Water Works

So, I lied. A. Ho here again. There is much to be said about the time that has passed since Friday afternoon. The most important of these points are that Hannah and Aubrey absolutely wore me out over the weekend and that I got to teach a science lesson this morning. Also, lunch. Lunch was important too. I'm sure you're all dying to know what the surprise was. It was a tree house. It rocked. Here goes.

We love Miss Allison!

After school on Friday, Aubrey, Hannah and I ran to the bank, sped home, packed up, called for a cab and headed out of town. The ride was pretty miserable. The cab was just fine, but there was so much traffic and so many people trying to get out of town for the weekend that it took nearly an hour for us to even leave the city. The pollution of so many smoke-spitting engines, overflowing chicken buses with people dangling from the windows and the jerky start and stop of the traffic made us all feel pretty hypoxic and conversation died quickly. Once we finally reached the town of Antigua, we were stopped by a shotgun wielding security guard from using a restroom in a coffeeshop, so Aubrey bought a muffin to appease him. And we got to use their restroom. So HA. A thirty minute trip had become a two hour drive and while on the road Hannah was scheming with someone unidentified about our shuttle to the surprise location. We missed our originally scheduled ride as well as dinnertime. Neither of these issues ended up mattering. We found the cafe where we were supposed to meet our shuttle. Standing outside of "Cafe No Se" ("Cafe I don't know"... I think... I don't know), it seemed that no cabs or buses were anywhere to be seen. That was because we were to ride in the back of a  pickup. Awesome, I know. I was never allowed to do that as a child, so it was particularly thrilling. We hopped in the bed and found some seats amidst the bags of corn and old tires. There will be pictures to follow of Hannah and Aubrey sitting quietly while I giggled uncontrollably as we bounced and tossed over cobblestone roads and then twisted through narrow mountain passes. We left the town behind and were raised high above the city in the valley onto the face of one of the many volcanic crests that sheltered Antigua. The view of lights and city reminded me of Taxco, Mexico, a similar location that I was familiar with. Finally, the road ended. The end.

That's not the end, but it is the beginning of us falling right back down the mountain we were driven up. We paid the driver and were pointed down a muddy path. In the dark. All Hail Aubrey for thinking to bring a flashlight! We carefully traipsed through the forest for about ten minutes until finally we found signs for the Earth Lodge. Some dogs barked at us in the distance, and a goat (Fortuna is her name, as we later found) took an especially dark and quiet moment to bleat and scare the pants off of me. Once the Lodge was found, we were welcomed in by a group of ... this is not prejudiced, it is just true... HIPPIES. The most friendly kind of hippies. Hippies who cook delicious vegetarian meals for us! Dinner was beer bread, a rustic salad with beet purple garlic dressing, steamed veggies, chipotle beans and spicy tomatillo sauce. We destroyed it. Scraped our plates clean. Then there was apple blackberry crumble topped with homemade granola. We liked the food. Can you tell? My grandmother will come back from trips and when anyone asks about her travels, she ALWAYS lists the components of each meal. I think I get that from her, but this was really good. Remember how I eat meat? I couldn't think of a single complaint, it was so good. After fending off the advances of an extra tipsy, friendly hippy, we were lead by Johannes, a German employee to our tree cabin. It was a cabin in a tree. Actually, more like a tree surrounded by a cabin. The cabin had two floors and windows that spanned the entire height of the building, looking out over the same panoramic view of the valley of Antigua and two VOLCANOES in the background. After sufficient girl-talk, giggling and nail-painting, we abandoned the queen bed on the first floor and all stuffed into the lofted bed above. This lasted about... yawn... goodnight.

There's a tree in my house!

The very next thing I remember is waking to what I thought was the sunrise. Through the mist and clouds across the valley an orange glow peaked up over the top of the mountain. I closed my eyes and attempted to fall back asleep. Thinking for a moment, I realized that I was facing southwest, not east, as I am told is the direction from which the sun rises (Angela Lansbury's Beauty and the Beast, anyone?). So what was that gleaming orange that I saw? OI VACA! It was lava! I finally saw lava coming out of a volcano! However unwilling I was to go along and watch the sunrise in the adirondack chairs by the lodge before, I was no longer. I popped right out of bed and trotted off down the path to sit in the morning dew and enjoy the sights with the girls. Sights are great. Exploring is better. We snuck up the opposite path to view the actual treehouse (suspended in midair by only a tree) they had attempted to reserve. We found monkeys that were actually squirrels, but we're going to pretend they are monkeys. We found a sauna and puppies! They weren't babies, but all dogs can be puppies. Lola the Siberian Husky and Rufus the German Shepherd welcomed us to breakfast and kept us company through the morning until we packed up and hiked to hill to leave. I think it was actually harder during the day, seeing the hills ahead of us, to travel back to the pickup spot, that and the fact that it was now nearly all uphill. We rode with two of the Earth Lodge employees down to the city in the back of the truck. This time, however, we saw that the Earth Lodgers both stood to ride down. Naturally, I did too. I think Hannah and Aubrey are probably smarter than me to have remained seated, but I saw pictures of my friend Marek riding in a truck like this in Guyana, so I figured I had to as well. It was like a genuinely frightening rollercoaster. Children in small homes on either side of the road popped out of doorways and out from underneath tarps to shout "HOLA! BUENOS DIAS!" and we were down the mountain and back to Antigua. Along the way, we were sad to hear that another American had been staying at the Lodge but had left to do laundry in the city and never returned, without paying her comically small bill. That was truly disappointing, but we kept an eye out for Latrice, and if any of us ever find her, we'll be sure to perform a citizen's arrest.

Chocopiñas!

After scouring the market for deals and jaguar trinkets that my brother requested (he would have accepted carved, stuffed or live, he said), Aubrey and I treated ourselves to a chocopina each. Heaven = a frozen slice of pineapple + on a stick + dipped in chocolate. Mr. Tom met us at the market and we were on our way again, this time to Paredon (spelling last time was off) Surf House for the rest of the weekend. The trip was long and sweaty, but the music and company were great. Upon arrival at Paredon, we dropped off our things above the kitchen in the dormitory style bungalow. We were each provided with a cot, a sheet a pillow and a towel. That was all we needed. I might as well take this opportunity to explain that until this point, I had yet to bathe in Guatemala. My bad. There was no need. We stripped down, jumped into swimsuits and (as promised) ran giggling into the ocean. Tom and Hannah surfed, Aubrey and I played in the waves and as the sun set, we and the ten or so other proprietors and guests lounged under the bungalow, reading selected chapters of our books to each other (Tom's racy Ken Follett WWI historical fiction Fall of Giants, Aubrey's do it yourself psychic trainer and my Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). Just as Christmas fell over Hogwarts, dinner was served. This time, tomato, green bean, and sunflower seed salad, followed by Swiss... or Swedish, I forget, beef with noodles in wine sauce and a vanilla bean pana cotta with fresh strawberries. Marvelous. Before leaving the Earth Lodge, Hannah bought their cookbook. While enjoying our meal, she mentioned to the owners of the surf house that they should record their recipes into a book and anyone would be crazy not to want a copy as well. They were quite intrigued and spent to rest of the evening poring over the concept.

They spent the whole evening, except for the part that they brought up a documentary they had seen- The Most Hated Family in America. Can I get an "OH BROTHER!"? Here I am, little Kansan me, a couple thousand miles from home and of course, as always, without my asking and quite to my dismay, the Fred Phelps cult of Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, KS is the topic of conversation. If you're interested or don't know, he/they are a family of self-indoctrinated everyone haters (homosexuals, liberals, Jews, Muslims, Americans, Canadians, opera singers, chefs, Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, soldiers and just about any other group in Topeka, Kansas, the US or quite possibly the world). Freedom of speech is in my opinion a integral tenant of the development and growth of a modern, free society, but their blame for all the world's problems and absolute disdain for anyone but themselves, represented by obscene, suggestive, vulgar signs and pictures HELD UP ON THE STREET BY CHILDREN who cannot explain the phrases they hold, nor the reason why they are there, are, to attempt to be more succinct, certainly no way to promote the growth or improvement of the society in which they find so much fault. I am embarrassed to be associated with them, but I take their publicity as an opportunity to exercise my free speech that I don't know how to fix the world, just as they obviously don't either.

My blood pressure drops a little now that is finished, we spent the night in the bungalow, no mosquitoes were bothering us, but there was netting over the bed and I have always wanted to feel like a tropical princess, so I slept under it. Kickass, I know. The next morning, we sported our swimsuits again to enjoy the waves and warm water. Breakfast was served (tipico for me, again, this time con tocino y aguacate- with bacon and avocado! Bacon is my favorite!) Tom surfed, the girls played in the pool and more HP was read. The sun made the black sand beach scalding, but the entire situation was so absolutely relaxing that no hot sand, or ants in my pants could bother any of us. We showered in the open air (walls, of course) but the lack of roof was really liberating. Once bathed, Tom, Aubrey, Hannah and I loaded up the Terminator (Tom's SUV) and headed out of town. We were all pooped, burnt and happy. Our return to town brought us to the grocery store to get supplies for the newly acquired cookbook. We made feta stuffed tomatoes, beer bread, avocado ice cream and I'll speak for all of us that we slept soundly.

Fwends!

Today was my last day with los ninos. Sad story. Hannah really let me take the lead with them. I read a chapter of Junie B. Jones, one of my personal favorites, and I even was allowed to teach the science lesson on water pollution and filtration. Whenever I give a speech or perform or dive, I get anxious. It's definitely nerves. I was red in the face and excited and hesitant not to make a mistake and generally full of adrenaline. I don't know if they liked it, but I LOVED it. I explained that filters are permeable to certain things. The door is permeable to people, the window is permeable to insects and the coffee filter is permeable to water and as it turns out, very small bits of dirt that keep the water brown, even when passed through it. We brainstormed observations about our water samples (polluted and tap) and inferences about the water we saw, based on these observations. As the lesson started to solidify itself, I felt much more comfortable with the idea of people believing the things I said to them. That seems quite odd, being typed, but it's true. Most of my interactions at school, work at the hospital and home are relations of opinion or debate, which I welcome. This feeling of trust for me was truly exhilarating. I can absolutely see teaching as something that I would love to do, but still, it scares me that there are these young brains, whirring along, now in part due to something that I have provided. My palms sweat to think about it.

Good morning, 3A!

The kids led me through the lunch line where I bought an authentic Guatemalan school lunch which was incredible. After PE and Music, the day was done and I had to say goodbye to (now partially) my little ones. The hug had about 46 arms and nearly toppled me over, but just like when Hannah moved away the first time and I was studying organic chemistry in chalk on her driveway, it was not goodbye. There is no need to be sad or hate the idea of separation as the feeling of reunion is so good, as I was reminded a week ago. Hannah is now done tutoring, we will go to the VIP movies tonight with Katie, Makenzie and Aubrey. My boarding pass is printed and I will be home in less than 24 hours. Bittersweet is cliche. I thought I would be relieving Hannah of thoughts of home by coming here. Instead, I have given myself another locale, culture and group of people to love. I can't call it homesickness, because this was never truly my home. I will call it Guatemalasick, and I can guarantee that is what I will be in about a day. These are just my thoughts, my perceptions. Come here and decide for yourself.