La vida llamó

Sledding

2010-01-03T17:49:00.000-06:00

First Christmas

2009-12-31T09:26:00.000-06:00

Tiny Moose

2009-12-27T09:54:00.001-06:00

My Christmas gift to my nephew: a moose suit. I don't think he enjoyed wearing it.

White Christmas

2009-12-25T09:59:00.000-06:00

The deck after two rounds of snow scooping.

A 3-4 foot snow drift against my parents house.

My brother Regan scooping snow.

Nephew Will

2009-12-18T07:27:00.000-06:00

These are outtakes from Will's photo shoot for this year's Christmas card.

Oh Christmas Tree

2009-12-14T17:29:00.000-06:00

This tree, located in the yard of a church on Broadway in Columbia, is my favorite decorated tree. When I was in college I used to change my route just to pass by it.

Adios

2009-12-10T07:47:00.001-06:00

This is quite possibly the most offensive going away gift I have ever received.

Pour

2009-12-07T08:00:00.000-06:00

I will not give credence to an Amazon customer review that claims a product to be of "pour quality."

Relativity

2009-12-04T19:31:00.000-06:00

After staying at my parents’ house for a few days, I decided to come and stay with my brother, my sister-in-law, and my 8-month old nephew. The 240-mile journey from Rock Port, Missouri where my parents live to Columbia, Missouri where my brother lives is one I have made innumerable times since I moved there for college. In many ways the trip was a flashback to the past—driving my mom’s vehicle that is the same as the one I had before I left for Guatemala and listening to pre 2007 CDs I dug out of the closet of my old room—but in one way it was very different.

The “trip back to school” or the “trip home,” depending on which direction I was heading, always seemed somewhat like a large undertaking. But now after nearly three years spent crammed into buses traveling on winding two lane roads, a three and a half hour trip in a personal vehicle on the amazing Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways feels like a short jaunt. Time, distance, and difficulty are all very relative. Según como se mire todo depende.

World AIDS Day

2009-12-01T08:14:00.000-06:00

Griffin Gridiron

2009-11-27T17:00:00.001-06:00

Only one person bled this year! Sorry Matt.

Niagra Falls

2009-11-25T17:33:00.000-06:00

On our roadtrip to Vermont, Regan and I swung through Canada and went to see Niagra Falls. Though the falls themselves were pretty, I must say I was a bit disappointed in the overall area given the proliferation of celebrity wax museums and other cheesy attractions. It is like the Branson of New York.

Operación Calabaza

2009-11-23T12:00:00.000-06:00

So I actually ended my Peace Corps service about a week ago (COSed in PC lingo) and am currently in the US. The thing is, my parents have no clue.

Peace Corps has a policy that bans taking vacation in the final months of service. I originally only wanted to extend my time from July to the end of October but with my trip to France for my friend’s wedding in September I was given the options of either finishing at the end of August or staying until mid-December to have the required three months of time after the vacation. I wanted to be home for Thanksgiving, but I needed the extra time to finish up my project so I decided to extend my Peace Corps service until the middle of December.

And then the Peace Corps policy changed from three months to two months.

Even though it is against Peace Corps policy to change your COS (Close of Service) date once it has been set, with my special circumstances, I was given the option of changing my date. So after some deliberation (passing over my project to a local group was not going as quickly as I hoped and losing a month would leave me a bit pressed for time) I decided to move from date from December 16 to November 16.

Operación Calabaza was born.

With the help of my three brothers, I devised a plan to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving. Our family usually celebrates Thanksgiving in Oklahoma, but this year we are breaking from tradition and having it in Burlington, Vermont at my cousin Patrick’s house. My youngest brother, Regan, was already planning on roadtripping from Missouri to Vermont and this worked out perfectly for my plan.

On Friday night I flew out of Guatemala and arrived in Chicago at about one in the morning on Saturday (direct flight from Taca!). Regan picked me up there and we have spent the past three days driving across the country. My parents, on the other hand, are currently with my other brothers in route by plane to Vermont. I’ll surprise them at my cousin’s house in Burlington.

Well, that is what will happen if Operación Calabaza goes exactly as planned. Since I don’t know whether I’ll have access to the internet during our roadtrip, I am actually writing this while I am still in Guatemala and scheduling it to post automatically today while Regan and I are on the road and my parents are in the air. Barring any car problems or flight delays, it should work, but after over two and a half years living in an LDC (less developed country), I shall be hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Now I just hope no one has a heart attack.

Hermelindo

2009-11-21T10:52:00.000-06:00

Hermelindo (the one on the right sporting my sunglasses) is one of my favorite kids. I'll write more as to why in a future post.

Chafalandia

2009-11-19T08:55:00.000-06:00

The "Sharyle" permanent marker...

that is strikingly similar to the "Sharpie" permanent marker.

Coincidence? I think not.

Navajazo

2009-11-17T08:07:00.000-06:00

I love how the Spanish language has words for things that English does not. What would take 3 or 4 English words to describe can oftentimes be summed up with one Spanish word.

Example:

Navajazo – a knife wound

Navajera – a female criminal armed with a knife

Navajero – a male criminal armed with a knife

With information such as this I usually like to invent new –ar verbs like navajazar – to stab someone with a knife. It should be a real word.

Bean Powder

2009-11-14T18:54:00.001-06:00

I don't know about beans made from powder, especially given that two of the listed ingredients are chicken meat and chicken fat. I guess these aren't vegetarian friendly beans.

Rodeo Boy

2009-11-11T08:30:00.000-06:00

This kid who performed at the Tactic rodeo had a Vicente Fernandez type amazing voice and was quite the ham which made for a very entertaining intermission.

A diputado (Congressman) from Alta Verapaz

Guatemala's Starbucks

2009-11-09T09:30:00.001-06:00

Unfortunately there aren’t any Starbucks in Guatemala. (Perhaps the fact that most Guatemalans would have to work more than a day to afford a cup of coffee from there has something to do with that.) No, instead of there being a Starbucks on every corner, in Guatemala the sacred fried chicken joint Pollo Campero gets the ubiquitous chain award.

The picture below is of Calzada Roosevelt (pronounced ruse-e-belt), the road that heads out of Guatemala City to Antigua or Chimaltengo, depending on which fork you take (I highly suggest the one that leads to Antigua). The Pollo Campero sign circled on the left does not belong to the Pollo Campero restaurant circled on the right. No, just out of view of this picture is another Pollo Campero restaurant that sits directly across the street from the visible one. And there is also another Pollo Campero in the Tikal Futura shopping center (next to where I took this picture) as well as another in the adjacent Miraflores shopping mall. That is four Pollo Campero restaurants in less than a square mile radius. Now that’s a lot of chicken.

On a related side note: While Guatemalans love PC’s (that is Pollo Campero, not Peace Corps) chicken, they generally find the establishment’s tortillas to be lacking, in both quantity and flavor. So, where there is a Pollo Campero, there is at least one woman sitting outside the front door with a basket full of tortillas. People will buy a Q or 2 worth of tortillas and bring them inside to enjoy with their meal. I would love to see how a set up like that would go over at McDonald’s.

Test Day

2009-11-06T12:00:00.000-06:00

13 hundred hours.

In t minus 1 1/2 hours I'll be taking a test that will decide the future course of my life. Okay, so perhaps the GMAT isn't quite that important, but I worry that if I perform poorly, I'll spend the rest of my days as a sandwich artist at Subway (no offense to you current sandwich artists). However, if I do well, I could be the manager of those sandwich artists.

You've got to dream big.

Tactic Fútbol

2009-11-04T09:53:00.000-06:00

Kilos & Pounds

2009-11-02T08:40:00.001-06:00

I was reading a Prensa article the other week about a police seizure of over 100 kilos of cocaine in two separate operatives. It made me curious. Why do the US and Guatemala use the metric system when referring to quantities of drugs while they use the English system for most everything else? (Well, Guatemala is actually English/metric mixed depending on if its volume, weight, or distance, but trying to explain that is for another post.)

But thinking more on this kilo/drug connection, I realized it isn’t for all drugs. You never hear about the police catching someone with a kilo or grams of marijuana. It’s pounds and ounces for weed.

Is there actually some good reason for this, or is it just custom? I suppose I could ask one of the local traffickers for his insight, but really I’m not that curious.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T15:18:00.000-06:00

or Christmas.

Holgazán

2009-10-30T08:19:00.000-06:00

Mapache's two favorite sleeping positions:

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

2009-10-29T14:35:00.000-06:00

It’s October 29th. 80 degrees in the shade. And as I write workers are putting the finishing touches on the Gallo Christmas tree in the park. Are we jumping the gun?