The Bottom Ten Of 2010

Well, Laura has inspired/challenged me to come up with a list for myself. Since my Top 10 Moments would probably be super similar to hers, I'm going to attempt to take a look at the least memorable moments (or, more accurately, things I wish I could forget) of The Year That Was.


It should be noted that my memory is the pits, so I probably already forgot 90% of the things I wish I could forget. My apologies.




#10: Being Stuck In El Estor, Guatemala: 
Last November, with vacation time preciously ticking away, Laura and I spent four days wandering around this sleepy, tiny town, hoping and praying that we would at least finish our double scoop cones by the time we circled back to the ice cream shop for another round. (In retrospect, this was actually awesome.)

#9: Cold, Cold, Cold: 
In December, we went to Wisconsin and Minnesota. These two states are really cold- I'm not sure anybody told you. At least our families and friends are awesome, because if they ever aren't, I'm staying the heck away.


#8: Lost In Translation: 
In July, I was stuck in a teensy-weensy Japanese restaurant (either that, or a Murakami Haruki novel) with little Japanese language, lots of eager onlookers, and a plateload of some kind of raw fish. Needless to say, I think I set U.S.-Japan relations back about 50 years.


#7: Insides on the Outside: 
Upon first arriving in Guatemala in September, Laura and I were quite overcome with the sights of magnificent Lake Atitlan, the beautiful streets and farms, and everyone's lovely traditional dress. However, we mostly just got to look at the interior of our bathroom about every 20 minutes.

#6: Our Complete Loss of Freedom, Liberty, God, and All That Is Good: 
Of course, I'm talking about how just any old urchin can go to the doctor now. 


#5: That One Time When We Were Totally Supposed To Play Settlers Of Catan But Didn't: 
Yeah, that was a total bummer, man.


#4: The Oil Spill: 
Yeah, this one made it, and I'm not even a shrimper. Being relatively close to the spill (we had been re-planting wetlands down to the Gulf the week prior to the spill...Whoops!) it was amazing and super sad to see just how much it affected a state that has its share of bad luck. (ATTENTION: It should be noted that this tragic event ironically led to my #1 Best Moment of the 21st Century: Being In Spike Lee's 2nd New Orleans Documentary If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don't Rise Starring Andrew Witkins as "Sign Holder #8")

#3: It's Gross, It's Everywhere, It's Nescafe™: 
The biggest injustice I can think of in life is a bunch of Guatemalans, living amongst delicious, fresh coffee plants, who still somehow manage to drink (nay, prefer) freeze-dried brown instant coffee crystals. Yes, I know it is cheaper and easier, but I would quickly sell a horse or two if it meant I could drink the real stuff.


#2: Taunting Fate:
 Laura and I both realize that nothing bad really happens to us (this list is proof), which undoubtedly means that we are both due for a tragedy. Probably a really bloody one.

#1: Knowing What It Means To Miss New Orleans: 
Yeah, this one still stings. We have some fantastic friends, co-workers, students, trivia teams, frisbee teams, and neighborhood bars taunting us from NOLA, and every day we wonder if we were crazy to leave. Such is life, I suppose. 


Well folks, it was quite a year, eh? I've already got some promising events for next year's list. See you then!

Top Ten of 2010

In my spare time, I've decided to come up with a list of the top ten events of 2010 (thanks for the inspiration, Kevin!). By "Top Ten", I mean the most memorable, not necessarily just the most enjoyable. These may or may not be some of Andrew's top events of the year.

10. Tie between:

a) Surprise Birthday Party at Juan's Flying Burrito: Andrew tells me he made reservations for my birthday, so he takes me by the hand and leads me across the street to Juan's. "Juan's? You made reservations at Juan's? Do they even take reservations?" I was perplexed until we got to the back patio where lots of lovely friends were waiting to eat delicious burritos and scrumptious homemade cake, followed by shenanigans at the Half Moon Bar.

b) Designing an Mouse-Friendly Mouse Trap: When I first saw the mouse out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was a cockroach. A day later, I walked in on the mouse sitting on the stove, eating crumbs off of a pan that I had just baked cookies on. Ew! Being that Andrew is much more kind to his fellow living creatures than I can sometimes be, he convinced me that we could catch the mouse somehow (without a mouse trap), and set it free. So we made a trap that consisted of rigging up a "cereal box ramp" on the stove that would go tumbling into the garbage can below if triggered by the little creature crawling on top of it. We got all three mice this way- one of them we caught in the presence of friends and made a group adventure of setting it free.

9. The "Christmas Surprise". It was incredibly fun and entertaining to see the look on our family members' faces when we showed up in Wisconsin and Minnesota for the holidays, unannounced. We spent three weeks hanging with family, giving big hugs and kisses to nieces and nephews, and basically soaking up all the love we could before moving to Honduras for who knows how long.

8. Moving away from New Orleans. Number 8 definitely falls under the category of "Events that affected us a lot, and not necessarily for the better". We miss New Orleans- our friends, the music, the vibe, our neighborhood. I cried when we locked our apartment door behind us. I teared up as we drove away. But we're young, and we wanted to learn a bit of another language and see the world. We can always move back, right?

7. Pub Quiz. For the first half of 2010, we had the lovely opportunity of spending every Monday night in New Orleans drinking beers with our witty and intelligent friends while trying to prove how smart we are (miss you guys so much!). When we left NOLA, there was a gaping hole in our hearts. Luckily, we found a "gringo" pub quiz night in San Pedro, Guatemala, where we kicked some pub quiz butt (although we never claimed first place). And all of that happened before we became champions at the Thursday night pub quiz in Beloit, Wisconsin, due to Andrew's crazy quick math skills.

6. Traveling around Guatemala and Belize with K-Dogg. After being in Guatemala for a couple of months without seeing any familiar faces (except the ones we made familiar while we were there- that's you, Jason!), it was incredibly thrilling to see a confused looking K-Dogg wandering down the street in Rio Dulce, Guatemala. We spent the week snorkeling and gazing into turquoise Caribbean waters, canoeing and hiking through the jungle and Mayan ruins, playing drums with some Garifuna folk, and taking in a lot of pina coladas.

5. Saints' Superbowl win. After we convinced Deb and Colin that it would, indeed, be fun to actually go to a bar and watch the game, it turned out to be even more fun than we had expected. After the Saints won, we secondlined (is that a verb?) through the city, and the energy was outrageous. I'm sure it was unlike anything I'll experience again.

4. Spending a week in Japan with the Witkins family for Nate and Mitsuyo's wedding. Not only was it our honeymoon, but we got to share one hostel room between the five of us for the majority of the trip! (Love you, Witkins family!). Seriously, though, Japan was incredible, especially the part where we watched the sun rise over the clouds from the top of Mt. Fuji. The family karaoke night wasn't bad either.

3. Canoeing the Boundary Waters. After a long, emotional move away from New Orleans, this was the perfect way to relax and feel like I'm getting totally ripped at the same time. Not to mention we got to make jokes with some of our very favorite people for a week, drink beer out of cans, and make hot drinks under a tarp in a hail storm. I vote for this one to be a yearly tradition.

2. Spending a month in the most beautiful spot in the world, Lake Atitlan. With the traditional Mayan dress, the comfort in knowing that toads will never become extinct, $1 cuba libres, and having two awesome local Spanish teachers to interact with all day, this was a perfect way to start off our time abroad.

1. Getting married. Hey, I know it's the obvious one, but come on, it was a freakin' good party. The old dancing with the young. Delicious grub, frisbee playing, kid throwing, gun shooting, African dancing, music making, watching little nieces and nephews reach up to put their cup on top of the bar for more sprite. Also, it lasted for like 4 days. Not to mention that it's a pretty good feeling when most of the people you love are in one room.

Real Life

Now that Andrew and I are getting settled into our new home, you'll be hearing a lot more from me, because Andrew is heading full force into his job, and I'm just starting to put together my schedule of "useful things to do with myself". And, to be honest, the blog might not be that exciting anymore. After months of gallivanting around Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico, paying little attention to where our money was going and doing every interesting cultural and adventurous activity that came our way, we are now going to have "real lives" again. By "real lives" I mean:

1. We get to/have to go to work.

2. We get to/have to stay in one place and make a community here.

3. We get to/have to go grocery shopping and cook delicious meals on our very own stove!

4. We get to/have to use an alarm clock to wake ourselves up.

5. We get to/have to clean our apartment.

6. We get to/have to save money for things like: paying off our loans, buying a plane ticket to the US or Africa, maybe going to grad school (either here or in the US), and someday building a submarine to return to the Gulf of Mexico and find the "shark" that scared the beegeebies out of Andrew last year.

As we have been moving into our new "real lives", I've begun to realize how cleansed I feel to be in a new space with minimal "stuff". Our apartment came furnished with a bed, a dresser, a kitchen table with chairs, a couch, a fridge, and a stove (along with a pot, a pan, and dishes). Andrew and I both have about 7 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 3 pairs of shoes (sandals, dress shoes, and tennis shoes). I've always known that I generally just feel more relaxed when I have less clutter, but being forced to fit everything I want for the next six months to two years in one backpack has been a great reminder of that fact. Now I just need to figure out what to do with all of my relaxed but excited energy...

This afternoon I sent out a notice to the university staff and students, saying that I am interested in doing a Spanish-English conversation exchange. I got about 9 eager responses within 30 minutes. Any suggestions on how to pick out the BEST of them?

And, last of all in this scattered post, I've really been missing witty people. So, for all you witty (or semi-witty) people out there, please feel free to email/comment something witty that your witty self comes up with.

(It turns out that "witty" sounds totally weird when you say it more than about five times in a row. Try it.)

Where are we?

If any of you out there are wondering where Andrew and I are, it is important for you to know that we are wondering the same thing.

We arrived at Zamorano last night at around 9 PM, and Andrew's principal showed us to our new apartment, which includes a furnished bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom with a hot shower. When we woke up this morning, we had a chance to get our bearings. We looked out of our front door and saw this:

(Well, we didn't see EXACTLY this, because I took this picture off of the internet after we realized that we had lost our camera cord, but it's pretty much what we saw.)

We are about 35 kilometers outside of Tegucigalpa, and it does not feel like I had imagined it would. Instead, it feels like... a really nice college campus that just happens to be in Honduras and has less drunk, puking freshmen (due to the excessively strict rules for the students, such as the ONE hour of free time allowed each day from 8-9 PM). The campus is beautiful- all the buildings are made of white stone- and the area is totally safe to wander around in thanks to the awesome campus security. Andrew's school is quaint and perfect, with a staff that seems incredible so far, and I might even have some great opportunities to teach ESL to the parents, teach a class to the students' mothers on nutrition or computer skills (in Spanish!), volunteer playing with kids at a local orphanage, and sub every once in awhile when a teacher can't teach a class.

I know it sounds pretty terrible to be where we are. To top it off, we have to look at these hideous fields and mountains every time we want to go for a walk:

And, finally, the clincher: if we get too hot in this wretched climate with a yearly average of 70 degrees, we are forced to go swimming here to cool down:

So this is where we are, if you can believe it. Where are all of you? Send us emails and Skype us, because we miss you.