Saludos!

Hello, hello! Que tal a todos, and my deepest apologies for the lengthy absence of postings concerning the whereabouts and well being of myself and my guy. We are in fact here in Chiquimula, Guatemala where it is somewhat difficult to acquire the necessary means to access the internet from one's casa. It's a long story, but I should mention that one critical element of the down fall of staying in touch is the inability of a company called needabattery.com. I ordered a battery for my computer from them 2 months ago, and have finally received it. Yes, the lesson here is to check the consumer report before purchasing as I later found that this particular company received an overall F.

So here we are, living in an adobe house, getting a feel for life here a little bit more everyday. In general it is very tranquil, with folks setting along our quiet street talking about the rain, the heat, the price of corn, etc., as well as at least a dozen children of all ages running up and down, kicking an empty, crushed plastic bottle for sport. Many of them have actual soccer balls, but they appear to prefer the bottle- I suspect for the sound it makes scraping along the pavement. How about that for recycling!

Our house has one medium sized bedroom, an equally medium sized living room, a large patio, a large kitchen, and many fruit bearing trees in the expansive backyard. Our neighbors on one side are primarily chickens, with one large dog that likes to have conversations with our pet birds. Yes, we have multiple feathered friends as well as other pets. Currently we have one parrot (Homero Jump Rope), two small green birds (la Turra and Eyebrow), one cat (Gato), one duck (Patito Feo/Ugly Duckling), and one iguana who doesn't have a name because we rarely see him as he hangs out in the trees all the time feeding on insects and such. The iguana was rescued from Cristian's dad's neighbor's house where it was tied up in a plastic bag and had had its tail and fingernails cut off. Cristian is some kind of animal whisperer and had to rescue the poor creature, so here he is growing back more tail and nails every day and is nothing of a nuisance. The duck was also a rescue effort of Cristian, as its mother did not want it and would peck at it whenever it got close. I guess what happened was that there were two mama ducks and all but one of the first mama's eggs hatched. To save the egg it was placed in the nest of the other mama duck, but when her real eggs hatched along with the adopted one, she knew it was not her young and rejected him. The poor thing really just wants to follow someone around, and although sometimes I accidentally brush him with my foot no one is deliberately pecking at him here at our house. He and the cat get along very well, except when the cat thinks he's going to eat the duck, but the duck is growing faster than the cat so it's not a very good chance the cat will be successful.

The torrential rain has ceased thankfully, as our house is on a down slope from the rest of the yard and often times we found ourselves fighting to keep the water out of the house with brooms for longer than my arms preferred. Cristian's father's house was re-flooded, and this time was apparently worse than the time before (remember all you generous souls who helped out? Thanks again!). However, this time around many more people showed up to help clean and donate food and all of that so I am electing to not sponsor a fundraiser. Seriously, the river overtakes your house twice in a rainy season, you need to move. What's that saying, fool me once never gonna fool me again? Yes, the river has proven its strength as well as the imbalance of the environment. Move it or lose it.

What am I talking about weather when I should be giving the Ezra update? Right. Well, he continues to grow I noticed this morning when I put on his ball cap and it looked comically petite resting on top of his head. He is picking up some Spanish, he can count from one to five consistently and sometimes when I am speaking to Cristian in Spanish Ezra understands what we are talking about. A lot of the time I think that Ezra understands more Spanish than he lets on but, like all children, he often times prefers not to understand (like when the neighbor boy asks him for his toy back, or his father tells him not to strangle the cat) because he wants to continue his way. He's a little too obsessed with watching television which I let slide a bit mostly because it is all in Spanish and I figure it will help him to learn. We spend everyday together and I primarily speak in English with him (when I speak in Spanish he says, “Mama, please speak in English.”) so I think his progress of learning Spanish is slightly retarded by the continued English immersion for the majority of the day.

Here's a cute Ezra quote from the other day:

Me: “Where does your food go after you put it in your mouth?”

Ez: “Into your milks (breasts).”

Me: “And after that?”

Ez: “Into your tummy.”

Me: “And after that?”

Ez: “To Grandma's house.”

I've asked him these questions several times and he always answers in this way, and I don't suspect that he is joking as his delivery is quite serious.

Here's one more from this morning:

Setting: after doing number two in the potty he looks down at his work and remarks:

“Mama, there's a skateboard in there.”

His poop looked like a skateboard? Sure sweetie.

Cristian got Ezra a bike, but he can only ride it with us pushing him around which gets very tiresome. Life is a bit more tiresome here as everything takes much more human power than industrial power. There is not dishwasher, there is no washing machine, there is no Swiffer. I'm a bit of an environmentalist so I can find my deep appreciation for the exercise and interaction offered by the lack of mechanical luxuries. However, doing everything takes so freaking long and there are many, many times when I want to throw in the laundry and catch up on some reading rather than get my upper body work out.

I guess that leads into what exactly am I doing. At the present I am basically a house wife, which is a funny kind of job to be plopped into. One of the key reasons why I decided to haul us down here was so I could spend more time with Ezra, rather than having to work and put him in child care as I would have had to in the US. So in my new role I am able to do just that and I do enjoy it. We have our moments of insane frustration and grief, but overall we have a good time together and I like watching him learn new things every day, whether it be standing up to pee (“Like Uncle does!”) or cracking an egg or making fresh mandarin juice (his current favorite) or pouring himself a glass of water, there are so many opportunities to learn.

Which brings me to what I would like to be doing in addition to my current house wife chores: teaching. I have two potential students, a girl and a boy each 3 years old, but I am waiting for their parents to make up their minds about when, how long, and so forth. I am brainstorming fun activities and making worksheets and such, but am weary of investing too much at this point since my students are still only hypothetical. I am going to print up some business cards and put some flyers around town sometime very soon and hopefully that will jump start things.

In the mean time I am cooking a lot, as a housewife must. It is much more challenging here, as I have no idea what much of the food in the market is. At first I would only buy the things I knew how to cook, but soon that got old so I've begun to buy random things that look interesting and then Cristian tells me how to prepare them. For example, squash blossoms. So pretty, but what on earth do you do with them? Make a soup! I also bought okra the other day, something I know more or less how to cook, but have learned that okra is delicious bar-b-qued! Most of the weird looking fruit can be turned into a fresco (juice the fruit, add water, sugar and ice), an activity that Ezra thoroughly enjoys. I have not jumped onto the weird meat wagon however, even though Cristian has expressed interest in eating pigs ears. Yes, pigs ears. I see them in the market and I simply cannot buy them. I told Cristian that he would need to do something for me if I cooked him pigs ears, and I haven't figured out what humongous favor that will be quite yet. Cristian would also like to buy a whole, live chicken that he would then kill. I think this could be a good thing to do, but am a little worried about Ezra's reaction both to the death of the bird and his attitude towards our pets afterwards. I'll keep you posted about that.

We did make it to Copan a few weekends ago and had a super wonderful fantastic great time. I pretty much would prefer to live there, but alas it doesn't really seem possible at this point. It is so small and clean and the air is so fresh and the mountains... oh and the countless English speaking friends and amazing library. I had to tear Ezra kicking and screaming out of the library when we went it was so sad. There is not a library here in Chiquimula and it stinks big time. We will have to go to Copan very frequently and gain the trust of the librarians so we can take books home with us. The selection we have is getting a bit stale, although the care packages from Grandma are very helpful to liven things up.

Cristian and I are getting along alright. He works a lot so I feel like we hardly ever see him. He works Monday through Saturday, 8 to 6 with a 2 hour lunch break from noon to 2 when he comes home. This leaves only Sunday and since the house where we live needs a fair amount of work he spends all day busy working here. Of course one of the reasons we came here was so that Ezra could build a relationship with his father, and right now I don't see that happening. I'm sure it's happening much more subtly than I realize but at this time my first wish would be that they spent more time together. At this point when Ezra sees his dad he asks, “Is he going to work?” as though he doesn't belong in the house. I think the language barrier is a huge obstacle to overcome, as they can't really communicate and plus when Cristian is here I speak in Spanish to him potentially causing Ezra to feel left out because he doesn't understand what we're talking about and prefers to be a part of the conversation as anyone would.

At any rate, things are above average most days and the house is coming together nicely and my computer works so really who can complain. It's started to rain now, not torrential I don't need to get the broom, but our pet birds love to make all sorts of funny noises when it rains, especially the parrot. I think he really likes the rain. Oh and by the way just so you know, the birds are not in cages they just live outside in a tree near the patio. The parrot can't fly and Cristian clipped the other birds' wings, which I will have you know is just trimming their feathers not actually maming them in anyway. I wouldn't want a bird in a cage in my house. I don't like that.

I'll be much better at keeping in touch from now on, I promise! Here's some pictures and videos from our first month here in Guatemala.

OH NO! The pictures are taking an extremely long time to load and I only have access for 10 more minutes! I will have longer access next time, I'm so so so so sos osososososoososso very sorry- only words this time. Boo hoo.