A New High

The professors at the institute must have the best jobs ever, depending where you fall on the extrovert/introvert meter. The classes are conversation based and therefore most classes are just talking for 45 minutes. The teachers do almost nothing but converse for 8 hours a day. I'm sure it can be very interesting at times. Yesterday, my grammar teacher, Lila, and I were talking about the essence of human beings. I was explaining the differing opinions of some important people throughout church history. Some believing that people are inherently bad and others proclaiming that they are inherently good. A result of the discussion was a book recommendation by her and the drawing of a detailed map to find the place where the book is sold. Not a store, but an alleyway. I'm sure I'll be picking it up soon.

We started talking more about books and I told her one of my biggest goals in life is, at the end of three years in Bolivia, to be able to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his native language of Spanish. Marquez being my number one favorite author of all time. We were talking about the different books of his that we had both read and I told her about the crazy dream I had after finishing his latest book. Her eyes opened wide and she said that he had written a short story, her favorite, that was exactly the same story as my dream. We went on a little field trip down to the institute library and there it was. Ojos de perro azul (Eyes of a Blue Dog). It is only a little 10 page short story and she said that she would help me read it!! I told my other teachers about this new project and they all said, "you won't need three years, at the end of one year you'll be able to do it without help." I happened to notice that in the library they have just about every book written by Marquez, just waiting for me to read them as they were meant to be read.

This is a very happy day indeed.