My family came to visit. Awesome to spend time with them. Highlights were kayaking in lago de Atitlan, supposedly one of the most beautiful lakes in the world and just getting to see my family, especially so close to Christmas when the need for family is amplified. I missed playing games with them and conversing about normal things. We traveled with a Phil´s family, so we had a big group, which ended up being really stressful. Mostly because...
We just about died on a volcano. The guide told us to keep going up, as we looked to our left at a group of tourists molten lava boulders came tumbling down at them- we were higher up and out of the way, so we figured we were fine. Again, our guide told us to climb up. I waited with my mom and sister. Then the guide came down a bit and said in Spanish- there are two rivers of lava coming, go down. We started going down, but didn´t realize we should have run-cause the boulders were coming. The group split in two and boulders fell in between us, spitting off lava every time it bounced. The guide didn´t count how many people there were, and Phil´s mom and brother were on the bad side. Phil´s brother and a Guatemalan kid dove opposite ways to evade a dishwasher sized boulder. One rock hit the kid in the foot, melting his shoe and burning his foot. So he helplessly laid on the ground yelling, help me help me. I didn´t know what to do. Feeling unsure and helpless, I froze. I wish I could have thought back to WFR and remembered that if the scene is not safe, you don´t go into the situation. Crazy.
Then we left Ellory in Xela, an excellent city, where she will be studying until May. She has a pretty great host family and her host mom makes her fresh squeezed orange juice every day. Lucky! And they have a great Indian food restaurant there. God I miss Indian food. I took mom back to the airport where I forgot to get my books and chacos back from her, bummer. Then I waited for Amber to come... 3 hours later.
I am single. Amber decided to come visit me even though she had started dating someone else a month ago, without telling me. Really messed up. I felt horrible because I felt like I had sacrificed a lot, especially over the summer, she did too a tiny bit, but monogamy was one of them. I guess I feel a great loss, because she used to be a really great person. It was really painful. But at least now the source of pain is gone, even though the residue persists. To make matters worse, while leaving her in Antigua, I laid down crying alone in the back of a truck and my wallet slipped out, so I lost $65. I went back to Xela to spend time with Ellory, which I needed. She is an amazing person who I am extremely lucky to have, not only in Guate, but in my life. I received lots of good advice-especially from my wise man-savant on the mountain-Rene McGraw. Thanks to everybody for being there.
Then Phil and I took a girl to Tegulcigelpa, Honduras for surgery. It was a lot of running around getting documents, blood work, and x-rays. We drove 12 hours to get there. Communication was pretty poor and partially because our phone didn´t work. We bought it a week ago. Dumb. Phil and I stayed in basically hospital overflow, with 40 beds in a room, a bottom sheet (who knows if it was changed or not), and people clearly saw the dollar sign tattooed to my forehead, but didn´t want our food when we offered it to them. So we left that after our most stressful day so we could have a place to get a beer and watch TV. The stressful day- during the surgery the mom sat outside. We watched the surgery, actually I watched 10 min. and felt lightheaded. When it was done, we told her everything went better than expected, she had a seizure. So now we have two patients. She peed on the floor while her body shut down and it took 20 minutes for anyone to clean it up, even though the hospital has 15 custodians with mops, constantly mopping the floor. the hospital didn´t have the personnel to care for seizures, so no one did anything. So we felt helpless again. Anyway the rest of the trip was fine, except when Phil and I were walking home, some random guy from the street ran up behind me and slapped me on the arm as hard as he could. WTF? And Jen Arnold, a friend of mine was there the day before we came, and was coming back the day after we left, bummer.
For the first time, it felt really really good to be back in Esquipulas.
Inaguration Day was awesome. I had the abbot make an announcement that the ¨gringos¨ would have a little celebration of their new president after lunch. We took the monks outside where we had two pinatas waiting. We told them that we are welcoming the new president but also booting out the old one. So we handed out shoes to throw at the Bush pinatas. Not only were the monks a better shot than I expected, but the abbot picked up the semi-imploded head from the ground and started kicking it wildly. Guess W. wasn´t too popular anywhere. The next day in the paper there was a editorial cartoon with Obama being sworn in on the left, and 5 shoes being thrown at Bush on the right. Perfect.
I´ ll do a better job of keeping this up- sorry.
