It´s cold at night, here at 7,000 feet in the western highlands of Guatemala. I´m bundled up in all my clothes (at least those that are relatively clean) with my airline blanket wrapped around my neck (thanks Copa!), resting up after a long day. My hands are dry and cracked from handling stone and cement, my muscles sore, my skin filthy... but my spirits are high, like the hills that surround me as I take this moment to reflect in this place that has become the latest incarnation of home. I´ve spent the last three weeks here in the mountains of Comalapa with an incredible group of people who are attempting to do something quite miraculous: bringing revolutionary green building technology to the people of Guatemala as a means to both provide vocational training and address ... read more

So it´s been a while since the last time I updated this blog. And much has transpired along the way, so much so that to include it all here would be long, and tedious, and really, I am not really sure who cares about it anyway. (does anybody read this?) But, for the sake of my mother, who has been reminding me to update this blog, I will give it a go. so..... ....THE ENDLESS SUMMER CONTINUES... ....with a slight interupption of wintry weather. Not here of course, but along the way I've found myself in some interesting positions. Like standing on a slushy Manhattan corner at 4 AM with airline blankets wrapped around my head. In a five star high rise hotel in Panama City. In the nosebleed seats at Fedex Field, taking in a ... read more

If you were to get into your car right now, and start driving south, you would eventually hit the Mexican border. And if you were to keep going, and keep going some more, and then some more, you would eventually end up on the Panamerican Highway, passing through Guatemala, Honduras, and then Nicaragua. And then about an hour north of Managua, you would notice some brightly colored birds on the side of the road, and you might be shocked that such an exotic flock of pajaros is concentrated in one spot, on the side of the highway, of all places! But if you were to slow down, you would notice that all those birds are made of wood, carved by machete, and if you were to stop and take an ever closer look, you would be ... read more

As we step off the rocky dirt road onto a the rocky dirt path, our guide Rafael warns us to watch our step on the uneven terrain. Onto a rocky terrace we walk, with grand views of the mountains in all directions, and with the first slip of my worn out shoe down the worn rock face, I heed the advice, tearing my eyes from the horizon to the more humble places of where I place one foot in front of the other. I follow along, trailing the group as we wind our way down the hillside, skirting through the yard of someone´s house, following a meandering path that we would never had found without our fearless leader. Working our way up a barely perceptable trail on a jungly mountainside, Rafael stops from time to ... read more

It seems like everyone in this town has a war story. I´m in the northern city of Leon, waylaid here for a week while I wait out a flat spell of no waves. To make a long story short, I fell in with a rowdy crowd of Australians back in Popoyo and we were on our way to El Salvador when we stopped over here in Leon for the weekend. However, the modern miracle of internet surf forecasting told me there would be no swell til next weekend, and so Í´ve decided to stay here and enroll in language school for a week. the Aussies went on their way and now here i am, sweating it out in this hot city for the time being. I´m staying with a family in the barrio and am enjoying ... read more