Head trip

I'm writing this in an effort to make the upcoming trip more real to myself. Here is the backpack I will be living out of when we tour those countries currently sitting benignly next to it on the table.

This is all M. Lee's doing. I am ashamed to admit the only thing I know about Guatemala and Nicaragua is that there were ... are? ... guys in the jungle with guns. Costa Rica? Next to nothing other than that a Norwegian friend of ours meets his family there every Christmas for a surf holiday. And let see... what's the name of the other book? Honduras. Crap! The thought of going to Honduras freaks me out even more than going to Guatemala or Nicaragua. Well, no. In order of dread, I guess I rank Nicaragua first, then Honduras, then Guatemala. I think my trouble dolls came from Guatemala. And maybe the cool bag I picked up at a second hand store recently. Nice colors. And I suppose bananas grow everywhere, which is nice, but there's still the problem of guys with guns. Hey, minus the bananas, sounds like
good ol' merika.

But I don't want to give the wrong impression. In the spirit of what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, I am looking forward to this although, for starters, I could rattle off about a million things that I might survive that would definitely not make me stronger. Dread. My ever-present shadow. But I also enjoy challenging and replacing brooding myths with new experience. And, for better or worse, M. Lee uses that to his own advantage. Of course, chances are the worst I will suffer is the pain of being back to school, the Spanish immersion classes but, for the moment, the Theatre of Doom is playing old Saturday matinée favorites and I am there, spell-bound, dropping half of every handful of popcorn onto my lap and the floor, fearing the worst for the heroine as she makes her was across the screen dodging bullets and alligators.