Ten things I learned in South America

1. Things are often not what you would expect: seeing a kid pushing around a hub cap with his sister, gitty as can be, makes you wonder about the X-Box. Notice too that they are TALKING while playing.
2. Airline seats are not the most uncomfortable way to seat people on a vehicle, nor is airline food the worst food on the planet. BOLIVIAN airline food is.
3. Sleep is like swimming: you can wade around or get completely submerged, you can dive deep or stay on the surface, and you can always get pissed off when people cut it short.
4. You can learn a lot about the world from travelling with people from different parts from it. I say "football" instead of soccer now and have added about twenty hilarious bits of English slang to my vocabulary
5. Until you have eaten fifty-three steaks in sixty-five days you don't know just how fragile your heart really is.
6. Clothes really don't need to be washed that often. They just need to be dark coloured.
7. We are all very, very similar underneath it all. In the ways we are different it is usually much more satisfying to learn the differences as opposed to immediately rejecting them.
8. No, you do NOT want to know what that smell is.
9. Having peace of mind, heart, and spirit is not necessarily related to your material wealth and is much more important. I met many people on this trip who had a lot less material wealth but who did have a much more settled inner life
10. You just have to say yes; the rest will just take care of itself. Often when you are thinking about something intimidating you feel the reasons not to do it sneak up like a sneeze. Most of life-s mistakes are mistakes of ommission, not commission.

I am curious as to who reads my blog regularly. If you are one of those people would you please leave a comment on the end of this blog? It will only take a second and would be appreciated. Thanks!

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