oh, oh-ten

Hi 2010. I know we're rather recent acquaintances, but I feel like old friends. I've been thinking about you a lot over the past year, worrying, dreading, dreaming about our life together and what it would hold. Maybe that's why our several-week-old relationship feels more like 12 years than 12 days.

We met in Grand Rapids, sitting on Colin's couch. My eyes may still have been a bit puffy from mourning the passage of the last 22 years and all the changes they've brought, but by the time you came around I was happily chatting with my best friend about the year ahead and the exciting promise it held. Marriage? Apartment? Job? School? I felt ready for it all.

You came home with me and met my family, laughed and planned and played with us. I resented you when you asked me to pack up my clothes and sort through piles of memories and get in Roger on the road to Pittsburgh, but I did it. It hurt but I did it.

And now here we are in Pittsburgh and you were right. Time passes and it's not a bad thing. As I look out the window of this coffee shop and see the snow falling down, I'm thankful for you and the chance to see and and enjoy a new place. To write about its peculiarities. I mean, any place as obsessed with sports as this town is merits more than a few blog entries, I'm sure.

here it comes

Sitting here trying to sort through the happenings of the past weeks, I realize why you don't wait over a month to update your blog. What is most important - coming home, spending time with family, seeing old friends, wedding planning? What's funniest - an hour-long "quiet game" among my siblings (involving fake marriage proposals over text messages in an attempt to induce exclamations)? A dead guinea pig lying in his cage on our front porch for days to wait out the snowstorm that made grave digging impossible?

I'm in Wisconsin now visiting my mom's family and hanging out with my grandparents. Last night was our big family Christmas party. Since my mom is the youngest of her brothers and sisters, I had years of being classified as one of the "little kids," even when the majority of that group was in high school and college. Not anymore. I'm not sure I noticed the complete takeover by the great-grandchildren until this year, but they are plenty, they are cute and they are loud.

My "I'm old" revelation helped me as I tried to wrap my head around the wedding shower my aunts and uncles threw me at the party. Judging the toilet paper wedding dress competition was easy enough - it was brimming with the familiar goofiness that my family is oh-so-good at. But opening presents of bakeware and tablecloths while everyone looked on hit me in the face one more time with the life that's coming. (I already have two black eyes and a bloody lip from the wedding planning that took place over the weekend.)

I'm so excited about everything that's coming up, but I don't think you can move home from a different country and find a whole new life waiting for you to plan it without a few oh-my-gosh-what-am-I-doing moments. Yes, I get overwhelmed. Yes, I escape by watching "Glee" online, getting really into a weird acapella singing competition on TV and dancing around the kitchen to Mariah with my awesome siblings.

But I also lay awake at night grinning as I think about all that will happen in the next year - so many firsts, relationships that will grow, life with my best friend. A new city to blog about! A graceful transition to aim for. It's coming, and I can't wait.

slacker

Yes, that's me. New post coming soon, I feel the inspiration rising through the ever-falling nothern Michigan snow...

little things

It might be because I have so little time left here, but a lot of moments have been extra sweet over the past week. Here are a few:

1. Being stopped in traffic on a major thoroughfare and growing increasingly impatient, only to have my frustration disappear immediately when I saw the cause of the back-up. Christmas decorations being hung over the street! The moment gets extra points because the tinsel swag had the word "Gallo" in the middle. Guatemala's national beer is never far away.

2. Birthday goodness. This was less of a moment and more of a whole day that felt very right. Phone calls and emails from my family, meals at all my favorite places with my favorite people, Guatemala-version Monopoly (get ready to play when I get back) and a general sense of being loved. Thanks to all of you who made the day so lovely.

3. I found Big Red gum for sale at a gas station for the first time. I love that cinnamon-sugar explosion in your mouth at first chew: the whole pack was gone in about 10 minutes.

4. Yesterday for work I got to put on my lawyer costume (which almost included flip-flops, until I remembered I had left a pair of shoes in Roscoe) and go to the reading of a sentence and pick a copy up. That was cool enough, but what really got me excited was reading through the first couple of pages sitting in traffic on my way home and finding my name and information in the act. I know this is the silliest thing ever but I, foreign assistant allowed at the prosecutor's table with the express purpose of taking notes without any intervention, live on in Guatemala criminal court. And that's kind of sweet.

Dia de los Muertos

On November 1st, I headed to Santa Rosa with my stand-in family (Victor's parents, who I live with, and their extended family) to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). First up was decorating the grave where Candy's (my "mom's") parents are buried with lilies.


Although it wasn't quite the spectacle that my Spanish II book made it out to be, the day was still completely different than anything I've ever experienced in the states. The fact that we spent a good portion of the morning hanging out in the graveyard, and even more so that we were far from the only family doing it, was out of the ordinary. And the colorful graves with fresh coats of paint and adorned with flowers, paper and real, seemed a fitting way to celebrate the life of people who had already gone. Remembering is good. Dedicating a day to remembering as a family is even better.


From there we went to the nearby farmhouse, built fairly close to the pineapple fields that are just now being harvested. Nothing, NOTHING better than fresh pineapple.


I may have mentioned this in my last post about Santa Rosa, but I'm a big fan of the chickens. At least I was, until one stole a piece of my pan de muerto (laughingly called "Dead Bread" by those who find the literal English translation funny) right out of my hand. You only get that bread for this holiday so it was substantial loss.


The other dish of the day is called Fiambre. It's this big concoction of everything: olives, sausage, beets, brussel sprouts, peas, cheese, chicken and twenty or so other ingredients in between. Apparently it grew out of the tradition of families bringing foods along with them when they met up at the graves of their loved ones on Dia de los Muertos and ending up mixing it all together: they've skipped a step now and mix it all up the night before. Considering my dislike of different types of food touching each other on my plate, you wouldn't think I would have gone for the vegetarian version they served Jo and me, but I actually loved it. Maybe it was the fact that the beets turned everything pink.

On the way home we did see some of what the images next to the vocabulary lists in my textbook depicted: people dressed up in masks dancing in the street. I didn't get my camera out for that because the events above were lovely and Guatemalan and enough. I'm so thankful my "family" took me in and let me be a part of it.