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.

This whole western trend toward tiny houses has always made me smirk. Not that its bad -- I am an advocate for downsizing, minimizing, living with less --but it's a bit curious that what we consider a small house, most of the world just considers a regular old home.

Where I lived in Honduras was a 15 minute walk to the nearest village. For some the neighboring village had no appeal. For me and a few other volunteers, walking through the woods past the village football field and along the two lane highway to the pulperia for hot coffee and sweet pan was a much needed, refreshing trip away from my work -- even if I had to walk through the rain to get there.

There's a lot missing from these villages; most lived without access to reliable jobs, heath care or an education beyond a one-room elementary school. But still, walking into town, women hung their laundry, cows passed us on the dirt road, chickens pecked in every backyard, and the dream of my perhaps one day life passed by me on my way to afternoon coffee. Every modest house housed a family, and in the backyard beside the chickens were mangoes trees, coconuts, mandarins, corn stalks growing from a small plot of land. They washed everything by hand, cooked everything by fire. It's a life that deserves no romanticism. It's hard. But walking through when the sun would set, it was also beautiful. 

(You know, I don't think there's a more articulate way to sum up my internal thoughts and dilemmas about the rural world than this New Yorker article about a new highway built in India.)

I am now home, reading Mortiz Thomsen's "The Farm on the River of Emeralds". Thomsen was a Peace Corps volunteer in the sixties who wrote about his four years attempting service in an Ecuadorian village in "Living Poor". 

I read that book before going to Honduras and accordingly, read his book about living on a farm in Ecuador four years after his Peace Corps stint now that I've returned. I've been going through the last chapter ten pages at time, partly because I can't bear for it to end and partly because it's so emotionally hard that I'm not capable of too much at one time. The last passage I read, I had to put it down and then quickly after, scan the page so I'd never forget it. After four years into farming a piece of land, he started to look at the neighboring land, wondering if purchasing it and starting perfectly anew, moving toward a greater degree of isolation and simplicity, will answer his problems. His final verdict?

"How stupid to think things were different over there," he wrote, "and that its isolation by a band of muddy water might have preserved it from contamination."

Journal entry from last year, most likely written after a run filled with too many thoughts on my wavering future:

THE DREAM

-- herb garden

-- CSA box

-- Sunday New York Times

-- dad's old radio in the kitchen

-- library card

-- Craigslist an old TV with DVD/VHS player for thrift store finds

I am both a grandma and stereotypical millennial all in one, although I relate to the former more. Before Honduras, I switched to a water bottle and thermos, a reusable bag for groceries that folds into a ball and fits in a purse, bought borax, vinegar, and baking soda for my cleaning needs, and shopped for makeup at Whole Foods. My wardrobe is modest, thrifted and always has been. I dream of my new apartment for many reasons; one being that I can tackle projects like composting, air drying my clothes, installing CFLs and sealing the windows for the Chicago winters.

I feel a bit like the main character in Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter with my plans: a bit obsessive and driven to much self consciousness for my habits/desires. Yet I can't help but think that like the main character's case, a storm is a coming (Okay, so that was so very doomsday of me. Ignore the analogy I suppose but please, go see any and all of Jeff Nichols' work).

Some of my attempts to live green haven't been that effective. Homemade deodorant caused me to do laundry more because well, it just didn't work. Homemade shampoo had my head itching for weeks, and green alternatives for feminine hygiene products weren't particularly helpful. The biggest upset of it all? The constant guilt that all of this is so small scale that I'm tackling the wrong problem.

The past couple of weeks, Chicago has debated over the recently passed legislation to ban plastic bags. While I'm sure there's more environmentally advantageous legislation to be summoned in Chicago and that the new ban needs tweaking, I'm mostly troubled by the anger from the opposition. 

Tribune columnist John Kass complained about the switch an article: "[What do you do] when you're carrying two badly packed paper bags and one splits, and your "personal items" fly all over the bus. You'll have to crawl down the aisle to get the navel orange that stopped rolling near the boot of a large, brooding man with blue prison tattoos on his face... And frozen foods? Don't forget to nestle frozen foods inside a "freezer bag" without touching paper, or the customer will have to chase the orange down the aisle and tap the shoulder of the blue-tattoo-faced guy. See? Let's go back to plastic before this trend sweeps the nation. It's much nicer and easier... And it's not stupid."

How outraged we become these days by the burden of changing a small habit. Perhaps I'm naive to think that the ban is a small win but I'm a cynic too and well, reminding people about sacrifice seems like a step in the right direction.

As I drove around Chicago today pointing at places to my friend from out of town ("That's the bar where I had my 21st birthday", "That place has $5 huevos rancheros so big you can split them for breakfast"), I realized how much of life in the city for me, and many young people, is devoted to this lifestyle of eating and drinking. In Honduras, my social life was limited. Work was central to my life and the time I had off, I used for simple pleasures: a run where you would end up finding yourself behind a herd of cows, a swim in the nearby dam, a fifteen minute walk through pine trees to a shop that sold hot coffee.

Chicago offers so much stimulation and even though I know that much of the stimulation doesn't do anything for me, I still find it hard to slow down in the city. Thank goodness for Lake Michigan and the stretches of grass where I can sit and forget the concrete behemoth behind me.

A couple weeks back, I took a friend to Pilsen to walk around in the predominantly Mexican neighborhood. When we drove in, we soon realized that the heart of the neighborhood, 18th street, was closed off because it was Good Friday. Once we miraculously found a parking spot, we raced onto the street, found a lady selling homemade food from her red cooler and bought Mexican hot chocolate and a tamale for breakfast. Men walked past us through the procession pushing shopping carts, trying to sell us palms and golden framed pictures of the Virgin Mary. After we followed the procession to its end, my friend and I opted out of the church service and ducked into a nearby pupuseria where I smiled at the sight of a Honduran flag on the wall and thought, well, even though Chicago offers me way too much, it also offers two things I very much want right now: a job, for one, and an avenue to transition.