Renewing the Visa

Thankfully that doesn´t mean my credit card.

Its been 90 days. Maybe I should reflect in thirds, but right now- I am still trying to piece together my last week and 90 seems daunting. I traveled to Tikal, the Mayan ruins. All I really have to say is ¨Damn how´d they do that?¨ Answer: slaves. It was big, it was beautiful, it was hot. I missed the bus (felt like all 4 years of college flooded back to me in an instant) and walked around the small town trying to find it. I found the bus company and met two people who lived 10 miles from Phil. Weird. I spent the rest of the day with Karen, Dave, and Phil. Cool people, she traveled a lot and said I had her son´s spirit. So I got that going for me. We saw howler and spider monkeys. Both deserving of their name. A kid kept screaming at the howlers. Made my day.

It was really nice to sit on the roof of our hostal in hammock and eat avocados with my jalepeno cheesy bread. But we had to leave Tikal. On to San Ignacio. I got Indian food and watched tv. That is all. And I found a rope swing, on a wild goose chase to try find falls in Bullet Tree Falls, they have a river, no falls. WTF? My side still hurts from multiple belly whoppers.

Onto the better part of Belize. Placencia- a beach town with nothing to do. Word from our friends was we could find Bill and Lisa and camp on their beach. With terrible directions we walked about the whole island to find it was a camping place, not friends who would let us camp on their beach. We made friends with two Geographists from Vancouver, traveling by bike. They had good travel advice. I spent more or less the entire next day finishing my book- The Thunderbold Kid, swimming, and making a sandcaslte. We met some Brits on the way their, as naturally one would in a bus where people are prohibited beyond the white line in the US, but there you pack 7-10 people in front of the line. Capacities don´t exist here, only limits to your comfort. So we went out to get drinks and I had a Belizian long island with- get this 10 types of rum. Yum rhymes with rum for a reason. They speak Creole (lazy unrecognizable English) in Belize. Did you know rum also makes blood squishy and therefore it is easier to sleep on sand, but it doesn´t stop you from waking up to rain on your face.

We went on a nature hike the next day. I saw leaf cutter ants, some cool and really big trees, and one of the plants they think may help fight cancer. Then while tubing, I made friends with more Brits, a couple and 2 kids- Kye and Cici. They loved shakeface and my really bad elephant jokes. Cici (8) said with a confused face ¨You have funny jokes (meaning peculiar and not funny). Then we did some rock sliding on smooth rocks into ponds. the guide went first. After Kye went he said, ¨He made it look really fun, but it wasn´t! I miss kids, british accents too.

Then I renewed my faith in Gelato, and traveled for 12 hours home to Esquipulas. On the way home I read, The Jaguar Smile. It was good, but Salman Rushdie is a man of fiction. Merry Christmas. 4 days until I see my family. I love it.

I can live a normal life again

I read The Pillars of the Earth this week... all week. It was all I did. Now if I weren´t in Guate and a frickin goon I could live a normal life. I´ll settle for whatever this is.

Best part of the week and maybe year was today before class. A girl, the most attractive girl in the class I might add (at 18), came up to me and asked me a question. ¨Que significa the palabra...¨ or what do the words mean (and with perfect pronunciation) ¨...do me.¨ Phil and I glanced at each other and I burst out laughing hysterically in front of the class. 5 min later when I regained a semblance of composure I explained that she meant dummy, not do me. I wrote do me on the board and the significance is the same in spanish. She shook her finger at me and said ¨Que malo¨ that´s bad. Class is fun. Only one week left.

I hate that I have the gene that allows me to smell the funny sent of urine after eating asparagus.

The basilica got some big award this week, so it became a bigger deal to go here now. It also won the nationwide contest, making it the number 1 marvel in Gautemala.

We started working on some bigger projects. Mostly the initial boring parts. I am looking for grants and am stoked that I might apply for the CAPTAIN PLANET grant. YES! Things I want to do- get books in the library, as well as solar panels and a computer. Also I want to get a water reservoir (basically swimming pool for drinking) built.

I got really into limericks after finding a book from 1961 in the library. They are dirtier than three whores in a chimney. I may or may not have stolen that from one of the limericks.

I found out that Fr. Don put my blog on the email that goes out to the all the alumni. He knows more people than a Wal-mart greeter. I can´t believe I write this crap- sorry mom.

Nothing happened this week

So I´ll add the parts that I forgot to mention about last week. As I was the assistant pharmacist last week, I translated the directions on how to take medicine. I did well overall, but I made two mistakes. I didn´t want to confuse people so I didn´t want to say ¨take three pills a day,¨ where people have taken three at a time and had problems. So I told them to space them out. I mistakenly told one man to take one in the morning, one with lunch, and one with a movie (cine, not cena). That man will have to watch a movie a day if he wants to avoid backpain.
I told another man with an ear ache, to put his head in the shade, put in two drops, wait ten minutes and then flush it out with water. I meant to say, put your head to your shoulder. Whoops.

If you want to read the blog from the professionals and see a lot of pictures, go to- http://international.chwhealth.org/chw_medical_missions_blog/2008/11/index.html

Since it is Thanksgiving, I´d like to take the time to mention what I am thankful for-
As always top three are what make thanksgiving so great (and life)
1. Family
2. Friends (especially those who have been in touch, having people let me know they think about me makes life so much easier).
3. Food- I miss grandma´s onion dish right about now. But I am loving Sweet thai chilli sauce, avocados, and Gallo.
4. A new president -Give me a woo woo.
5. Practical jokes. I haven´t pulled many around here, but I screw around in the library a lot and really want to take a monk statue and put in somewhere conspicuous.
6. Mini squirtguns
7. Candy- m&mś this year
8. Traveling to random places and then not only picking up trash with some girl I just met, but then finding a bar with swings. I want to throw in handstands and doing whatever the heck I wanna do, gosh.
9. Crashing someone elses party on a party bus with doctors
10. When the cue ball actually rolls 200 degrees around another ball on the crooked pool table here, no wonder I can´t win.

Cashews, volcanoes, and an unlicensed pharmisist

Steakhouse flavored Cashews. My mom sent them to me. I looked at the ingredients. #2 is crack, and 3 is MSG, so they are addicting and taste good. But I am out. Christmas presents?

Phil, a monk, a sister and I hiked up a volcano (Ipala). It was great. The scenery was good, the climb was nice and best part- a lake in the top that we could swim in. All the locals said it was dangerous because it was deep. I take that to mean ¨I can´t touch the bottom, so don´t go in.¨

A medical mission came to for a week. It was inexplicable, but here it goes. We traveled to the nearby aldegas and set up a mini hospital in the clinics or schools. By the end of the week we had served 14oo people. Several were people who just needed pain relievers because they work hard. But others seriously needed professional help. One girl´s feet were so disformed she was actually walking on what should be the tops of her feet. But the one that took the cake was while I was at lunch. Sorry about the bad selection of words, it isn´t a contest, but food fits in. So I went to the church to take a break and eat. It was so hot out the three block walk made me feel even more exhausted. I leave and of course get lost- it´s three blocks- wtf? I find my way and go back to the pharmacy. Janet, my surrogate mom for a week, says ¨Did you see it?¨ What am I in for? She takes me out into the hall where 8 people are gathered around a 9 inch long roundworm in a cup. Thank god the kid was 7 and probably didn´t understand everything going on, because I never want people to take pictures of what I throw up. I want to do a project with water quality so that doesn´t happen any more. Seems worthwhile.

Besides that, the mission was great. We went out every night to eat and drink, variety and beer was great. It made me forget my butt hurt from riding in the back of a truck for 2 hours with 6 other people following another truck by 15 feet down dusty roads. But the best part was I felt like I was directly helping people instead of the slow progress that comes with teaching English. I also got to play with kids and hand out glasses to old ladies. The doctors were fun and lively and left us M&M´s. For example, we went back with them to Guatemala City and we got on a Gallo Bus. Gallo is the beer here. They pack people in, the bus cruises around town slowly while you drink and dance. Most of the people were old enough to be my parents. I think I am going to invest in starting this in the US. Again, inexplicable- so I´m done trying.

Impecable TIming

No words can really explain how I feel about this weekend. Refreshing, needed, perfect. We hit a 30 second window right away when the English teacher at the school allowed us to hitch a ride with him as we were heading to the bus station. He took us to the next stop and 2 buses later we made it to Copan. After getting a little hustled and played for hotels, (the only bad part of the weekend), we met up with Phil´s friend who is volunteering in Honduras. We went to the Ruins in Copan which are some of the most complete in central america. As awe inducing as they were, I just enjoyed the peace of the place. There is way to much noise in Esquipulas and just to have 3 hours of quite felt different.

I started talking to another gringo (thank god for the attraction to familiarity). He informed us that every year the Peace Corps volunteers overwhelm the city on halloween weekend. This weekend was pushed back 2 weeks (unknownly) and the timing was perfect. They needed the weekend as much as we did. To put it lightly, we went out. Live bands, swings at the bar, lots of costumes, and a makeshift ¨change you can believe in¨ sign. We met up with Phil´s friend´s friends randomly, again good timing.

I slept in...to the afternoon. After recouperating and watching a really bad movie on tv we decided to go to the waterfall. Some guy doing laundry wanted to do the waterfall trip and we met up with him- I don´t know how. We didn´t want to pay the 9 bucks each (highway robbery here) for the ride, so we decided to find it ourselves with public trans. Luckily the freinds from the night before were on their way home and knew the way, we would have never found it. No signs, nothing. Again amazing timing.

The falls were spectacular. No one else was there, the rocks were worn from the water. I felt like I found my paradise. We discovered the water treadmill, where you can simply swim in place against the current. I wish we would have had all day and picnic supplies.

To close a brief note about buses. At first I thought public trans. was terrible and unorganized. Now I love it. You don´t have to wait long (I have always waited longer in the US for buses), it is cheap because everyone uses it. BUT, everyone use it. That means in something larger than a minivan, but smaller than a 16 passenger we fit in (and out cause people hang out the open door) 32 people. When I get home I want to try fit in 9 in my car. Maybe that is why Guatemalans are small- so they can fit more in a bus?

Refreshed, alive, and needed.

Babes, bikes, brujos and students

It´s been a while, sorry. The weeks seem to go by faster now that we are teaching English classes. We have about 15 students on top of teaching our old orange orchard boss and the guys in the library English. We play a lot of games but Hangman is great for the alphabet, Simon says for body parts vocab etc. We have one class from 2-3 and one from 3-4. It is fun.

The guys in the library like to goof around a lot, it is good for practicing and becoming confident in Spanish, but I don´t learn a lot of vocab. They are a couple years younger and good stuff. Definitely nice to have someone around the same age.

As for the babes, we saw that they was a bike race coming through Esquipulas last Thursday. Some of the promotion girls wanted their picture with us, we wanted to take some pictures with the girls. The main point of the whole thing was to send the pictures back to a kid volunteering in Central MN, and since we can´t go out much, we had to rub something in.

I missed pumpkin carving this weekend. But I did dress up in rainbow tights and brought cookies to class, those kids are going to have a screwy perception of what Halloween is. Phil bummed a monk´s habit. Brujo is the word for witch, which the monks call me when I play pool with them, really the table is so warped that you can make a shot from anywhere if you know how the ball rolls.

Some students were here this past weekend from the US (studying in El Salvador). A social justice orientated study abroad group. Quite the characters, I hope to visit them in late Nov. One kid, a camp couselour informed us that ¨aplostar¨ (a-plaw-star) is the verb to destroy, stick, and engulf in flames while intoxicated, actually it just means demolish, but it is a good word to know. You can also use it a vulgar way to say stick your butt down to the chair. Bombas is the word for butt too which I get a kick out of. I guess I am finally to the point where I can enjoy the language. Also with the students- who somehow knew more about the place than we did (maybe the fact that they actually got a tour helped)- we showed the monks how to play basketball; we actually only won by one point and it was incredibly intence. And we milked the cows.

We made cookies again- i think they turned out better.

Bikes, babes, baquettes (snacks)

First a special thanks to all of you who have sent me packages (snacks is baquettes) or letters or emails that made me feel missed this week. You are awesome and make it easier to be away when I know that people at home say they want me there- it is a strange paradox -that being missed makes me feel better about being here, but it does.

We were invited to one of the brother´s homes in the Sopas (soups). After going on an adventure through the mountains which no vehicle should be made to endure, I still have no idea why they call it the soups. I think the views may have been a better name. They grow corn and beans on the marginal hill-mountian sides and coffee on the better land.

We started to teach class today- yesturday was a bit discouraging when we had one student, but they messed up the sign and put the wrong day. So we started today and had 4 in the first and 8 in the second. Once word gets out that the gringos are teaching it, we expect a few more. It is good for learning spanish and I feel like I am doing something. Yoga and running 6k every other day and thinking about things a little differently have made it seem easier here. I think I am finally able to not care about things and just accept where I am. Que Sera, sera.

We are going to Copan this weekend so that should be nice to get away. Ruins, Rum, and Rapids baby.

Oh! Tuesday there was a huge bike race here. We decided to get our picture taken with the promotional girls (all 5 sets of them), or rather they asked if they could have our picture with us, maybe I have a future in Guatemalan advertising? Anyway, I want to send them all to Weichman at SJU to prove that volunteering in Guat is better than in Central MN (i.e. say what is up now bitch?). Padre Serafin, kept giving me the thumbs up and his friend said that the ¨Taliban¨ (my new nickname because I have a beard) looked as good as the models. Anyway the race was cool and I got two free shirts - yes levi- you can steal one.

I´ll miss pumpkin carving this weekend, but plan to find something to carve even if it is a watermelon.

PS- I found PB, butter, and black pepper here, but it is nice to have my own supply.