home sweet home

so, i´m finally back in ipala after being gone nearly a month. it´s nice to be home. and this time, upon my return, i did not find two rats like last time (one alive in the kitchen, one dead in my bedroom), or a pack of baby scorpians, or any other undesirables. i do, however, have a water problem, in that it´s not arriving at my house. usually water comes un día sí, un día no from 10 am to 2 pm. well, they´ve been replacing pipes all over the pueblo and i guess they messed up on our street. so my depósito is frighteningly low and i´m using all the water conservation methods described in ¨50 things you can do to save the earth¨ but i´m still worried. appearently they fixed the problem yesterday, but water won´t be coming again until tomorow so i´ll have to wait and see. that reminds me of another incident with my water depósito. when i first moved in, noel and i were hanging out in the backyard when there was a knock at the door. it was a woman, my neighbor, with her young son. now, this was a time in my life with my spanish was a little more básico, and i wasn´t really sure what she was trying to tell me. something about how when they were building the depósito her son fell in and she wanted to do something so he wasn´t scared anymore. so i let her into the back thinking she would show the finished depósito to her son so he knew not to be scared. well, she did that, kind of. or rather she broke off a small branch from my lemon tree, got it wet, pulled down his pants, and started smacking his penis with it, causing him to start crying. i was in such shock i didn´t know what to do. luckily noel intervened and told her that was enough and said it was time for her to leave. she seemed indignent and said something to noel like ¨you guys don´t believe in this stuff, huh?¨ and if by ¨this stuff¨ she meant child abuse, i guess the answer would be no. anyway, i don´t really remember which neighbor she is (they all look alike) but i think i know which house is hers and her little boy cries and throws tantrums all the time. he´s got to be the saddest kid ever.

speaking of mother´s day. when you thinking of celebrating mother´s day, what do you think of? maybe your mom sleeping in late, bringing her breakfast in bed, some nice flowers. well believe it or not, mother´s day, always june 10th, is a huge deal down here, at least in this part of the country. the appliance stores always have sales (that´s how i got such a good deal on my pressure cooker last year). there are concerts, and public events, and school events. unfortunatley i was feeling ill this year so i didn´t really participate. but just to give you an idea of how things are done . . . i was staying over at noel´s in catocha. at i think around 4 am the fire crackers started. not like pretty, colorful fireworks and shimmering fountains, but bombas. really really really loud fire crackers. so this goes on for about a half an hour, waking up all the roosters and annoyingly loud song birds. then a car starts driving around the town with a way too loud and horrible quality sound system playing music and i think making some sort of announcements about the day´s events. i´m not sure i was somewhere between a state of being woken up scared shitless by the fireworks, trying to ignore it in my sleepy delerium, and all out rage at the preposterousness of guatemalans. ridiculous. then noel´s alarm went off at 5 am. happy mother´s day.

oh just so you know, i´ve got my plane tickets to new york. i get in at 12:02 am 13 july at jfk and leave at 8:30 am 26 july. can´t wait!