So, I got my roommate to dance with me until he left.  Not the first time we had to do this, but the difference with Central American men is that they ask if you want to dance first, then you act like you're together and say "no," and they leave.  Or you just say no and they leave.  Or you say yes and you dance not touching, just together.  Spanish men do not ask if you want to dance, they just start being a pervert (and this happened in Barcelona, too, and at least this time they didn't resort to rubbing their junk on you until you have to walk away).  It's similar to going out in El Paso, TX, or even Las Cruces, NM, where all of the sudden someone is rubbing on you.  After that, though, a group of us Americans danced together and it was one of the best going out experiences I've had so far.

Than I went back to the hotel.

Saturday - We all slept in until about 11 and went to get breakfast/lunch after changing hotels to Hotel Granada 3, which was a lot nicer and a block away.  I ate at what is apparently the biggest baliada chain in Honduras, and it was the best best baliada I've had yet.  It only rivals the ones that set up a tent in the park.

I was planning on visiting Helping Hands for Hound Honduras, an animal sanctuary in Tegucigalpa, but I couldn't get ahold of the woman who runs it, so I couldn't.  I did have an entire conversation in Spanish over the phone with her neighbor, though, which was really cool.

Instead, I ended up going to Valles de Angeles with everyone else.  Valles de Angeles is basically a tourist town that exists off selling stuff that says "Honduras" on it to tourists.  It would completely adorable and felt like being in Epcot and gave me really great ideas for gifts for me family and for myself.  At the end of the day, four of us decided to get a bite to eat, not knowing that in an hour the last bus to Teguc was leaving.  By the time we got our food, we had to shovel as much food into our mouths as we could, pay, and run to the bus.  It was the most expensive meal for the least amount of food I've had yet.  A 16 limp baliada in the park it way better than a 200 limp three tortillas filled with beans.  But what can I say?  It was a tourist town.

That night we went to a Cuban restaurant for dinner (the music was crazy loud), and the 10 of us split up.  Myself and 5 others went to a Canadian bar called Angry Beavers, which is where I finally had a real beer: New Castle.  After drinking nothing but super light beers for a month, this was such an amazing flavor.  The man who owns the bar sat down with us and talked until 2 am, and told us that we should come back at any time and he'll close down the bar but let us stay as long as we want.  It was exactly what I needed: a chill bar that played music that every so often we all stopped to sing to that had good beer.  We even talked about politics!  I was a little drunk at this point, though, so I mostly ran my mouth, but overall the conversation was great.  This bar definitely hit the spot.  Next time we go to Teguc, I guess we're going to go to what has been described as a "hipster bar."

Sunday - I woke up at around 7:30 am so that I could meet the woman from HHHH.  She picked me up and took me to her house that doubles as the sanctuary.  She has about 15-20 dogs living there, 3 cats, and 4 birds that she has rescued and has a story for every single one.  We mostly talked, but she definitely needs help.  Her house is a mess and she takes care of close to 30 animals every day, mostly on her own.  Next time we're in Teguc, I'm planning on spending an entire day there cleaning and feeding the animals.  She's in her 60s and has been doing this for about 20 - 30 years, so she knows what she's doing, she just can use some help.  She could also use monetary support to fix some stuff around her house and buy food for the animals, so if you want go to Animal-Kind International's webpage and donate some moneys, she could use it.  It would be nice if this could turn into something bigger, have an actual location maybe, with more hands, like, perhaps, a hired veterinarian on hand.  It's not the only animal rights organization in Teguc, but it is the only one that has connections to an organization based 20 minutes away from my home town, so it's the one I'm choosing to support.

After talking for a few hours and giving me a Spanish/English book to read about the organization, she dropped me off at one of the malls.  We spent a few hours there, I bought a shirt at a store called Charley and Siddhartha in Spanish so I can work on my Spanish with a book I know well.

I'm not much of a shopper.  I usually just wonder around bored if there isn't something I'm specifically looking for.  That store Charley, though, was an eye-opening experience.  I understand now why people like shopping...  The shirt I bought I wore out of the store because I loved it too much, and I think I'm going to start a tradition.  Slowly, over the course of the year, I am going to add to my wardrobe with items that are a mixture of Annie Hall and the early 90s, and wear them out of the store.  This is exactly the style I've wanted for a while, and now it will happen, dog-gonnit.

We got on the bus back around 3 pm.  When we got back we had no water in our house, apparently since Saturday.  Today is Tuesday and still no water.  If it doesn't turn back on soon I'm seriously going to need a shower.  The chic head scarf thing can only last for so long.


It was a really great weekend.  This upcoming weekend is promising to be really great, as well.  This year could potentially be punctuated by the weekends.