Jo’s Jovial Jolly Jocular Journal

Yesterday Victor and I found a little spot that we loved so much and are so happy and proud to have found. It is a bookshop/coffee shop and after we browsed around the bookshop for a very long time we went and sat down to have a drink. Well, we opened up the menu, and there was the longest list of tea I had seen for a very long time. Guatemala has yet to discover tea, but here, in our little gem of a find, was all types. Just sitting here and thinking about it now, I want to go back!

Ahhh internet has returned to my home. That is a happy thing!

I meant to write in the last post about how much translating and interpreting that I have been doing lately and how helpful that is for the Spanish. But how tiring too!!

The other weekend I went shopping and you wouldn´t think that I was a poor volunteer because I bought myself sooo many clothes. I have been bit by bit this week wearing some of them and it is making me happy. Also I was happy because it looked like I may not have to go shopping again for a long long time. When I was leaving the shops I wasn´t exactly sure which way to drive. I stopped off in some fast food place and asked one of the security guards to help me. He had no idea and in a few minutes I had 4 different men with guns from 3 different fast food joints surrounding the car in an attempt to get me home.

Tonight is the Pedida of Chochy, Victor´s sister. Her fiance is coming to the house with his family and they are going to ask for her hand in marriage. I get to go too, as part of Victor´s family. Fun. At the last family event we were all sitting around a big table and we were talking about these traditions and I was telling them about Australian engagement and marriage traditions. I talked about the man asking the parents of the his girlfriend permittion to marry them. Victor´s Mum made a joke like ‘Oh and have you done that before Joanna?’, in front of about a thousand Aunties. And I laughed ‘ha ha ha’ and quickly looked down at my food, not exactly wanting to tell the long story to all the Aunties. Anyway, have to go formal to the event, and so it looks like I will be back in the shops this afternoon looking for a formal outfit for the occasion…

I am at an internet cafe where I am paying about 70c for half an hour. I think that is a bargain ey.

I have had a big week. It has been long and full of work. I have been tired and missed home and missed every phone call that Jem made to me. It is wet and rainy and dark. Just found out that Victor is being posted to work on the other side of Guatemala. At least Guatemala is smaller than Australia…

But it is the weekend. Long awaited weekend, and I give thanks for that.

I have had to travel every day to Antigua. The last two days have been interesting because we went to visit a town on a volcano, we went to visit the court numerous times and I was the closest to one of the perpetrators that I ever have been. We also had visitors from Bolivia, Peru, Honduras and the USA come for a regional meeting of Aftercare. I have been thinking alot about my job and our work here in Guatemala and my work of the future.

This is not a very witty or intelligent or interesting post but as we still don’t have internet at home it is the best way to assure you all that I am still out here.

Tracy and I came to Antigua today to begin our long awaited Spanish classes. Alas, we arrived at the place to find that they had no record of our booking and that all the teachers are in training on Saturdays until the end of the year! So instead we are drinking coffee and chai and I am trying to catch up on some communication because I have been dismal in the past month or so. As you know.

Rainy season has started in Guatemala. It started in style because there was a hurricane in Honduras and the rain washed over in to Guatemala. And it rained and rained and rained. And the roads are now falling apart, you have to swerve all over them to try and miss the big chunks that have come out and which the wheels of your car could get stuck in. In Boca del Monte where Victor lives it is the worst. And I go there quite a lot. And when it rains there all the roads flood and it is very exciting driving through, like an adventure movie, and you can’t see the road so you can’t even swerve over the big pot holes and any moment you could plunge into one!

I have not written on my blog for a long time.

For a month in fact. Actually for more than a month in fact.

Well it has been a big month and a bit. I have had international visitors. I have toured much of Guatemala. I have got a boyfriend. I have worked, played, it has rained and rained and keeps on raining.

It seems that Tom has been reporting most of the trip of my family on his blog, which is very good news, cause he keeps up for my slackness. If you want to know more go and check it out! It has been fun and lovely and wonderful to have 4/5ths of the family together and I am not looking forward to them leaving.

So I apologise to all and hope that soon I might be back on track to my irregular but more regular posts.

Tracy and I are currently in a cafe in Antigua which is the old capital of Guatemala. It is about 45mins from the capital, and now that I have a car it is so easy to just duck on down. Tracy is sleeping on the couch beside me. It is a cafe run by YWAM and a bit earlier about 4 boys came in and the women who work here gave them something to eat and then they were playing with some of the toys which are here. I got chatting to one of them and we read Curious George together (Jorge Curioso) and then we started drawing and the others came over and I taught some of them to write their names. Luckily I had crayons here so we were a happy bunch, until one of them took 2 bracelets when I only gave him one and they all started fighting. But you know, until then we were full of crayon joy.

I have never owned a proper big adult size bible with those thin bibley pages and yesterday I bought one which has English and Spanish and smells so good. I am so happy.

I had been into the shop which was a Christian Bookshop about 2 months ago and they didn’t have any bilingual bibles. When I went back in yesterday I asked, thinking that it was pretty unlikely that they would have anything, and the shop assistant led me straight to the bibles. He recognised me and and told me that last time that I had asked, they had ordered it the day afterwards, especially for me. Ohhh.

We went on a Road Trip to Coban and beyond in L’l Romeo (photos of his heights of coolness available on facebook for all who are interested). He did pretty well. We only lost one hub cap momentarily but I was only driving about 40kms an hour on a very bumpy road we were able to quickly fix the problem. We drove through some spectacular scenery, winding through mountains and small villages, past indigenous women and men all dressed up in their brightest church dress walking along the side of the road. All of a sudden we rounded one corner and there, in the middle of the road, walking as calmly as could be, stark naked except for a backpack on his back, a little brown man. What joy it gave us to see his serenity on this lovely Saturday afternoon in rural Guatemala.

I had a very exciting day yesterday! By the end of the day I was very sleepy with all the excitement I had had.

First Miriam and I had to do a training for the employees at a Children’s Home. Beforehand I didn’t feel very well prepared but it went really well I think. And I really love doing trainings, but I had to do it in Spanish, so the combination of not feeling that prepared and it going well gave a bit of adrenaline. Then, after that we went to buy me a new car!!! Yes, that is right, I am the proud owner of (another) Toyota Corolla 1999, silver, full equipo, tinted windows, sound system, flourescent flashing light around the back numberplate. It was exciting driving it back to the office because it was so easy to drive because it drives just like my car at home- so smooth. Yay! It is almost like getting my licence all over again, the independence that it is going to give me.

Then….(the excitement doesn’t stop there) at the end of the day a couple of us stayed back late in the office. We never do that, but randomly this day Miriam and Jessica decided to do some work before the weekend. As we were about to leave the alarms started going off. Miriam came to the back of the office to tell Tracy and I off because thought that it was us being noisy that was making the alarms go off, when all of sudden Jessica started screaming that there was a fire. We went running to the front of the office which is actually the inside of another office and looked in to see a fan on fire and bits of fire dropping off the fan onto the wooden bench below. Miriam quickly opened the two doors between us and the office, Jessica called the Fire Brigade,Tracy ran to get scissors to open the fire extinguisher ran with the fire extinguisher to the other room and sprayed, putting the fire out in an instant, I made some helpful comments like ‘Yep there is a fire’ ‘Be careful’ ‘Yes’ ‘Yay’ ‘You’re my hero’ and so on. Then Tracy ran around the office and we all hugged and high fived and felt like heroes.

That was perhaps the climax of the excitement of the day, but after that I dropped Miriam off and battling Guatemalan roads and traffic (piece of cake really) drove all by myself to meet my friend Victor for an outing to the zoo. After we met up I followed behind his car to get to the zoo. At about the same time that I realised I had lost Victor, I also noticed that my car was making strange squeaking noises. I called him and he suggested that we meet in a petrol station up ahead. So we went into the petrol station and opened up the bonnet to find the engine spurting out great amounts of steam. We had to fill up some water and sat in the petrol station for about an hour to wait for the engine to cool and the traffic to lighten up.

When we finally got to the zoo I got to see animals that I had never previously seen before. The final exciting moment was when I almost had a head on because the one way road that I was driving on had turned into a two way street and I hadn’t realised (I may have also briefly forgotten that I wasn’t in Australia). I quickly swerved into the right lane, although I doubt that the driver coming in the other direction would have thought anything was amiss because people drive like that all the time in Guate. Finally I arrived home and fell into a deep worn out sleep.

The update on my car is that it was an electrical thing and the fan wasn’t working. I got it fixed this morning and it cost 100 Quetzales (about $15). In Australia most likely it would have cost about $100!

It has been a long time since I wrote on my blog. It seems that the longer I don’t write, the harder it is to decide what to write. I keep waiting for inspiration and it hasn’t come.

Josué just came into my room to teach my how to play Tazos. I have been wondering for a while. Anyway, after having been taught I don´t know what the big deal is. It seems a little bit boring to me, but there must be something in it because it keeps primary school boys going for hours. I also don´t know why Josué wanted to play with me after telling me about 10 times this afternoon that it was pretty boring playing cards with me because he always won (so not true). I guess I must be the best of a bad lot tonight as David, who is apparently so much more fun to play with than me, is at his house.

It has been a good family weekend as yesterday I spent the day with David and La Abuela. She had told me previously how much she loves hippies and that there is this hippy street in the centre of town that she wanted to show me. So yesterday in we went, La Abuela, David, his friend David and I. We actually didn´t sight any hippies, which is a shame, but I did discover a place with some very cool bars. We bar hopped. Well we went to two. At the first La Abuela and I drank hot chocolate and ate traditional food whilst David and David drank beer and tequila. By the second bar La Abuela and I were ready to go though and the red wine came out, a perfect accompaniment to the various troba songs that were being sung by the musician in the bar. Smooth. By the time David and I got to our next social event I was pretty happy and we had a bit of a dance up the front of the restaurant with Tracy and Chepe who were impressed that I had got so tipsy when I went out with La Abuela. Dancing up the front (something like lounge room dancing but with other people watching you) was very helpful for David who is not that far out of adolescence and quite a cool guy, so found it embarrassing but liberating I think. I will make a dag out of him yet!

Josué just came in to offer me half of his and half of Diego´s chocobananos, a family favourite here in the Torre household. I wonder if he is feeling bad for telling me I was so boring? He sure is being nice.

Today in church one of my friends was sitting with his family in front of us. His Dad put his arm around his shoulders and awkwardly patted him. All of a sudden I really missed my Dad.