Finally, a quiet moment.
Finally a moment when all the busyness which surrounds me becomes quiet. Finally I can process something more than flip flopped Spanish sentences and six year olds clamoring for a piece of my broken attempt at their language.
Finally a moment when I sit still and wish I had stuck my bible and journal in my melon colored canvas bag this morning.
But I’ll settle for the quietness too.
There is nothing I’d like better to do than write and write and write, process the thoughts which have been fighting for breath and soon smothered under the weight of the daily grind. A few:
We lose the power at least once a day, sometimes three or four. This would not be such a huge inconvenience if we were not so reliant on alarm clocks, spreadsheets and keeping contact through email at home.
The best thing to do upon returning home each evening is to pick three large lemons off the tree outside and make fresh lemonade. Soon the tree will be bare of lemons. This is not the best thing.
I feel like I may be repeating myself when I say this, and so I am, but it is hot down here. They promise that it will be hotter from March through June, but I prefer to hope in the goodness and mercy of God. There has not been a day under 90 since we’ve been here.
It is a bad day when I want to watch Smallville because it will have the only English words I’ll hear that I’m not generating.
I was dismayed upon finding out that:
There is no differentiation between seasons here. No shadows or turning. The darkness always falls at 6pm and the light always comes at 7am.
Spanish uses a completely different alphabet than we do. The letters are the same, but nothing sounds the same. Nothing.
I am not allowed to go barefoot outside.
Mazatenango isn’t a very white-person friendly environment, therefore, we are not allowed to be displayed to the public very often, which is fine, except it means we go nowhere alone. Being alone has its advantages, I already knew, I just didn’t always appreciate them as much as I do now.
Culture:
There are drunk men lying on the side of every road.
Horses graze in parking lots.
Women are taught the art of balancing bags on their heads from a very young age.
Cow tendons are a delicacy.
Children are the same here, there, everywhere. The same mischievous grins and fooling eyes. The same perfect destinies and faith. The same dependence and small stature. The only thing different is that here we speak a different language.
The story of Babel isn’t very comforting to me right now.
