Pupusa y habas

We have a couple of new favorite treats: pupusas and habas. Habas are roasted broad beans. I know, it doesn't sound that great, but they're crunchy and when spiced with chilies and lime, they're super tasty. Of course, I'll eat just about anything with chili & lime....chips, almonds, corn nuts...you name it! At least I can justify these as possibly being just slightly more healthy. Pupusas are filled corn tortillas. Apparently, it's a Salvadoran thing, but a number of the restaurants here make them too. We tried frozen ones tonight that were so scrumptious we're anxious to try the fresh ones.

So, we solved the light problem the low-tech way. Realizing that our apartment was covered up with antique candle holders, we decided to make good use of them. And since everything is so soggy from the incessant rain, we figured that the risk is acceptable. Our newly learned Spanish skills helped us find some pillars and tapers to buy and now although the place looks a little bit like a church, it's better than its previous cave-like appearance.

We had a lovely afternoon and climbed up the hill north of town where a very large cross overlooks the city. The Lonely Planet Guide from a few years ago says it's not the best part of town, but from our apartment we could see that there were a bunch of people up there. Climbing up the hill, we saw a couple of tourist police and once we reached the summit, we saw groups of families, kids with nuns, and old grannies wearing high heels. Didn't feel too threatening, and it was a great relief to get ourselves out of the apartment! On the descent, Larissa tried to count the stairs of the path and we think there are about 322. She had a few difficulties such as skipping #45, and going from 309 to 900. Perhaps her math teacher (me) needs to get back with it...

Fin de Semana

I sadly said goodbye to my Spanish teacher, Sonia yesterday. I enjoyed the week of classes with her immensely; it was quite nice to have someone just to talk with! The owner of school, Humberto teased us every day because whenever he passed, Sonia and I were chatting, not working in the grammar book. He accused us of talking about clothes and makeup and boys but little did he know that we were solving the problems of the world. We covered health, politics, immigration, narcotraficantes, food, adolescents, and more. At least that's what I think we talked about - I certainly hope that I didn't come across as some whacko Idaho survivalist or something! Sonia said I speak very elegantly....but that is partly because I don't know the idiomas! Once I learn the short cuts, I won't have to use long convoluted phrases to say what I need to say!

Y'know, I think part of the problem in learning Spanish is that I don't know what many of these verb tenses even mean in English. What the heck is a past subjunctive anyway? Or a pluperfect subjunctive? Anyone? Anyone? I thought not - I think I'll be sticking with these more than sufficient tenses: present, past, future, and a little conditional or imperfect thrown in occasionally when I feel like speaking "elegantly"!

Three solid days of rain inspired me to get to the gym for some exercise today. I've been avoiding it because the music they play there is very very very unappealing to me. But at least it's very very loud! I made a great discovery today though. Every Saturday afternoon, they give Salsa lessons in the gym. During the lessons, the music is still very very very loud. But at least it's Salsa. And that's much more tolerable.

I've added links to Kelsey & Larissa's blogs if anyone wants to read the teenage version of our adventure. They are titled, "My Extended Summer Vacation", and "My 6 month Summer " respectively. Good to see they're taking this experience seriously from an educational perspective!

Brain Overload

We're noticing a disconcerting set of symptoms: it seems that the more Spanish we learn, the more English words we forget. Today I couldn't come up with the word for "Wasabi", and Kelsey couldn't remember "Speed Skating". It's almost as if our brains have limited capacity and something has to get dumped to make room for every new word that goes in!

Temblor?

I awoke early this morning to rattling windows and a gently shaking bed. After deducing this disruption wasn't from late night fiestas, I started to think I was feeling my first earthquake. As my little heart started beating faster, the shaking stopped, only to resume a few minutes later. It was not very dramatic, just gentle shaking. When I asked my spanish teacher about it later, she said that it probably wasn't an earthquake and explained that many of the buildings in Antigua shake when large buses or trucks drive by. This was not reassuring to me. I then started to wonder "if that type of disruption is occurring merely as a result of a truck driving by, what's going to happen if there really is an earthquake?"

We're in our third day of spanish classes at the Christian Spanish Academy.  The school is just a few blocks from our apartment and so far I'm very impressed. We each took an assessment test and were placed with our own private instructor. We spend 4 hours a day with at our table under the umbrella with one on one instruction and conversation. The girls both enjoy their teachers - they are really animated young women who like to take Kelsey & Larissa out to buy bread or ice cream and have plans to play basketball tomorrow! My teacher is also a great match for me - we have a very good time chatting about all kinds of things. And this is the first situation in which I'm not getting in trouble for talking in class because it's part of the learning process! Larissa is in level A, Kelsey in B, and I'm in C. We're all doing some amount of review of material that we've learned already. In my case, since my last Spanish classes were more than 25 years ago, the review is just fine!!!!

Ben went back to Driggs this morning for some business and we sent with him our wishlist:
1. washcloths(they don't provide them and the one I brought never dries so gets disgusting pretty quickly)
2. Extension cords and a wireless router. There's only one internet connection and of course we each have a laptop we want to plug in!
3. Lamps or stronger light bulbs. The apartment is a very quaint renovated hacienda...but it's a little dark and gloomy at night.
4. A toaster oven. There's no oven here and I'm running out of things to cook on the stovetop.

(I probably won't actually get that last one but can certainly learn how to be more creative!) Other than that, we're really not craving anything that we're not able to get here. There's even a Subway, a Burger King, and a Domino's Pizza if we should feel the urge for fastfood!

George Foreman

It's the simple things that are important. Tonight we toasted George Foreman for inventing the Mean Lean Fat-reducing grilling machine. One of that last things we did before embarking on our trip was to go to the Driggs Thrift Store to buy a $3.00 George Foreman grill to bring with us. Wow was that a great purchase! Since we don't have an oven (another 'hassle' I neglected to mention in my previous whine), it's great to have a grill. Kinda pathetic how my concerns have completely narrowed into the very basics of survival: Can I purchase food? Can I make dinner for the family? Can I keep them healthy? If I wash these vegetables in the water, will that be worse or better? (Thank goodness for vinegar & its assistance in bug killing!)

So far, so good as far as keeping healthy goes. We're not being hyper-paranoid and use sink water to brush teeth, wash dishes, etc. And we realize that anytime we go out to dinner, we have no idea what kind of hygienic precautions they are taking. I'm hoping that our immune systems can keep up with what I guess is the constant onslaught!

We also gave thanks tonight for the fact that we have consistent hot water, electricity, and internet. In our experience, none of these things can be relied upon in India and it minimizes the hassle factor to not have to worry about these basic survival issues.

Today I missed a great photo-op: I saw a Guatemalteca woman about 4'10" tall, dressed in a colorful skirt and embroidered blouse. She was navigating through a large crowd of people. In her left hand, she was carrying a brightly colored bag full of something that appeared to be somewhat heavy. Balanced on her head (with no support from her hands!) was a bundle of something that was larger than a bread box. In her right hand, she was holding a cell to her ear and chattering away. Talk about multi-tasking! And talk about anachronism. Wish I could have captured it!

International Hassle

This is when international adventure turns into international hassle. Although I know it will get better, right at this moment, I’d just like to be back in Idaho (snow and all!). We’ve caught the end of the rainy season in Guatemala which means we’re still getting downpours every day. While my skin and hair and nails are loving the humidity (especially after being used to single digit aridity in Driggs!), the moisture has a downside too – and its ugly name is mold and mildew. The room the girls are sleeping in had some leaks and water damage from the rain last week. The air hasn’t been dry enough to air that room out and it’s starting to smell horribly stuffy. It’s so musty, we dragged a mattress into the dining room for Kels & Larissa to sleep on so they don’t have to breathe mildew in the bedroom all night. You can imagine how I sounded complaining about the problem:

“We have a problem. This room is wet. This room needs to dry. It is not ready. My daughters are not able to sleep here.”

The apartment manager, Sofia, promises to get it sorted out tomorrow; I think what I understood her to say was that they’re going to bring in some maquina to remove the water. We’ll see – our experience is that so often in international travel, the response to a complaint is assurance that it will be taken care of….but very often the follow through just isn’t there.

To top it off, we've discovered that Saturday night is serious party night in Antigua. Apparently, many of the wealthy folks from Guatemala City have weekend homes here and they drive up on Saturdays to spend the night in the cooler hill country. Starting about 8:00 pm, we had at least 2 bands blasting us from opposite sides of the apartment. It was so noisy, the drum beats were literally rattling the window frames! I don't know how late they played because I was finally lulled to sleep by the boom boom boom. Ai yi yi!

So now, I’m just feeling a little sleepy and stuck – the rain is keeping us inside and I’m feeling lonely. But, tomorrow the girls & I start Spanish lessons and I know that will help get us out of our isolation. And Tuesday night we’re attending a meeting about how to get involved in Guatemala where we’re hoping to find some volunteer opportunities for all of us to do!

Market Shock

Today’s adventure was to the open air market for provisions. Although there is a large grocery store here in Antigua, many of the items are imported and tend to be somewhat expensive. The city has an impressive and intimidating open air market: about 3 acres full of stalls and tables with narrow paths winding through. Near the outside, one can find all varieties of produce: pyramids of tomatoes or bananas or pineapple, piles of jalapenos and onions and cilantro, stacks of potatoes and green beans and lumpy squashes. As one meanders into the depths of the maze, the market reveals aisles of meat; various animal parts suspended from stalls, heaps of raw chicken, and strings of sausages. We wandered for an hour, getting lost in the twists and turns; stumbling over mangy dogs, hopping over puddles of water, and generally looking dazed and confused. All in all fairly overwhelming, and after finally navigating our way out, we realized that most of our purchases could have been made at the edges. I still can’t figure out what differentiates the vendors – although one may have cilantro and another garlic, they’ll both have tomatoes and onions and seem virtually indistinguishable. My mission is to figure out how Guatamaltecos choose which stall to frequent.
Is it price? Is it quality? Is it buddies? In any case, we ended up buying some beautiful fresh produce: an onion, garlic, a jalapeno, a large papaya, a bunch of bananitas (the small sweet guys), green beans, potatoes, half dozen tomatoes, 3 large chicken breasts and a kilo of blackberries all for less than $10! And we’re fairly certain that we paid too much because we didn’t bargain.

Eating is interesting - I’m struggling to cook in a kitchen with limited supplies. And after the close-up views of raw meat at the market, Kelsey & Larissa declared they were going to be vegetarians while we’re here. They don’t understand that all meat starts out the same (I’m pretty certain slaughter houses are not too lovely either), we’re just sheltered from the disgusting reality of seeing the meat on the animal. It reminds of being asked by a Sri Lanka Villager, “Who butchers the chicken in your village?” How could I begin to describe mass production, Styrofoam trays, and plastic wrapping? I managed to put together a tasty dinner last night: oven roast chicken with onion, boiled potatoes with butter and garlic, green beans and blackberry cobbler for dessert. The girls even dropped their meat objections after tasting the tender chicken; I don’t know what it is, but chicken is really good here. Maybe it has to do with never being frozen or being generally fresher?

We just took an assessment test for Spanish school. I struggled more than I thought I would; didn’t realize how much I am avoiding conjugating future tense by using the cheating tense: “Yo voy a_____ “ (I’m going to _____”.) We’ll start classes on Monday and hopefully the verbs will come back to me quickly!

The adventure begins!

My apologies for repeating myself to some of you – I need to update a number of friends so please bear with me while I provide a Reader’s Digest Condensed version of recent events!

Ben was flying for SpiceJet in India during June & July and we had planned to return with Kelsey & Larissa to spend the school year living and traveling there while Ben continued to fly. It seemed the perfect time to embark on an international adventure: the girls are still in middle school so are not yet caught up in sports and grades and boys and all of the other trappings of high school. And with the horrible economic climate and crazy pre-election political atmosphere, we figured we wouldn’t miss too much by being gone for a few months! After a few twists and turns, we now find ourselves living abroad….but with a slightly different plan. Many of you know of the challenges we faced in trying to figure out living in Delhi, including:

1. The high cost of living in Delhi.
2. Spice Jet's recent cost cuts and moving pilots to a hotel with smaller rooms.
3. Ben's mother's poor health - worrying about being literally halfway around the world and wondering what we do if she takes a turn for the worse.
4. Ben's flying schedule (or LACK thereof!) and Spicejet's apparent inability to schedule any time off for him with any advance notice.
5. My uneasiness in doing a lot of traveling with the girls and without Ben
6. And then.....the bombings in Delhi recently. Two were in Connaught Circle and our compatriots at Spice Jet heard/felt them in their hotel a few blocks away. Another one was at the India Gate - a popular tourist area. This factor alone isn't enough to scare me away; but the thought of having to be hyper vigilant, avoid all crowds and worry constantly about public transportation didn’t thrill me!

When taking all of these factors into consideration, we've decided to make a complete left turn and are in Antigua, Guatemala to study Spanish this fall.

We arrived yesterday after an uneventful journey down. The travel gods seemed to be smiling on our journey: everything was on schedule, all the bags arrived in good shape and we arrived safe and sound. The apartment manager Sofia sent a taxi driver to Guatemala City and he was waiting for us at the airport while Sofia stayed up late in Antigua to unlock the apartment for us. We’re staying at the El Solar Apartments, a lovely place only a few blocks from the central plaza in Antigua. Here are some pics of our unit (#3) from their website:

Apartamentos El Solar

Today we walked around the city getting acquainted with our new ‘hood. Antigua is a very old city – verging on 500 years old with ruins and cathedrals galore. The roads are cobblestone and all of the building walls come right to the sidewalks. Peering into doorways as we pass, we can see that the entryways lead to beautiful garden courtyards inside each structure. The streets can be somewhat hectic, but the courtyards inside provide a cool and calm escape immediately. I can see that we’re going to have to get into an afternoon siesta habit soon!

So far the weather is pleasant – partly cloudy and in the 70’s. It is the tail-end of the rainy season so will only be getting nicer and nicer as we head into November. I noticed that the forecast is for snow in Driggs this weekend. I won’t be sad to miss that, but hope it keeps coming so it’s another good powder year!