movement

an old arab proverb, 

fi al-haraka baraka, 

literally means 

"there is a blessing in the movement," 

but more freely it can be translated as: 

"he who travels harvests goods."

MAP IT OUT

First a broader look at the Central American Countries

you will notice that teenie tiny red country being spooned by Guatemala and Honduras is El Salvador.

zoom in and you will see the capital, San Salvador and to the right you will see San Vicente and I *think* in all the paperwork, booklets etc.. I read we would be training there the first 8-10 wks.

adventure inspiration

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
~Andre Gide (French writer, humanist and moralist, 1947 nobel prize for literature, 1869-1951)

“I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.”
~Rosalia de Castro

“The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes "sight-seeing." ~Daniel J. Boorstin

“When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home”
~Thornton Wilder

things

So many things to do and I'm crossing them off my list one by one.
First up officially accepting my Peace Corps placement in El Salvador.
This leads to a series of other THINGS  such as an updated resume, application for a government passport, aspiration statement for the country director and of course sorting through my clothes and getting myself back to something closer to what I used to have living in hot and humid south TX where I would get excited if I saw frost on the rooftops on the coldest days of the year and my heaviest coat was a jean jacket. So I'm off to sort through clothes making a keep, donate, toss pile. Ultimate goal: to leave Denver this next weekend with only a car full of nessesities.

Palestinians in Israel: Stakeholders in limbo

PC Assignment

I'm going to El Salvador!

do you see birds or music?

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Chavela

Doesn't get too much better than Chavela Vargas and Mariachis.

Miss Palestine

Interesting little piece of news out of Palestine:

On December 26 the first Miss Palestine will be held in the West Bank.

There will be 58 young women participating, including 26 Arab-Israelis and 32  from the West Bank. Unfortunately there are no contestants from the isolated Gaza Strip.

The only difference in the beauty pageant is that the Palestinians will not participate in a swimsuit contest. Personally this is how I think all the pageants should be but that's just my opinion. (Heaven forbid we stop objectifying and judging women based on their appearance and judge on intelligence.)

The organizers of the pageant say the goal of the contest is to change the misconceptions of Palestinians.

Palestinians want to be seen as people not just through the lens of political turmoil and conflict.

The winner of the Miss Palestine pageant, who will be chosen by a jury that includes representatives from the Information Ministry and the Culture Ministry. The winner will receive a new car, a 10-day trip to Turkey, and $2,700 in cash.

waiting for my Peace Corps offer...

I turn to others for some simple truths:

“None of us knows what the next change is going to be,
what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner,
waiting a few months or a few years to
change all the tenor of our lives.”

~ Kathleen Norris quotes

* * *

“The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are,
and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself
and
in the direction you have chosen.”

 ~ Ralph Marston quotes

* * *

“The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile”

* * *

“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg,
not by smashing it.”
~Arnold H. Glasgow 

* * *

“Patience is passion tamed.”

~Lyman Abbott 

* * *

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

~Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

* * *

 “Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.”
~Ambrose Bierce

* * *

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

           ~ Rainer Maria Rilke ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ (1934)

beautiful fanciful books

(Clothbound books Designed by: Coralie Bickford-Smith)

In my "comfortable life" I will have books like this.

Precious

dang. I want to see this one