We just got back to our site after two weeks of traveling for business and holiday. After all that time away and only three months to go in our service, it’s like we are in the “home stretch”… I feel vaguely less connected to being here, yet now we suddenly have all this stuff to do. We found out yesterday that we have been approved by USAID to do our SPA project, and our check has arrived in Guatemala. YAY! Now we have to get busy and build 43 stoves, floors, latrines, and water tanks in about two months. In addition, we also just got word that the Rotary Club of Logansport Indiana has ALSO decided to support us with a grant to build latrines. And, to add even more to the pile, our fellow volunteer Charlotte is doing about 50 latrines in her village, but her mason just quit. Guess who’s going to be teaching Charlotte’s town how to build latrines? 🙂

We returned to some pretty good news… not only did our garden survive two weeks of drought under Chalio’s expert care, but he also pointed out to me that the cucumbers have come in, to join the already abundant radishes and onions and spinache. But the real treat is that after more than a year of waiting, we finally have Jalapeño peppers!!!!!!! He showed me no less than four on the bush, and said that he’d already taken one for dinner a few nights ago. I am overjoyed.

Then, moments later, the neighbors came over to tell us that Chalio’s litle brother Alberto is having his birthday today, and would we please come over for dinner? This means that we didn’t even have to cook for ourselves after the long bus ride home… but we DID have to hop right to making a birthday cake, the traditional collaboration of House Fanjoy at any birthday gathering. We got it done in the three hours we had, with about 5 minutes to spare. It looked great covered in colored sprinkles my dad sent me in a care package several months back, and Alberto was pretty pleased.

Emily, however, is about to have a nervous breakdown. We returned to a house that had been totally overrun with mice in our absence, and they pooped and urinated all over our bed and furniture. We had to change all the sheets, clean it up, and throw away the rice-filled heating pad that has been handy for almost our entire service. While we were away at Alberto’s party, the mice came back and pooped some more on the NEW linens to show us who’s boss. We’ll see about that; I just busted out the snap traps.  

Once the sun went down, the neighbor’s teenage daughter (Lina, who is normally really nice) went into the new room that they’ve built onto the side of our house, and turned up her radio to do her homework. We asked her to turn it down, and she did, then it went back up after a few minutes. About that time, Emily turned on her computer, to discover that the bottom row of keys weren’t working, and she couldn’t even log on (her password contains an “m”). Her computer is her lifeline to the outside world and the only way she can organize stuff, and at that point she looked like she was about to burst into tears. I went next door and explained to Lina that she REALLY needed to turn it off, as it was getting late. She looked at me, then at her watch, then back at me. “Well, I dunno… I can just turn it down some.” I gave her The Look, and went back into our side of the shack. Luckily, her boom box is powered via an extension cord that runs through a crack in the wall and into a plug in OUR side of the house. I gave her 2 minutes to comply before I “pulled the plug”, and she turned it off with a few seconds to spare.

So, we made a hot bath and the fireplace is burning merrily and it’s raining on our tin roof for the first time in months, so Emily is going to relax a bit and go to bed. That should help a bit. That’s good, because tomorrow we have to start on a HUGE pile of work.