I love this rant. I agree with this rant. Here's a taste:

The average American watches 4.5 hours of television every day. You sleep for eight hours. You get up and work for eight hours. Come home, eat some dinner and turn on the television. A few hours later you're getting sleepy. Time for bed.
.....................WHAT ARE YOU DOING??
We're not kidding. All those things you wanted to have in your life: passion, romance, love, childhood, parenthood, adventure? when are you going to do all that?

We had to go into Mexico City so we decided to start working on getting our visas for our upcoming trip to Egypt and Ethiopia.

After quite a bit of searching I had finally found the contact information for both embassies. Upon calling the Egyptian embassy we found out that it is only open until noon and we need a copy of our round-trip ticket, which we don�t have. Upon calling the Ethiopian embassy we found out that � their phone has been disconnected.

Undeterred we looked the street up in our 230 page map of Mexico City. On the map it appeared to be in Polanco, one of the nicest parts of the city, where many embassies are located with their flags waving and their colorful coats of arms proudly displayed by the doorways of the buildings. The reality however was a bit different.

As we drove closer to the targeted address, the large, ornate houses of Polanco were replaced by they type of unadorned, square cement-block construction, multi-family dwellings that make up most of Mexico City. We found the right street and, on the second drive-by, a building with the right number, but we couldn�t find an entrance. The third time around the block, I decided to get out and ask at what appeared to be the entrance to the neighboring apartments.

I had already lowered my expectations for the consulate significantly. The flag and coat of arms image had vanished as we stared up at the dirty curtains in the sixth floor window of an small, ugly apartment building, but I was still unprepared for what followed.

There was a security guard sitting behind a Formica counter inside the glass cube-shaped entranceway. I knocked at the door and he motioned me over to the intercom on the wall beside me.

(This conversation is translated from the original Spanish for your convenience.)

Annette: Good Afternoon. I�m looking for the Ethiopian Consulate. It is, by any chance, in this building?

Guard: Yes it is. But no one has come in for a very long time.

At first I thought he meant no one had visited needing consular services, then I realized that he was saying the office had been abandoned for a very long time.

So there you have it. We did find the Ethiopian consulate, which I personally consider a success, of sorts, but we are absolutely no closer to getting a visa, or even to knowing how to go about getting it for that matter.

But hey, it�s another chapter in our international life.

We always track with interest Transparency International's annual "Corruption Perceptions Index." This year Mexico got a score of 3.6 (with 0 being "highly corrupt" and 10 being "highly clean") and ranks as the 64th in the list, a place it shares with Ghana and Thailand. In case you're interested, the US only got a score of 7.5 and shares 17th place with Belgium and Ireland.

Two statements in the brief report really struck me:

"Corruption robs countries of their potential."

"If we hope to reach the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, governments need to seriously tackly corruption in public contracting."

We promised your the lowdown on how our Quito "ostrich convention" went... so here it is with a few photos at no extra cost.

download Word format <-> download PDF format

This is Isaac (click photo for bigger version), our Mexican neighbor from across the street who we met through a Hungarian photo website. If you don't remember the story, click here and read about this amazing small world coincidence.

Today Nahum received his university degree - a big cause for celebration.

In mexico they have this system in which everyone has to do a thesis and defend it publicly before a panel of professors. Although it requires self-discipline to finish the thesis the biggest challenges for the students are the expenses and the hoops they have to jump through. Nahum estimates that he spent at least 700 dollars (yes, U.S. dollars) and had to make more than 30 trips to the university before he was given a date for his presentation.
At 9:55am we arrived at the "School of Architecture and Design" because we had been told they close the doors for the presentation at ten o'clock sharp. One of the professors didn't arrive till about 10:10, so everyone had a bit of a grace period. Nahum did a great job on his multimedia presentation then the panel of 5 teachers grilled him on his project. In the end they voted unanimously to pass him, not a surprise, but still a relief.

Nahum had asked us to prepare a CD with music for the celebratory luncheon. We decided to do it in mp3s so more would fit on one single disc (137 songs to be exact). As i was creating it this morning Tim did the math and figured that it probably had about 8 hours of music on it. I said, "Well that should be enough even for a mexican party."

The lunch started at 2 PM (actually it was supposed to start at 2... We got there at 2:20 and probably talked with the 4 other people who were there for a good half hour before there was enough of a critical mass of people for us to be invited to sit down) and we got home at 6 PM. In true gringo form we were among the first to leave. Nahum's dad came by at 8:30 and said they had just left the restaurant. So all in all, it was a full day's "work" being there for Nahum. You see why we don't have more friends in Mexico, it's just too time consuming :-) ha ha

We had a great time in Quito, Ecuador, it was the best Latin Summit yet -- this is it's 4th year. The group of 20 or so people, all of whom train youth leaders in Latin America, really has something special and lots of synergies grow out of the relationships started and fostered by this *ostrich convention. I'm busy trying to catch up with the hundred of email that piled up while we were gone, but Annette or I will write up a highlights letter in the next couple of days.
[*don't know what i mean my "ostrich convention" click here and choose OCT'04]

Click here to read a CNN article about how Mexican churches jam cell phones for quiet services. Now that's a technology we can all love.