''Is this real life?''

Most of you have probably seen the viral YouTube clip ''David after Dentist,'' which shows a young boy on post-cavity-filling high. One of the most memorable (and hilarious) moments in the vid is when David sincerely asks his father, ''Is this real life?''

This question has sometimes popped into my head (usually in David´s little voice) during various experiences I´ve had here in Guatemala. It`s usually followed by a mental note to write down what happened so I can tell someone back home.

I´ve begun to realize that my life (during my SALT year and otherwise) is NOT just material for anecdotes. It`s real life, for me and for others. If you know me, you know I love having a good story to tell. When something exciting, strange, ridiculous, or even frustrating is happening in my life, I still think about how to most comedically phrase my description of the event and even who exactly would appreciate it the most. This isn`t wrong, necessarily, but I`m starting to see how it distorts my understanding of the real life.

It might be fun for me to talk about, for instance, ''that time......''

--....I crossed undocumented into Mexico with the host family for a party with their relatives''

but this is real life for people in this area of Guatemala who live so close to Mexico that crossing the border doesn´t make them feel like criminals, so later many are surprised at how differently it feels to be in the U.S.

--...I hiked three hours to Vega community for the first time and thought I was going to pass out.''

but this is real life for every person who doesn´t live in a town or city center, who either spends a half of their possible grocery money for a pickup ride on market day or else makes that hike with the groceries (and quite possibly a toddler) on their back.

--...I went two weeks without eating meat, which made me feel super healthy.''

but this is real life for both the urban and rural poor, for whom access to protein is a legitimate problem. Around 50% of Guatemalan children are malnourished. An average ten-year-old here in Sibinal looks about seven.

I realized that what I´m struggling with is my own default attitude that I,the young American in a foreign country, am the main character in all these experiences. All these things I experience are happening to me. It`s like I´m Julia Roberts in "Eat, Pray, Love," except that instead of eating hand-crafted pizza in Italy, I´m eating hand-crafted scrambled eggs with black beans. With this mindset, I`ll have a rollicking good time hiking mountains, have funny miscommunications across languages, and maybe meet a cute Guatemalteco, all before going home in July to tell everyone about all this crazy stuff that happened......to me.

This ethnocentricity is somewhat natural, but that doesn´t mean that it`s okay. In my culture and in this one, the effects of colonialism are still very present, and it is all too easy to keep on thinking my opinions, my time, my very life matter more than those of the rural Guatemalans around me. This is absolutely wrong. My experiences are NOT the only experiences. Others matter, as more than just secondary characters in my movie.

It has to be an internal battle to correct myself every time I think "Why on earth would they do it that way?" to keep conscious of what I really think about something versus the cultural residue that cruds up my view of things. I want to keep challenging my worldview so that in the future, ''real life'' to me can be a much more complex concept, truer of the world that I share with billions of very different others.