If you really don't know where you're going....keep going I suppose :)

I meant for this blog to be more of a travel journal – I wanted to record and share my impressions of and discoveries in this new culture I was transplanting myself into, but it has not turned out that way. Instead, looking back over the entries, they are much more about my internal process. I think this expectations and hopes vs. reality is probably pretty representative of my experience here as well. I had high hopes for getting deeply immersed in work and learning about the culture and exulting in the adventure of it all and finding those thrilling places within the Other where you suddenly hit upon something that feels familiar at the core. It has not turned out that way, so far at least, and I think my writing here is representative of that. Instead, these have been five months where I have been much more withdrawn into myself than I would like. I have found myself over and over again set up against the culture rather than finding ways to search within it, and the places where I see similarities are not the comforting, joyful discovery of connection between man, but instead disheartening recognition of the wreckage produced by my country and culture, as well as the general, universal folly of man.

I have been back from my trip home for about two weeks now and I think I have not been able to bring myself to write here because there is so little actually happening in my life right now. I am in limbo – I am standing around waiting. I am still hopeful that the project I have been offered through the Department of Education will pan out, but I have not been able to arrange a meeting to get things rolling yet. I have less hope that work will surface for me at CIPROS, the development organization which has taken me on. Nevertheless, I like the people who work at that office, and if the Department of Education project works out, it will be a good place to base myself, so I continue to go in, to show up and make small talk with the various employees, to eat lunch with them and to hope on the off chance that if I show up enough, if I establish myself as there, that perhaps something will change.

In the meantime, I am playing a lot – there have been a number of guests visiting my friends down here, and so I’ve been going to the beach, and on self-led walking tours of the Zona Colonial, and on picnics to the Botanical Gardens. I’ve been reading a lot, and swimming, and waiting. Parts of it are wonderful – sometimes I stop and wonder what my friends are doing on a Wednesday afternoon, while I read a novel on a lounge chair at the pool in 80 degree, perfectly sunny weather, and in those moments I recognize that this is exceedingly temporary, this break from real life. Other parts of it are much harder, and I am struggling with not having even something small to be accomplishing.

I do have a game plan however, and it is to try and exploit the temporary nature of all this free time I have. It is to get my gym routine started again, and to use the yoga DVDs I brought back from the States. It is to work my way through the enormous stack of books I lugged from Philadelphia to Minnesota to New York to DC to Santo Domingo. It is to try to post here, even if I find myself with nothing to say, or at least, nothing new to say. On that account, I’ve been thinking maybe photo essays might save me – you all seem to like the photos, right? If not feel free to say so, but otherwise, expect to be seeing a lot of photos and maybe not as many words for awhile. Well, I’m off to the pool with Peter Singer under my arm. See you later :).