Saturday, May 9, 2009

HAPPY MOTHER´S DAY!!!

HAPPY MOTHER´S DAY!!!!
Dearest Mom,
I hope this cures your picture desires. I wish I could be there for Mother´s Day. Thank you for all your love and support. I love you!


So let me start with a few pictures of the places I visit and the things I see on a daily basis...

So Doña Julia has chickens and I walked out one morning to see eggs in the flower pot. Just a funny way to start my morning really.






There is a little space beside the house where a man park his "tuk tuk," this little vehicle. A concept I understand to be taken from India but one that functions well here regardless.






I spend a lot of my time playing with the kids. Since the rainy season has started I´ve been racking my brain for good indoor activities. Drawing and bracelet making seem to top the list as far as prefered activities. I attempted to make Rive Krispie treats when I first arrived.




Let´s just say that after spending a significant amount of time scraping burnt marshmallow from my new host mom´s best pan I think from now on I´ll just stick to what I know.



I mentioned in the previous post that Doña Julia owned a motor used to make the masa for tortillas. After boiling corn, salt and lye for hours, you pour the corn into this nifty contraption and out comes that beautiful stuff for good ol´tortilla making.






So Bethany and I travel a great deal to get to schools. Sometimes by foot, sometimes by bus, but more often than not we hitch a ride in the back of a pick up for a least part of hte way to the schools. We are also fortunate enough to often ride with the Centro de Salud when they go out to the various communities. This is the Centro and the official coche bomba vehicle we sometimes travel in. Hard on the hind quarters but so worth the ride!!!



As far as free time goes, I´m attempting to learn chess as learning how to cook is still somewhat of a struggle, and I have to tell you, I think chess is easier. Granted I have yet to win a game. I also spend more time than I´d like to admit at Doña Paula´s drinking atol in the evenings and listening to the rain under the tin roof outside of her house.






I´m still taking katchikel classes at the Centro de Salud. I started thinking it would just be a nice way to get to know the other people taking the class, it´s turned into a really fun and really informative hour with our professor Israel who is so sweet. We start every class leaning the Mayan symbol and energy for the day and a quote that coincides. Last week the quote was "The night too is the hope of a new day!"
Maybe, just maybe, I´ll absorb something in the process!!!





So at the end of June I will be moving out of my host family´s house and into a place of my own. The place needs quite a bit of work that I am uncapable of but I think I can do enough to make it enough to at least make it home. Bethany helped as I tried to rearrange a number of large concrete blocks to make stairs to the roof.
Let me also just say that this picture does not do justice to the size and type of spiders and other insects we saw in the process! I´ve never been tweeked by bugs, but even this made my skin crawl!!


As anxious as I am to live on my own and make myself a home in this country I have to admit I really am going to miss living with a family here. Doña Julia has included me like one of her own and I have loved having the opportunity to share time with her and her family. They have included me in so many activites. Aside from making a habit of Sunday lunches and Mama Chila´s house, they have taken me on vacations with them and invited me to all of their family events. The other weekend we all piled into the back of a pick-up truck and made a 3 hour trek to a place called Patulúl to go to a swimming pool. As it happened the pool was closed when we arrived but no matter, we just went to a hotel and paid them to let us use their pool and eat lunch their for the day. It was a blast. Among the highlights were playing mermaids with the girls (I of course was the mama carrying the babies or those that couldn´t swim) and eating a large lunch of Dove, Chicken and Iguana soup.


Week before last was "Día del Trabajador" or Worker´s Day and we celebrated by spending a full 36 hours making tamales and ponche which is a particularly delicious dish generally reserved for Christmas. What was the most interesting to me, however, was that while the men got the day off of work, the women worked about twice as hard both doing their daily jobs AND spending the time making the food for the celebration!

Making tamales is a process with many steps. Here is the abridged/illustrated version...
You begin by cutting two different kinds of leaves so that they will bend easily when needed.

After making a very complex sauce with many different types of chiles and thick pieces of pork, you boil a huge pot of potatos (yes tamales are usually made with corn but my family prefers potatoes.)
Then, while they are hot, you hand pick the skin off the potatoes, a process that more than burns your fingers and really hurts thyour fingernails. I have to admit though, it is definitly a bonding experience!

The potatoes are mashed, laid on the leaves, filled with sauce, pork and a chile. They are then wrapped in two different leaves and cooked on an open fire for hours. The result...a delicious and filling meal that is made tastier by just having invested the time and effort to make.














To end this I just want to say thanks Mom for having the courage and strength to support me in this journey. I know it´s not easy. You are an amazing amazing women and I am lucky to have a role model like you in my life. I love you so much!