Me & My Guy: Sunday Funday

Sunday is the only day Cristian doesn't have to work so we made the absolute best of it last weekend. The night before we planned what food we wanted to make and in the early morning I drove the motorcycle to the market and got all the supplies, which included buying the meat of a cow's udder. Yes I tried it, no I didn't like it. It was really tough surprisingly! I thought it was going to be like butter. Anyhow, Cristian likes udder so he lucked out that I didn't like it (I guess).

The only other note about the market that morning was that I actually got good prices. Usually the vendors take advantage of me not knowing the price of things and way overcharge me. An example from the last time I went to the market: I asked how much the mandarines were, she said 5 for 10Q, I only had 5Q, she said “Oh I will gift them to you then, for your son, and sell you 2 mandarines for 5Q”, I gave her the 5Q and she gave me the 2 mandarines, later I realized that she did not gift me anything as that's even more expensive. On Sunday's visit to the market I paid 1Q per mandarine (not from the same lady). Thanks dude with the wheelbarrow of mandarines!

So when I got home Cristian marinated the udders and then got to work making a kite. October is kite flying month here in Guatemala and the kites are not plastic and covered with commercial characters. They are largely homemade using paper, needle, thread, glue, and thin sticks. Cristian and his brothers made dozens of kites every October when they were young of every size, but he hadn't made one in roughly a decade. He spent most of the morning piecing it together.

When it was finished Ezra and Cristian made a fire to cook lunch (yes, fire roasted udders). Ezra really enjoyed making the fire and when it was done he sat in his chair around the fire and even had a poker stick. Such a Minnesotan. Cristian didn't understand. I made a pasta salad and some guacemole. The guacemole turned out really good, I think I've got guacemole down. The secret? Not so much lime juice. Well, I had put in too much lime juice the last time so that was the secret to this batch anyways. There are limes all over the ground from all the trees so it's easy to put too much in when cooking. Although the neighbor told me the other day that lime juice is good for relieving the itching of insect bites, so that's good to know and good to have in plenty.

We sat around the fire and flipped tortillas and ate a good, fire cooked meal. After a digestion period, we took the kite and walked the opposite way down our dead end street than normal, towards the river which is called El Rio Taco (accent over last 'o'). We crossed the river at a narrow point, zigzagged along the river bank and followed a stony path up for a short while. We arrived at this beautiful, sunny, stony piece of land that Cristian's grandmother actually owns. It felt as though we had walked far, but when I looked back over across the river we were aligned perfectly with our own callejon (dead end street, it rhymes with own). It was weird to see our familiar street from such a different perspective. The old men were propped up on the sidewalks in the same places, only viewed from the other side it appeared so strange.

We tried to fly the kite, but tragically there was no wind. Spending the whole morning to make and kite and then having no wind when you want to fly it is a bummer. But we had a lovely time walking around, especially Ezra. He collected sticks, jumped between the rocks, and walked along this pipe.

We waited for wind to come and watched the rain clouds approaching. There was a small wind growing and we wanted to wait to see just that the kite would fly, but looming rain and darkness didn't allow it. As we walked back home the wind grew strong, but we continued and got home just before the rain started. Hopefully next Sunday the wind will be more timely in her arrival.