Today is Wednesday, June 21. Today I spent the day in the office dealing with LA stuff, jobs, grad school stuff. Details. As per usual I am freaking out about decisions but oh well.

I hope everyone is well. I am well, but extremely hot and missing my family and neices alot. I figured I should say something on the blog but am not feeling too witty.

The past two weeks I have been accompanying the guys on trips to various communities to find leaders and do evaluations of different projects. I enjoy it so much, taking the pickup into isolated communities in the mountains and having great grammatically incorrect conversations. Yesterday I went to a community called Puerto Parada that had a latrine project that is just being completed. It was one of the first times I have been in places that are that isolated, practically surrounded by blindingly green, undeveloped land. One leader was spending the day camped out by a placid lagoon fishing/farming for shrimp. The place had a strange feeling about it for me. It was beautiful and sad at the same time, isolated and completely still.

I have a rather ominous pain in my stomach today. In my mind´s eye I have vivid fantasies of little work guys in yellow hard hats carrying clipboards around organizing my bodily functions like a construction site. The little men are conscientious and sincere and they work hard. (¨nice work on that dehydration issue, Frank.¨ etc.) However, every once in awhile, Ron the foreman just can´t get his men to fall in line and frustrated throws the clipboard aside and slams his hardhat on the ground yelling profanities and storming away, temporarily giving up, overwhelmed. Thats when Deb gets dihare, diha, how the &%$" do you spell that? I give up.
I have similar fantasies about little mosquito families, though I can´t decide if they are like rabid, drooley, vampirous little beasts or more like miners with mouths to feed, moving toward the work, aka. the great white juicy sleeping beast under the mosquito net.

Anyway, my Spanish is definitely getting better (I had a whole functional conversation on the phone today) and I am getting more and more at ease with my host family. One thing I can say now for sure that is hard is that recently I have become more aware of how entrenched ideas of whiteness and beauty are (here, everywhere perhaps) and it´s heartbreaking. When I hang out with the preteen girls in my neighborhood, sometimes I am aware that they look at my clothes and my skin and on some level sometimes it hurts them because they are surrounded by ideas that white skin is prettier. (not all the time and, of course I´m not a mindreader, its just a sense.) My host sister who is 11 calls me ¨Debora Buen Rostro¨ with a sort of accusatory flourish. At first I thought it meant like Deborah the major pain in my "·/&%, but literally I guess its like Deborah good face, which I have to admit eased my mind a little.

One kid who I am really close to drew a picture of me that said pretty and a picture of her and her brother and cousin that said, the ugly ones. I felt so heartbroken. I crossed out feos and wrote in spanish, very very very very pretty. She smiled at me but I don´t know what´s in her head. A gesture like that feels so lame and insignificant but at least she knows what I think. That and I know now to be careful with her in a certain way, knowing that she has those feelings. Its so wrong, just so wrong because if you met this kid you would probably think, that kid is radiant. She´s physically gorgeous but more important she´s tough, athletic, witty, sweet, funny, all of these things. She has a sophisticated sense of humor, a beautiful smile and is really humble. What do you say? I don´t know what to say. It sucks.

I´m off. it would be nice to hear from you people.
Later homies, I send hugs and smoochies.

Deb

PS Gema if you read this can you email me? I heard a rumor that the car was giving you ---- and I wanted to ask you about it. thanks.