This morning was beautiful. Thick, musty and hazy. Walking around Ocotal and watching the sun poke through the clouds as I poked along my way to the school for a despidida ceremony for Thomas and Anika, it was nice. A good way to start a morning.

Errands, despididas, trips to Honduras, surprises, delicious lunches, class room time, the plucuamperfecto tense, along with dates for Thomas and contentment for me knowing that Thomas will have the opportunity to explore anohter aspect of cross cultural communication. ¡Que bueno!

An evening of reading, relaxing, writing and maybe making a notebook. The challenge to keep my energy level high enough to create or read or write has taxed me but I´m working on it. I promise!

Anyone who is interested should check out the program for the fall or spring.

walking again through homesick lane, hearing npr and imagining warm saturdays driving to work and the three way intersection in westwood at which i would make a left and park in the trader joe's parking lot before i walked to work.

thinking about kate, trying not to, but the second i step away from any deeply engaging activity she would come up into my brain and just hover there and i would happily resign myself to love and not knowing when i would speak to her again. waiting is an unfriendly, unfun and deadly boring.

I love librarians.

My bike is sitting next to me, an empty container of bat guhr on the floor and a few wrappers of chocolate peanut candies in my bag. headphones on and wait, wait, dont tell me! playing are all trying to keep my grounded through this burst of time that keeps trying to wrench me off the ground. viciously and without mercy. i feel like a balloon. I want to shave and rip off my stomach, throw myself infront of a semi burning down the panamerican right infront of the trifecta of bars and la shell and just die. its one of those moments and i dont quite know what to do with myself.

hm. there are some clouds in the sky right now. i might go hide beneath them and smile as the world turns around me today. return and hide in my un welcome, un private home, hoping that today there would be some type of solace for me there, but i am, sure, that there wont be and the only way to move my self forward will be to do some problem solving.

demetrius

The sun is crashing in through the door of the cyber, my laptop is humming away while downloading new music and my fingers are running through their normal routes and happy to be doing so.

Quite the day in ocotal, I am out of the house early and smiling because I have an entire day infront of me with a mix of fun things to do. Work, class, writing, reading and bike riding.

You know how sometimes with people you need to be "on ?" I define it as being ready to talk, work or perform for or just be around someone else, just to have that mode running in your head, not to be able to let yourself go, to fall flat and just let your body sort itself out. Usually, I sort myself out at home, in a bar or while drinking some coffee or a juice of sorts. But since I've been back in Nicaragua my house has been occupied by a bunch of male college students, friends of Micheal, meaning that I have to be on all the time even though it is my house. I do not really appreciate this at all.

That adds another point of stress to my life and I just thought my bike was stolen, argh. Quite wierd that some senora had rolled it, along with another guy's, a few doors down. Stress, constant vigilance or awareness and being aware that I live in a community of need. But I am over it as I have to be; over the immediate stress of possible theft, not over the feeling or the gut instinct that defines the place I live in.

The boys in my house have another fifteen days of practica which is ironic cause what they are practicing is getting drunk and annoying demetrius instead of actually doing their agricultural work. They had been so obviously absent from work that yesterday their professors came to the house and took them to Jiicaro, a town 4 hours away, so that they would actually do something. Thankfully, both Micheal and Walquiria are stationed in town, so the house will be quiet and filled with nice people until friday. Pleasant.

Tomorrow a(nother) trip to Managua and a reunion with an old friend.

Today Ocotal rolled on like normal. An explosion of rain in the afternoon preceded and followed by the sweltering humid heat of the day. After returning last night and searching for my friends and family, who were stuck in Dipilto (a smaller coffee producing town close by), I eventually settled back into the house from a high energy weekend in Granada, Nicaragua's main tourist city, with the students.

Now, with WNYC playing softly in the background I can slowly destress and let some of my tensions fall around my feet. Breathe. Stop. Breathe. Stop. Breathe and continue slowly.

The visiting college students in my house, have just now started to agitate me. They are rude. They are loud. They drink everynight. They occupy Micheal and Linda´s time and it is hard to spend anytime with my brother and sister. They put Claudia on edge and her and I tend to have a very clear back and forth. These hombres have upset that and thus have upset me. Plus, the only nice student, Walquiria, left! And Linda left this morning. My support team has abandoned me and I am pushing on solo. Argh.

Combined with coming home this is so much pressure and I am stressing because of it. Work too pushed on me a bit, Anika and Tom are leaving this weekend and then ive got to meet a friend at the managua airport on wednesday, sigh oh sigh. too much business.

whatever.

i love you.
i miss you.
thats all im really thinking about right now.

two words sum up the tidal wave of emotions im languishing in: Ragi Balls.

a few days on cape cod, a few days with jackson and sarah always have me questioning and marvelling at how we ended up here. how did we move from protest to vacation? why are beaches more appealling than strange city streets? what is my friendship with them, and why is it still going on?

its confusing but satisfying, we cook together, clean together, and go on adventures together. we dream similar dreams and work towards similar goals. the distance in between us is like an unexplored void sometimes, vast and daunting, but other times its close, comforting and warm, generally i just feel confused about whats going between the three of us with our radically different lives.

But when we are apart, when I am thinking of the people in the states that i want to write to, its jackson or sarah, when i think of the people that i trust with my life when it comes to a protest, its jackson or sarah, when it comes to people, that despite moments of awkwardness, i feel that i can come to with problems and that will be there for me. its jackson and sarah.

the navigating of that void and the reflection of myself that it casts upon me is challenging. i am petrified of walking into it and i know that, well, no, i dont know quite what to do about it.