Our time living overseas can be counted in storylines. This is one of them. Towards the end of my 8 months teaching, I bought a rugby ball. While I have played rugby in the past (10 years ago, say), I’ve never been particularly good at it, and recently, I’ve found myself to err towards the café[...]
Posts Tagged ‘sports’
Boxing Like Rocky: Spotlight on Cleber Santana
I first met Cleber Santana, a 30-year-old Rocinha resident and boxing coach, on a chilly September eve. I was struggling to keep up with one of my English students, Jose, who was weaseling his way through an intricate maze of tiny streets in an unfamiliar part of Rocinha. Huffing and puffing after a[...]
Organizing Fundraisers at Home and Abroad
Since September, my co-worker Lauren and I have been holding weekly fundraising events here in Cusco, and with just a month and a half left we’re also gearing up for events to be held back in the States. Here is a brief I outline of our fundraising endeavors from abroad and at home: I. Fundraisers[...]
iGoooooool!
I open this week’s post with a public service announcement: the Copa Mundial starts this Friday. Perhaps a fairly obvious announcement, for those of us already living in Latin America; but if you, dear reader, are logging in from the USA or perhaps Mars, let this serve as notice to please view[...]
Happiness is: New Experiences and Unpredictability in a Foreign Country
“Maybe we mistakenly think we want ‘happiness’, which we tend to picture in very vague, soft-focus terms, when what we really crave is the harder-edged intensity of experience.” I read this in a New York Times article two days before leaving the States for my yearlong stint in Cusco. Nine mo[...]
Challenging Gender Norms
Last week I wrote about the personal decisions we all have to make when it comes to challenging cultural norms. Here I elaborate on my experience challenging one of the most deeply-rooted cultural norms of Nicaragua: the role of the muchacha. I’m an unofficial athlete and one of the things I obser[...]
