I'm here!

Hi! Just wanted to let people know that I am in fact alive and in the U.S., and have been for three weeks. I have yet to write a final reflection, nor have I written up the stuff that I did since my last entry... I will, but that may not go online for another couple weeks because I'm going to the east coast to visit people and be a tourist.

To give a brief summary, my transition back to the U.S. hasn't been as hard as I was afraid it might be, but that doesn't mean everything's been just dandy either. I'll write more later. I'm supposed to be packing right now because we leave for Boston in about five and a half hours. Whoops. Sleep would be nice.

Buenas noches...

vaya, pues

Hello world! Sorry it's been forever, and I don't have the time or energy to write a substantial entry right now. I've been insane with schoolwork, and am still semi-insane. I'll be done with classes on Friday, and I come home on Wednesday. Four months is not a long time. It's been amazing though.

I gotta run, but I'll write more... perhaps after I get back to the U.S.

Any fluent Spanish speakers want to help me with translation for a video we're making?

I heard about the Bay Bridge insanity. Getting across the Bay will be super fun now, huh. It's kind of impressive that the steel melted...

Campo entry 1

Sorry I haven't written in so long. This past week has been very crazy with school stuff. I survived the week in the campo without incident. One student got dengue fever (though not necessarily from the campo), but for the most part everyone else came out in one piece.

It was a good experience overall. It wasn't incredible, but it was an opportunity to get a much better picture of Salvadoran life. The best part of the time was the first weekend. Monique and I went with Lupita to her house in Carasque, a community in the department of Chalatenango, close to the (very small) town of Nueva Trinidad. I loved her house. As Lupita said, it's very poor, but it was beautiful to me. Her parents live there, and Lupita lives there when she's not in San Salvador at the UCA (living with us). She originally had two brothers and three sisters. One of her sisters lives and works in the city of Chalatenango, a couple hour bus ride away. Another sister lives in Carasque, just up the road from her parents, and her third sister lives in Denver, Colorado. She's undocumented, but I guess she got a temporary work permit or something (I haven't been keeping up with immigration policy) that allows her to travel, so she's coming back to visit in May for the first time in six years. Lupita and her family found out on the Saturday while we were there, and they were so excited. She has two kids who were born in the U.S., and she's bringing them with her. Both of Lupita's brothers have died. One of the brothers, Nicolas, died in the war as a guerrilla in 1990. He was only 16 years old. Her other brother, Ismael, died three years ago, March 26, 2004. How he died is a little fuzzy to me, and I wasn't comfortable asking a lot of questions, but from what I gathered, he was on a bus in San Salvador, apparently on the 44 line, which runs close to our houses and the UCA, when a group of men, some with guns and some with knives, got on the bus. I think they were robbing the passengers, and Ismael was shot and killed. Every night we were there, people from the community came over to the house and prayed the rosary. They did it for nine days, starting on the 26th, the anniversary of his death. I got good at saying the Hail Mary in Spanish really really fast. It was really neat to be a part of that with Lupita and her family and their community.

One evening we went to a community assembly, which was interesting. We had been told beforehand that they have a lot of problems with mining companies trying to get into the area, but I didn't know any details. At this meeting, they were talking some about the issue of mining, saying fortunately their community is very organized against it, but other communities are having more trouble. Lupita explained to us later that mining companies discovered there is gold and other precious metals in the mountains there, and they want to come in and extract it. The problem is it would basically displace entire communities, and the people living there refuse to leave their land. They would not be able to survive without it.

I have so much to write about and so little time, that I think this is going to have to be a multi-entry series. I'll try to get it all written sooner rather than later because I know I'll forget stuff, but we have insane amounts of schoolwork due until the end of the semester. Vamos a ver.

Random note: On Wednesday at praxis I saw a guy with giant MS-13 tattoos in his chest and arms. He was right by Angelica's house. (MS-13 is one of the two main gangs here.) No wonder she's always scared to talk about gangs. Amilcar, who teaches the computer classes, said "Buenos dias" to him as we walked by. I can't even fathom what it would be like to live under the fear that so many people live under here. There's a place called Mariona, one of the praxis sites, where people can't leave their houses after 8 p.m. because it's too dangerous.

Three Month Reflection

Over the past month I don't feel like I've had any personal breakthroughs or major challenges. I'm becoming more comfortable, with my Spanish in particular. I'm continuing to learn more and more about what life is like here. I successfully ate a couple meals without using a fork (in the campo they use tortillas and fingers as their utensils). Now that we only have one month left (less because I'm writing this late), I'm scared both about returning to the U.S. and about all the schoolwork I have to do in the next three weeks. I want to go home because I miss my family and my friends, but I will be very sad to leave my Salvadoran friends. I'll also be sad to leave my new U.S. friends, but at least I know I'll have opportunities to see them again. I don't have any concrete plans to return to El Salvador after this. I'd like to, but I don't know if it's something that will happen. It's possible that these are people I will never see again. I know that's the way life is - you meet new people, lose touch with them, meet more new people, and so on, but it's especially hard knowing how much the Salvadorans will need to struggle for the rest of their lives.

Something I've been reflecting on lately is how it must feel to be from a country like El Salvador. I think I would either have a major inferiority complex, or I would be very angry. El Salvador is completely dominated by the U.S. In essence, they are constantly being told they are not as good as the U.S. Their country isn't as good, their culture isn't as good, their lives aren't as good. I am continuing to realize more and more what privilege U.S. citizens have. I already knew about how difficult it is for immigrants to cross the border into the U.S. from Mexico, either legally or illegally, but it turns out Central Americans can't even get into Mexico legally without great difficulty. If I can travel to practically any country in the world I want because of where I happened to be born, and a Salvadoran has practically zero chance of getting into countries like the U.S. and Mexico, and many others, I would imagine, isn't that basically the world saying Salvadorans are not as good as U.S. citizens? Poor people are treated as if they are worth less than rich people, and people from poor countries are treated as if they're worth less than people from rich countries. As I type this, Teresita, one of the scholarship students I live with, is laying on the floor next to me studying. It breaks my heart how many privileges I have over her. She has worked so much harder in her life than I probably ever will, yet I am the one who is able to get on a plane and fly to the U.S. in a few weeks, safely and quickly, to a house with more computers than people and a university that costs nearly $40,000 a year. Tom, one of the staff people for the Casa program, recently traveled the route that immigrants take from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, up to the U.S. He said that nearly every woman he met along the way had gotten a shot that keeps you from getting pregnant for six months. There's an almost 100% chance of sexual abuse if you try to make this journey. Fortunately, I don't think Teresita has any plans to try to go to the U.S., but it is not fair that I can go there and she can't. She would probably contribute much more to society if she had the opportunities I had. It was just a matter of chance that she was born to a poor family in El Salvador and I was born to a middle class family in the United States. I really don't like borders. I don't like nationalism. I don't like patriotism. I wish we could all just respect each other's dignity. I wish we could just love one another.

Probably everyone reading this is from the United States. Imagine being from a country where you are told you're not good enough to get into another country unless you're really really rich. The two obvious responses to me are internalizing this inferiority or becoming very angry. It always pains me to hear Salvadorans who talk about how grateful or honored they are to have us here. I always want to tell them "No, we're not that great." Maybe they're just being nice, but I think it has to do with how glorified the U.S. is here. I don't want U.S. culture to spread to other countries. To me, it consists of individualism, competition, money, greed, consumerism, killing terrorists (and Communists), instant gratification, constant entertainment, glamor, and fame. I know the U.S. has many redeeming qualities, but it seems like they're always overshadowed by the bad ones. Money always controls and decides everything. I don't think Salvadorans glorify the U.S. for its values - it's the money. The remittances from Salvadorans in the U.S. bring in more money to the country than coffee, one of the country's primary crops. The economy is completely dependent on the U.S. Is that why people are so nice to us here? We have power over them. In a few years, we could be the powerful ones in the U.S. We're college educated, mostly middle and upper class, almost entirely white (among 24 students, there's one African American, one Asian American, two Latin Americans, and 20 very white people) U.S. citizens. We are potentially the ones who will be making decisions that affect the lives of Salvadorans in very big ways. That's why we're here: so we'll make the right decisions, based on what we've learned from our experience here. The structure of power in the world is so distorted. It has everything to do with money and nothing to do with merit.

I ran across a Bible verse the other day that I thought would be good to end on: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21). Whether I like it or not, I (and you) have a lot of power over a lot of people. Let's use it for some good.

Universidad Nacional, Robert White, Romero, la Boda del Siglo, y Hijo Desaparecido

Long entry warning! I have had a pretty interesting last few days. On Thursday I went with my Spanish class to visit the National University. The National and the UCA are the two most prestigious universities here, but the big difference is that the National is public. It costs between $5 and $35 a month to go to the National, depending on how much money you have. I don't remember the exact range for the UCA, but I think the bottom end is around $35, up to maybe a couple hundred a month. The National also has to accept everyone who passes an entrance exam. There are about 35,000 students. Even though the money comes from the government, it's retained its autonomy, and during the war it was very very far left, among faculty and administration as well as students. The major guerrilla groups came out of the National. The government keeps funding it because it's in the Constitution, and the FMLN (leftist party) members in the Congress are mainly graduates of the National and make sure it keeps its funding. We visited to look at the murals on campus. They were fascinating. I don't have time to post pictures today, but there were a whole bunch of hammers and sickles (is that how you spell that?) and a bunch of Marxist and Leninist stuff. Pictures of Che and Farabundo Martí, a famous Salvadoran Communist, etc. If someone proposed murals like these at USF, people would just laugh. There is no way murals this political would make it on a university campus in the U.S. I'm no Marxist-Leninist, but I would love to have murals like those on campus, just to get people thinking and debating. But it would never happen. People don't care enough to put forth the effort. At the National there are very strong student organizations. Classes didn't start till a couple weeks after they were supposed to because students took over the school until the school figured out a way to let everybody in. Technically they have to let everyone in, but they have space and time restraints, so they can't admit everyone. But when they do that, the students organize and make them admit everyone. Again, I would never see that sort of organization at USF, and they don't have that sort of organization at the UCA either. The UCA is a private, Jesuit school, and while it is active in human rights stuff, the student body tends to be wealthier people and the focus is academics, not political activism. It was all really interesting.

On Friday Robert White, former ambassador to El Salvador from the U.S., came and spoke to my history class. It was very interesting and pretty awesome that our teacher is good enough friends with him to get him to talk to our class on his lunch break. He was speaking at a conference at the UCA. He was fired from being ambassador when he refused to lie when the U.S. government wanted him to sign something saying the Salvadoran government was working hard to solve the killings of the four U.S. churchwomen (I think that was December 1980). He was like "Dude, you and I both know it was the Salvadoran military that killed them, and they are not going to investigate themselves." Maybe he didn't say dude, but it was something like that. So he got fired because Reagan was like KILL THE COMMIES! GIVE LOTS OF MONEY TO THE SALVADORAN GOVERNMENT! But the Congress wanted to be told that they weren't financing human rights abuses and the government was making progress, doing things like investigating the deaths of the churchwomen. White wouldn't lie, so he got fired. As he and other people have told us, if the U.S. had not funded the war here, there is no way it would have gone on 12 years. If the U.S. had wanted, the peace accords that were signed in 1992 probably could have been signed in 1981 or '82. Yay Reagan.

Saturday was the 27th anniversary of Monseñor Oscar Romero's death. If you want to learn about Romero, I suggest the movie Romero. It's very good and I've heard it's pretty accurate. Oscar Romero was archbishop of San Salvador in the late '70s. When he was appointed, the Church thought he was a safe choice because he was relatively conservative and liked his books and didn't make waves. However, after the killing of his friend Fr. Rutilio Grando, a Jesuit priest who was advocating rights for the poor, and after spending more time with the poor and seeing their situation, Romero became a voice for the voiceless, a prominent figure who spoke out against all the violence that was going on at that time, especially the violence against the poor coming from the military/government. His homilies were broadcast by radio and he was hugely popular. He was killed March 24, 1980, as he was giving Mass in the chapel at the Hospital Divina Providencia, a hospital for terminal cancer patients, where he chose to live instead of having a fancy bishop house. The U.N. Truth Commission which investigated human rights abuses during the war, said that Roberto D'Aubisson, founder of Salvadoran death squads and the ARENA party (the party in power now, modeled on the U.S. Republican Party), was responsible for the killing of Romero. I think Romero knew it was only a matter of time before he was killed, but he kept on speaking out. He said "Se me matan, resucitaré en el pueblo Salvadoreño." If they kill me, I will rise up in the Salvadoran people. And he has. His memory lives on very strong in this country, and he is very much a source of inspiration. He's not canonized, not yet at least, but he is often called San Romero de las Americas. There was a march, a Mass, and a vigil (more like a concert, actually) in celebration on Saturday. It was pretty cool, and the music was great.

Sunday was the boda del siglo (wedding of the century), between Eugene (Eugenio) Palumbo and Guadalupe Montalvo, a.k.a. Gene and Lupita, our history teacher and one of the women who cooks for us. A group of students formed a decorating committee and we all went early and set up for the reception. It looked beautiful and it was a wonderful wedding. Gene is a journalist and is friends with everybody. Fr. Dean Brackley presided, Horizontes, who did the music for the giant Romero celebration, did the music, and Robert White was there too. It was lovely.

Yesterday, Patrick (my praxis partner) and I started doing interviews for a video we're making as a project for our praxis class. I was nervous about it, but it went really well, especially our first interview. We talked to a woman named Rosa Edit. Her son, who is/was 20 or 21, disappeared about a month ago. She doesn't know what happened. He could be dead or alive. He worked and helped provide for the family. They are very poor and she has four other children. Her husband works when he can find work, but work is very hard to get here, especially for people without an education. Angelica (our praxis site coordinator) said his disappearance could have to do with gangs, but Rosa didn't say anything about that. However, a lot of people are afraid to talk about gangs. Angelica always gets very quiet when she talks about them. Rosa said the family could get some money, I think some kind of social security, if they had a death certificate for him, but they don't even know if he's dead or not. Before she told us about her son (though we already knew because Angelica told us), we asked her what a typical day is for a mother, and she started to cry and talked about the tristeza, the sadness. Please pray for her and her son and all her family.

And now I have a ton of schoolwork to do. And today is my birthday (happy birthday to me), and no, I will not be going out and getting trashed for my 21st birthday. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't have time. :) On Thursday we have a midterm for sociology, which we have to read a 30-ish page article for (an article written by Stuart Hall, who is British and wrote in ENGLISH, yet our professor gave us the Spanish translation), and I have to read a short book and write two short essays for Spanish. By Friday I have to read an entire book (in English) and write a reflection for theology. And this afternoon I'm meeting with Patrick to work on our video.

Next week we're spending in the campo (rural area) near Arcatao in Chalatenango, in the very north of the country. A few of the becari@s are from communities around Arcatao, including Lupita, one of the students I live with. Monique and I are going up on Friday to spend the weekend with her and her family, then we'll join up with the other students on Monday and stay in pairs with families who are part of the Jesuit parish in Arcatao. Some of the houses have running water and electricity, some don't. Some are about a two hour walk away from the town. Some will have had American students stay with them before, and some won't. It's pretty scary, but it will probably be amazing. Let's hope.

Okay, I think this entry is long enough. Adiós.

Prayer for Peace in Iraq

Hola! First, I was alerted to the fact the the links to my Voces Inocentes response and my liberation theology paper didn't work. They should work now. I also wanted to note that you should not take my liberation theology paper as serious academic work because I didn't cite my sources (gasp). That was because it was a timed essay and because my teacher knew exactly what sources I was working from. So thank Clodovis Boff for a bunch of the information in there.

The second thing is I was reminded today that the four-year anniversary of the war in Iraq is tomorrow. One of my roommates, Amy, said she would like us to do some sort of prayer service for the anniversary. I was looking through a book of prayers I have, but I didn't find anything that seemed like what I was looking for, so I decided to write something myself. Here it is:

God of Life, we pray for peace.
Let us be makers of peace
in ourselves,
in our communities,
in our country,
and in the world.
We pray for all people suffering from war,
especially the people of Iraq,
today, on the four-year anniversary of the war in that country.
We pray for all those who have died: the tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, the soldiers of Iraq, the United States, El Salvador, and all other countries.
We pray for those who have died trying to make peace,
and we pray for those who are still alive, trying to make peace.
We pray for the politicians of the U.S. and Iraq,
that they see the injustice of war,
put an end to the violence,
and prioritize peace and true justice,
leaving behind selfish motivations,
and giving preference to the poor.
We pray that everyone understand that "collateral damage" and "casualties" means real people, killed unnecessarily:
Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, best friends.
We pray for an end to religious conflict and civil war,
that the world may hear your call to nonviolent resolutions,
to beat our swords into plowshares,
and to love our enemies.
We pray that we learn from history,
that we do not repeat war, violence, and injustice,
that we always remember the tragedy of war.
We pray for hope and strength in the struggle for peace.

Amen.

Back from Guatemala!

Hola! Stephanie and I safely made it back to El Salvador on Thursday. We had a nice time. On Monday we went to a nature reserve where there were supposed to be spider monkeys, but we didn't see any. We also went to see the lake, which was gorgeous. On Tuesday we went on a boat to visit three towns around the lake. We also did some shopping for pretty Guatemalan stuff. On Wednesday we had been planning to do a hike through a cloud forest, but we discovered that the place our Lonely Planet book said to go to arrange a guide no longer exists, and when we talked to someone else, they said it isn't safe where we wanted to go. We decided to just relax on Wednesday, and we sat by the lake and read for a good part of the day. It was fun. I got to watch TV for the first time in two months, and was able to take hot showers for the second time in two months. It was a nice little vacation. At first I was really enjoying being a tourist, but then it disturbed me a bit how I was just one of those Americans who came to Guatemala to see some pretty sites and buy pretty fabrics. My role was to spend money, which I did. I wasn't doing anything but seeing pretty sites and buying pretty things, and I understood that and intended to do that. I guess the fact that I know I was not seeing Guatemalan reality makes it a lot better than it could be. Also, I'd rather be giving my money to Guatemalan textile makers than to some corporation in the U.S. And guess what? I uploaded pictures!

Everybody should read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. It's highly disturbing and educational and very good.

One of the major continuing news stories here has been a bunch of loans that the ARENA party (the primary conservative party, in power currently) wants and which the FMLN (the primary liberal party) opposes. ARENA is presenting it as the FMLN is against poor people and doesn't want to help education and the health care system, etc. I don't really know the specific reasons the FMLN is opposing the loans because the papers are pretty biased and I haven't seen their side represented (that could also be because I'm too lazy to read very many articles in Spanish). They just voted on $197 million of loans, which the country will not get because of the FMLN's opposition. I was talking about this a bit with Teresita, one of the Salvadoran students who lives in my house, and when I said that loans to poor countries aren't always a good thing, she asked why. I was kind of taken aback. I forgot that just because someone suffers from the poverty that these loans often create doesn't mean that they know about it. Being poor doesn't mean that you're super educated, and is more likely to mean that you're not educated. It reminded me of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (another book you should read, but a whole lot harder than Confessions of an Economic Hitman) and the need to raise consciousness in order to make change. I explained to Teresita that the loans often just put poor countries into more debt which makes them dependent on the loaning countries or institutions, and allows the rich people to exploit the poor countries and requires the poor countries to institute programs that benefit the rich countries (e.g. we'll give you this money if you grow this crop). When I explained it, she completely understood. Even if she hasn't been taught this stuff in school, she will always have a different and deeper understanding of what all that stuff means than I ever will.

Okay, I said forever ago that I was going to post my reflection on Voces Inocentes and my liberation theology paper. Here they are: Liberation Theology, Voces Inocentes.

Two Month Reflection

I'm writing this March 10, my two month anniversary being here in El Salvador. I just finished listening to an mp3 of a forum at Grace Cathedral (in SF) with David Batstone, talking about his new book, Not For Sale, and the campaign against human trafficking and modern slavery that is going along with it (the forum was about a month ago, so I don't know if the file is still available, but I would recommend listening to it if you can). Dave was my professor last year and is amazing. He mentioned in the forum how in the 1980's he formed an organization of people with U.S. passports to come down to El Salvador to be with people who were at risk of being targeted by the death squads. They wouldn't dare kill a U.S. citizen, so it was a way to protect the Salvadorans. He used his gifts, one of them being a U.S. passport, to save people's lives.

Over the last month, since I wrote my one month reflection, I've become more comfortable with all those questions I was asking. I haven't figured out the answers, but I think I've gotten closer. The big thing I was struggling with was how do I fit my privilege into a commitment to justice and service to the poor. I said last month "I am the oppressor," which a number of people took exception to. I said it because I am an active part of an economic system that is based on exploitation of the poor and the world's natural resources, and I am on the top end of that, receiving the benefits. By participating in that system, I am helping to keep people down. That's why I called myself an oppressor. It doesn't mean I'm trying to or wanting to, but that's the way it is, and it's not something I can easily escape from. What I can do is acknowledge where I fall in the system and see what I can do to stop perpetuating oppression and change the system that creates and maintains poverty. I have to acknowledge my context and work with it.

So what are my gifts and what is my calling? While I do have a U.S. passport, I don't have Dave Batstone's daring to go to a war-torn country and accompany people likely to be assassinated. One great gift I have is my experience here. Few people who have the privilege (and potential power) that I have get the experience of spending time with people in very real poverty. One of the biggest problems with the world, I believe, is that we dehumanize people who are distant from us - economically, geographically, socially, or whatever. If we recognize that an undocumented immigrant is not just one of those "illegals" but my friend Lupita's sister or my friend Amilcar's parents, it gives us a different perspective. If we recognize that the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people devastated by two major earthquakes here in 2001 are the people I'm spending my days with every Monday and Wednesday, it gives a face to the number. I've been given the gift of humanizing people who are poor. The scholarship students who are my friends and the wonderful children at my praxis site are very real people.

At a retreat we had a couple weekends ago, I experienced something I don't really know how to describe, at least not without writing a lot more than I want to, but basically I realized how strongly I hear myself being called to serve the poor, to work with the poor, to live the Beatitudes, but I'm scared of what that means concretely in my life. I think that even though I keep saying I don't know what I want to do with my life, the answer is right in front of me, it's just that I don't want to see it because it won't be easy, and I love easy things. At this retreat I was faced with figuring out what sort of poverty I am called to - kind of that same question I asked last month, about whether it's socially and morally responsible to live a middle class life. Spiritual direction with one of the leaders helped me some. He talked about working within your own context and what's really important is to not value material things more than people. That sounds simple, but in practice we very often do put the material above the person. All this is a real challenge, but I take this seriously, and I don't want it to be one of those "Oh, wouldn't that be nice" things, and just go on living my life.

I also recognized something I've noticed a number of times through this experience, that I feel a lot of hopelessness. I look at all the world's problems and how deeply rooted and interconnected they are, and I feel like it just won't change, at least not before it gets a whole lot worse. And if/when it does change, whatever replaces it will still have problems because people are not perfect. People will always be greedy and uncaring. My problem is, can I truly commit myself to working for justice if I think total justice can never be achieved? Will my whole heart be in something that I believe isn't going to happen? Yes, maybe we can get food into a community, but we have to change the entire global economic structure to eliminate the root problems. How do I balance being realistic and being hopeful? With some reflection and discussion, I've been able to restore some hope and some faith in humanity that at least some change is possible, and even though there will always be problems, they don't have to be nearly as bad as they are now. Vamos a ver.

This doesn't really go along with the rest of what I'm writing, but I hate the fact that I'm so afraid here. I don't like walking down the street, and I'm uncomfortable especially around men I don't know because of the blatent machismo. I feel like I don't belong here and I stick out like crazy. The machismo has made me so much more aware that sexism still exists in very real ways. I guess I've grown up pretty sheltered from sexism, and even though I knew it existed, of course, I've never seen it like this before. It's shocking and inexcusable and I feel like I can't do anything to change it. I can't really. An American college student is not going to change a deeply ingrained part of a foreign culture. Still, this experience has made me a lot more aware of women's issues, which will stay with me when I return to the U.S.

This last month has been a really good one, overall. I have mixed feelings about this experience being halfway over. On the one hand I have so much more to learn and my Spanish is far from where I'd like it to be, but on the other hand I miss home, and I think of how much I've learned over the past two months and I know there's a lot more to come.

Arrived in Guatemala

Stephanie and I arrived successfully in Panajachel, Guatemala yesterday afternoon. We had a lovely very comfortable (because it was primera clase) bus ride from San Salvador to Guatemala City, then an incredibly overpriced taxi ride to a shady looking bus place with the buses to Panajachel. As soon as the bus pulled away, the guy told us we had to lie down for a couple minutes as he drove, but we couldn't really figure out why. Perhaps safety? There were three other white people leaving with us, and I'd imagine a bus with five gringos might be a nice target for robbery. But nothing happened, and we got to sit up a little while later. The bus got very crowded, but we made it fine. We successfully found a hotel to stay at, and we are spending far too much money on everything. Yay. And there's tofu here! Yum.