Sunday, May 24, 2009

whew, it´s been a while.

Sorry guys.
Let´s see, what´s going on? Well, a pretty normal life. We´ve been watching the dance troups practice for the festival that starts next saturday. Party of the year. I can´t wait to see it all, it sounds like so much fun.

I´ve started dating a Peruvian man - Andres for those who have been following. He is really great and I enjoy him for the most part, but boy are cultural differences hard sometimes. We are taught so early and so often that independence is everything and they are taught the absolute opposite. Family is everything and when a couple gets together then they don´t need any more friends or anything else to do, they just spend all their time together until they get married and have babies. A very hard thing for this American mind to comprehend so I´m always hurting his feelings and then apologizing. No matter how many times I tell him to the contrary he is pretty sure that I will fall in love with him and stay here in Peru and have babies. I don´t think this will happen and it is hard to watch yourself breaking someone´s heart in the moment of it happening. I´m not sure how this all will go, but it sure is interesting.

Other than that, the strike last week was interesting as they always are. Still about water ownership rights. A company in Chile is trying to privatize the water and make people pay for water that for generations and generations has been their right as people who live on that land. On the one hand, I would hate to see Chile get water rights in Ecuador and the people who farm are already so poor that it doesn´t seem fair to make them pay for water. On the other hand, I have never met a bigger group of water wasters. Faucets will just be going full blast for 24 hours a day and it doesn´t occur to anyone to turn them off. Why would they? It´s free and there´s plenty of water! There is no concept of the fresh water in the world being limited. Even as they watch their glaciers disappear more and more each year and they are 1/3 of what they were 10 years ago and will probably disappear in the next 5 years, there is no connection to the idea of guarding the water they have. If they had to pay for water, they would surely conserve it more carefully. I don´t know what the answer is, but it´s interesting stuff to think about. Especially interesting to watch a country excersize it´s rights to strike.

I will take lots and lots of pics of the festival coming up to post for you all.
love!
maryjane

2 comments:

  1. Hi, just a thought, Andres might be attracted to a dream, as much as he's attracted to you. Does he compromise? None of my business, anyway.

    Enjoy!

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  2. yes, i had the same thought and we´ve talked about that many times. He has done an amazing job of figuring out that if he lets me go then I will come back to him and be loving which is much better than guilting me into spending time that i´m kind of pissed about. He is really fantastic. I still don´t think it means I will stay here, but I intend to enjoy him until I break both our hearts. Also he treats me like a queen which isn´t hard to deal with.

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