This week has been lovely for the most part. I made my first basket of the year with Tat Lu’ whose teaching method is to do the work for me. Hopefully by the end, I’ll be making baskets completely on my own from splitting the cane to putting the rim on. Maybe. I’ve been learning a lot about their family and it’s amazing how different their family is from the one I stayed with last year. Last year I kind of resented the lack of nitpicky care I got from my family, but this year I appreciate it. The family this year takes such good care of me that it makes me feel bad and stifled all at once. No longer do I burn my tongue on the food or drink, I am always at home before 9:30 else they come looking for me even though they know where I am, I am not allowed to help with dishes or cleaning (though I do get to make tortillas and take the kernals off the dried corn-cobs) and my bucket baths are nice and luke-warm. Sometimes I think they think I don’t know how to care for myself, and I get annoyed. Then I remember that they are thinking of my family back in the States and want me to get back just the way I came. So no worries mom and dad. They have let me do my own laundry which makes me at least feel slightly autonomous. I decided to live with a different family to get a different experience. I’m definitely getting what I wanted.
Last week I had a wonderful birthday. I made pizza with Yohana, my host-sister from last year and we invited all the students over (all four of them). They also made a small dinner complete with roasted chicken, broccoli, and yucca was it? We also had the pizza, and they surprised me with a cake! Yummy. This was the first year that I actually was subjected to the mordida tradition were the poor birthday girl’s face is pushed into the side of the cake. It was all very fun. Who doesn’t like having whipped cream all over their face?
Last week I also started really working again with Lucia and her group. Right now they are mostly doing crochet, so I’m learning how to do that. They actually let us work with them and with their materials even though there is no way that my stuff is good enough for sale in the market. Who wants a crocheted cell-phone bag made by a gringa anyway? Actually, Chad is also learning to make baskets with Tat Lu’ too, so we have big plans to make our own set of a dozen baskets to take to the market to sell. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t sell any, but it would still be fun(ny). On Saturday I went with Craig to San Marcos, a town on the edge of Lake Atitlán that is a prime spot for tourists. It’s always a shock going to tourist areas after being in the communities even if it’s only been two weeks. We were only there a few hours to see a friend of his and pick up a newspaper clipping (unbeknownst to the other students at the time, they were in the Diario for being tourists at Tikal. I was already in Santa Clara. It’s ok. I’m not that jealous). Anyway, for some reason the pot-smelling, long haired tourists made me nervous. Small pathways, lots of people. Why was I afraid they would touch me? No idea. It would be more logical to be nervous in the place where I’m the odd-ball. Which reminds me that a man that was slightly drunk came up to me in the street yesterday asking me something about Venezuela and telling me they were all wonderful people and that I should love them too. He then said in the politest way that he could that they didn’t want anything from the United States in their town. “Bueno,” I said with a smile and walked home. Slight paranoia ensued, but it was all forgotten in a couple of hours.
I also have been having crazy dreams about home and people I haven’t thought about since high school. Why? Maybe it means something. Maybe it’s the tortillas. Anyway, I want to go back to San Marcos one day and jump off the huge rock that’s there into the lake. Most everybody’s afraid to jump off of it. I’m pretty sure it’s no higher than the second platform at Candler. No biggy. I’m going to wow them all with my fearlessness.
As far as everything else goes, I’m way far behind in my coursework and getting things typed up. Typical. Oh, and last night was the first big rain since I’ve been here. The water was streaming in through the windows in the kitchen, flooding the floor a bit. The sound is always deafening. We have to shout to hear each other and the little girls kept talking to me. They are hard to understand anyway, so I just smiled and nodded.
I forgot that last week we also went to the election of the queen of La Salle, the school that I learned to weave at last year. Each candidate had a short dance that they did with others of their age-group as an introduction. One of the girls’ groups reenacted a Maya ceremony and actually sacrificed a chicken by dramatically chopping off its head. The kid who was acting as the priest then poured the blood onto his face and danced around. At the end when they were cleaning up, they left the head out in the middle of the basketball court where they had danced. “The head, the head,” everyone shouted. Eeew. We heard that the director of the school though it was inappropriate. It was cool though. The other dances were pretty typically traditional with marimba, incense, and baskets of corn and other greens.
Well, that's all there's time for this week. Stay tuned for next weeks grand adventure in basket making!
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