Story 1

As I stepped out of the airport double-doors onto Guatemalan pavement, diesel exhaust stung my nostrils. I took in hectic, rushed panorama of this hectic, rushed environment, yet from the faces of the people asking me if I wanted a ride to Antigua or illicit drugs, I sensed a calm, almost perfunctory acceptance of Guatemalan life. No one seemed to mind the air pollution, litter, stray dogs, or murders. The guy who got stabbed two paces in front of me wasn´t even surprised at the development, and gangsters across the street firing rusty pistols at each other seemed almost bored with the enterprise. As I drew near to the study abroad group with whom I was supposed to rendezvous, the sounds of gunshots faded. Yet it was not because the gangsters were moving away. They were actually approaching me... sprinting at me, in fact. No, the sound of gunfire receded in my ears because my sense of time and space had slowed down for what must have just been a split second. For me, it was almost an eternity. I was having my first epiphany.
In my dreamlike (and perhaps narcotics-induced) state, I sensed a dark, foreboding Question that gradually took the incarnate form of a dark brown genie on a gilded throne. It posed a question to me from which I had no escape: Who will you follow? I knew what it meant... and I knew what it wanted me to do. Rashly, I replied to the fiend, ¨They will follow ME!¨ Stopping in my tracks, I ignored the cries and screams of my study abroad classmates. I slowly turned to face the gangsters with a calm I had never previously known. I called them to follow, and they silently complied. Shifting from a sprint to a jog, they followed my lead into the adjoining jungle. One of them handed me an assault rifle. I had made my choice.