Mine are:
Gilead- Marilynne Robinson
The History of Love- Nicole Krauss
East of Eden- John Steinbeck

(It is also 3 weeks until Christmas Day)

Whoop!

Long Walk to Freedom- Nelson Mandela
This book took me two intents to actually get into it and then finish it, but the second time was well worth it. It made me excited about the struggle for dignity and justice and human rights and equality and inspired me that the struggle for these things can lead to change.

Audacity to Believe- Sheila Cassidy
I have read this book several times. I think this is perhaps the first book I read about Latin America. It is a book about faith and Chile and its history and how one woman got caught up in that. It made me excited about Latin America and about living out faith, and again, about justice and equality and the struggle for these things and the interplay between faith and politics and justice.

Celebration of Discipline- Richard Foster, Don´t Just Stand There Pray Something- Ronald Dunn, Intercessory Prayer- Dutch Sheets
These are Christian books that I read at really important points in my life and were really practical and impacted the day to day practice of my faith.

Daughter of Fortune- Isabel Allende, Captain Correllis Mandolin- Louis de Bernieres, 100 Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The God of Small Things- Arundhati Roy
These are books and authors that have contributed to me loving stories and have followed me around long after the end of the story.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5A234J20091103

Last night there was a birthday party of one of Victor’s cousins. At 11pm on the dot, we heard a trumpet sound, and in through the front gate walked a mariachi band in a line. The 7 mariachis gathered around the people at the party and played and sung, the party guests joining in the sing-a-long. Then the birthday girl was pulled into the middle of the circle by her husband and they started to dance. Another couple joined in. Victor reached out his hand and then pulled me up on my feet and we start to dance, we’re moving in perfect unity, the stars were shining, the mariachis playing songs of love….all of a sudden piercing through our haze of romance we hear a chant of “Kang-goo-roo, kang-goo-roo, kang-goo-roo” and suddenly I am thrown to one side, Victor starting his famous routine of hopping, jumping, shaking his booty to wild familial acclaim….

Okay, so Guatemalans can dance, that is my conclusion, and I am always impressed by the way they can move to almost any song. And my husband can dance too, he’s got his moves, he’s not shy, so ask him to do the kang-oo-roo when you next see him and see what you get.

Place your orders now, various colours and styles available.

(Discounts available for missionaries and the unemployed)

Guatemalans drink coffee at every meal, especially breakfast and dinner. They have people over for coffee to their house. They make awesome coffee. They drink it a lot. Unfortunately for me, the fact that I did not get given coffee since I was 3 years old, as many Guatemalans are, means that after 3pm in the afternoon I cannot drink coffee or I wont sleep, so I miss out on being part of the important ritual of sharing coffee in the afternoon or evening.

Making a pot of tea is a ritual foreign to Guatemalans. I have shared it a few times, but it never evokes as much excitement from the Guatemalan side as from me. I own two pots and I think the busiest they have ever been is at the Australian-organised despedida. Apart from that they have mostly just been sitting quietly on the shelf, ready for service when they are called.

Recently, El Niño has been making his presence known in Guatemala. With a hurricane on the coast of Nicaragua sending cold rains up to Guatemala. So yesterday I arose to a cold and rainy morning, unusual here in Guatemala. I decided I was going to have my Quiet Time with Tea on the Side. Fantastic. I didn’t realise how homely and comforting making a pot of tea, pouring it and drinking it was going feel. It increased my happiness about 40%. Then, in the spirit of my mother and grandmother and generations of Australian, New Zealand and British women, I took Victor a cuppa in bed (although in my family, the women are the ones in bed and their husbands bring them a cup of tea, but I am all into role reversal when necessary).

In conclusion, tea is great and tastes like home (especially since I made a pot of a Madura Tea that Mil had sent me. Nice).

*I know that is not true for everyone, and any cultural difference is going to be a broad generalisation that doesn’t fit in every case, however, it is one thing that has been noticed by myself and Victor and thus counts as a cultural difference.

What I need is some community participation.

Please write a question or topic in the comments and I will try to make a post for each one.

That should get me going again!

I love it so much. I can’t explain how much joy it gives me to get and send letters. (If you want to write to me, please, please do). However my most regular correspondent is one that I do not get very excited about. Since I changed my address to Guatemala, St George has been sending regular bank statements to my in-laws house. Since I own a credit card that I don’t use, sometimes they send a bank statement all the way from Australia to Guatemala saying ‘You have $0 owing on your account. You have to pay $0 in the next month. You have made $0 of transactions in the last month.’ However today I received something a little bit exciting from St George. Obviously the posty didn’t read the address well, but luckily it still made it to Guatemala, with a stamp on it that said ‘Missent to Guyana’. My measly bank statement has made it all the way from a big island in the South Pacific, to a small random country in South America and then on to a small random country in Central America!

I love mail.

Victor and I went for a little impromptu holiday over the weekend. It turns out that an American missionary was selling his bikes and moving back to the States and Victor has been mentioning every so often over the last couple of months that he really wanted to buy a bike. So we rang this man and had a little chat, and then we realised that he lives in a city a couple of hours away. Oh well. Good excuse for a holiday. And since the city also has the biggest markets in Guatemala (Central America even maybe?) we thought it was a jolly good idea to go check out the bikes.

So off we set after Victor’s work on Saturday afternoon. It was a little bit of an adventurous trip. Well not good adventurous. First we got stopped by police to check all our documents and Victor was driving. He didn’t have his driver’s licence on him so they decided to fine him. The policeman took quite a long time to get around to writing out any fine, so I went to see what was up. He was making an elaborate explanation to Victor, over the car boot, of why he was fining him, what right he had to fine him, just how much it was going to cost (Q400) and making a suggestion that he could possibly just buy him a little cafecito instead (Q20 or so).

I drove away with Victor sitting in the passenger seat, the fine in his hands, me fuming about the corruption in the policeforce that also lets the abusers of our clients get away when there is an arrest warrant out for them, for the price of a couple of cafecitos….

Well, in my fuming state, I also passed the not-sign-posted turn-off and we drove for another hour or so until the sun was going down and we decided to ask someone where the city was. Turns out we were way off track and we had to drive an hour back and then only half an hour from the turn off that I had missed!!!

But we made it, and we found a hotel and I got to live out my dream of going on holidays and staying in a hotel with a husband. It was quite fun and very grown up of us. The next day we headed out for breakfast and ate on a balcony looking out over the colourful market place and then, after checking out a bit of the markets, headed out of town to check out some bikes.

We were very pleased with them, especially when the two of them, taken apart, fit in the back of my little Corolla. So we headed back home, content with our weekend away.

This morning we decided to go for a bike ride instead of a run, so we got up bright and early to head out on a little route that Victor had planned in his head the night before. I decided that I needed a little bit of warming up so drove in and out of the streets in our colonia. When I tried to go down the hill however, that is between our house and the street, my memories of riding down a hill on an oval in Asquith and coming off my bike, forward roll over the handlebars, came back to haunt me and needless to say, even though I conquered the hill this morning, I didn’t quite make it out onto the main road. Maybe next time? I suggested to Victor. Perhaps Not was his reply.

So I must practice, and practice will make me perfectish and then I will be able to ride on the road and that will be a great achievement.