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These six weeks have been a whirlwind.  I now have, not only a job for next year, I have my dream job.  I showed up in New Mexico exactly five weeks ago and bought a car on my second day here.  I knew what I wanted and planned accordingly.  In the week leading up to the residency selection, I thought,

My god, Vishnu Shiva and Brahma.  What am I doing?  I bought a car.  I jumped through hoops to register it in New Mexico.  What am I going to do if I don't get this?

But I got it.  I'm moving back to Gallup in July.

People are people no matter where you go.  I've lived in the bay area, Boston, and soon Gallup, New Mexico.  Despite the differences in geography, not only are we all human, we are all American.  But there are some interesting differences of interests between places.

For example, people in Boston like cranberries, rotaries, shell-fish (including lobster), the Red Sox, saying "wicked", and mis-prounouncing words in general.

So far, I've noticed that people in New Mexico are all about keeping their headlights on at all hours, looking at rocks, talking about rocks, biking, potlucks, large belt buckles, and anything silver and turquoise.  There is also much more of a "do it yourself" attitude out here.  I'm not sure if that is only representative of pharmacists in New Mexico, but my coworkers all like to brew their own beer, grow their own vegetables and hops, sew, and one of the pharmacists even mentioned wanting to start making his own soap.

I told him not to go all fight club on me.

I have a lot to learn about the history here.  I ask my 65 year old roommate a lot of questions.  I'm not really sure what he does.  He seems to maybe do something with park maintenance and was a pilot for a long time.  Maybe he still is one.  He was also telling me about some of the Navajo customs through his eyes.

We talked about medicine men.  He told me that he had found a religious set up of children's shoes, toys, feathers and rocks over the hill above the school that was meant to put a hex on the kids at the Rehoboth school.

He says,

You know, they're white when its better to be white and they're Indian when that works out better for them.  They come off with all this crap about caring for the land but I tell you what Marie.  You go to the res and see what they're doing with their land.  And all the crap about land ownership... jeez.  It makes me laugh.  They certainly believe it now.

Disheartening.

Gallup is on the eastern border to the Navajo Nation.  The largest reservation in the United States.  I can't say that cultures collide because the Navajo are mostly westernized today.  But if you dig a little, you most likely will be able to find some animosity on both sides.  Had history been different, the Navajo would probably have assimilated into western culture on their own.  The difference is that they were forced to.

My roommate told me that Navajo comes from the word for "horse thief".  Long ago the nation had called themselves Dine.  The people.  According to wikipedia, "Navajo" comes from "tewa navahu" or "fields adjoining a ravine".  Whatever the meaning of the word, the tribe recognizes themselves as "Navajo" today.

The Navajo also believe that if a person has something that they are not using, it is ok to take it to make use of it.  They also believe that if no one sees you take it, it is not stealing.  There are no words for "sin" and "forgiveness".

The Navajo language is not progressive.  New words are not made for new concepts of things; rather other words are used to describe the concept or item.  When I hear many Navajo translating for their grandmothers, I also hear English words mixed in.  Which isn't surprising.

The Navajo seem to have a good sense of humor about language.  My other roommate (a 29 year old male working at the Christian school) said that the direct translation of the word for "cell phone" is something like, "that thing that makes you walk up the hill".  Cell phone service is poor on the reservation.

What a culture emphasizes becomes apparent once you begin to learn the language.  I think learning some Swahili helped me to gain a better understanding of the cultures in East Africa.

At the present, I know two words in Navajo and I pronounce them poorly.  I have my work cut out for me.