Friday, July 11, 2008

Huele Mal (it smells bad)

So, this morning Jill, Rucci (girl), and I went to our first yoga class! It begins at 650am and apparently thats when everyone is driving into the city because when I turned the corner off my street, there was a cloud of exhaust for as far down the road as I could see and it sucked. It smelled so bad, like I had my nose stuck in an exhaust pipe of an old school bus. NOT what I was hoping for at 630 am on my way to do something healthy...barf. Yoga was great though, so we bought a months pass, $12 (100Q)...good deal minus the exhaust issue on the way. They have these buses here called chicken buses which are super old school buses painted all crazy, and they drive just as crazy. If you dont get out of the street, they will still go right next to you, and when I say next, I mean 5 inches from hitting you. Its happened to me once, and never again. I about jumped out of my skin when it came by...I had heard it coming but there was enough room in the street, so I bet they got close to me for fun. Anyway, there are millions of them and they let out that exhaust you see come out of semis in the states. I guess I will get used to it. Today I feel much better, I went to the pharmacy and told the lady my stomach hurt so she gave me a box of pills which read something like intenstine in the symptoms part so i figured it was ok...so i took them and feel great! kinda risky. but i could read enough to feel like it was ok to eat and i didnt start seeing crazy shit. lessons are good, learning so much vocab and verbs that i feel a little swamped in how much i need to study this weekend. ive learned the parts of the body, fruits, vegis, clothes for winter...amongst other random words. right now all the students are on a hike somewhere, which i wanted to do, but when i got home lunch wasnt ready and i only had 15 minutes until the group left so i just skipped out...rather do that than find a way to skip out of lunch, and i have other stuff to do, like blog. can you use blog as a verb? yesterday we went to zona 3, it is the city part of xela. the roads are much wider, the buildings taller (as in 2 to 4 stories) and here is where the market is and a mall and the bus station and the market. though we walked there and if i want to go alone or with someone else i have to take a little bus...i may do this to get a charger for my camera..going crazy without it! mom, have you found it? that area is nuts. the market is huge, selling everything you can think of from lingere to crazy foods ive never seen and dvds. probably where you all will get your christmas presents from! though i can get so much stuff cause its so cheap here. heres an example of the prices

beer $3 at an expensive place
bus ride $.15
cell phone $12 (and when you buy 100Q worth ($12) worth of minutes you can get up to cuadruple that, 400Q worth, so minutes are super cheap and it costs the same to call the states as it does anyone here)
i went to the grocery store and bought water, shampoo, conditioner, chips, razors, soap, a basket, body scrubber, other stuff i dont remember...all for like $15

its awesome. write a comment if you want anything in particular because i forgot everything you all said to get. i might get a pet parakeet for my room...every house has them except mine and i really want one...and when i leave i can give it away easy. the other day we watched a movie about the trash dump in guatemala city...saddest shit i have ever seen. generations of people have lived there...taking peoples trash and leftovers to make houses and eat and survive with. kids work there, some abandoned, like this one 10 year old. they sleep there too. and when they were interviewed, some said they like it there and they dont ever want to leave. it is crazy. lots of women get pregnant and just leave their baby somewhere. others take care of them and put them in this free nursery some us organization created so they wouldnt have to grow up in there breathing methane while they were developing...so fucked. kids apparently used to get run over all the time too. picture this...when a new trash truck comes in, the people line up on the sides of it until it stops so that they can have the best chance to get the new goods...the people in the front grab onto handles tied to the top of the truck so as the trash piles out, they kinda surf the trash until they want to let go and start looking through it. its raining now. sucks cause after this i was going to venture to the cell phone place and the bank...raincoat it is. were having a wine and cheese welcome party here at the school at 6pm, should be cool. i practiced some vocab with my papa before coming here and now he wants me and him to practice for an hour every night at 8! he really likes helping, and its great! i dont know what im going to do this weekend, its a free weekend. may go with the school to some hot springs tomorrow...most likely will. i think the family friend asked me if i wanted to go out with her saturday night but im not sure...i get wrong ideas sometimes. shes great, last night we were eating dinner together and she asked me if i played cards, and i said yes, and she asked me if i knew and tricks, and i said yes, so after dinner we sat on her bed and showed eachother our card tricks...it was great and so hard to do a card trick in spanish! i think shes lonely. she doesnt have a boyfriend and is home most of the time besides when she works and there shes the only on in the office! ill be her friend. all week my papa and one of the daughters have been working on a flower to go over the granddaughters head for a play shes in today...at 5pm...which they didnt invite me to. i was hoping they would. whatev. and no dylan, im not being picky about food...ive eaten EVERYTHING...including cooked banana that was fuckin nasty...its like a really old brown banana, heated up...can you imagine?!? they call big bananas platanos, and the little ones no one in the states eats, bananas. anyway, i think thats all for now...im sure your bored. i should have broughten a better variety of pants...shorts are only worn at the beach... except long ones...which ive worn. every day i wear long sleeves..so needed more of those adn less little shirts. if you all want to send me anything i can get the address to the school because apparently so much mail comes here it doesnt usually get lost or stolen...or dhl is here and shipping stuff to that store is perfectly fine, just more expensive. perhaps my computer could be shipped there, my house has wireless...the sergio was using his laptop last night so i figured that one out. ok...hasta luego. oh, and the finger is fine...no problema. and about flowers...the place isnt covered in them. my school has some boganveilas and rose bushes but not much more...theres tons of bushes and grass and trees but not much for flowers...darcy.

2 comments:

Travis said...

having a blast reading your posts! keep 'em coming. And I'm pretty sure platanos are plantains, not bananas. They look a lot like bananas, but are all brown/yellow and not nearly as sweet. You find them fried a lot. Really common in central/south america. Check it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain.

Dylan said...

Thank you Travis. Kira, plantains are yummy. Just don't think of them as bland bananas. They are just all together different.