Another monday at school...another compromise. time vs. duty. machismo has many incarnations. love vs. possesion. maybe love is a myth. what do you let guide your life? what are you chasing after? success...no more loneliness...youth. running for the sake of not standing still

Does anyone have any plausible ideas for what i should do with my life, come september? i'm taking suggestions.

My sister is in Japan...she likes it, but not the fish eggs. i have started university...let me just say this and get it out of the way: its dreadful. i'll survive the two months that these courses last, and maybe take some courses in september in spanish, that would last 4 months, but i can't see myself spending any more time here than that. it kills the soul, i tell you. its made me realize how desperately i want to NEVER BE RICH (everybody else here is). Oh, the contrast! For example: ...in the afternoon, i travel here on a city bus, surrounded by fat sweaty women with hairy armpits, sacks of sweet smelling oranges, wide eyed children on laps, sullen wrinkled working men, reggeaeton music blaring from the speakers, animated spanish conversation in the quick, consonant-sparse language of the lower classes...in the evenings, i travel home on one of the universities private buses, surrounded by a world that is opposite from my afternoon world in every concievable way. Glowing iPod and cellphone screens. Whispers. Empty looks. Fruity perfume smells. Radio Disney on the sound system. i can't...stomach it. i hate myself for living it. Higher education is not worth this way i feel, like a traitor to...to who? i think its ironic who i identify as my "people"...ironic because of how oddly i fit into that group, but I feel more at home with them than with this crowd. i realize what this comes across as...complaining. i know i have the opportunity to study, the opportunity that many of my friends in Bastión would appreciate dearly. It sounds shallow, to them, for me to explain why i don't like university. i know what this would sound like to their ears, so i don't say it. i guess that why i blog in ENGLISH...it's someone i'm not allowed to be all the time.

in a library

why do we do this to ourselves? feelings are so uncontrolable, so mysterious, where do they come from? chemicals. god. subconscious. whatever. thoughts, also, trip over each other. if we knew exactly what went on inside of each other, we'd believe everyone to be crazy. so much contradiction, it doesn't make sense.

I'm out of peru. i'll have some nice pictures for you guys, this week.

Huanchaco- Perú

Small beach town. I am amazed at how different the climate is here, only 15 hours south of Guayaquil. Its so much COLDER! Today is uncertain, however, yesterday we found a camping hotel in this little town with great restaurants, and slept in a tent with nothing but some reeds and a sheet protecting us from the ground below. I liked it better than the sleep before, though; the birds and rain and the sound of the waves made it worth it. We were the only english speaking guests on the campsite, though, everyone else spoke FRENCH. Tomorrow, I hope to be across the border again.

Trujillo- Perú

It took us 18 hours to get here, but it really didn't seem that long, having slept for most of it (i brought a pillow instead of a towel...thusfar, a trade I consider worthwhile, having got a good 12 hours of usage out of the pillow, and not having needed the towel in my present, unbathed state) The town reminds me of Ecuador mountain cities like Cuenca, except without the altitude headaches and the cold, so thats nice. We walked around a fair bit this morning trying to find an open place to eat, and again this afternoon, because the bus dropped us off a fair distance from the town centre, but we got to see some impressive ruins this morning, the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (I like d the drive there: through the dusty countryside, low adobe houses and walls, the river winding through a desert, sights i haven't seen in Ecuador) Our hotel is a bit of a dump, no toilet seat or showerhead, no sheets yet, and some suspect foreign hairs and foodstuffs on the carpets, but for $3 a night, we can't complain. Tomorrow I think we will switch cities, to the smaller beach town, 20 minutes away. I feel like such a tourist, gosh, but i guess its fun if you are so painfully aware of how ridiculous you look, wandering around with a map, white skin, and a dazed look on your face, counting unfamiliar change and getting ripped off by every other transaction you make (so far, twice by the same taxi driver, twice at the border by men who sold my travelmates the forms they could get for free at the window, and other instances that have slipped my mind...we've only been here a day! Perú seems less friendly than Ecuador)