Home again. Augh!

I had to erase my last post because it was too depressing. I didn’t go out Saturday night, it’s ok, we made up for it on Monday night.

I guess I should start out by saying that I’m back in the states now, and we have been since tuesday night at 11:00. The shock isn’t nearly as bad as I was thinking. Life in Guatemala quit being extraordinary after a while, it was just life, the same kind you have here. So life here and life there isn’t disconnected too much, and the transition is only in the images, not the thinking. Well, a little bit of the thinking. I can’t seem to force myself to flush toilet paper. Gross for you guys, normal for me and millions of other people below the line. And the desire to bleach everything I eat. We ate some blueberries today at Hugh’s house, and I felt a little panic after I only rinsed them in the tap. Air that smells like nature is really nice. And sitting comfortably in cars, that’s probably the coolest thing so far. Last night we got in an SUV cab to go to the hotel from the airport and it was like a small house on the inside. I could have slept in there.

Well here’s how it went, in case anyone is interested, but more so that I have something to do before I go to sleep.

Sunday me, Ashley, and Sara, the two other volunteers in the house, went over to Hilda’s for lunch and a jaspe demonstration. Jaspe is the ikat or tiedye technique that makes up the major part of indigenous women’s skirts. She showed us some knots at light speed for a while and then Hilda, her three boys, and us three gringas piled in the back of a truck and went to the market in Estancia- the place where I teach Juana and Dilma and Olga. We actually met Juana out there in the market, and I met her husband, who I was a little surprised with. He was wearing a leather jacket and all greased up, and then there with Juana, who looks like she’s raised 4 kids by herself-which I expect she has. I had no idea her husband was still around, and Hilda kind of rolled her eyes when he walked away. I don’t know what that means, and I didn’t ask. We got our ingredients and went back to Hilda’s house, and cooked the most amazing meal. I’m so glad we ended it on that, it was so worth it. We had marinated steak (churrasco) and mashed potatoes and grilled onions, guacamole, and steamed brocolli, and of course tortillas and tomalitos. Hilda made us feel so comfortable, almost at home, and we helped chop and entertain the boys.

Monday was our last day in Xela. It feels really weird telling it now that I’m in USA mode. I don’t know that I can tell it objectively. Anyway, we ran a million errands in the morning, trying to get everything out of the way for a big lunch we were planning in the afternoon. I bought the pieces for a backstrap loom that I’m terribly excited to try out, and Hugh and I went to Democracia to buy some house plants. One to give Claudia for the AMA house, a little greenery is always cheerful around there, and one for Hilda for the garden of her newish house, though we saw while we were there that her garden gets chicken burrows in it. She had two digging out little holes to curl up in while we were there. We came back and waited for everyone to come home to cook lunch- when Vlad left, he made us all this amazing marinated chicken that Claudia managed to get the recipe for.

I’m having a really hard time writing this. Currently I’m sitting in the Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea in Botetourt, VA. My old home town, even my old job. Right now I’m gazing out over this blacktop parking lot filled with cars, observing the action of two fast food restaurants and a gas station across from all the parked SUV’s. One of the restaurants and the gas station popped up in the time since I was here last over Christmas. Everyone in the shop is wearing a business suit and working on their laptops, and occasionally a middle aged woman in Capri pants and tight shirt come in with their manicures and their screaming kids. I just met a kid I went to high school with and his 6 inch Mohawk, who actually makes a living doing magic. He wasn’t so bad. I guess it all just makes me feel kind of claustrophobic. The coffee is the best I’ve had in a looooong time, but I’m still pretty weirded out. Probably the caffeine doesn’t help. It was really nice to drive here. No busses or pedestrians or 800 people honking and trying to jam me off the road, however that in itself was weird. I’m not scared when I drive anymore. I’ve observed enough of that aggressive/observant driving technique that I think I could see a solution to almost any weird or stupid thing that someone in the car in front of me could do, except that if they’re going way under the speed limit, I don’t think it would be appropriate here to just lay on my horn behind them for 20 seconds. The guy with the computer behind me is playing a game with machine guns and screaming and splattering sounds that I suppose are blood or heads exploding. That kind of stuff gets to me. Violence and disasters I’ve lost my insensitivity to. Dad was watching a disaster show last night where a helicopter crashes onto a sidewalk and I couldn’t handle it. It’s not a toy in a movie to me, I just see the people inside it. I don’t know why that changed, I didn’t see any violence in Guatemala. Maybe that’s why, the time lapse.

The cats! I’m reunited with my cats! I want to say that before I continue more. The did amazingly well while I was gone, even living with their first dog at the Browder’s house. They sat in the car and were so good on the 4 hours back home, and when I let them out, Zy, the sensitive shy one, popped right out and pranced around like “Hey! I’m home! Thanks mom!” He’s spend the first day and a half rubbing on all our legs and purring and he slept with me last night. Lula, the one who’s usually in charge, has spend the whole time growling and hissing and being easily scared. She’s finally at the point where she’ll let me touch her, and even cuddle with me when she knows the door’s shut and there aren’t any other threats around. She tries to nip at my parents though, and will act like she’s going to attack Zy when he come near. Zy just looks at her like she’s immature. They’ve discovered the screened in back porch and spend a lot of time there chasing the birds with their eyes. We also have humming birds here. I love the back porch. I was sad to lose my connection with the sky after losing the patio, but I think I’ll spend as much time back there as possible. It’s humid here, which I don’t like at all, but it’s nice in that the air smells and tastes like water, or like the re-breathed air of trees. I can fill my whole lungs up with it and not get light headed. Also the altitude is so low! I feel heavy, like my head is closer to the ground. It takes more effort to fill my lungs all the way up. And mountains. I grew up in the Blue Ridge, I’ve spent a significant amount of time in the Rockies especially near Colorado, and though I’ve always known they were small mountains, I still considered them a major mountain chain, and thought that their presence affected the road systems, farmland, and grown habits of the community, which it has.. But still. I look at them and think, I could walk to the top of you in probably 30 minutes, you’re no bigger than Baul- the “hill” behind our old house that looks over Xela, which has a trail to the top of it that takes 30 minutes. Then I think, if you were in Guatemala, you’d be covered in corn and houses. A mountain here transplanted there would absolutely be prime real estate for a farm. Then there’s the fact that they’re covered in trees at all. I didn’t see all that many trees there, though there should have been a major forest cover in other circumstances. Hence the reforestation projects I suppose.

I miss families here. Kids here are insane. I just watched a 9 year old girl pick up her 2 year old sister by the hands and spin her around and around and around, in the major walkway of the coffee shop. Also, that same little girl screaming at the top of her lungs and her mom talking to her in her best poodle-voice something about being quiet which was obviously not observed. On the plane here from San Salvador there was a little boy Luie’s age who spent the entire 4 hours jumping on top of the cushion of his seat. That’s no exaggeration. And he only had one volume, which was scream, and I never heard his dad say a single thing, not one word. It’s like they’re the adults, they run the house, they run their parents. And I can’t say enough about the idea of carrying a baby on your body when it’s an infant. I never saw a baby cry when it was on a back, not even after 3 hours on a bus when it’s wedged between its mom and the seat. They don’t fuss, it’s like that’s where they belong. Almost every baby I ever saw in a stroller when I worked in the mall was writhing and wimpering. And babies stay with their moms until they’re school age- which means they come to work with them if they have to. There were 2 year olds running around in Trama and in the libreria I got paper supplies at, and they weren’t little terrors. Everyone looked out for it, and it didn’t get in too much trouble because nobody let it, and it didn’t make a big screaming fit when no one paid attention to it. I don’t know what it is that does that, I think that parents there just really spend a lot of time with their kids doing things that aren’t passive tv watching so the kids just know they’ve got attention so they don’t have to fight much for it. And also I have observed parents not letting them get away with crap when they’re being little monsters. I don’t know what it is. I see an observable difference between families here and there though. Like siblings don’t compete as much, and everyone’s more affectionate, and parents are parents and kids are kids, and I don’t have to deal with bitchy kids there, the parents do. On the plane here I was having to deal with that bitchy kid screaming and jumping all over the place and hitting Hugh accidentally and staring at us. Because his dad sure wasn’t.

I want to go on a hike. I don’t suppose it’s safe for me to do that by myself, especially when I don’t know the trails. Maybe I can get Hugh over here to go with me.

I also was able to leave my computer and bag by itself on the other side of the shop while I talked to my magician friend and not worry about it disappearing. That was nice.

I miss the colors there. Here it’s more natural. Brick and leaves and dark asphalt. I miss teal and hot pink. I miss teal a lot. I miss the chrome flashes off chicken busses. Every time I left the patio I got a new visual show. Constant entertainment and inspiration. And the people. Women in traditional dress. Western fashion is boring.

I like being able to wear a skirt again and not getting harassed. I like not having to worry about getting harassed, though I am more sensitive now to the possibility of it. I’m distrustful of young men of all types. That’s probably a bit unfortunate, and I may get over it.

I still can’t make myself tell the story from Guatemala. It’s too far away. I’ll paraphrase.

Monday night, we had another campfire in the patio and invited our friends from the school. We had Guacamole and nachos and fried plantains, all my favorite foods. When we started the fire we made smores too. Carlos, Luis, and Jairo came soon after, and brought hot dogs that were pretty funny to watch roast. We put on salsa music, and Carlos gave an impromptu lesson in the patio for Sara and Ashley’s benefit. I danced some with Luie, who will be a crazy lady killer one day! Ashley used to swing dance, so she and Carlos hit it off as dance partners really well and managed to turn out some nice moves in just a few hours. I got in my last dance with Carlos, which I enjoyed so much, and took lots of pictures that I’ll post later. It was wonderful, I smiled through the whole damn thing and couldn’t have been happier. All my favorite people in one place, doing their favorite things. It was perfect.

Tuesday morning we left at 6:30, and got to the airport at 10:30, something like 4 hours before our flight left. It was relieving to know we weren’t going to have to rush, so I was ok with it. After four months of riding on chicken busses and microbuses and all the times I’ve gotten carsick in that truck, I finally, in my last hour of ever riding a road in Guatemala, had to get the driver to pull over so I could throw up. That just put the cherry on top. My experience on the roads there was oooooveeeerr. We had a short layover in San Salvador, and then got on for Washington. We didn’t have any problems in customs, though I think I was smuggling products that I decided wouldn’t be a good idea to claim since I’d probably have to pay taxes on it. Well, I’m not selling them, am I?

We got out of everything at 12:00, which was not very late. We were expecting 2 at the earliest. And then kind of figured we’d spend the night at the airport. I know I know, how gross and uncomfortable. But hotels in DC are crazy expensive, and we just don’t have spending money right now. Actually, while we were trying to figure out where to go during this time and calculating costs, we figured out with would cost significantly less to stay in Guatemala for another MONTH than this one night after the airport. Doesn’t matter what we did, bus, train, hotel, cab, it would all be over $150. We sucked it up and got a hotel though. 7-9 hours waiting for Hugh’s parents in the morning was just way more than we could handle in the luggage claims while they were waxing the floor. Just too much, plus we had so much luggage, it’s hard to keep track of making sure nothing goes walking off if we doze off. It was worth it, for sure. Hugh and I spent the morning watching TeleMundo Spanish morning shows, and I had to fight, literally fight, my mouth from talking to the maid in Spanish, though I don’t suppose she’d be incredibly offended. Who knows.

Hugh’s parents picked us up at around 8:30 and we went back to Williamsburg, to the cats, to a nice little house in a nice little suburb, with a nice family who was so happy to have us home and take care of us. I ate blueberries and pork chops and petted a tame, clean, sweet dog that was really happy to see us and slept in a flea-free bed and breathed fresh air. It was nice, but I got stir crazy really quickly. My parents picked me up on Thursday with the cats, and we stopped off in Richmond for lunch and to drop off my smuggled items at AlterNatives, then drove the 3 hours home from there.

It’s nice to be home. For all the reasons I’ve already said and a couple more. It’s surreal and I don’t like so much being in this strip mall at the coffee shop. Everyone’s nice. But it’s weird being around so many white people! I’m so used to being the minority. I didn’t like it then, and I still wouldn’t like it, mostly because people there were not very accommodating to my skin color, but the ones that were were really patient and kind. I think I probably encountered more patience and grace from people working with me there than someone from there would get here. I hope I can give that gift back one day.

I also excruciatingly, heart-breakingly, miss Claudia. I would adopt her into my family if I had the chance. I’m sure mom and dad wouldn’t mind having another daughter, and meg and whit would like her as a new sister. I also hope that I can repay her kindness in taking us into her household whenever she wants or can afford to come to Virginia. I hate that she’s in that house all by herself now. I want her to come here. I miss Luie.

Ok. That’s enough for now. At some point I’ll get the nerve to sum up my feelings about the project. I talk about it a lot with Hugh and the people close enough to me to care and ask questions, and I feel like something’s a little unresolved. I’d like to get it all out in an organized manner, and this feels like a good way to do it. So stay tuned. At some point there’s more to come.