I love our house.

So it's a Friday night here in Guatemala, and I'm having the time of my life. In my pajamas. At home.

It's been a pretty long week as far as work and being it Guatemala goes. I still like it and everything, but after being home last week the flaws of the city are more evident than its good sides. Everything seems dirty, and people do things differently than I would. I hear this is called culture shock. Well, I don't like it very much. It makes me crabby. I'd like to jump to the stage where I'm ok with everything again and excited to be here.

All this to say that when 5 o'clock rolled around today, I was sooo ready for it. I climbed in my car, turned up my new Ryan Adams mix CD Jenny made for me (so good. I'm surprised I hadn't fallen in love with him before this point) and headed for home with a smile on my face. I wasn't even upset when traffic was bad and I made it through the rest of the CD, because I popped in the mix CD I forced Colin to make me when we were in the airport last week and lost myself in its cuteness for the umpteenth time.

When I got home, I set myself to work re-falling in love with our apartment. I took in my laundry, and decided it was a beautiful day and hence, I should take photos of the house. I'm no photographer, but look at the sunny color of the house - I just wanted to keep the way it looked. It inspired me to climb up on our pool's "waterfall" and take this picture (sorry it's crooked).

Victor called me tonight and said we're going to fill the pool tomorrow morning, so I guess I will have to find another spot to dry my jeans.

From there I walked around the house, admiring its beauty. This photo is of the main floor, looking in from the "backyard" (where the laundry and pool are). I love that my shadow is on the wall. I also love our impromptu dining room table - plastic functions just as well as wood, at least for the time being.

I simultaneously love and am terrified of our stairs. I'm a klutz, plain and simple, and I'm worried that one day I'll be walking through the hallway outside my room over to Jo's room and just fall down. They are beautiful and make the apartment feel really open, however.

So after taking photos, I cleaned up, folded said laundry, turned up my music and made a delicious dinner. I tried to take a picture of it but my camera does not do closeup photos, especially after dark, so they all turned out bad. Because the food was so delicious, I didn't want to detract from its goodness by posting a bad photo; let me just say that I was rather proud of the result. Pasta, onions, garlic, cherry tomatoes and spinach in olive oil resulted in exactly the kind of delicious, relatively healthy comfort food I was going for.

I miss my roommate - things are too quiet without her, and I feel as though she would have appreciated my dinner. Cooking for one is no fun.

So now I'm sitting on my bed, catching up on emails and following the MSU game online. I went to great lengths to feel extremely comfortable right now - I even braved the freezing shower to get ready of the Guatemala City Grime I seem to bathe myself in daily. It was well worth it - not only do I feel great, it means I can sleep longer tomorrow! Hot showers are once thing I unashamedly miss, though. I try to be tough and not complain, but getting up in the morning is a lot harder when you know you're looking forward to chilliness. I took full advantage of heated water last weekend when I was in the US.

Well that's it. The Spartans came through (Go green! Go white! The game was exciting online, I hope it was as good for people who actually got to watch it - and I'm glad my bracket's champion made it to the elite eight) so I'm going to go to bed early so I can fully enjoy tomorrow.

And because I love my bed.

Boda time

I haven't been here long enough to blog, but here are a very few pictures from the past week and a half. I promise I'll start bringing my camera with me so that I can put up more.

Bridal bouquet on a beautiful Minnesota spring day

So adorable.

Odd picture from the wedding in Guate the weekend before. The kid was not that tiny -- maybe I'm a giant.

5:15 train to Minneapolis/ St. Paul

I’ve successfully boarded by fourth major form of transportation in three days: taxi, plane, car, and now an Amtrak train from Columbus, Wisconsin to Minneapolis Minnesota.

You may be asking “Why, Lerae, why another transportation-themed blog? We’re tired of hearing about you moving around. Give us something good -- maybe talk about the poop on the streets of Guatemala, or, you haven’t mentioned food in a while.”

Well hold your horses, I’m sure I’ll let my stomach start writing my entries again soon. But for now getting around the world is a big deal to me – I’m proud I’ve made it this far, it was not without its challenges.

Let’s back up. So last week Friday I was all gearing up to hop on a plane the next morning and fly my way into my home state and the waiting car of my sister and boyfriend. I opened my email, found my Priceline confirmation, and fell back on my bed as I read “Returning flight: February 14, 2009.”

Needless to say I mist have been a little distracted in December when I bought my flight to Guatemala, because I somehow managed to miss the day I actually needed to fly home by a month. After some frantic phone calls, smooth talking by Colin and a dear woman at an airline named Diane (I owe her), and a couple big cries, I got on another flight for Monday.

(It must be noted that although I missed some much anticipated time with Colin, his family, and some other friends, the weekend didn’t turn out all bad. I got to attend a wedding of a friend in Guatemala, dancing and a birthday party. Not too shabby. Almost as exciting was my Saturday morning relaxation on my tiny patio, getting a tan and listening to Wait Wait, Don’t Tell me on online streaming NPR.)

I made it to the airport on time, squeaked through customs with enough time to run through the airport to my connecting flight’s gate with a red face, sweaty armpits and my belt in my hand and find I was upgraded to first class.

So from there it’s been a pleasant day at home, a trip to Wisconsin to visit my grandparents, and now a ride with plenty of leg room to St. Paul where my dear, almost married friend will pick me up and I’ll be swept into her wedding weekend activities.

I’m just glad I haven’t managed to further mess up my travel plans – but to those of you coming to visit in April, maybe you should double check our reservations. July, right?

Space

One of the standard cultural lessons in every Spanish textbook I've ever bought is that Latin Americans and people from the United States, in general, have pretty different ideas of personal space. It's sort of true.

I'm not a touchy feely person in the first place, so the daily morning cheek kiss and hug took me a bit to get used to. Now I really like it. Maybe it doesn't sound like a big deal, but there's a difference between waving across the room at someone and actually coming over, getting close enough to touch, and taking the time to personally greet them and ask how they're doing.

However, I will never get used to the close proximity on the buses. They're FULL of people, which makes sense, but I don't like and will never like "rubbing bums with strangers," as my roommate once put it. Nobody likes it and everyone tries to give as much space as possible, but there's only so much you can do.

Since my house is toward the end of the part of the bus route where people get on the bus, my traditional entry pattern is:

1. Squeeze past the assistant who is calling out the destination of the bus in loud, singsong tones
2. Pass the bus driver who is keeping one eye on the road and one hand on the steering wheel, while using their partners to make sure no one enters the bus without paying their quetzal
3. Squeeze past the businesspeople, women with baskets, students, elderly people and mommys with babies to find a place to stand where I'm not touching too many people, look like I know how buses work, and have a sturdy place for each hand to hang on to in preparation for the ride ahead.
4. Hang on for dear life while paying attention in case I need to contort my body in some way to allow departing passengers to get past.
5. Hope the bus driver isn't driving over the edge of the road or into a dog, because I wouldn't have a clue. I can't see anything but the back of the guy next to me I'm trying not to bump into.

All in all not that much fun - one of the reasons I was really excited when a seat opened up in the first row Friday. Not only would I not have to surf my way into work, I could also we where we were going. I plopped down in glee.

Bad idea.

I had a firsthand view of the driver and his assistant. The driver, who had already reached the age where he started to shrink and shrivel, peered straight ahead. His assistant, about 20 years old, wore a baseball hat and a worried look on his face as his driver meandered along, switchiing lanes or taking up two without changing expression or checking his mirrors. The assistant performed his second most important task, (aside from making up songs about where the bus is goig to scream out at people as we passed) telling his driver what's in the right lane and when he can change lanes or make turns.

Maybe our driver and asisstant were father and son having a fight. Maybe he was hard of hearing. Maybe the driver was trying to get back at the assistant for playing some sort of practical joke on him. Whatever it was, their communication was bad. The driver swerved over into the right lane when the assistant was telling him to stop. We almost hit so many cars, no joke. The assistant yelled at him, and the driver set his face into a slightly more stonelike expression and drove on.

We almost drove off the road.

We almost hit a red car three or four times.

I was terrified.

I prefer being squished in the back of the bus, "rubbing bums" and being blissfully ignorant of my surroundings and the grave danger I am in. Needless to say, I was tremendously relieved to hop off at the bus station to make a change.

Until I sat down and found my mortal enemy smeared on my seat: Mustard.

Blogworthy weekend recap starts… now.

Friday night wasn’t really anything special. I’m content with the quiet evenings I’ve grown accustomed to here. I have four years worth of the weight of homework hanging over my head to work to work off by reading or going to be early.

I made a smoothie (wow, I wasn’t going to write about food in this blog but it showed up in the second paragraph) from some of the fruit I talked about a few posts ago. The good thing about
.

how cheap the fruit is here is that I don’t feel particularly bad for using up so much in one drink. Actually there are only good things about how cheap the fruit is here.

After trying and failing to sleep in on Saturday morning, I woke with the sun and construction workers, chatted with a few people on Skype and then went to find the bus toward town.

A few words about the buses here. They are almost all former school buses painted in many colors – greens, reds, blues, whatever. When I first got here I thought they were pretty ridiculous, but they’re growing on me – usually they’re detailed and kind of cool. The insides, though, are another matter. For example. The bus I took that morning was decked out with a banner made out of pom poms with the drivers names, a plethora of Christian decals, a full set of stuffed animal Winnie-the-Pooh keychains, and some naked girl stickers. Add in some crazy awful music and an assistant yelling out the bus’s destination and you get the Guatemalan bus experience.

So then I grabbed a taxi (which ripped me off) and headed to Oakland Mall. Oakland Mall is ridiculous. While it may not be as big as Rivertown, it has all these extravagant touches, like a fountain that falls from the ceiling and spells words out of water: it’s sort of like a scrolling marquee but out of drops of water.

Highlight: buying and eating a Nutella crepe. And Jenny's bling bling diamond-studded revolver necklace purchase.

That evening Jo and I went to the civil wedding of Victor’s sister. Here in Guatemala, the legal marriage takes place before the ceremony in the church. I’m not sure how they’re making it through this week, being “married” but not being married. I guess on the bright side you get two parties. I loved being invited to this civil which is only for family, especially because I won’t be around for the actual wedding Saturday (I’m going home!).

I slept for a very short amount of time then got up early Sunday morning to again take the bus into town and again grab a taxi, this time to meet some coworkers to begin our trek to Tecpan. It’s a city about an hour and a half outside Guatemala City apparently sort of known for its traditional breakfasts, which lived up to the hype. I loved the beans and warm tortillas that were being made nearby, and I’m a huge unashamed fried plantain fan.

Then we headed to the Iximche ruins, which I have pictures of! I finally remembered to bring my camera somewhere! Unfortunately I was so excited to climb up to the top of the ruins that I didn’t take many. I love Mayan ruins, I can't lie. Especially the ball courts (last picture). Following are a few:
Good weekend overall, if incredibly tiring. It was strangely relaxing to be back at work this morning.

lista y caliente

Whoot, good to know the cheap, greasy staple that is the $5 Hot-and-Ready at Little Ceasers knows no borders. Although I'm feeling pretty stuffed up and out of it today, having that for lunch perked me up a bit. didn't do wonders for my stomach, but it helped my heart.

Over lunch there was a discussion about Hispanics in the US - whether everyone calls them Mexicans, immigration, language... I didn't take part in the conversation because I was 1)trying desperately to focus in spite of my headache and 2) I just wasn't up to expressing my feelings in Spanish. But it did get me thinking about how I percieve myself here in Guatemala. I find myself using "them" all the time to describe, well, everyone who isn't me.

Nowhere is this more evident than in my drives into work in the morning. Traffic is always really bad going into downtown, and it gets a lot worse when the police officers stand in the street and direct traffic (I don't THINK that's the goal, but I wonder sometimes).

"This would never happen in the United States. What do they think they're doing? Don't they know that stoplights are for a reason? Everyone drives so badly here. What are they thinking? Those bus drivers! I can't believe it took them five hours to clean up that crash!"

It all seemed like innocent observances at the time, but I realized today that it's quickly becoming a habit, and one that I want to break. (Side note: there is a lot of corruption in the police system, so if I find out that creating traffic jams is part of that, I will take back portions of this post.)

In other news, nothing much has changed. I love my job but can't write about it here and nothing else particularly exciting happens during the week -- work takes up most of my day, then I come home, eat, read and sleep -- so there's not much more to say.

Here's to a blogworthy weekend.

these words are not enough...

...so I'm adding pictures. Here's the view of the mountains from our colonia this afternoon; unfortunately today was a cloudy day. To the right is a gorgeous volcano but sadly it's blocked by a hill and by trees.

Here's a look down our street. I'd show you our house, but you can never be too careful.

I always say that I'm going to take a photo at sunset, and today I finally remembered.
If only photos could do the view justice.

Ok, I'm quite excited about this photo. That's our kitchen table, laden with the fruits and vegetables we picked up at the street market after church. We've got lettuce, snow peas, pineapple, oranges, tangerines, mangos, strawberries, blackberries, carrots and more that you can't even see. We just walked around the street to all the people selling their veggies on the ground, and wow. I loved it. Plus, it's all ridiculously good and fresh. AND to make the whole experience even better, we got it ALL for about 85 quetzales, which is a little more than $10. Although I will always love you, Fulton Street Famers Market, your deals pale in comparison.

Yay! I have to admit that these next pictures weren't taken with my camera, but I had fogotten it yesterday but I'd still like to share our grand adventure with you so I may have stolen these from Jo (sorry). I did take this particular picture of the teleferico over Lake Amatilan, where Jo, Victor and I spent the afternoon. We were ascending past some adorable kids climbing the mountain when I took this photo of another car.

This photo of me is pretty dark, but I love the light on the volcano in the background. Oh my, so pretty.

Yay, my lovely roomate! We discovered that we both have the same problem: our eyes go all squinty in photos. That makes this particular photo even better, because our eyes are so open!


More photos of the house's interior, etc. to come (maybe of better quality, too). It takes forever for photos to upload here.