Isolation

A way to be a hermit, besides living in the jungle and eating bugs and grass is to move to a foreign country whose language you don't speak and where few people speak English. When I first moved to the countryside in China, and later to the countryside in Mexico there can be weeks that go by where I seldom say more than a few sentences to other people. It is also helping me learn the language a lot quicker then I otherwise would have, but, as of now my Spanish is still fairly low level. The dirt and loneliness ain't so bad, but being a hermit doesn't necessarily mean being hungry. The best part of being this kind of hermit allows me to take a vacation from being myself, to the chinese I am a "laowai" and laowai jiu shi laowai (foreigners are always foreigners). It is pretty much the same here in Oaxaca. I am a guero, or the male equivalent anyway. The real goal of being a hermit is not to be inside yourself but to leave yourself behind.