My feet hurt so badly...
Cat's birthday is today, but we celebrated it Saturday with a bunch of
her friends in Poaquil, a little city that's 11.5 kilometers from
Comalapa. Mateo decides that instead of taking the hour and a half
bus ride and going in almost a complete circle before arriving in
Poaquil, we´ll take our chances and start walking and hopefully get a
ride. Our luck was with us as about 3 minutes out of town we got
picked up and taken directly to our destination--about 35 minutes by
truck. We had a great time Saturday and Sunday and at about 3:00
Sunday we decided to try our luck again and walk towards Comalapa--
same deal, hopefully 3 minutes into our walk we'd get a ride. After a
quick liquado (smoothie) stop, we started off on our hike. Two hours
later, Mateo, Cat, and I are STILL walking under the hot Guatemalan
sun, and the only mode of transportation that has gone in our
direction was one motorcyle. Let's keep in mind too that we are
living in the Guatemalan highlands, so it wa
s 2 hours of climbing up fairly steep roads only to brace ourseleves
from falling down on the way down. (just one last point to add,
Poaquil is about 200 meters lower than Comalapa, so a lot more up than
down). Two and a half hours later we stumble into Comalapa, soaked
with sweat but quite impressed we had walked from Poaquil all the way
to Comalapa. My wonderful Keen shoes that I trecked up Tajumulco
accompanied me yesterday too, though without socks, so blisters
formed, the sole of the shoe somehow rubbed into my feet, and now the
only relief I get is by simply wearing other shoes. To top off our
adventure, we had been told by various other people that a week ago
Monday, a taxi had been robbed on that road, and that robberies were
actually quite common occurances. Armed with nothing of value
however, we didn´t worry too much...what an adventure.
Mateo and I have been working on our chicken coop and it's done except
it still needs a door (which I guess means it's not done, but the
walls are!)...so close to getting chickens, but I don't think I´ll get
to see the day..however, this brings me to a GUATEMALA MOMENT! One
day while we were working, three indigenous women came by to look at
trees to buy. So Mateo goes out to explain everything and I followed
along. The women were all snacking on corn and one woman reaches in
her apron pocket and offers Mateo a half a cob. He graciously accepts
it and starts eating it and the woman takes a look at me and realizes
that I don't have anything to snack on. Pretty soon I receive a
handful of corn and I thank the woman and start eating it. Almost
finished with the corn, I realize that that big bite the woman took
out of her corn only moments before went directly into her hand and
consequently into my hand and into my mouth. Upon realizing what had
happened, I could only lau
gh and relate the story to Mateo...it was kind of sentimental too in a
way because I was taken back years ago to my only memory of the
Guatemala City public buses which was with my mom and I had recently
lost a couple of teeth, so we sat in the back of the bus, my mom
biting big chunks of apple so I could tackle the smaller pieces. As
Mateo put it, "something only a mother could do....or a random
Guatemalan woman!" I loved it though...it was a great Guatemalan
moment all the same.
August has brought new volunteers, Billy (18) and Alex (17), two boys
who go to a boarding school together in Massachusettes. They are a
lot of fun with Billy quoting movies with amazingly accents and Alex
always providing laughs with his lack of cooking experience and his
consequent trying to learn to cook. The three of us teach at a school
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and we have such enthusiastic groups of
kids that it is well worth having to wake up at 7am during our summer
vacation. Unfortunately I'm leaving tomorrow and Alex and Billy are
only here for 2 weeks, so they'll be leaving this weekend, so all the
kids' teachers are going away!...but it was great while it lasted.
So I guess that's enough for now...I'm supposed to be summing up my 2
month experience into a little essay type thing for the Long Way Home
website, so I should start on that. It´s a sad time leaving Guate,
but I´ll be seeing you all soon!
annemary
bug bites on lower right leg: 54
number of times I kicked the dogs out of my bed last night so I could
get comfortable and then called them back in: 4
number of laughs in the past week: infinate
