Everyday MRM

Today is my birthday. The big one. 31 on 31. What a strange and fun and difficult time to be alive. The highlights. An early morning chat with padres. A cute surprise from my teacher of chocolates and chocolate milk. A high five from Eddie. A chicken and rice lunch with Robin and Rachel. A workout at the gym. Dinner with Alicia and drinks after meetup with Ali. A present from Ali of Kinder Supresa where I got a nice little skunk creature holding a drink and a radio antenna. Why the radio antenna? No idea. Ben received one that was a snail whistle. The day was lovely as all birthdays should be. In some ways, very much like other birthdays, with some crazy happening. One year was skydiving, one was volcano climbing, one a ruins visit. Other past birthdays have been quite tame. Last year I was taken to a lovely dinner. Year before that, I did what I wanted to all day, which was clothes shopping, book buying, and coffee with friends. This year was back to the good stuff, tropical storms an...

Very little happened today. I learned that Guatemala is under the worst storm disaster in many many years. People have died and towns are flooded. It seems that my previous few days of fun in the rain and much like my days of fun in the rain in Nashville, when that flooded. I’m not sure if I have shock that hits before events or what, but my reactions are never really on par with what they should be. (Edit: I met a doctor friend here who says that is normal. I shouldn’t worry.) Rachel, Ali, Thy and I all met at Fernando’s for breakfast. We had all just discovered at the same time that Guatemala had just been through a big storm, some saying hurricane. Thy was remarkably calm, seeing as her boyfriend Ben was stuck somewhere in between El Salvador and Guatemala, pulling a bus out of some mud. Turns out he had spent the night in some Posada in the lowlands, no bathroom and no water. The bus was full on stuck, and the busdriver’s wife volunteered to find him a someone to drive him the rest...

Dear All, After almost a month of Central American life, I thought it finally time to send out a massive informational email. Perhaps the recent natural occurrences have had something to do with it, but I realized today that many of you don’t even know that I’m out of the country. So, here goes. All media frenzied opinions to the contrary, the eruption of a nearby volcano is not as exciting as one may imagine. Two days ago the volcano closest to my current home city of Antigua, erupted. Pacaya has been active for a long while, and there are plenty of places to see hot red lava oozing out from under the rocks. Tours often hike up the mountainside, and it is not uncommon to see smoke roiling around inside the crater. The rocks are hot, the air is hot, and a few years ago I humped up some marshmallows to roast over the hot air and watch as they caught fire from what appeared to be mid-air. I was informed the other day that marshmallows are now sold on the route to the volcano, along with ...

Post dated - May 20 Dear Old Life, I just now looked at the calendar to count weeks, and if my calculations are correct, we are coming up on the three week mark. You left me on May 4th when the world began to realize the impact of the rain, I left on the 6th when I fled that impact. Depending on how long 3 weeks actually lasts in the old life, there’s just a few more days. So, yay! I hope everyone is going well. So, tonight has been a little funny. At the moment I’m in my room and through the open window I hear a woman yelling and hitting something. It is either a cat or some garbage. I don’t think it is a child because I haven’t heard any response. Unfortunately I think she is also drunk, because I can’t quite make out the sentences, but I did pick out ‘gato’ and ‘duerme aqui’ which is cat and sleep here. So, again, it’s anyone’s guess. The power just went out. There’s this amazing storm that has not quite happened yet but it’s been threatening to all evening. Around 5pm the sky turn...

What a strange day. Mostly it was boring, but the good kind of boring. I woke up late, showered in Robin’s bathroom again, fell back asleep, thought about going to church then didn’t. Then checked my email. Received this from Rachel: Hooked up with Ali, we walked around and I was feeling really good -- like, I like this place, I know my way around this place, I feel safe here, etc. We went to several bookshops, the travel company, etc. Then on 7th Calle, which is one block from the parque central, we run into two of her friends from school, and are chatting with them on the sidewalk. I am not really paying attention, and don´t immediately notice the black tinted window Land Rover parked in the center of the one lane street. Then, a dude bumps my shoulder, and I was annoyed, and turned around. The bump came from 5 men carrying 1 man who was kicking and flailing, towards the Land Rover, another man was running ahead telling them to hurry up, he opened the back door, they throw the guy in...

That song has been running through my head all day. Last night was an epic pour and it continued through to the early morning. A lovely reprieve from the puppy’s 3am crying, and Claudio’s 4am crowing, but still I was up and awake at 5:30, per usual. I tried to stay in bed for as long as possible, but at 6:05 I finally got up. Claudio had begun his warm up and I thought I might as well get some stuff done before class. Then I remembered it was Saturday and I had nothing to do. The gym didn’t open till 8:30 so I wandered around for a minute before deciding to finally open the David Sedaris book Henry had left behind for me. It turned out to be a mixed emotion read because while Sedaris’ wit usually leaves me chuckling, I simultaneously drift into a comparably narcissistic desperate dark hole. It happened with Dostoevsky, it happened with Hemingway, (strangely, it never happened with Cormac), and now Sedaris. Around 8:15 I finally decided to put down the depression and go for a run. The g...

Margoth’s friend Neti came by this evening during dinner. She and Margoth had been out and she stayed while Robin and I ate dinner and watched the ‘novela (as they call them here). Neti is a character. She is funny and direct and very crude and sort of reminds me of Olympia Dukakis’ character in “Steel Magnolias.” In fact, now that I think of it, there are a lot of Steel Magnolia references going on in this household. For instance, I found out when I first arrived that while Tito, Giovani and Rita are Margoth and the Sir’s children, there are two other men who work in the bakery at night who are his children from another woman. Margoth rarely talks to them, and I’ve noticed that Tito never talks to the Sir. I can’t blame Tito, the man is a sour pus, although Robin insists that he’s gotten better since I showed up. She thinks it has something to do with the extra income. I can’t tell if the Sir doesn’t like Margoth or if they just have money arguments. Margoth cooked breakfast for me an...

If words could shame, I’d first need to translate them to Spanish, then use a super soaker to dowse the town.. (I’ve spent the whole day feeling anxious about being tall, female, and light skinned. Thank god I’m not blond or I’d really be in a tight spot. (hi T!) ) So, last week when Rachel was still in Antigua, we spent a rather interesting and unproductive day wandering about the city going from bar to café to hostel and back again. The purpose was to find a dry spot and to link up with my brothers, who we’d told to meet at Sky Bar, a place we stayed at for five minutes before moving on. With Rachel I found myself talking and walking, mostly aware of my surroundings, but not hyperly so. That evening, since we’d failed to meet up with Henry and Stephen, I decided to walk home alone. Rachel was concerned and wanted me to stay at the hostel for the evening, but I was more concerned with Margoth’s anxiety if I didn’t return. So I decided to take Rachel’s mag-lite as a weapon and I starte...

The shower’s hot water still doesn’t work. Tito keeps telling me he’s going to fix it, and I believe that he tries, but so far it’s a no go. Margoth thinks I’m turning it on too high, but I’ve assured her that I know how to use the Guatemalan showers. Dripping is hot, pressured is cold. Still, we are at an impasse. It’s not a huge deal since I’m just using Robin’s shower; and truthfully her bathroom is a lot friendlier feeling than mine. My bathroom has mint colored walls, with olive and mint speckled tiles for the lower half. The sink is a hunter green that holds onto water spots with envy. And the toilet seat is decorated with a furry green cover. The toilet itself is green, although of all the greens in the room, it is probably the nicest. The shower itself is tiled in more of the olive and mint tiles, and there is one metal hook bored into a tile on which to hang a cloth or a shower rack should I ever get to use this shower again. The curtain is a lovely white cloth, lacy and jarri...

Summer in Antigua: Week two begins. Spanish classes continue to go uneventfully, and as I read over Rachel’s posts, I am slightly envious of the brand new language learning. Everything is a discovery. Everything people say has the possibility of being a new poem, some great insight into character or politics or love. You pass a conversation on the street and think, I wonder if they are two lovers arguing, she demanding he leave his wife, he begging her to understand his love for her and only her, hand gestures pointing at the sun and their fading romance; in reality it is most likely a vendedor haggling the price of beans. Sigh. However, thinking back on my French learning of oh so many years ago, honestly I am mostly relieved that I’m not starting at square one. My little maestrita continues to prod me along with prepositions and tenses. After flying through the fourteen tenses of Ser and Estar in the first two days, we’ve slowed considerably. And a good thing too, as I have a tendenc...

Summer in Antigua I have moved into my new summer house. It is in a bakery. The family here consists of Margoth, my new den mother and her husband Oracio, whom I call Señor. Their son Tito is here as well. I’m not sure how old he is, anywhere from 20 to 30, but since men here rarely leave their parent’s house before they are married and also end up looking much older than their years, I probably will never have an actual number. There are two other children, Giovani and Rita, with families of their own. I have not met them yet. I get the feeling that Margoth will be my primary point of contact. There is also another student here, a woman named Robin who is learning spanish before beginning a 4 year missionary trip into an orphanage in Honduras. She seems quite nice and I have a feeling we’ll get along well. The house also has a few other inhabitants. Claudio is the old rooster who lives on the roof. He has no grass to scratch, no hens to shuffle about, and generally nothing to do but c...

Summer in Antigua - I think I need to explain something. When my brothers and I talk about our Guatemalan heritage, it almost always includes a reference to “The Family.” At times it may sound like we are speaking about the mafia. Or perhaps it sounds like we aren’t happy about staying the in The Family’s house. Neither is true, although the moniker “the family” is the best way to describe our spanish side of the family. First you must recognize that “the family” is a unit. There are no individuals. Everyone responds to everyone else’s problems, situations, life issues, or what have you, although this shouldn’t be understood as everyone communicating. Additionally, since there is no real individual recognized, every member of “the family” must be involved in the other’s lives. This includes, but is not limited to, church, school, events and functions of the community (although this is another paragraph entirely), housing quarters, afternoon outing decisions (again, a paragraph), weeken...