"Ethnicity is now based more on language than on location."

This quote comes from Leonard Sweet in his book "Carpe Ma�ana". He bends the traditional understanding of the word "language" a bit. Read the following to get a feel for what he means:

English may be the new "lingua franca", but we all have local accents... some of these accents will be geographic -- slovakian, spanish, mississippian, minnesotan -- and some of these accent will be cultural... a hip-hop fan speaks a different language that a punk rocker, and art collector speaks a differenct language that a beany-baby collector. These languages of local accents will be the "lingua" of art, literature, sports, etc.

A gamer from Orlando, Florida will often speak a more common language with another gamer from Hong Kong or Buenos Aires than he will with his handycraft-making, Martha-Stewart mother.

Click here to view a few select photos that we just uploaded from our time at the beautiful Montserrat Monastery in Spain.

Oh the joys of Internet service in Mexico (read sarcasm).

Last Friday night our connection to the Web went out and didn't get fixed until today at noon. Six days of wrangling with the cable TV/Internet provider here in town. They told me they'd "monitor my connection" to see if it was working all right... that was on Monday. On Tuesday, they told me I'd have to come into their offices - which I did twice - to show them proof that we'd paid our bill. At their offices they said I'd paid and that they couldn't do anything about my connection but that I should call tech support. Of course, it was tech support that had sent me to the offices. I call tech support - without exaggerating - 80 times and no one answers their phones one minute and the next it rings busy -- *grrrrr* -- very frustrating.

After 4 days of them telling me they'd "monitor" my connection, that I must have changed some configuration on the computer, or to go into their offices to make sure I'd paid... I get a manager on the phone. This is the same manager who has not returned my calls for 4 days. The one who they tell me "is in a meeting right now" even though I can hear his voice in the background. So... this manager tells me that there is a problem with their system and that they've been working on it since "last Friday night". I almost loose it.

"Then why was I told that I was the only one with this problem? Why was I sent on wild goose chases to your offices, and told they'd monitor my connection if all along it was known that there was a problem on YOUR end?" I asked with as much self-restraint as I could muster. As if he hadn't been listening, the manager responded, "We'll take that into consideration, sir." ---- Huh?!

48 hours after that conversation, our Internet connection came back on. We are now happily connected to the world again :-)

i just got off the phone with Jack Graves of the Overseas Council who generously gave me a free consultation on the in's and out's of Latin American higher education. Very helpful.

I had an aha! moment when during our conversation Jack used the phrase media-based urbanization... the process by which people all over the world, primarily youth, are "urbanized" or indoctrinated into a common world culture thru TV, movies, videogames, music and the Internet. This reminded me of something Annette heard at a conference ten years ago:

A 15 year old from any major city in the world
has more in common with any other 15 year old
from any other major city of the world than
he/she does with his/her grandparents

If Jack is right - and my experience coincides with his thinking - the above statement no longer applies only to youth in large cities. Media's reach has extended this impact. Easy and inexpensive access to an emerging world encyclopedia of icons, ideas and experiences is incorporating a growing percent of earth's population into the one world superculture... a worldwide melting pot.

Two and a half weeks ago Annette and I were in Madrid's Atocha train station. People from all over Spain and the world were setting off, passing thru, or arriving. It's was a busy bustling alive place.

Our hearts goes out to all, especially those who have lost close loved ones from this horrific act=> BBC News coverage of the Madrid terrorist attacks.

I was browsing Google news (news.google.com) and came across an interesting article: Princeton University & The Passion of the Christ

What I found most captivating was the significant cultural divide between 60's era modernist professors and todays postmodern students.

6 = number of tacos i ate at Do�a Paz's fried taco place (it had been a long time, and they taste so good)
2 = number of dogs who were waiting for us, happily wagging their tails when we arrived at our home in Mexico
1,484 = pesos it cost us to clean our rugs, rooms and furniture after arriving home from 3 months of travel (that's about $134 dollars)
58,000 = number of people who used our spanish youth workers web site during the short month of February (71,400 in Nov'03, 59,954 in Dec'03, and 58,432 in Jan'04)
2,971 = number of emails i had waiting in the Inbox of our youth workers web site account (we get around 200/day)
Priceless = getting to sleep in your own bed after months of nearly constant travel

We're back in Mexico.

And what a warm homecoming it was, two friends we're standing just outside our front door when we arrived. They had just left a note telling inviting us to lunch with their family. They'd made our favorite... tinga! (chiplotle chili sauce and pulled chicken on fried corn tostadas).

We handed out the perfunctory travel schwag to our friends - a mexican cultural requirement. Everyone caught up with each others' lives and we began the process of unpacking the load of stuff we'd brought back from our time in the U.S. (including all those Christmas gifts).

It's good to be back.