One of these days, I’m gonna catch up and post things that aren’t almost a week old… Anyway, last Thursday night was wonderful. My madre and I spoke quite a bit, and I was able to tell her a lot about my life back in the states. She told me about Mayan culture, and even taught me a couple of words of Kaqchikel, the local language. I sat at the dinner table for almost two hours, just talking with my madre, and later on with my sobrinos.
On Saturday, the four of us spent the morning in San Lucas doing some shopping at the market and the supermarket. We returned home around noon to eat lunch. After lunch, Linnea and I piled into the car with my host parents and headed off to Puerto San Jose, on Guatemala’s southern coast. It turned out that my entire familia had gone down in one of the camionetas. We arrived and went for a walk on the black sand beach. It was beautiful, but super dirty. We would later find out that Puerto San Jose isn't very nice and tends to be pretty dirty... oh well. After our walk my madre took us to the pool. We hopped in only to find that, while standing chest-deep in the water, we couldn’t even see down past our stomachs. I can only begin to imagine how disgustingly dirty that water was… Anyway, after about an hour of standing in the pool, we headed back to the hotel to eat some dinner. After dinner, we went to the beach to sit and read until sunset. It was beautiful. Then we went to the hotel that the rest of my famila was staying at and played soccer with my sobrinos for a while. I haven’t played in years, and I’d forgotten how much fun it is! We got back to the hotel and cooled off with cold showers, but it was still so hot that I couldn’t stop sweating. I definitely did not sleep well that night (this wasn’t the type of hotel that offers air conditioning…)
Sunday morning, I woke up around seven to find my madre and my hermanas cooking breakfast over a fire. The Doña asked me if I like fish, and I responded yes, assuming that we’d be eating fish for lunch. Linnea came out of the room just in time to sit down with me and see that, as a matter of fact, fish was on the breakfast menu:
Breakfast of Champions
I’m really learning how to go with the flow down here. I was fully prepared to eat this thing for breakfast, along with a bowl of whatever the fish was cooked in. I did, however, have to tell my madre that I didn’t know how to eat this fish without any utensils. She showed me how to tear the meat off and avoid the bones. Just as we were digging in, she brought over a large steak of a different kind of fish, and told us we could eat that instead. I think we were both pretty relieved. After we recovered from breakfast, we headed to the beach to swim in the ocean. My madre was concerned about our ability to swim with the strong undertow, but we assured her that we wouldn’t go any deeper than our waists. We spent the morning, from eight until noon, at the beach, in and out of the ocean. It was really relaxing, and nice to get some sun.
It was also amusing. We were the only white people to be found, and we got a lot of “I love you… I love you forever... Good afternoon!” It was pretty hilarious. My madre wasn’t feeling well, so my padre was left to figure out the eating situation… Lunch consisted of a piece of fried chicken, black beans, and tortillas. I’m not gonna lie, it was actually pretty good. We headed home in the afternoon, so that we could spend some time at the Mother’s Day fiesta in the central square (Mother’s Day here is on May 10th).
Enjoying the Beach in Puerto San Jose
The days are finally starting to have some normalcy. Last week, everything I did was a brand new experience, and somewhat interesting to write about. Now I feel like I can just focus on some of the more special and exciting events. Tuesday was Mother’s Day, and I gave my madre an olive shell necklace from Neah Bay. I explained to her that it was a typical necklace from an indigenous group that I worked with in the US, and she thought it was pretty cool.
I returned from my day at the Peace Corps office around 5:30 and found that a bunch of my nieces and nephews (I recently learned that I have 22 of them) were over for Mother’s Day. I pulled out my playing cards and played go fish with five of them. After that, we played an epic, 1½ hour game of crazy eights. I’m really having a blast playing with these kids. They’re all really nice and amazingly respectful. After dinner, we celebrated Mother’s Day as a large group. First we stood in a circle, held hands, and prayed together for about fifteen minutes, which was interesting, to say the least. Then we had cake and hot chocolate (best hot chocolate ever!), and I got a chance to talk to one of my hermanos. I got to practice my Spanish a ton, which was great.
Tuesday was also the day when my young nieces and nephews decided that they can come in my room if I’m in here. This resulted in three of them getting to see me talking to my dad and Hannah on skype, and later, my three-year-old nephew got a chance to meet Christopher.
Today (Thursday) was normal, except we spent the afternoon in a different town with another training group. We got to go to the house of another trainee, who happens to live on a huge farm. We spent the afternoon studying the geography of Guatemala, which was helpful. We then picked some fresh peaches to bring back to our host families. I returned home and played hide and seek with my nephews for a while, until my hermana invited me to bathe with her in the temascal. It was quite an experience. It was a lot like a sauna, but we bathed in there too, which was nice because dumping water on myself helped to cool me down. We sat in there for a long time and got a chance to talk a lot and get to know one another better. I found out that her husband is living and working in Long Island right now, which is why her and her sons live with my host parents and I. Just a week ago, I was really concerned about my ability to build a relationship with my new family. Now I’m confidently able to talk with them about my life, even if it is with a very elementary level of Spanish.
Whew! I’m finally caught up.
Very cool, I'm glad it is going well...
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