So even though I'm three months out and a world away, I'm realizing that most of my posts concern Honduras, and that's a bit unexpected. However bizarre this might sound, I did not expect to be entirely changed by my time abroad; at least, not changed in that coming of age, Motorcycle Diaries-esque sense. I expected to be changed by the lifestyle differences, the disparities but I didn't expect to be so deeply affected by the language, the community, the music.

Before leaving, I never would have thought I would walk away listening to such a different genre of music and go from John Cale and David Bowie to musica Latina. Latin music is now modern, more global, and Calle 13 (pictured above), Anita Tijoux blew me away when I heard them but I'm familiar with the indie sound. More than anything, it was the salsa, cumbia, merengue, bachata, pues even reggaeton, ranchero (un poco) that affected me.

For a gal who never tuned into this type of percussion, never realized what was lacking without horn sections and never heard a pan flute except in Simon and Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa", it's life changing on like a Che Guevara-hitting-the-open-road kind of scale.