Culture clash

6/10:

I'm racing downhill on my bike to make it back in time for the bbq that's happening tonight. Tears are leaking out the corners of my eyes from the wind that's pummeling my face. I'm looking down and ahead at the same time, trying to avoid the cow pats that are sprinkled across the road. My obstacles are a good sign though, I'm getting close to the dairy, close to home.
My ipod is on shuffle and as I ride faster and faster a corrido comes on, one from the Barranquenhos CD that Chica gave me a few weeks back. The horns and accordions blast in my ears and I smile as I look down at the Atlantic shore and rolling hills of quaint farms. I feel bubbles of laughter inside as I think of this cultural clash, this music in this landscape.
But that's the wonderful thing about Gubbeen. In a minute, I'll be eating sizzling steak with the French intern while talking to Lindsey, Clovisse's friend from Canada/Berlin/Marin, and playing googoogaga with Olin, the little Irish baby with a mohawk. I guess love of food is a very uniting concept.

(agri)culture

Chyca's obsession with Winnie the Pooh started as a little girl. She loved everything Pooh so much that her adoration soon filled up her bedroom with stuffed Pooh bears, Pooh cups, Pooh boxes, Pooh everything. At night when she slept in her sea of Poohs she dreamt of going to the US where she would work enough to buy a life-sized Pooh bear for herself so that she could sleep next to it. But when the time finally came and she arrived in the US, her gigantic Pooh bear was nowhere to be found. She looked and looked but they simply didn't sell life-sized Pooh bears. Crestfallen but still determined, she continued on with her obsession and collected even more Pooh accessories than before.

Now years later, still toting her subtle Pooh bag, she describes this infatuation as a a thing of the past. She confesses that her fetish has subsided but she knows she will always love the idea of the chubby, carefree, happy-go-lucky bear that is Winnie.

I swear, being on this farm I have learned just as much about agriculture as I have about culture.

paying the river

The deep green water rushed by quickly as tiny trickles of gravel occasionally fell from the menacing cliff face that dropped directly into the water. Digging my toes into the sand, I watched as the kids splashed in the water and the adults chatted around the sizzling grill. With the sun still high and bright, clouds of swallows flew at the cliff walls gathering bits of mud in their beaks to use for their nests.

We ate chili covered oranges and our faces grew sticky with the juice that dribbled down our necks. We jumped in again to wash it all off and lay back out in the sun for a few minutes to dry, lying on the warm sand as we inhaled the lush smell of the forest that mixed with the smoky smell of the carne that was azando.

After spending enough time at the picnic we drove with the kids to Guinda where the kids could play more easily in the shallower water. Standing up to our knees in rushing water, Mary and I held onto the kids as they dove around looking at fish and stones. Little Hector found the round stones and held them in his hand, calling them monedas. He threw each of them out to the river in payment for all the fun he was having saying, "here you go, sir" before tossing them downstream.