Monday, July 7, 2008

the good stuff


I think one of the great flaws in the human brain is our tendency to focus on the bad stuff. Sometimes I snap out of that cycle and realize what a stunningly great place we live in, how blessed we are to have this chance at being human. Today has been one of those days. I am writing this from highway 180 in the state of Campeche, Mexico.
I spent the morning shooting the shit with my driver Pasqual, who has determined that besides having a small mouth (which sounds weird in translation) I am also atrevida (which translates, at least in mexico, to something like daring and playful). While my group was checking out the ruins at Uxmal we went and got gas, I drank an epic amount of jugo de guanabana and kept throwing the seeds at things, sometime that thing was Pasqual. What can I say? I am pretty sure I still am about 5 years old.
After picking up the crew we headed out on the road. At the state border we were stopped by a super guapo soldier who wanted to check that we weren´t carrying fire arms or drugs in our van. I of course got right into conversation with the soldiers and ended up spell checking their poorly edited sign which concluded with, "hava nice day." They tried to convince me that a local english teacher from Toronto had written it, but the Canadians are way better spellers than that. Anyways after grabbing a photo with the men in uniform we loaded back up to drive away, and as we were pulling back on the road one of the soldiers were pretending to dig out the sign.
I think that one of the things I will miss most in leaving Latin America is the playful approach to life that most people take. People here (for the most part) are more interested in having a human interaction than just getting the job done. An attitude that leads to a lot of laughter at arms and drug patrols.
With that I will leave you.

1 comment:

Trevor said...

Gemma! Hey love. Didn't know you had a blog. Our site got erased somehow and I was googling references to see if I could find our stories. And, I came across you. Wanted to say hi!