Alright, I’m not as up on this blog as Fletch-o-matic. He’s got 40 posts to my 10, so for all of you who like to give me flak about being the big talker, I think there’s some evidence here to suggest I married my match. However, I’ll see if I can catch you all up a bit on what’s been happening here on my end.
My birthday happened, for one. But not just my birthday. August is for our Guatemalan family what May is for my biological family. We walked in on a rash of cumpleaños celebrations, mostly for grandkids of the family: Delvin turned 3, Chalio turned 9, Delmy turned 1, I turned 25, and last but not least Nas Palas our infamous host dad turned ?? (not exactly in August, but we’ve already celebrated). After about 25 or 30 people here seem to stop counting and have trouble remembering (just like after about their 4th or 5th child it takes them longer than it would ever take an American to tell you how many children they have). In Q’anjob’al there’s a “How old are you?” phrase for young people who are likely to know exactly how many years they’ve been alive, and a separate phrasing of the same question for older folks who are not likely to remember how many years they’ve been alive. To me, that kind of defeats the purpose of asking, but oh well. One would think they could tell you in corn growing seasons since they have so many other references to corn, but alas is does not work that way.
Delmy before her cake.
Birthday celebrations are part of what established the haphazard routine we have of eating with our host family about once a week, and, since they were birthdays, we felt like we should contribute something. I think we were invited back for so many parties in part because they were curious to see what we would bring to each one: there were chocolate chip cookies for one, ginger snaps and apple sauce (made from their home grown apples they kept giving us), chocolate cake made by Fletch, and then a chocolate cake made by me (it was a competition and I won, just so you know). All of these tasty treats come from our wonderful and slightly mysterious oven. Mmmmm. The outcome of this is, even though the littlest ones hardly speak spanish they now come to our door on a regular basis asking for galletas! That’s spanish for cookie.
The cookie habit started because we didn’t have a pan in which to bake a cake for quite a few weeks, but we found the comal, a round flat pan for making tortillas works well enough for baking cookies and bread. Cakes are pretty unusual here. Delmy’s mom, their daughter who is my age and also a nurse, is a bit modern and bought a cake to throw a party with all the nurses and the local doctor. Reigna takes Delmy to work with her just about every day, all the health workers are pretty close, and we were kindly invited to attend the party. I’m happy to say that what they did to Delmy with her cake they did not repeat to me on my birthday.
Delmy after her cake. Amazingly she didn't even cry.
For my birthday we’d decided to skip town, in part because all of our friends were gathering to celebrate having completed a month worth of service, and also because it’s pretty impossibly to entirely relax here. We didn’t exactly tell them we were leaving to party, rather there is a very convenient word in spanish we use, reunion, which means to meet or gather either for enjoyment or work. We just injected the word with a tone of seriousness about having a reunion with our fellow volunteers and it made the vacation sound obligatory. Yay! If only it were that easy in the states. Anyway, we decided to celebrate with my family the night before leaving, and it turned out to be one of the best nights we’d spent with them since we arrived.
We showed up to eat dinner with them, soup and tortillas as
Everybody loves chocolate cake!
usual on their end, and brought stir-fried vegetables and chocolate cake with icing that Fletch had fixed. They were so excited about the cake that we had to eat it first, and since the family all-told adds up to about 17 people, the cutting and dishing out is always exciting commotion. In the middle of it someone disappeared outside and set off two rounds of fire crackers, because it’s not a birthday in Guatemala without firecrackers, and the family presented me with a gift. These folks are not stingy in spite of having so little, and their gifts are so practical–I got a soup bowl. This was perfect because it’s tradition to give your house guests something to eat and or drink when they show up, but we only bought two of everything when we moved since we had to be careful about not spending too much. They were pretty pleased I was so happy.
Our host-mom, Lina.
Everyone was excited about Jaime baking a tasty cake, but our vegetables were a big hit too. Perhaps not as big a hit as our non-stick pan and wooden cooking utensil. Maybe they just ate the vegetables to get to the pan. A big discussion was held to talk about the pan, it’s use and cost, and our wooden utensils. Fletch explained the wooden utensils were used so we didn’t scrape the pan, and as he said it our host mom, Lina, turned bright red. She had to have been really red for us to see it so clearly because she’s pretty dark skinned and the light in the room is always incredibly dim. She dished out healthy servings of vegetables with a big old aluminum spoon. Guiltily she held it up to show us and then laughed nervously. Everyone died laughing. The thing is our host mom is usually so get it done and confident, she looked like a nervous little girl. I think she figured it was ok when we died laughing. It was just so funny.
The last birthday, which was actually Sept. 16, was moved to the 15th just so we could participate. Refer to the “Matando Kalnel” post. Since they moved the date for us and everything we couldn’t show up empty handed so I made the best darn chocolate cake we’ve ever had, recipe thanks to the PC survival cookbook. All in all, we’re having a good time with the host family, and if nothing else I think they like our cooking.
The lake at sunset.
My birthday away was pretty much the best weekend we’ve had in the last 5 months. Lake Atitlan is a vacation spot anyone who comes to see us must visit. We stayed at a chill little hostal that gives discounts to PCVs. They had fantastic food, and since I lost over 20lbs with the dysentery mishap, I took it upon myself to eat bacon every morning for breakfast–we’ve had a hard time finding it here. It tasted soooo good. There was dancing every night, and Saturday at the Iguana Perdida is cross-dressing night. They have a dress up room full of clothes and wigs. My birthday ended while I watched a meteor shower over the lake with friends. Maybe this sounds bad, but it feels so liberating to escape the poverty here, to just shut off all the needs and wants of the villagers. We got to be ourselves with a bunch of Americans for a whole weekend. It was a great birthday.
Saturday night cross-dressing, kind of.