Out of Culture

We made it home with a minimum of difficulty.  A fabulous welcoming party met us at the train station, and threw rose petals at us!

The very next day we moved into our new house.  Since then we have been spending lots of time with friends, unpacking, and even working a bit.

There will be more for me to say about the end of our travels, so stay tuned!

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Right now, we’re in Boston.  In a few days, our friend Carolyn is getting marriagificated, and until then we are busy like beavers.  I am cooking for the rehearsal dinner (with or without a head-chef from out of town - I’m not sure yet) and helping keep a few kitchens in order in the process, Megan is doing alterations on all the costumes, and in between we are catching up with friends we haven’t seen in at least 6 months, usually more.

After the ceremony, we will get to quiet our lives down a bit and hang out with Bonnie and Chuck more (and do chores!) until the 3rd of June.  Then we will sit calmly on a train for three days.  THREE DAYS of not being home or seeing friends or doing ANYTHING.  Hopefully, Megan’s mother will stop by our train for an hour or two, though the logistics of such a visit are suspect.  Then, at 10:10am on the 6th of June, 366 days after we left our beloved city, we will be back in Portland.

Feel free to come say hi and get hugged.  I don’t really know where we’ll be headed immediately after that, so also feel free to offer suggestions.

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Today we went out and selected new personal communication devices (Martin’s first ever).

Martin: 503.415.1611

Megan: 503.380.0907

Text or call; we would love to hear from you.

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We are here, and well, and happy and have a good night’s sleep behind us.

Now to enjoy the company of our friends and explore the city!

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Today marked the end of our adventure in Central America.  We worked the morning, as usual, then spent the afternoon helping to prepare an amazing feast for our going away dinner party.

In the morning (19/5/09) we will take a taxi to the airport, fly to Florida, and then to New York City.

I feel a bit like we are walking away from paradise.

I am very excited to be heading closer to home.

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A couple of weeks after we left portland we posted pictures of all of our stuff.

Now that we are only a couple of weeks away from our return home we figured it was a good time to do it again.

Click on the photos to be taken to bigger pictures with notes of what everything is.

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My aunt, who takes care of my grandmother on a ranch in Northern Colorado, would like to grow vegetables.  The supply of water and dirt is plenty enough for the task, but it isn’t one of those fancy self-completing tasks all the kids have these days.  So, if you’re looking for a way to pass a few weeks or months this summer, ask me and I can set you up.

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Right, so a few weeks ago, I was in Guatemala.  I have forgotten much of what happened, and any of what I might already have told you, but here are some things to know:

• Everyone speaks Spanish, or some Mayan dialect, and I understood about 10% of what was said to me.  This meant an average of 10 re-explanations were needed to get me to understand something.
• The kids hated the mac computers, and the teachers just ignored them any more.  This was good for me, because I am not nearly so good with mac hardware.
• My PC repair skills were exactly suited to the job I had.  Through a gamut of mis-jumpered Western Digital drives, burned-out power supplies, and faulty memory, I could diagnose and fix every hardware problem I encountered within minutes.
• Sadly, the majority of the problems had nothing to do with the PC hardware, being either dead monitors, which I have no fixing ability for, or trashed operating systems.
• I hope my emails to MacRenewal contained enough vehemence for their practice of sending 15-20 year old monitors to developing regions to delay the first category of problems.
• Trashed OSs were all replaced with Windows 2000, in Spanish.  I demoed Edubuntu to a few people, and they liked the idea, but wouldn’t support moving everything over.
• I can now navigate the Spanish Windows 2000 Installer.
• All the edutainment was Tux stuff and other cross-platform linux games.
• Which is part of why it really was too bad that these computers weren’t all installed with full software libre systems to begin with: there isn’t any tech support for these things outside of the volunteers coming through, the kids and teachers would never have known the difference, and the frequent reinstallations (that would themselves have disappeared) would have been much less of a hassle if there were a standard install disk that included all the necessary software, rather than me having to hunt down a bunch of programs.
• None of the schools had internet or even networks, but the hardware is in storage to upgrade a few of them.
• I did leave the project organizers with copies of all the software I used, which hopefully helps the next wave of volunteers.
• None of the schools had grounded power, so we had to rip the third prong off the power cords (rather than buy the little orange “adapters”).

I hope I didn’t miss anything.

In other news, I don’t like my writing.  The story I was working on so many months ago is too ugly in its current form to want to continue with.  I will instead pursue a strategy of practicing creative writing until I can give the whole thing another go.

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The last three days have had exciting wildlife moments.

First there was this little grey snake, at first we thought it was just a fast variety of worm it was so tiny.  Then the next day Martin caught a bigger version of the same species.  Their scales are amazing, in the sunlight they shine with all kinds of blue and purple tones.

Today we got to see this little guy:

In addition there are a couple of birds nests we’ve found with eggs in them.  We are trying to stike a fine ballance between curiousity and not scaring away the parents.

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Entonces…  (I think that means something like, “So then…”)  I’m going to get home in June, and in addition to doing some math, I need to collect data on how people are working.  That is to say, I have very little experience in jobs that are not kitchens or amazing.  So to all my friends in PDX (and those in Boston and NYC, for my brief stays there), this is my request: let me come to work with you.  I will do whatever molding of myself you need: dress in drag (of whatever sort), do all your work for you, craft elaborate cover-stories, sit in another building with binoculars while listening to hidden microphones (unless that’s overtly illegal), mop the floor in the hallway, pretend not to speak English.  Whatever gets me a few hours to observe your worklife.  Also, if you know anyone who you believe would be willing to offer me the same but that I don’t have much of a friendship with, I would still love to watch them work.  No boundaries for work types; I just need to see things.

If that is not to your liking, or in addition to a workday, I would just like to hang out with people in an attempt to catch up on the last year of life I have been outside of.  Being at work makes that hard, so just having fun will have to wait until after work.  Anything you’re doing, I’m willing to tag along: chores, studying, games, cooking and eating, building a houseboat.  If you want to combine the two into a Martin-overload-festival, I’m game, but I shouldn’t linger too long on any data source in the first little while.  Say, 24 hours, max?

Other than that, I know I need to binge a few times to get through any of the worthwhile video games and movies that have happened (for which I will need suggestions), and I will need to do house-chores and cooking for at least a half dozen houses whether anybody is home or not.

If you are up for any of what I just described, or have information leading to the acquisition of such a situation, please contact me or comment below.

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