Samson Roske: A History of Hair

Rakin´in the awards at La noche de los mejores.

I'll never forget the hair cuts of my youth. The first step was to go to the laundry room to nab the red towel that was so thin and faded that its number of uses might have finally been reduced to single digits by now. I then fetched a clothespin from next to the fridge, never fully understanding why the clothespins weren't in the laundry room (Mom, Dad?). I would then position the stool between the kitchen table and the dining room table that also doubled as that place in every house where countless items simply appeared throughout the week like homework assignments, discarded clothing, and a plate or bowl from when prepubescent JJ wanted to avoid parental wrath of eating in the living room, a law whose regulation waned significantly as JJ grew into moody adolescence. Another strategic move was to always sit so that I could squint to see whatever Disney movie tape I'd popped in the VHS player in the living room that evening (Although it would later give way to basketball games, Disney would never really leave the top of what graced the Roske television screen most). Then began what seemed like an hour of wincing as I waited for Dad to finish cutting my hair.

Ben graduates from ye olde Prep school. 2007.

You see, my father is a woodworker. And he will be the first to tell you that that is different from a carpenter. And for more circles around the sun than I've seen, he's been crafting furniture that will probably outlast him and I both for the monastery and university at St. John's. But as much as his job requires attention to detail and that he be meticulous and careful with each piece, he also handles industrial sized saws, sanders, and planers. So while I would never claim that his haircuts were painful, I feel like there were times he would treat my ears as he would a chair leg that wasn't flush with the other three. 

Homecoming royalty, including Addie. 2010.

As I got older, I would conveniently plan my hair cuts around holidays when my older sister, Molly, was home from college or whatever part of the world she would find herself in. I began to trust her not necessarily because she was better at it (though in her own right she was and still is a secret artist who is as meticulous as both Mom and Dad), but she probably had a better grasp on what an adolescent male would want for a hair style than my father who’s had the same whispy flowing locks and mustache for decades. You probably just giggled at the mention of style when referring to my hair if you knew me back then. Mom called it Beatles style and my kind contemporaries called it the Bieber cut, but anybody worth their stones in fashion would have simply called it fresh. And this fresh cut was seen dancing on my eyebrows from about 5^th grade all through most of college. I never gave in to the social whims of society; I had something I liked, and I’d be damned if I was going to change that.

Me and Bob in the most creative Halloween
to date, 2011.

Fast forward to college, the time of self-discovery, nearly unlimited independence, and beer. And hell if I knew who I was or would be. In what could be perceived as breaking from the mold but what is probably best described as cheap laziness, I stopped getting haircuts in my sophomore year. Now, if you’re a man who has tried to grow your hair out, you know there are some awkward phases between a dude cut and a dudette length of hair. There’s the mullet phase, right before the phase where it’s too short to put in a pony but too long to make it look respectable in the ten seconds before waking up and running out the door to class. I restrict this mention to men because if you’re a woman who’s had her hair cut short and then grew it back out again, you probably took better care of it than any man attempting the same. My way of taking care of it? A hat. If it was warm, baseball hat. If it was cold, beanie. Easy. But just as we were coming into summer of that year and the locks were near displayable, I got knee surgery and crutches. Summer 2013 was a doozy: 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours at work, studying tree rings under a microscope for the Environmental Studies department and my advisor/hero Troy Knight who’s southern accent makes Matthew McConaughey’s seem like a piss-poor attempt to be romantic, and then 8 hours with my leg in a machine that bent it back and forth as my knee relearned how to function.

Dad wins the hair of this picture.

But the point is, if you’ve ever had longish hair you know it requires a lot of brushing out of your face, so much so that you probably didn’t notice you’ve done it three times while reading this post. But on crutches, this constant, absent-minded flick of a lock becomes less possible when both your hands are focused on propelling the sticks that have become your legs. So the axe came down and I got my hair cut. Right before leaving to study a semester in Chile, it seemed like perfect timing since no one I knew would see the aforementioned awkward phase. As it turns out, that was my last haircut for a while.

brewing up some mean Korean noodles
with Slim Jim sticks to boot. 2015.

Fast forward again, this time to the fall of 2016. Teaching English to some snot-nosed sixth and seventh graders in Bogota, Colombia, I was sporting a more than respectable man bun that, when let down, was nigh on nipple length. I was also a homeroom co-director along with the French and Language Arts teacher, Eliana Castañeda. Four years older than me, she and I made a kickass team leading group 6B. She led with a sharp tongue but big heart and hugs when necessary, and I led with my positive attitude and goofy gringo accent. We also benefitted from a group who could be annoying little brat mamones, but then angels who would ace their exams. Through the first two trimesters of the school year, we had taken the top spot in the school in terms of homeroom grade point average, along with the help of Maria Josse Romero, our ace who took the top student GPA.

Entering the last term of our year, a period infamous for kids slacking if they know they’re already going to pass the year, I thought of something to keep them motivated. They had always nagged me to let my hair down, and throughout the year I had only obliged them once when playing soccer on a field trip back in June. I told them that if they finished the year in first place for all three trimesters, I would cut my hair. To be honest, I thought most kids wouldn’t care. But almost every week I was asked if I had chosen what kind of hair style I was going to get, which prompted a response from me along the lines of “Have you passed your final exams yet?” But considering they’d won the first two trimesters, one more was definitely within the realm of possibility.

Immediate post-haircut chot. You can
                see hair all over me. No beard though. 

So it wasn’t too shocking when – during the week after grading when all the final grades were being calculated and I was working in the computer lab – Eliana and Laura, our department head and good friend of Eliana, ran into the lab with those happily evil grins that I’ve seen countless times from my own two sisters, taunting, “Oooo you have to cut your haaaairr!”  

So that brings us back to me sitting on a stool, with a towel draped around me, next to the kitchen. This time, in a monastery in Colombia. Gerson, one of my best monastic friends, insisted that he get to cut the ponytail. But thankfully that’s all he got to do, as I submitted my overdue hair to Edwin who, luckily for me, has a background in hair styling. And give or take an hour, the deed was done.

I have to admit, for being someone who doesn’t care a whole lot about his hair, I was more nervous going into that haircut than I probably should have been. I’m not a guy who likes big changes, and that hair and I had been through a lot together, seen lots of different places and such. You might say we were practically inseparable. I don’t think I ever truly pulled off the man bun look, but shit was it a conversation starter. You see a guy with short hair, what you see is what you get. But with long hair, you never know, so you usually ask. Bam! Conversation. Plus, long hair is actually less maintenance when you’re as lazy as I am. Instead of needing to worry about my hair being “in place”, I just woke up every morning and bunned it up. If I showered at night, I could get my morning routine down to five minutes or so, giving me those precious extra minutes of warmth under the bed covers. Really the only downsides were no more hats (don’t fit with the bun), needing to wear a thick headband when running or playing sports (so the hair wouldn’t constantly de-bun), and hair everywhere. Because when you’re room is all white tile like mine is you find hair always and everywhere, something I’m sure infuriated other occupants of the monastery’s guesthouse who shared a broom with me.

So, for those who had been wondering why I cut my hair, there’s the whole hairy tale. Having an in-house hair stylist means I’ll probably keep it short for the foreseeable future. But in the future, who knows? The locks could be back in full force before you know it. Though in the end, it’s just hair.

J.


Spanish word of the day: Following the theme, corte de cabello haircut, peluquería is barbershop, and peluquero is barber. Short and sweet, just what we all needed after I wasted your time with the first 1500 words of this post.

Song in my head lately: You can never go wrong with a Matt Corby song. Whether it´s Winter is Coming or Untitled, you´re set to be moved, maybe to tears. Made of Stone fits in those lines. If you can´t appreciate his goose bump inducing voice, then hopefully you can at least appreciate a good looking dude who can sufficiently fondle the ivories. And if not, close this tab, turn off whatever crap it is you do listen to, come back, and skip to 3:30 in the song.

Hooligans in Medellin

(Writer's Note: the events of this post ocurred over a month ago, finishing up our travels through the Eje Cafetero. I am just getting to this now, apologies.)

Being the intelligent college graduates we are, Steve, Nate and I knew that because it was the rainy season the chances of rain during the soccer game were higher than normal. And the extra few thousand pesos to get seats under the roofed part of the stadium paid off when the first half got a sprinkling.

                  But if you’ve ever seen any soccer game that wasn’t the World Cup you probably know that your average game doesn’t sell out. The halfhearted cheering from our section reflected the crowd’s scarcity, despite the fact that the home team of Medellin was winning. I often caught myself glancing longingly at the super fan section behind the home team’s goal whose band never stopped playing and whose fans never ceased their yelling and singing. So when the halftime whistle blew, I was determined to find my way to the hooligans.

Super fan section, Atletico Medellin v. Huila.

                  We left our seats and found the entrance to superfandom, only to be met by a closed door guarded by a man in a blaze orange jacket and headset. Could we pretty please sit with the cool kids? Not possible, said the blazed headset. We were not above bribing. But he pointed to a camera facing the door, explaining how his job wasn’t terrible and he wanted to keep it. We needed to find his boss, he said, another blaze orange headset man somewhere downstairs. Assuming we were sent on a wild goose chase, I wasn’t too hopeful as we descended into the food vendor area. That is, until we spotted said goose, headset, orange vest and all. He was being similarly persuaded by a group of young ladies, and we were met with the same sad answer to our own proposition. The ladies left, but we hadn’t given up yet. I fed him some admittedly entitled bogus about how we gringos wanted the “full Colombian experience”, and though I’m sure that wasn’t the trick, after he confirmed that the ladies had indeed left, turned back to us and said, “Follow me.”

                  Two stairs at a time we climbed the flight to our first crony guarding the black iron door. Head honcho tells us to wait by the stairs while he goes and talks to the hired hand. After some whisperings, headsets conspicuously turned upwards away from their faces, they shook hands and we were waved over. “Disfruten, muchachos” he grinned at us as we could barely contain our Agustus-Gloop-in-a Chocolate-factory excitement when we officially became superfans.    

*                                  *                                  *

                  Having grown up in the woods around St. John’s playing Pooh sticks down at the creek and doing absolutely nothing in the not-so-secret forts we built when we were supposed to be helping Dad haul wood for the stove, the idea of living in a city is so far down my bucket list that they’re those words you try to cram onto the page before surrendering to the flip side. However, despite my apprehension and subtle agoraphobic sensitivity the last seventeen months in Bogota have been more than I could have ever hoped for, an observation that I’m sure has been clear in prior posts and will be further articulated in subsequent ones. But as far as cities go, it still has its problems. Trash is everywhere, public transportation has only ceased to be a nightmare because of how fond I’ve become of packing my sardine self onto the Transmilenio busses, and although crime isn’t what it is in the states you still might have to cross the street to avoid the soccer gangs or whistling prostitutes. Well, depending on your intentions you might cross the street looking for the latter. The point is Bogota suffers some of the same problems as any city whose population is expanding faster than its infrastructure and local economy can properly manage. On the other side of that spectrum is Medellin, the city where we spent the second half of our trip in October.            

                  Medellin, once famous for being the most dangerous city in the world in large part to the drug smuggling and police killing activity of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, has recently made some serious strides towards being seen as the best city in Colombia. For starters, it’s cleaner. When we gratefully stumbled off the bus outside the terminal, we were struck by how little there was to be struck by in terms of wrappers and bottles rolling by. The garbage collectors in the heart of the city seemed to be of the same ilk as those in the terminal, since garbage was hardly noticeable throughout the city.

Plaza de las luces.

                  But while I mention garbage collectors, it could be that paisas – the term for people from Medellin and the surrounding coffee region cities like Armenia, Manizales, and Pereira – simply give more than two shits about the state of their cities. That attitude of stewardship appears institutionalized, given that Medellin was named the Most Innovative City of the World in 2012, beating out Telaviv and New York. This is in no small part due to their revamped public transit system, an elevated metro track with a cable car system providing access to the poorer neighborhoods in the hilly outskirts. Other ways they’ve cleaned up the city’s image have been making the city safer, adding more parks and other public spaces, and, well, physically cleaning the place up, to the point where Medellin is seeing an explosion of tourist activity from gringos who previously deemed it too sketchy to visit.
as if they’re just better at it than those of the capitol city, it should also be mentioned that there’s a decent chance that

                  Which brings us back to we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, Steve Nate and I. We arrived as a personal escort for one of the seniors from our school who, like us, was bussing from the coffee region to Medellin. Except she was visiting her mother who lived there and owned a host of phenomenal restaurants in the city called El Llanerito, which are basically nicer Famous Dave’s with incredible food specializing in the regions main food resource: meat. Huge shout out and thanks go to Laura, her mom, and her grandmother, who fed us that first evening at one of the restaurants. It should be mentioned that her mother, on top of being a successful business owner, was also a looker, an observation I feel comfortable making considering her Lorelai Gilmore youthful motherhood and the fact that when it was her turn to order she asked for a boyfriend because she was single.  Nate and I tried to set her and Steve up, but we’ll have to check in on that development at a later date.    

Hanging out with Botero's statues.

                  Anyways, housed in our recommended International House Hostel, awaiting our mysterious fourth roommate that never showed, we were given breakfast (a perk we weren’t even aware of when making our reservations) and a show, since public basketball courts lined the block in front of our hostel. I would have seriously considered joining if I weren’t still nursing a severely sprained and swollen left thumb from a previous game of a tournament we’re in back at school. Our days then continued by taking a taxi to a part of the city where we could hop on the metro. And travelling with two dudes about two meters tall meant I sat up front with the cab drivers while they scrunch-sprawled out in back, which gave me a good chance to ask questions, get travel recommendations, and, in some cases, oblige a requested English mini tutorial.   

                  Upon other suggestions from friends who had travelled to Medellin and from Father Nicolas who calls the city home, we were able to fill our handful of days fairly easily. We visited the Botanical Garden, which was a distant second to Parque Explora, a dream combination of science museum, zoo, and planetarium. We geeked out for a few hours and could have definitely spent more time there with all the kids’ games they had, which made me think about returning to the Science Museum of Minnesota to see how far I could shoot those ping pong balls out of those compressed air cannon.

                 

Guatape Benedictine monastery.

One of the many attractions of the surrounding Medellin area is going to the nearby town of Guatape and climbing the Piedra de Penol. Supposedly it is the largest freestanding rock in the world, in that it is in no way attached to the bedrock, simply a nice, large boulder. Like most natural wonders it used to be a sacred site for the indigenous populations. And also like most natural wonders it was climbed and claimed for the white man. The two nearest towns, Guatape and El Penol, disagreed over which could claim the rock as their own, to the point where Guatape rascals were caught painting their town’s name in gargantuan letters on the face of the rock. After painting just two letters, their conspicuous vandalism was stopped. But to this day you can still see part of two giant letters “GU” on the rock's side.

                  The attraction apart from this rocky rock is what you can see from the rock. The surrounding town had to relocate many citizens as the government decided to flood the valley and install a hydroelectric dam in the 70s. Now, tourists come from all over the world to climb over 700 steps to view this Colombian Boundary Waters-esque area. Then, most try their hand at water skiing, paragliding, or a boating tour, since the water flooding the hilly pastures shifted the towns’ local economy from farming to eco-tourism relatively quickly. We took part in the latter, having met three other gringos – Matt, Max, and Alex, travelling South America in their gap year between undergraduate and graduate school – with whom we were able to split the cost of the boat trip that took us past older parts of the flooded town and one of Escobar’s hundreds of houses. Check this video out for a drone video of the whole place.   

                 

Community surrounding Guatape resorvoir.

Another day found us in the cable car up out of the city and into Parque Arvi, which we affectionately and oh so Americanly named Arby’s Park, since the letters “v” and “b” in Spanish sound nearly identical. This park is also surprisingly well managed, with ample camping areas, community gathering spaces, bike trails, and swimming holes all within the 40,000 acre wood. It also had pretty decent signage, but we’ll get back to that.

Brimming with confidence, right before getting lost.

                  The last cable ride lasted over twenty minutes and took us three miles high up out of the city and across the hilltops, over the river and through the woods, if you will. We got plunked down in the middle of artisan shops and guide information. Many choose to hire someone to guide them through the parks fifty-odd kilometers of paths, so naturally we wandered off into the woods ignoring the catcalls of guides offering their services. You’d think, what with Nate’s hiking guide experience, my sublime directional intuition, and Steve’s height, that we wouldn’t have gotten lost. But fate has a funny way of working, which is another way of saying that signs have a funny way of not working. We came to a fork in the road, with a park sign leading up to it giving no indication as to which tine of the fork to tread upon. Stymied by our Robert Frost-like predicament, we decided to veer to the left and up the hill so as to get a better vantage point and make a better educated, or rather, minimally educated decision. Our choice ended up leading us through a mini neighborhood tucked away in the woods, and up to a four-way cross. More choices. Just what someone like me, who sucks at making decisions, wants. Luckily some lady walking a Daniel Radcliff amount of dogs happened upon us. She must have seen our confused faces and map flipping, put dumb and dumb together, and offered to walk us back down the hill we had just climbed to properly orient us. We emerged from the woods a short while later and promptly caught the cable car back down in time to catch our soccer game.

Spanish word(s) of the day: Often, as a customer in Latin America, entering a shop, store, or walking by a street stand will be met with lots of client calling, courting, or ways to get your attention to come over and purchase something. I'm assuming this has to do with hourly wages not being great for customer service positions, leaving vendors to rely on their salesmanship. For tourists, it can be even more incessant since you're a walking wallet. In Guatemala, you could be met with a no tenga pena or siga adelante. In Colombia, the popular one is a la orden. In Medellin and the rest of the Eje Cafetero, an additional greeting along with siga and a la orden is bien pueda.  

Song in my head lately: Many thought Bon Iver's latest album was a huge stylistic shift for Justin Vernon's group, but it seemed more like a natural progression from where he was going with songs from previous albums like Woods, Minnesota WI, Calgary, Hinnom TX, Roslyn, Perth, etc. So lots of songs off 22, A Million didn't strike me as wholly different from a lot of his other work, including Over Soon.

                   

Mayor Mario

Our tradition of ending the day with some brews was in jeopardy. Nate’s keen eye had noticed the troops clad in green enter the small town of Montenegro’s main square from the far end. But I didn’t realize what was happening until officers surrounded the dimly lit plaza, a handful of them approaching the three of us as we sat on the church steps. We weren’t the only group seated together across the expanse of the steps across the plaza’s west side. But having two 6’4 frames on either side of me is probably why they sent upwards of five or six guys our way. Normally, simply being a gringo and feigning ignorance can get you out of a lot of uncomfortable situations. But since these boots and semiautomatics were likely looking for evidence of drug trade or human trafficking – activities that have been rampant in this area of Colombia for years and unfortunately sought out by some foreigners for their affordability abroad – Steve, Nate and I still received a lovely pat down and questioning. You aren’t supposed to drink in public either. But I wasn’t overly concerned about that since it was just a beer or two and we were definitely not the only offenders. Still, even after the policemen left us to complete our nightly ritual, part of me felt like we dodged a bullet as we saw them take a few other guys from their perch on the steps back to their white police vans.

           

Every year the seniors at Colegio San Benito take a trip to some part of Colombia as a sort of last hurrah before graduation. For my American readers, the timing would be similar to the Spring Break of our school systems. Accompanied by a few teachers, these seniors were also graced with some gringo presence as this year’s crop of BVC volunteers and I tagged along. This year, we all crammed on a bus and made our way to El Eje Cafetero where most of the country’s coffee is produced.


Each day of the week gave us something new. We spent our first day at the Parque del Café, balancing out the theme park area of roller coasters, bumper boats, and log chutes with the museums and mini play about the history of coffee in Colombia. The next day brought us to Panaca, essentially a glorified zoo that had different shows that included various domesticated animals. Coming from Stearns County, it felt awkward hearing people go nuts for goats and cows getting walked around the yard. But hey, we got Nate to be a volunteer for the milking race.

Big Nate in a milk-off against a student.

Because the highlights of Panaca are the shows that take place every hour or so at different sites all through the park, the crowds are essentially the same. So after the presenter of the cow show found out there were some gringos in tow – something I’m sure rarely happens because a foreign tourist likely wouldn’t spend money and time watching domesticated animals all day – the other presenters later in the day knew we were in the crowd somewhere as well. Naturally, we got a sufficient heckling during each show for the rest of the day.

Tweedle dee and dum of Panaca.

Our last two full days with the kids were spent riding horses through the picturesque misty mountains of Salento and then a day at a subpar waterpark. But like most travels, the memorable moments were not the big tours or breathtaking vistas, but the conversations had, the different helados tried and judged, and the unapologetic staring from Colombians as they saw how tall my two companions were.

Riding horses through Salento

The most memorable event of our stay in Montenegro would have to be when we met Mario, which brings us back to our church stoop. We find our three gringos enjoying their last evening in the small town, the moonlight glinting off their cans of Club Colombia beer. After four nights, we felt like regulars. The faces in the crowds that occupied the local taverns adjacent to the main square seemed not to wonder anymore who we were but rather how long we’d be staying. From our position at the top step, right in front of the gate entrance to the church, we were given a front seat to the late night happenings of this town. We had watched the same crew of kids play soccer night after night between two mammoth trees the plaza was built around and had heard the same boisterous laughter coming from the evidently most popular bar on a corner to our left. Considering that it was late on a Monday evening, there were a surprising number of people out and about. I recognized one particular trio of girls who had sat conspicuously close to us the night before. It was impossible for Nate and Steve to miss them too, since they were walking up the steps straight towards us, much like the police officers had done earlier in the week.

After pleasantries were exchanged, the girl on the left said to me, “Manuela just wanted to meet you,” gesturing to the girl in the middle with dark, curly hair. “To say hi.” With what I’m sure came across as the utmost confidence and charm I replied, “Hi. Now we’ve met.” And just when you think things couldn’t get any better, we all heard a rough voice yell in near perfect English, “Hey! Who are those guys??” We look past the girls down the steps to a short, sturdy man with a large dog on a short leash glaring up at us.

Trying to figure out what the hell we just got ourselves into, we spattered out something that I’m sure once again effectively relayed our confidence. The man rescued us from our blathering as his face broke into a huge grin and said, “Na I’m just kidding, Manuela’s my daughter!” Sure, that improved our situation. The girls soon hurried away to join the group of cronies they had come from, undoubtedly as a dare to see if they would go talk to the gringos. This left us three sitting ducks as the man climbed the stairs and stood right in front of our plaza view.

Montenegro main square, church steps and all.

“Hi guys, I’m Mario,” he said with a huge smile and extended hand. Not quite convinced that he wasn’t going to sick his dog on us, we introduced ourselves. So that’s your daughter huh? “Yeah, she’s just back from school in the states. She’s seventeen.” As if the nail already wasn’t already in the coffin on those chances.

“Oh, really. Cool. So how did your English get so good?” It should be noted here that while some superheroes wear capes, others are just really good at changing the subject.

The bait was taken hook, line, sinker, bobber, the whole works as Mario then streamed into his life story. He began listing U.S. states and other countries in Latin America and Europe. When we asked why he travelled to all these places he replied, “No, these are all places I’ve lived and worked.” Maybe it was the lingering fear from him yelling at us earlier that made me consider a change of underwear talking, but my mind instantly jumped to mercenary. “I’ve lived in lots of places and worked lots of jobs, but now I’m in the banana business.”

Euphemism? Not at all. It turns out Mario was a businessman. After ‘working lots of jobs’ around the world he found fortune in Colombia, primarily from buying cheap land and offering cheap wages to banana pickers. “I think planting a tree is the smartest thing someone can do,” he told us, figuratively high fiving the environmentalist in me. “Because in five years that banana tree starts to make me thousands of dollars every year!” Environmentalist shudders.

So, why Montenegro? “Oh, I grew up here! My uncle owns those shops on the right, my cousins just sold the bar straight ahead, and I went to high school with Tato,” he proudly motioned to the popular bar on the left whose sign read Fondo de Tato. “I’m also good friends with the mayor. Yeah everyone around here knows me, everyone knows Mario.” Well, I’m glad it just looked like we were hitting on the daughter of the guy everyone in town knows. 

 “But the problem with small towns like this is that people think they aren’t going anywhere, so the moms take care of the kids, the dads drink, and the kids get into gangs and sell drugs. No one wants to work.” An outlook that I’m sure could not have been improved if he paid his workers more than Colombian minimum wages. The pot proceeded to call the kettle black when Mario said, “Hey, guys. I want to go talk to Tato. Let’s get drunk tonight!”

Now, throughout our conversation with this guy, my mind rocked back and forth between wanting to talk to this guy for hours about his life experiences and feeling that tingling on my neck that we should probably get the hell out of here. Then Mario offered to buy the beer.

After knocking a few back, people who knew Mario appeared out of the woodwork. Soon we were a group sitting in chairs outside the bar, facing the plaza. Biker gangs started to show up, and I wondered how long it would be before police swept through the area again. I noticed Mario deep in conversation with some other people who had showed up, and used that as our opportunity to bid farewell. “Oh, you guys got to get up early tomorrow? Oh well, we’ll see you tomorrow then!” Uhh, sure! As we ducked through the plaza’s trees back to our hostel, I wondered who this Mario guy actually was. Mafia boss? Actually the mayor?  If you’re really curious, he could always use help in the banana fields!

Not on the church steps here. But this is essentially the scene.

Spanish word of the day: If you made it this far in this post, chances are you're already the kind of person that knows that Spanish is not spoken the same from country to country. For example, the verb joder in Colombia means something along the lines of "to mess up" while in Central America it carries a much stronger connotation (hint, it involves replacing "mess" with another word). So, something like se jodio el pie means "he messed up his foot" or estamos jodidos would mean "we're screwed."

Song in my head lately: Like any good emo song from the 2000s, Play Crack the Sky by Brand New will always remind me of high school dances and sharing headphones in Prep's "Fishbowl" lounge. This song has nothing to do with our trip. But like I've said before, you can't choose what song gets in your head.

Yes, we look like we crapped our pants. But, more
importantly, check out the lady behind me.