last night we went to benigans with friends. it was my first time there. i tried their world famous monte cristo. it was TERRIBLE.

aftewards we went to see the life aquatic with good company. i really really liked it. and i feel like this one would be much more accessible than the royal tenenbaums but the feedback i hear so far tells me this isnt the case. as always, so many funny unique characters, small details, complex plotlines, hilarity, tragedy and sentimentality, all bundled into one big artistic masterpiece. i do think wes anderson is a genius. im waiting to hear what you think of it. but please dont bash it harshly with no reasoning because i get very sensitive in those situations and i'll either cry or get really angry and not say anything or punch your lights out.

we walked out of the theater to the blizzard of 2004. the 15-20 minute drive of taking erica home and going back to my house took around 45 minutes. there was not a salt truck in sight. it gave me some good experience with driving in the snow and we ended up with around 3 inches or so.

we went to hanover today to visit my grandparents and relatives. my grandparents have started the thing where everything they say they add "that is, if we make it until then" or "if we'll still be around, but we could very well not be" etc, etc. its sad.

continuing that trend, my grandpa got out a box of trinkets from his former places of employment and let the grandchildren pick out things to remember him by. i got a really cool belt buckle from the wood-pulp-paper company place he worked for for 30 years. so tomorrow we have to set out to look for a belt i can use with it. i dont strike myself as a belt buckle kind of guy, but if it's my grandpa's, it's extra special, and i'm going to make myself a belt buckle kind of guy.

erica's cutting my hair in the morning. hooray!

if you want a gmail account i have lots of invites so let me know.

chalupa, i have a mission for you. but i'll talk to you about that later. it just popped into my head now, so i'm writing it here, so remind me later.

i will conclude this post with a short anecdote that i find amusing.

my four year old niece taylor likes to pretend to be a waitress. so she'll walk around the living room and take orders from everyone and write them down and the whole bit. the other day when she was doing this she walked up to my sister.

"what would you like to drink?"
"i'd like a grande mocha gingerbread latte."
"but i said, what do you want to drink?"

merry christmas eve, suckahs!

is it really christmas eve? i dont think so. if it is, that means ive been home a week, and i only have one week left, so i prefer staying in denial.

still no word from the doc, but i've recovered. the fever's gone and last night i finally had solid stools. and i felt better the day after going to the doctor. it always works out that way, doesnt it? and get this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so i have a bad earwax problem, right? and the doctor pointed it out and asked if i wanted him to clean them out. of course i said yes, because it's a fun thing to do and it feels nice and stuff like that. so he squirted some water in my ears and got out all the potatoes and whatnot and i went on my way.

my mom looked at the receipt when i got home. guess how much it costs to get your ears cleaned out. SEVENTY BIG ONES. SEVENTY! i'm changing my major and going to med school. i can squirt water in people's ears no problem.

yesterday was full of wedding errands. we started looking at tuxes and although erica doesnt feel like we made much progress i was quite proud with my decisiveness while we were there. we laughed a lot with the tux guy too, and it was fun for us, and i think it was probably fun for him, because its probably not usually a very exciting job.

im getting very pumped up for the life aquatic. are you?

have a merry christmas.

hello again.

no real results from the doctor. when he mentioned "taking a sample" he didnt mention a sample of what, and i assumed he meant blood, but no, he definitely meant POOP. i took care of that last night which was interesting to say the least. he did take blood as well and we'll see what shows up.

last night i hung out with dan and brian and rata and rikki showed up too. its always refreshing to hang out with old friends and not have it be overly awkward. i always giggle pretty hard whenever i am with brian becker. i do like that kid and wish i hung out with him more often.

so i went to bed at 2AM, knowing i had a dentist appointment today at 11:20AM. and since student teaching, i've worked my body into a routine of waking up sometime before 8:00 and not being able to go back to sleep no matter how late i stay up. so i figured i didnt need to set my alarm last night. well good thinking, nate. i slept straight through til 11:00AM on the nose, jumped out of bed, did the obligatory 5-minute-brush-before-the-dentist thing, and left as soon as possible because the office is at least 15 minutes away. i did make it by 11:25, but i was frazzled nonetheless.

i was delighted to see a christmas present in the mailbox for me today, but my heart sunk when i saw "merry xmas" was written on the package. DOES HE NOT KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING?!? has he never realized that writing xmas is taking christ out of christmas?!? and we all know that's the last thing we all need in this day and age!!!!!!!!!!!!

hello all.

i do want to apologize for my lack of consistency while in bolivia. i had a lot more good stories than what i let on. below this post is another post that i wrote on the plane traveling from chicago to philadelphia. that will give you a good wrap up of bolivia if you're interested. but i'd love to talk to you in person about it if you'd like.

so how are you?

is this really christmas week? i'm quite a bit thrown off, and i blame it on being out of the country, but apparently it's catching a lot of people off guard. and it happens every year, more and more as you grow with age, so why does it surprise us every year?

ive been running a low grade fever for the past week which has made me feel a bit lousy. i'm finally going to the doctor today so we'll see if he knows anything about any bolivian diseases.

so far i've been rather lazy since coming home. i like to blame it on the sickness, but this is just how christmas breaks end up if you arent proactive about them. so if any of you readers are in pennsylvania and want to do something exciting, please let me know, cuz i dont want these two weeks to pass me by with nothing to show for them. although there are plans to possibly see reels of white softly flow.......and THAT would be something to show.

last night we hung out with a friend who got a teaching job this year and she really intimidated me about the interview process and the job itself. i dont want to make a portfolio and go through the interview process. i'm not one to sell myself. i've lost jobs in the past because of it. and whats worse is i dont care if i lose jobs because of it...i really do not want to sell myself. i am who i am and i want an employer to see the real me and be pleased with the real me and hire me because of it. i guess the problem is the pessimist me doesn't always see the real me. but am i a pessimist or am i merely honest? now there's a good question. but anyway, i dont want to be a teacher anymore, i just want an easy simple comfortable job somewhere.

i guess this is all for now. oh, i have a new email address, it's nathanshorb@gmail.com ....those taylor emails dont last forever, you know. so feel free to use that one if you want. and call my cell phone sometime over the break and we'll catch up. merry christmas.

ps, i heard an awesome christmas song the other day on xm radio. it was a little kid singing "mamacita, donde esta santa claus?" if you have this song or know where or how to get it, i'll be your best friend.

december 17, 2004

and with that, i am in the air, overlooking lake michigan, headed home. a gorgeous clear day allowed a beautiful view of the city; the shadow of the sears tower and chicago skyline was cast onto the lake, and i was surprised at how small it all looked.

flying makes the world seem small. flying makes the world seem enormous.

the possibilities and opportunities in flying are amazing. airports are amazing places. so many people, so many destinations, departures, arrivals, plans. flying over south america yesterday was a strange feeling. i watched the video screen which showed our location as we progressed, and i imagined the many different cultures villages, cities, peoples, families that were momentarily below us. the world is a vast place.

and so, as i mentioned, i am on my way home. i was much more excited about home a few days ago than i am today. it is dawning on my that i will face the same shallow conversation over and over again in the next month. "how was bolivia?" "good...great...really good...i really enjoyed it." "great..." and the conversation changes from there. (some people dont care, other people realize it's much too large and complicated to get into, others simply dont know how to get into it, and it's all ok.)

perhaps it is just as well, because i don't think people can fully realize what i experienced, and i'd rather not have to try to fumble my way through a weak explanation.

the trip was not magical, romantic, or full of fantasy. short term trips to exotic places produce exciting highs, and this was not the case for my seven weeks in Bolivia. But I think people will be expecting the opposite. (my family would call and excitedly ask 'how's it going?!?' and i think they were somewhat expecting an 'it's amaaaaazing!!!!!!' but i never really felt that way. i was happy, yes, and content, but excited and romantic? not really.) But I'm glad this was not the case. Although it is better or more exciting at the moment, these feelings eventually fade and one might feel a tinge of foolishness later on. no, this experience was authentic. there were boring days, frustrating days, confusing days, miserable days. and there were plenty of amazing days as well. i'm not fanatic about bolivia, but i now have good friends there, who are very beautiful, and i know a small part of santa cruz, which, in its own way, is very beautiful as well.

perhaps this lack of fanaticism is why leaving was easier than expected. the goodbyes were hard, yes, but easier than expected, and i boarded the plane headed for the USA without a bit of sadness or sentimentality or awareness. this did strike me as odd.

and what did i learn? oh the dreaded question! is the fact that i rarely learn anything blantantly god-related on these trips mean that i am a bad christian?!? (oh god! don't allow me to buy into that!)

mom mentioned the possibility of me giving a testimony in church. what would i say? that i am not a big fan of christian schools? that the missionaries there, in my opinion, are doing a poor job of being culturally sensitive, relevant, effective, or useful? that we need to reconsider our view and use of money, and our interactive with those in other social classes? that my distaste for america has, in some ways, grown? but my approval of the way my generation thinks - the 'postmodern' no-easy-answers frame of mind (the enemy of the evangelicals) - has also grown? i dont think many people would like (or approve) of what i've learned.

i have grown in my love of life, this much i know. and while my prayer life continues to be rather stagnant, if what madeleine says is true, then the growth in my love of life means a growth in my prayer life. i do think this is true, for every time i marvel at the beauty oflife, i am marvelling at and worshipping the one who gave and is giving life to me. i was worshipping standing on the back bumper of the jeep. i was worshipping sitting in the bed of a pickup truck for 2 hours, wind whipping through my hair. i was worshipping eating a thanksgiving meal a day late at la cocina de don jose. i was worshipping every night as i laughed and laughed with my 2 new friends. i was worshipping on the bolivian roller coaster, in the back fo the fourth grade classroom (with chills and tears and joy), at the christmas program (with the little exciting shepherds with spanish accents, the terrible solos, and the eighth graders, full of stark personalities and poor attitudes, playing the bells and playing them rather terribly, but still making it beautiful somehow), watching joshie play with his outie belly button, playing basketball with the jr. highers in my dress clothes and letting them see the real me ("you're loud mr. shorb!") falling asleep at the end of joy-filled days, and now, flying over clouds and mountains while listening to explosions in the sky.

the sense of worship, these "movie moments" as i call them, this love of life, is a frame of mind, and i am thankful the good lord has allowed me to discover it and has granted me consistency in it, for although i am far from consistent in conventional areas of worship, this consistency in my love for life gives me some glimmer of hope. it is a sense of wonder and joy. on my second-to-last morning, i stood at the gate of our house and looked across the street to see a boy happily playing with his new puppy. he was so lost in wonder and joy that he did not realize he was crawling around with it in the middle of the street! what an odd scene, but the boy was oblivious to the world around him. he did not care what others saw or thought. he was taken captive by wonder and joy.

perhaps these thoughts would receive more approval. but still not everyone would understand....

...and where do we go from here? the upcoming months hold much. but for now, i am thankful, and extremely so, not because i had a trip full of unbelievable emotions, but because i had the amazing opportunity of spending seven weeks in another culture, forming relationships with beautiful people, loving and enjoying life.

and so, with that, the captain has announced our approaching landing and in less than an hour i will be reunited with the familiar, with the goods and the bads. but may i never forget the months of november and december in the year of two thousand four.