The Beginning of All Things..................

So, it took moving to Guatemala to figure out that Arbor Mist truly is amazing! What is this undeserved reputation for tackiness all about? I had purchased this bottle to help me become nicely toasted during my birthday celebrations. The bottle said that it has only 1% less alcohol by volume than a regular bottle of wine and had a huge cardboard sign wrapped around its neck proclaiming its first place finish in some competition. Lovely! Why had my friends and girlfriend scoffed and laughed when they heard that I had purchased it? This thing is amazing! I did not need it for my birthday gathering as others gifted me with such things as rum and tequila. This is the inaugural run, I just popped.....or, I suppose, twisted the bottle!

My first sip of Arbor Mist Blackberry, or any Arbor Mist, for that matter, has come nearly one year into my life of being an “ex-pat.” At 28, I am a rather young ex-pat, and with a plan to move back to the States or Europe in late October, I am truly a short lived ex-pat!

My journey to this lovely bit of wild frontierdom began not one year ago, but more than two. I had discovered a few things toward the end of 2007. Thing number one……my fiancé was cheating on me with one of my best friends. Thing number two, and most important, was that I had never tasted freedom. Oh, I had tasted many things in my life, mostly fatty, tasty things. This was made abundantly clear by my fast ballooning weight and my ever increasing time in the 100 yard dash (which was years now, as I had not done a 100 yard dash in five years). The shock of the break up left me a shell of a man…..for about a week. I used South Park as salve for my broken heart, alcohol as my means to reconnect with friends and my own wants and desires as my new moral compass. I let the girl take my cat and let a stranger (well researched, I assure you) take my dog. This actually hurt more than the break up, but I digress. Before I knew it, I was firmly ensconced in my very own downtown apartment, buying whatever I wanted for the fridge (usually something sweet, something alcoholie, something meat and something to put my PB&J on), decorating in whatever fashion I wished, keeping whatever hours I wished and keeping whatever company I wished. Life was good. I worked for three newspapers and a men’s magazine, had an amazingly fun car and a group of friends that I would die for, and often almost did during our many nights to the pub and club!

Guatemala came knocking one day in the form of my lovely friend Ia. Some months before, we had held a bit of a discussion on a walk through the sand and waves. We had discussed a group called Safe Passage and a Support Team that would be heading from my home town in Michigan to Guatemala for a one week volunteering stint, of which Ia was a part. I decided that I should go along.

One year later, here I sit. After almost 11 months of volunteering with Safe Passage, my commitment to them has finished. I now write full time and enjoy the fruits of that labor here in Guatemala.

What has this little excursion granted unto me? Well, Stephanie, my Support Team guide for Safe Passage over one year ago, is now my girlfriend. We spent an amazing evening together the day before I returned to the States in May, when my Support Team stint was through. We stayed in contact and are now working on one year of bliss. I have a new circle of friends the likes of which I never even pondered having. I am dating a girl from the Bay Area. One of my best friends is from Ottawa, way up there in Canada, another is a Guatemalan who lives in New York City, another is a French Jewish Princess from New York City, another is a Belgium citizen who grew up in South Africa, yet another is a current resident of London Town and still another is from Boston (despite our differences in Baseball, I like the Yankees, we seem to get along just fine). Yesterday, I spent the entire afternoon having lunch, scouting the market and just enjoying the Antigua, Guatemala sun with a beautiful new friend from Germany.

This new life has taken me from the amazing little downtown apartment in Michigan to my life here, begun amongst modern circus performers and in a small apartment. I have lived with the South Africa chick and now have scored a gig as a house sitter to a mansion. My adventures have been many and they will certainly continue.

In these pages I will expand upon my life’s story thus far and upon some of the topics in this very introduction (perhaps you would all like to hear the tale of how the cheating fiancé is now married and in a trailer park in the same town that I left behind?).

My approach to life is simple, I will live it. I will live it until I can live it no more. Whatever kills me will be the very thing that I love. Whatever I die doing, I will die loving it. Time and old age may take its toll, but I will not let the hope for a long life stand in the way of my living it.
As I finish off this “Merlot,” I am again struck with how it is that I, a boy from Michigan, who had barely traveled from it, now finds himself living in Guatemala surrounded by people that he loves, people that he never knew existed one small year ago.

AH! I hear the dulcet tones of a dying ice cream truck! Think of the typical ice cream song, but the battery is dying and a horror movie is being made! Quick! Run with me! We must get some coconut!!!!