Oratorio - first weekend

When we arrived, I found out Don Efraín had already found an apartment for me. It´s pretty nice, in Guatemalan standards, 1 bedroom 1 bathroom with living room area, running water and a huge sink in the kitchen. There´s a little patio out back with a pila out there. I´ll take some pics of it so you can see. All this for 500 Q. And the water runs every other day, so that´s cool. So Matt and Brooke, if you´re wondering, yes, I have a shower and a toilet and a sink in the bathroom. I just have to buy a calentador for the shower so I get some hot water (right now it´s just cold). So far I´ve got a bed, a metal stand, and a plastic chair. The high life. It´s not like I´ve spent much time in there anyways. I went in last night and literally fell on my bed and crashed. I woke up this morning, took a cold shower and was off to work. Even though I have moved in, but there´s only one problem. It´s not attached to a family. If Pilar is not in the best of moods, she´ll ask me to move. We´re supposed to live with a host family for 3 months when we get here, but this is probably the best apartment available in town, and if I don´t take it, someone else will. We´ll see what Pilar says on Monday.

Guess what? It is the end of the month, and that means.... inventory! At least everyone from the LSG crew might have gotten that. Yesterday (Saturday) Don Efraín and I went to our farmacia to help Doña Vilda do some inventory. Today we get to finish. We were supposed to go at 9am, but lo and behold, it´s 11:30 am and we´re still at the coop/Don Efraín´s house.

Don Gildardo asked me yesterday if I could tutor his son with English this afternoon. So it looks like I will get something to do. Tomorrow we´re going to visit the school here, and the lemon project the coop has going on. Apparently after that we´re going to the capital to get more medicine for the farmacia.

Overall I still feel like I´m not doing anything constructive yet here. At least I´m doing some things, b/c otherwise I´d be going crazy if I was sitting in the office bored all day. A lady came in the coop yesterday and I tried to explain to her what I was going to do with the coop and her response was, oh you´re a visitor.

I´m just being patient, and soon I´ll get more accustomed to it here and the people will get more accustomed to me, hopefully. By the way, there is internet here. Don Efraín has it in his house. He pays 150Q for a connection off of a satellite. Unfortunately it does not always work, and it´s not the fastest thing in the world, but after about 15 minutes of screaming, I can check email. And it´s free! And people do play basketball. On Friday evening I took a quick walk around the block and there were kids playing on the basketball court, so hopefully one of these days I´ll make an appearance on the court.

This morning Doña Ana asked me if I´d ever had turtle eggs. I´ve never had them, and supposedly there some kind of delicacy, so I agreed. She asked me if I wanted it with beer or lemon juice or beer. Don Efraín had already come back with some vegetable juice for the both of us, so I didn´t really get to choose. I still didn´t understand what was going on until she brought me a glass with the raw turtle egg (minus the shell of course) in there and told me to pour the vegetable juice in there. One, two, and down the hatch. Didn´t really taste anything besides the vegetable juice, unless you count a blob of something going down my throat. One of the older ladies that works in the comedor had some as well, but instead of vegetable juice she had it with beer. I should have opted for the beer, but I was too busy trying to be culturally appropriate! Thanks Grandma! Oh man this brings back a memory - Cantos, do you remember that raw oyster shot we had in Acme Oyster House, New Orleans back in November for LEAD? I think that time I was lucky and had the raw oyster in a shot of vodka. I don´t think I would have agreed to the turtle egg had I known how she was going to serve it to me, but hey at least I now I´ve got a story to tell. That was around 8:30am this morning and it´s about 12:30pm and I´m still alive.