Why I hate sharing a kitchen with strangers

My apartment is pretty cool...I mean, it's not awesome, it's pretty basic, but it's right in the center of the city which is great for taking the bus to and from work and also great for going out at night (I don't have to take a taxi home). There are, however, some things that drive me crazy about my apartment. The building's acoustics are really good, which means that every sound from the street comes right up the stairs and into my room, plus every sound from the kitchen goes down the hall and into my room....but it's not so bad, I'm pretty used to it now and I can sleep through anything (for those of you who have ever shared a room with me, you already know this about me). The lighting in my room is not so great; there are three lights on my ceiling and there are usually only two that work, but sometimes only one is working and it's a pretty high ceiling so at night it gets a little dim in my room sometimes. The whole lighting thing sucks for when I'm trying to skype with people because I always look like I'm in the dark...but that's not even the worst of my skyping problems: the internet here sucks!! Sometimes it works fine and I can skype for 5 hours with minimal interruptions, but usually it's more like 15 minutes and then the call is dropped, 3 more minutes and the call is dropped again, and after doing this for about half an hour it just stops working. It makes keeping up with people back home pretty difficult.
But all of these things, though annoying, are livable. I'm a pretty easy-going person, so I can roll with the quirks....but sharing a kitchen with strangers is killing me!! Maybe working in the kitchen at camp has ruined me for using all future kitchens because my expectations are now quite high (ok, maybe it's not a maybe, I'm pretty sure it's true. Ask Rory, we're kitchen snobs because of camp.....sorry kitchen at Gleanings!). But really, is it so hard to clean up after yourself?

This is what I wake up to almost every morning. And keep in mind that I usually work early so I'm in there at around 5:45AM trying to make breakfast as quietly as possible for the poor guy who has a room closer to the kitchen than I do. Making breakfast quietly is really hard when I have to first dig out the dirty dishes that I need to use and then wash them. And who wants to wash their dishes before and after using them? Because there's one lady who lives here who is apparently always calling the dueño (manager) and telling him that I'm leaving a bunch of dirty dishes, so there's no way I can wash the dishes, use them, and then leave them dirty.

But sometimes there are no dirty dishes in the sink and as I walk into the kitchen ready to make my dinner because I'm super hungry from a long day of work, I get really excited that maybe it'll all be clean. But no. All the pots and pans are on the stove....full of food that has been cooked, served, and the people who made it are in their rooms eating. At this point I don't even have the option of washing the dirty dish before and after use because they're all full of other peoples' food...and you can't just throw their food into a Tupperware and put it in the fridge because you have no idea whose food it is and everyone has a designated spot in the fridge. Speaking of which.....

There's never room in the fridge because there's 5 of everything. Everyone has their own little area. I have the bottom drawer. There's always so much crap in the fridge and I just don't get it!! And in a family fridge there's no "my food" and "your food," but I'm positive that someone took half of a lime that I had in my drawer and I was instantly really upset when I realized it...over half of a lime. Plus people put dumb stuff in the freezer! A few weeks ago some of my neighbors threw a huge party on our terrace before a soccer match and I guess they thought it was a really good idea to put 3 liters of beer in the freezer and then they left them there. The next day I went grocery shopping and opened the freezer to put my chicken in there and the instant that I opened the freezer a bunch of beer-slush fell out onto me...not to mention chunks of the shattered bottle. Genius. 

 And there are rules:
1. After you cook, leave that area clean.
2. Wash your dishes after using them.
3. Don't take dishes to your room, we need all of them.
4. Make sure all your trash is thrown in the trash can.
5. Take care of the appliances, don't get the stove dirty, or the microwave.
6. Don't spill liquids on the stove.

Remember that the cleanliness starts for each one the same. Take very good care of the things that we                                                                                  offer you! Thank you for your help and understanding!

So really, it's not like there are no guidelines here. The only one that I really don't follow is the not taking dishes to your room. The kitchen is a terrible place to eat, it's really uncomfortable. So I eat in my room and then take my dishes back to the kitchen and wash them within an hour of finishing my food. Some other people, however, I swear have a stockpile of dishes in their rooms! We recently acquired more silverware, but when I first moved in there were maybe 7 forks, 2 spoons, and 1 butter knife...and 1 sharp knife. More often than not there were no silverware in the kitchen. It makes eating a little hard. And preparing food is hard too when there's nothing to cut stuff with. So when I went home for a week in March I made sure to bring back a set of silverware and I've bought a couple knives here....I try to keep all of the dishes that I've bought in my room because otherwise they disappear. In fact, just the other day I had a knock on my door from the lady who keeps calling the manager to complain about stuff and she was telling me that I took her container and she wanted it back. Here's the thing: it was my container and it had disappeared a week or two earlier and I later found it in the fridge. Empty. Who leaves an empty container in the fridge?! But sometimes it's not just plates and silverware that people take to their rooms. The other morning I wanted to make a cup of tea, but the kettle was nowhere to be found. Who takes a kettle to their room?! And there have been countless times when I wanted to make pasta or something and the pot that I needed to use was nowhere in the kitchen. I'm starting to fear that I'll go into the kitchen one day to make toast and the toaster will be gone because someone wanted to make toast from the comfort of their room. 

I'm sure the people I live with are great people in real life, but for sharing a kitchen they're making me crazy! Sometimes the dish soap runs out (by that, I mean that it runs out about every 2 weeks) and people just stop washing their dishes. After a day or two of no soap there are no longer any clean dishes. Makes cooking and eating a bit difficult. After I get sick of both sinks overflowing with dirty dishes and not a clean dish in sight, I got downstairs to the Q.3 store and buy some dish soap. Seriously, there's a little Q.3 store just downstairs yet no one else can seem to manage to go buy some soap. Q.3 is less than 50cents USD....it's not like we have to have the fancy stuff. 

Ok, I'm done complaining now. I've been incredibly blessed here in Guatemala with everything from a great Spanish school, great friends, a great place to live, and a great job. If an annoying kitchen is all I have to complain about I think I've got it pretty good. But seriously, if you share a kitchen with someone who's worked in a commercial kitchen for 8 years (or really, even if they haven't!), pretty pretty pretty please clean up after yourself and keep in mind that other people need to use all the stuff in the kitchen too.

Malacatan, San Marcos, Guatemala

This month I've started traveling to a city called Malacatan on the weekends to teach English classes. If you're looking at the above map, point B is Malacatan and the solid white line just to the left of it is the Mexican border. Malacatan is a little city in the department of San Marcos (Guatemala has departments, not states) and when I go there I'm pretty sure I am the only white person those people have ever seen (with the exception of the teacher who went before me). In the academy that I work at we change teachers every two weeks for weekday classes and every month for weekend classes, but the previous teacher who'd been going to Malacatan had been going for the last 7 months....so I could potentially be going over there every weekend until I head back to the states.
I love the city; it's small and fairly easy to navigate, the majority of the traffic is due to the many tuk-tuks they have running from place to place (see the photo below if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say tuk-tuk), and the people I've met there have been really nice and really helpful if I've had questions about anything.

My students over there are also pretty cool. I have a class with 3 kids (two boys and a girl, 13-14 years old) and then another class with a boy who I think is about 8. Normally, I don't like teaching kids because they don't really want to learn, and that's kind of true of these kids too, but we have a good time. They all love playing soccer so whenever we take a break from class that's what they wanna do (both classes are 4 hours each, so we take a lot of breaks to play games). The class with 3 kids also likes to play spoons...but the kind where you put the spoons in random spots around the room so even if you're the one who got the set of 4 you might not get a spoon. Haha! 

The only thing I really don't like about Malacatan is that it is so hot all the time. It's humid and just straight-up hot, so when I play soccer with my students I get wiped out really quickly from the heat. I learned very quickly that the only way to survive over there is to wear a skirt instead of jeans and to wear an airy shirt instead of my thick work polo....and I also need to drink way more water than here in Xela. Really, if it weren't so hot over there I'd be totally fine with going every weekend until I leave Guatemala, but it is so hot and only getting hotter as summer/the rainy season is starting to kick-in. Oh yeah, I love the rain here! I mean, I like the rain in Tacoma, but I've always loved thunderstorm rain way more...there's intense thunderstorm rain here with thunder and lightning and everything, plus it's not freezing cold here when it rains!! 

The city is 3.5-4 hours away from Xela by bus, and I have to take two buses to get there. So yeah, I spend about 8 hours on a bus so that I can give 8 hours of classes, but I stay the night over there and it's way more relaxing than getting up at 3:30AM on Saturdays to travel to Huehue to teach (that's what I was doing all last month). Plus it's conveniently located right by the Mexican border so that when I need to border-hop to renew my visa I'll already be right there. (Actually, I need to do that in the next few weeks...I'll let y'all know how it goes)

Funny/super gross Malacatan story #1 (ok, fine, there's only one so far...but I'm hoping for more in the future): My Saturday morning class is with the 8-year-old boy and he has a little wiener dog that doesn't understand the meaning of personal space/seriously, don't jump up on me. So I was playing soccer with my student and all of a sudden the maid starts calling his name, telling him to come quick because the dog ate a mouse. The dog's running around with a little tail hanging out of its mouth and then it spits out the mouse on the floor....this mouse is just a little baby and it would've been so cute if it weren't a mouse and if it hadn't just come out of the dog's mouth. Well the mouse is still alive and it's kinda wiggling around so the dog eats it again and we're running after the dog trying to make sure he doesn't spit the mouse out somewhere we can't find it. The dog spits out the mouse again and this time it's dead. So we block the dog from being able to eat it again while the maid sweeps up the poor little mouse to throw it away. We're all super grossed out by this and my student is running around the house yelling "Que asco!!! Que aaasssssccccoooooo!!!!!" (basically it means, so gross!) I mentioned already that the dog is really an up-in-your-grill kind of dog, right? Well the dog keeps trying to lick me, but I know what's been in that mouth and I don't want that all over my legs....so we were pretty grossed out by that, but life went on. We continued with our class and started working in the book again, but then the dog jumped up on the couch and started making sounds like it was going to throw up. Sure enough, it threw up on the couch. "Aaaahhhhhh!!! Que asco!!!!!!!!!" But it gets worse....the dog jumped back up onto the couch and ate all of its barf. So we jump up and start running around the house being super grossed out, my student is yelling "Que asco!!! Que asco!!" and I'm trying really hard to think about something else so that I too don't barf and watch the dog eat that too. Of course, we had a great laugh about it, but still. So. Gross. I never want to have a little dog like that because I'm pretty sure I'd be reminded of what happened last Saturday every time I'd see the dog. 

Anyways, yeah, so I'm going to Malacatan every weekend and it's a pretty great place (minus the suffocating heat). If you've tried to reach me during the weekend and I haven't responded it's because I don't bring my computer with me...I already have enough stuff to take with me, there's no space for my computer, also I don't want it to get jacked.

3 weeks of wonderful madness

I'm just going to start by saying that I have to coolest family ever!! My dad, Bouakham, and Steve came down to Guatemala with me to hang out for 3 weeks and it's crazy to think that those three weeks are already coming to a close. Dad and BK leave tomorrow at way too early and Steve's leaving Wednesday probably early afternoon. These past 3 weeks (well, 4 if you count to one that I spent back home) have flown by!! I feel like we haven't really done anything, but I guess we've done quite a bit and I think my family (at least part of it) now understands why I want to spend so much time here.

Steve on his horse for our 3-hour horse tour

You already know about our hike to the mirador of Santiaguito (that is, if you read my last post...) and since then we've rocked Holy Week in Xela, gone to San Andres Xecul to see the big yellow church, the zoo, el baul, Lake Atitlan, Xetulul (a theme park, similar to a Six Flags park), los Vahos, a Xelaju MC soccer match and....I feel like we did more, but now I can't remember.  We've been doing stuff the whole time and it's been super awesome to have them here, and I'm also exhausted now. Haha! Who would have thought that playing tour guide, translator, and trying to spend every moment that I'm not working with my family would tire me out?! As you may already be aware, my dad is the photographer of the family so I didn't take a ton of pictures while they were here....if you want a play-by-play of pretty much everything we did, beg my dad for pictures.

On the boat between Panajachel and San Pedro on Lake Atitlan

Me and my friend Patty at the theme park, Xetulul

My dad was hoping to get stepped on by the horse to heal his guppy elbow

BK rocking the bumper cars!!

Timo, Patty, me, and Matt at Xetulul

The slides at El Baul

We spent a lot of time in the market and I spent a lot of time translating and trying to get a better price. This is how a typical market trip would go: Bouakham would point something out to my dad and say, in Lao, that she wanted it, my dad would then tell me in English and ask me to ask about the price, I'd ask in Spanish, they'd tell me in Spanish, I'd tell my dad in English, he'd tell BK in Lao, and then they'd talk it over for a minute or two, he'd tell me in English whether or not they wanted it and then I'd convey their decision to the vendor. Overall, it usually took about 5 times longer than normal to make a purchase, but I think that just adds to the experience. Of course, I wouldn't want to be doing that for a long period of time, but for three weeks it's just comical to me. I've learned that having visitors is great, but they definitely need to be able to keep themselves entertained for some of the day since I work. Good thing my dad and Steve had an idea of things they wanted to do while I was at work...even if their poor Spanish got them to San Pedro in 5 hours instead of 2 and they occasionally got ripped off at the market. 

Tonight Steve's cooking for everyone at the house they're staying at and it'll be our last dinner together. Kind of sad, but I'm still really glad that they had the chance to come and that we had a great time. My dad's thinking of coming back sometime to take Spanish classes, so I'd say my work here is done. :)
  

And then there were four...

I had the great opportunity to head back to the states last week on Tuesday and stay for a week. It was exhausting! But I'm so glad I got to see so many people in such a short time. I've already told you about my long day of travel to get home, now let me tell you about my crazy week back home.

After spending too much time in transit, I had a very busy Wednesday full of familiar faces. Hanging out with Sarah Sheps making delicious goodness, an attempt at ultimate frisbee that really just turned into running around like crazy people and freezing, playing games and eating said delicious goodness back at home with more familiar faces, and finished off with dinner with Seth's parents. Thursday morning was a little bit more relaxed, but still busy trying to make sure I had everything I needed for my mom's wedding and then we headed up north in the afternoon. We spent all of 5 minutes at Josh and Jenna's before leaving for the reptile zoo (so cool!!) and capped it off with sandwiches at the Sultan bakery (you haven't been there? you must go!). Friday was a whirlwind of skyping with Seth before he peaced out to Russia, rushing to the church before the secretary left so that we could let my mom in when she brought the cakes, going to a nail salon that cost way too much money (but my nails will be purple forever!! or at least until they grow themselves clean), running to a St Vincent De Paul to buy a swimming suit so that I could rock the hot-tub at Rachel's hotel (btw, if you've never gone shopping with my niece, Mina, you have to, she's simply adorable!! She'd climb through the clothes to get to the other side of the rack, then tell me to come too, I'd tell her I was too big and she'd tell me to try it, I fit, and then she'd say, "You fit just like me!"), rehearsal dinner and rehearsal, then I passed out on Josh's living room floor. Saturday was the wedding day and everything went great and it was beautiful and the reception was great and it was sunny outside and relatively warm (a HUGE difference from the giant snowflakes from the day before!), and after cleaning everything up I jetted down to camp to visit the Millers and Carol (and Rory, but I'd already seen him, so I don't know if he really counts again, haha!). Left camp pretty late and crashed as soon as I got home. I hit up the early service at First Pres, then sped over to the service at South Lakeshore. Right after church I had to meet Tim, Rachel, Mina, Steve, and Jonathan at Pt D to hang out for a bit, then speed over to Tukwila to meet some friends for lunch, then race back home to hang out with Josh and Jenna and Jaxon again. Monday was fairly chill, just some last-minute stuff I had to pick up and Steve hosted a Passover Seder at our house and then I went to bed. Then Tuesday it was back to the airport. We made it to Guate and stayed in a hotel there, then took a bus yesterday morning to Xela. We did a hike this morning and then picked up Steve from the bus station this evening. Now we just get to enjoy the holy week processionals!
So my vacation week was probably anything but a vacation, but it was so great to be back home (even if it was only for a few days) and now I'm so excited to have my dad, BK, and Steve here to explore with me. Also, I have four parents now....that's weird, but I'm super stoked for my mom and Mark, I can't wait to actually get to spend some time with them when I get back home for good. :)

Santiaguito erupting at the top of our hike this morning 

A long day of travel

As most of you know, I'm back in the states for a week for my mom's wedding. I traveled all day on Tuesday. Like actually. Here's the story of my full day of travel:

I woke up at 3:05AM (Central American time, that means 1 hour ahead of Washington) and I ate breakfast (pancakes I'd made from the day before) and finished up packing last-minute things and I was leaving my apartment in Xela by 3:55AM. I walked from my apartment to the Alamo bus station (it's about a 10-15 minute walk) and the streets were dead empty. It was comforting to know that it's not every day that there are a bunch of drunk people wandering the streets at way-too-early in the morning (another story for another time), but it was also really weird that there was no one. Well I got to the station and awaited my 4:30 bus to Guatemala city. Now, there are chicken buses which are old U.S. school buses that have been pimped out and go flying down mountain curves, but Alamo buses are like the Greyhound. They're nice charter buses with comfy seats, only one person per seat, they don't fly down the road and they go more direct. The bus ride was wonderful! We never stopped to pick anyone extra up and we only stopped a couple times before the Alamo station in Guate to drop a couple people off. It was maybe like 8:45AM when we got to the station in Guate and I hopped into a taxi to go to the airport. Just in case you're wondering, the taxi price was outrageous!! I paid Q62 for my 4-hour bus ride and Q50 for my 20-minute taxi ride. Dumb! But the driver was a really nice guy and we had a nice chat while sitting in terrible Guate traffic. I got to the airport at about 9:15 and had to wait for the United Airlines desk to open so that I could check-in.
[There's something you should know about me: I'm paranoid about being late for travel transportation. I really could have taken a bus from Xela at 6:30AM, not 4:30, but I wanted to make sure I'd have plenty of time just in case something went wrong with the bus or something] I got checked in and moved onto exit customs. I had overstayed my tourist visa by 8 days so I had to go to a different window so that they could write me a fine (Q10 per day overstayed). From there I had to go back upstairs to pay the fine at the bank, then back down to the fine window so that they could sign-off and back to the customs guy. At first he only talked to me in Spanish, but when I came back the second time he only spoke to me in English. Haha!
I got to security and still had a half-full water bottle. I thought there would be a bathroom before security, but there wasn't. I told the security guy that I still had water and I needed to empty it or drink it and he said (in Spanish) that I could drink it on the other side of security or I could take it to the bathroom on the other side of security to dump it out...either way, I could pass through security with my water. On the other side of the metal detector there was a security lady who saw my bottle and said (in English) "yours?" I said yes and she said "drink it, now!" Ummm, so the other guy was a lot nicer.
[Another thing you should know about me: I almost always have to pee, and this was no exception...so drinking half of a nalgene bottle full of water was kinda miserable]
I got to my gate and waited. There's no AC in the Guate airport, so it was cookin! Finally got onto the plane and I was sitting next to two guys, one about my age from Austen, and the other about 65 from Puyallup. We chatted throughout the whole flight and waited in customs in Houston together. We all had about a 2.5 hour layover, but customs took FOREVER so by the time we got to our gates we had about 10 minutes before boarding. But anyways, we waited in customs together and when we parted ways (the guy from Austen had a gate in the opposite direction from where Puyallup and I had to go) we actually introduced ourselves. So we spent an entire flight and 2 hours in customs chatting without knowing each others names, I love how that's totally normal when traveling!
On the way to our gate, Dwight (the guy from Puyallup, whose name I now knew), offered to buy me a coke or something for helping him out with navigating the Houston airport and customs. I declined, but he was hungry so we stopped at a taco restaurant with tacos 2 for $8 (for reals!! Tacos in Xela are 3 for Q10, which is about $1.30) and he said I could have the other since he only wanted one. So we had the most expensive tacos ever and then boarded our flight. We weren't sitting together on this one. I slept for most of the flight because by this time it was about 7PM Central American time and I was pooped. We arrived in Seatac at about 10:30PM PST and made our way over to the baggage claim (somehow it always works out that the gate you fly into is basically the furthest it could possibly be from baggage claim and your carousel for baggage claim is the one on the furthest end). My cousin, Jonathan, was already there waiting for me and then Alex came in too, we finally got my bag and I said bye to Dwight. He was hoping my dad would be there to pick me up so that he could tell him what a nice young lady I was. How sweet! But anyways, I said bye and then we headed outside. It's freezing cold here!!! But we headed to McDonald's to get shamrock shakes because it's tradition! Fenda met us at McDonald's and we were stoked to see each other. :) We headed back to my house and got there at about midnight (so 1AM central American time) and stayed up to eat some food and chat some more. I think I finally went to sleep around 2AM PST...and had to get up early-ish for a dentist appointment the next morning.
Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of traveling all day long...but I was so happy to be home for a bit! The Houston airport is probably one of my least favorite places in the world, but I survived it and I'll survive it twice more within the next 8 months. It's weird being back, but it definitely feels like home. :)