This afternoon I'm sitting in student dorm called the Hacker house in Lewiston, Maine. I've been living at the Hacker house the last week while getting up and dancing at 8:45, 11:00, 2:00 and 4:00 for the last week. This, after a week of being in NYC and dancing at 10, 1:00 and 3:30. Today is the first time I've opened my computer, which amazingly looks exactly the same even as the work has been piling up in this strange little receptacle, a box that provides countless hours of work whether I look at it or not.

When I wake up tomorrow on the other coast I will proceed to finish a book, hire staff, raise $18,000, and move. I have 6 weeks to do it all, at which point I will have become a partially employed dancer. I will live in Seattle again and San Francisco, well, SF will be like a friend I had an extended visit with before we grew apart.

Lewiston, Maine is an old mill town and home to Bates College. Pedestrianism is not big here. Empty mills the size of football stadiums and old ornate churches built in a time when white people were still the minority on the west coast make it seem impossible to refer to this town as a suburb, though that's often how its described. There is a mall and a wal-mart so maybe that's enough of a standard.

In the midst of a the town that seems to limp along in the early 90s time zone, is the beautiful Bates College Campus, home to dozens of rooms fit for dancing and a cafeteria that caters to almost any dietary need. I've quickly become accustomed to eating prepared I acquire from behind a sneeze guard three times a day. This is the only way I know how to feed myself here.

Hi I'm shannon and I use "she." I was thankful that this was the only thing asked to share in our first go round of the Anne Braden program. Of course that statement is easier for me to make in a room of 45 strangers than for others here.

Up to this minute that I found myself sitting in 522 Valencia, my anti-racist organizing experience totaled some participation in the campaigning against anti-affirmative action legislation while I was in college, attendance of some "CAR W" meetings (Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites) the year after I graduated, organizing community forums for artists of color, and a long and frustrating struggle to bring liberation politics into the all-ages music organization I helped to start in Seattle, that was and is mostly white.

I thought I lived in Amsterdam by day 5. I'm not sure if it's just a survival technique or reflective of some subconcious longing, but I cut all ties with San Francisco by Friday. On Sunday I had fully accepted my new life as a dancer in the Netherlands, living in between the Vondel Park and Leidsplein, riding around my salmon pink cruiser (matches my scarf) and shopping regularly at Albert Hein. My community is a hodge podge of dancers from all over Europe, Austrailia and North America. Our main goal is to acnowledge that the butt is part of the torso, not the legs.

I think the ease of transition was helped along by these unlikely Amsterdam and San Francisco similarities:

1) Houses in layers. Tall homes with extravagant ornamentation and facades that extend well over the structures as if to create an even better fortress for the quiet gardens behind.

2) Fast clouds in the summer. It was stormy almost the entire time I was there but unlike a marine layer that rolls in around 5pm, we're talking tall thick thunderclouds that clap over the few minutes of sunshine and dumped rain (and sunshowers) on bikers with cell phones and umbrellas in hands. The first week I stayed in a little glass garden house in the back of my host's home and thought one night I was going to swept away in a hurricane.

3) Trolleys, bikes, car unfriendliness, and different languages being spoken all over. Everyone is from somewhere else but they are not necessarily trying to get somewhere.

4) It's easy to get lost and found.

5) Scarves

6) Stoners

The Workshop Forty dancers from well over a dozen countries met in this new warehouse turned arts center for 10 days of learning what is known as counter-technique. I was the only person not making most of my living from dance and proceeded to get schooled in both counter and classical technique. Our instruction went from 9:30 to 6:30 and was almost always followed by a going to a dance performance (The Juli Dans Festival was going on at the same time--so incredible!). This is dance immersion at it's best.


Dance in the NL
The difference in attitude about art in Europe (especially western europe) vs. the United States is astounding. Modern dancers make a living from dancing, training happens full time, performances are well-attended and international, it's as much of a study of science as it is of art. I'm blown away. What I expected to be physically exhausting was much more mentally and emotionally so. I didn't realize this until taking a modern class at another studio on one of my days off and realized that it was the first time I had really sweat. In all other classes I was thinking so much about anatomy, about this amazing thing called alexander technique, about where the counter points of energy were in movement, and about how to reprogram my approach to dance away from "end gaining". . . I was in my head the whole time.

To the benefit of dancing in the states, I'm so appreciative of the compositional focus of the training I've received. I may not be able to do four pirohettes but I do know something about when a piece needs stillness, text, a timing shift, etc. I didn't learn anything new about improv or composition at this workshop. It was much more about learning a movement technology or ideology rather. How geeky and awesome.

I also feel like whereas in the Netherlands I have seen virtuosic "dancers" dance in well funded performances in beautiful theaters, with works by choreographers who aren't afraid to tackle edgy or racy subject matter-- (with no disclaimers on programs, yay!), I contrast that with my experience in the US where it seems you get to see the "people" dancing, and in good work, you see that the dancer's personalities are critical to the choreography. I appreciate that we use these odd little spaces where you have no choice but for dancers and audience members to see one another and be in a different kind of negotiation with one another. Of course both of these things exist to some extent in both countries. . . There's just more money for it in the NL.

So that's it really. I turned in my pink crusiser to the bike rental shop, crossed 6 canals, spent the last of my euros on some coffee from a weird machine and got on my plane. The pads of my toes are thankful for the break from the hard marley floors and I'll reluctantly go back to a less cheese-based diet. I think there is more space in my hip sockets now and that I actually can feel where my head connects to my spine now (it's right behind the bridge of your nose! Can you believe it's that high?).

Some crazy stuff that happened before I landed back in SF tuesday night:


Volcanoes.

Volcanoes erupting.



Meeting the radical guatemalan libertarian and the neoliberal capitalist guatemalan-american the first weekend. . . and then running into them both again my last weekend. Our last conversation was kicked off wtih something like: "you guys just lost the best secretary of state you ever had." ay yai yai.

Fireworks, an every day occurence, actually getting so out of hand that they took the power out on Christmas eve just before I could watch the dad in The Christmas Story put the leg lamp in the living room window. Yes, even in central america they play The Christmas Story for 24 hours.

Swimming in a volcanic lake on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Calling my teacher something nasty when trying to conjugate the verb poder. (okay, that wasn't really that crazy. Situations like that were a dime a dozeen. . . like when my friend said she was diarrhea instead of saying that she has diarrhea).


Losing a a 32-year old teacher at the school who died while having an operation to have more kids. She was the sister of another teacher and everyone's friend. The funeral went from funeral home to cathedral to cemetery. Em and I rode down from the mountain school (hour and a half each way) in the back of a pick up with 17 other people. . . oh and 9 of those people were norwegian. You can imagine the spectacle. Gueras del pick-up.


Falling in love with the incredible people I met - de Neuva York, Irelanda, y Engleterra.



Meeting the person that ranked all the language schools in Guatemala and finding out the PLQ is the best school of all language schools in Guatemala. . . though I already kind of knew this.

The countdown is on until I return and it seems a little sacreligious to be on a computer at all. I feel like I'm biding time until I can be in my home, around my friends, and closer to my family, but at the same time I'm not ready to leave. This has been a pretty hard week in a lot of ways, especially with learning spanish. I don't know if it's because I've hit saturation or if it's because I keep learning obscure things that I never use in conversation but I've definitely become quieter. The weather turned a bit cloudy so the couple hours of sunshine that we've been blessed with everyday that alleviate the constant chill are missing.

But oh, how easy it is to love Xela. It's something I didn't understand really when I got here. There seemed like plenty of other prettier and warmer places in Guatemala but after 3 weeks, it's become the most familiar place to me. It's hard to imagine a city with huge signs and stores with racks and racks of things, sidewalks made for people to walk on without tripping, roads with more than one lane, paying more than $2 for almost anything, and being a place where people don't say "good morning," "good afternoon," and "good evening" to everyone they see. Here comes the romanticizing phase.

Hola chicas y chicos. This past week I left my temporary home of Quetzaltenango for La Escuela de la Montana (I can't believe there is no n with a tilda on this keyboard). Anyway, living in rual Guate was a different world. Houses with no floors and everything cooked on wood ovens. Oh the fresh homemade tortillas!!! Oddly, there are still lots of sound systems in this otherwise tranquilo environment and they are either blaring reggaeton, or the sermon of an evangelical church. . . these churches are everywhere, the services go all night and they are always broadcasted. que bueno.


I also have become accustomed to this kind of travel and am happy to say that not only does it change the way I think about transportation planning, but riding chicken buses has proven to be 100% safer than my first bus ride in Guate on a "first class" bus. On that fateful bus ride (8 hours), the 18 year old driving it seemed to be working out some anger and by the time they dropped us in Xela, he had busted an axel or something.

off to study for my last week of school.

Feliz Ano Nuevo.

I´ll save the pathetic writing in Spanish for my journal at this point because it mostly reads like this:

Today, I woke up at 7.

I went to school at 8.

I ran into some friends and we walked together.

We went to a conference.

and on and on. So anyway, merry belated christmas if that is your holiday of tradition and/or choice. I´m in my second week of studying spanish and finding that the bigger my vocabulary gets, the harder it is for me to understandd. . . but my teacher keeps saying és un proceso.´

My mom in Xela reminds me a lot of my grandmother and I´m definitely adjusting to my life here. It´s very straightforward--all I´m supposed to be doing is learning spanish. Not answering emails, phone calls, trying to invent an organization and it´s programs from scratch (don´t get me wrong, i love my job). Funny, though how after the two weeks of struggling with understanding and speaking another language, trying to juggle all that and work on AMP sounds really easy!

Anyway, even though I´ve been and lived in a lot of beautiful places, I am astounded by how striking the landscape is here. This past weekend I went to Lago de Atitlan with Em and a couple other students and it was unbelievable. It is a huge volcanic lake encircled wtih conical mountains (volcanoes) and sprinkled with little villages. The bus ride there took us up into the mountains and past incredible vistas where the fog would create light patterns like paintings. Pictures nor words could do it justice.

At midnight on Christmas eve as we were walking back to our hotel, the whole town erupted into a celebration. Guatemaltecos usher in the birth of baby Jesus with fireworks. Lots of fireworks. So many that store and car alarms were going off and the electricity went out. We had to dodge the explosions in the street to get back to our hotel where we stood in the courtyard and watched the explosions fill the sky. Which went on for a long time.

Before the power went out, we had been able to watch a little bit of ¨The Christmas Story¨on the little TV. That was exactly what I needed to feel a bit more connected to the experience of my family who was far away.

Other than that, my life is like this: Go to school from 8 to 1. Eat lunch. Study. Eat Dinner. Study. Go to bed. Sometimes I go on field trips and I started playing soccer a little (strange for me). That´s about it. This weekend I will go back to Lago Atitlan for the New Year. Next week I go to the Mountain School where we will work and go to school on an old coffee plantation.

It´s already hard to imagine life back in SF, though I miss it immensely. It´s hard to imagine being able to write in more complicated sentences than this as well! People keep saying that´s a good sign that my spanish is improving. . .

You tengo siete minutos escribir, so I'll drop the spanish right away. I've been in Guatemala for 5 days and have noticed that my english seems to be regressing to catch up with my spanish, which I think is improving.

We arrived in Guatemala City, apparently sharing a plane with a well known reggaeton band called Calle Trece. After the media encircled them (and myself and emily as we were exiting the airport behind them) I finally asked who they were. We were clearly the only ones who didn't know. We took an insane taxi to Antigua. That city is really beautiful and full of tourists. Xela is beautiful too but much different. Middle class means something other than what we think in the states. I'm truly humbled on so many levels. My "host family" is this one amazing woman Catalina whose family members rotate through to visit. The school is really incredible.

There is so much to tell.

Today I told Catalina that "it wouldn't come for lunch but it would come for dinner."

There is much to learn.

hola familia y companeros. Este es mi journal de travels of guatemala. Aqui you will see my progress in learning in spanish, adjusting to Guatemala's microbes, and eventually there will even be photos (fotos!). I might try to write in spanish and then translate. Que divertido! I guess it will depend on the frequency and duration of computer access.

This is Em, my BFF, who I will be meeting up with in Guate. We haven't decided who is going to get to bring the sweater yet. It doesn't so much matter though as we'll inevitably be dressed identically anyway. . . or people will just tell us that we look identical or something.

but anyway, the point is, I would love long distance correspondence and here's where to find me:

Proyecto Lingüístico Quezalteco de Español
Apdo. 114
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Central America

Or interweb correspondence in it's various multiple outlets would be lovely as well.

Hasto Luego. Feliz Holidias! (okay, okay, i know the spanglish is obnoxious) :)

xoxoxo