martes, 1 de abril de 2008

grandma pat´s apple pie with moon and stars motife... sometimes i get bored.

treating ourselves to a fancy dinner in santa craz el lago

we like hats.

central park, antigua

Patrick comes to Guatemala...

this last month i got to have my first visitor to my site. my boyfriend, patrick, made the long trek from little rhodie to hang out in guatemala for a couple of weeks. so much fun to see him after over half a year! it was also just nice to be with someone who knows me and whom i'm so comfortable with.
volunteers often talk about the duality of personality that often comes with living in a community so culturally far removed from the states. although in time i have begun to feel more comfortable in my town, cultural taboos sometimes prevent me from just being the me i'm used to back home - to let my hair down so to speak. part of this is just part of being culturally sensitive, but having to constantly consider the appropriateness of words and actions in a new context can sometimes be plain exghausing.

this is not to say there is nothing to talk about. people like to joke around and talk about every day things like anywhere in the world. the human struggle that comes from personal relationships is pretty much the same here as back home.

also, sometimes the struggles here have this feeling of legitemacy that doesn't really seem to transfer to the united states: "Estamos luchando..." - we are fighting. we are struggling just to make it. back home supposed stresses seem imagined and insignificant in comparison... deciding to paint the living room egg shell or off white... an expensive cell phone bill.... not being able to afford the latest clothes/technical gadget. compared to.... my baby just died of malnutrition. still, i understand that all stress is relative to the reality we face on a daily basis. we all face hardships in that buddhist-life-is-suffering kinda way, right?
so back to Patrick. i was very excited to see him. it was great to get a taste of back home here in this corner of the world. we checked out the chaos of market day in my site, pulled weeds at "la granja", watched sunset out at the lake, and witnessed some of the processions and flower carpets in Antigua during Semana Santa (Holy Week). more than anything we just hung out in my site, cooked a lot, and played with my puppy.
it is hard being far away from one another, but i think it is worth it....

next time patrick will hopefully be spared some of the side affects of street food although those papas fritas with the pica mas can be pretty hard to resist:-)













spending an afternoon at "la granja"




i don't know.




those crazily fun dentists with the ladies of taltimiche

semana santa in my home town

rough week...

i have one sick puppy. no, really she is actually very sick. the last couple of weeks have been hard. not the kind of hard where i have been able to find some sort of ideal peace corps "the moral of the story/lesson learned is"...

i'm sick. one week with fever, not wanting to leave bed, hacking up some lovely liquids kinda sick. it isn't the type of situation where i was feeling like hopping on a camioneta and taking the bumpy three and a half hour bus ride to see a doctor. i figured i would just sweat it out.

but....

my dog, amalia, was sick, too. she's still a little babe and she was shitting blood and vomiting, a possibly deadly combo for a puppy. i would have brought her to the vet, but it was semana santa meaning that the whole country, including vets offices, were shut down. by the time i got her to the doctor both her and myself were in rough shape. the supposedly experienced doctor gave her a couple of shots and we were on our way.

as we left she was having difficuly walking with her right leg, but i figured she was still pretty sore from the injections. it's been two weeks since we went to the vet and she still cannot walk. i feel like a bad mother or something. it's just sad to see her hobbling around, but we have been doing some serious physical therapy to try and better her leg.

so here is the frustration.... i could not bring her to the vet for a week when she was sick, because the whole country shuts down for a holiday. also, what i thought was a good vet ended up doing some serious damage (possible permenant) to my dog.

times like this is when i ask myself, what the hell am i doing here anyways? i feel very frustrated about the entire situation.

pero, asi es la vida, ¿no?