In love with Chilera

The tastiest preperation in all the lands is Chilera. It's a type of vegetable-chunk-heavy salsa prepared in vinegar, and I've enjoyed it in Belize (topping stewed chicken, rice & beans) and Guatemala (topping everything on my plate), and I'm comforted by the knowledge it's available at least as far south as Costa Rica, maybe further. I know for a fact a mountain of Chilera is the ideal condiment for Salvadoran papusas.

Take chunks of chili peppers, onions, green beans, cauliflower, and anything else you might want, soak it in vinegar (and probably a number of other spices) and presto, the best tasting condiment in the world. In fact, I often eat it alone when I've cleaned my plate, bulging inside a fresh tortilla.

(Image stolen from this blog, with a recipe!)

How to Clean Everything (out of your intestines by introducing worms)

This morning at my Spanish School I scooped a fallen orange from the grass, shoving it in my pocket for an after-lunch snack. >The fruit's exterior was almost flawless, a few hints of green at the gnarled pole where the orange disconnected from its tree swirled into the predominant orange hue. A sticky mist sprayed as my fingernails penetrated through and peeled back the skin, fat orange droplets spattering on the concrete beneath my feet. My fingers detected a soft spot on one side of my prize, so I halved the orange and first devoured, section by section, the unblemished portion.

Delighted, with sticky juice-tracks meandering from the corners of my mouth down my chin, as always concerned by the perceived lack of vitamins in my diet, I chomped into the half deemed less appealing. My foray into the rotted area proved fruitful, but a quick examination of the newly tooth-torn cavity in the hunk hemorrhaging juice into my palm revealed a teeming mass of squirmy white worms, with little black freckles for faces, burrowing throughout. Immediately I emptied the contents of my mouth into my hand, but whether I'd first swallowed or anything had wriggled down my throat are mysteries I'm attempting not to ponder.

This is a regular Slither scenario...without the comedy.

I can't believe I'm writing this: There's a good chance I might have ingested any number of maggots or whatever kind of goddamnfuckingawful worm colonizes oranges. I'm left convinced nothing is sufficiently offensive to make me throw up, the probability to having swallowed worms insufficient even to induce nausea. And because the trade secrets of bulimiacs yet confound me, I can do nothing but wait to see what interesting illness arises or parasitic invasion manifests in my digestive tract.

Guess I'll be watching the toilet to see if it turns into a fishbowl.

Student-Teacher Conduct

Haunted by a lingering American lingering perspective, it's cien por ciento awesome crushing on my spanish teacher. Now of age, the chase retains a deliciously illicit feel without the impending prison term and pervert reputation that I'm convinced deterred various vixen teachers from succumbing to my schoolboy charms. (And I'm not referencing their miraculous supression of the urge to lean down and pluck with their lips Lucky's stray, spoon-diving made-sticky-by-milk-saturation marshmallows and grainy stars that adorned my face and clothes each morning.)

Christmas Eve, Noche Buena in Guatemala, I accompanied Mildred to her Evangelical Church, unaware earplugs are a requisite accessory. I staggered out two hours later, shellshocked, and deafened after an aural assault perpetrated by a handful of musicians flailing without regard to time or rhythm -- as if names were drawn and instruments assigned as the congregation arrived. I think I understand why so many people in the audience were crying.

But the churchgoers were exceedingly friendly, anxious to greet me, and the kid-carried tunes were cute and hilarious, the youngest performers standing at ankle's-height, picking their noses and yawning, contorting their bodies and faces, oblivious to their on-stage responsibilities.

Afterward I passed time juggling homecalls, stuffing three dinners into three hours, concluding with the traditional midnight tamale feast with my suddenly swollen host family, Melida having returned from la ciudad with extended family in tow. When the clock struck midnight I occupied high ground, overlooking San Pedro with an unobscured view of the other pueblos across and around Lago de Atitlàn. Armageddon was gorgeous, rockets launching from every alleyway and rooftop citywide, exploding rainbows of color casting shimmering sprinkles across the water, like the Mayan Gods were skipping rocks with giant, luminescent Skittles. Belts of firecrackers machine-gunned incessantly, which coupled with the heavier booms thundering down built a wall of war so uniform the cacaphony coalesced into it's own form of screaming silence.

By three AM the town was quiet again, the streets littered with exploded confetti and blackened sparklers, a breath of sulfer hanging in the air, the odd drunk veering through the alleyways, mumbling to himself as he lurched from wall-to-wall, confounding stoop-sitting couples with unintelligible gestures and monologues. One special drunk, who moved with the fluidity of an animation missing 90% of its frames, alternated between dancing with lampposts, arguing with an unoccupied car, and patrolling the strip of cobblestone in front of Mildred's home, admonishing us with a finger to his lips and whispers.

Christmas Day was low key, almost like any other day but gathered with family. A town-attended convite in the central cancha de basquetbol lasted the afternoon, throngs of Pedranos ringing the court, licking ice cream cones purchased from the many vendors pushing three-wheeled wooden iceboxes, wheelbarrows fashioned into coolers, the jingling belss signaling rushes of open palms stretched up and out every parent's pockets. Lines of dancers costumed as random stars of American cinema and world history (including two of the Nutty Professor, one Batman and one Catwoman) dipped and swiveled through choreographed routines, and every fifteen minutes another drunk would stumble into the middle, a mess of incoordination weaving about until the police could escort him away.

Bkicjs (I was trying to type something else and missed the keys. This title seems somehow more appropriate.)

Fine as wine, I'm aged a quarter century. To celebrate, I've buzzed my hair back to 1/4 inch, paying an outrageous Q$25 (US$3.50) for the 5-minute shearing, but at least I'm free of the fledgling mullet that always sprouts as my hair grows thicker and longer, the only consistency as my headtop shrub blooms with cowlicks and curls.

Transportion in San Pedro has improved significantly since I arrived in October, steady construction transforming the rainy season's rocky-river-roads to level cement pathways. With the road running in front of Mama Meli's house recently reopened, the town has inherited unexpected gifts: Free Speedbum(p)s! Specifically, the unconscious alcoholics, splayed across the road just down the hill from the church, in front of El Rinconcito.

Last Friday Ricardo and I trekked the lakeshore, skirting water, scaling rocks and mounds of tide-deposited basura, working around obstacles from crops to cows, on the way to San Marcos La Laguna. We strayed from the road after warnings from numerous Chapins that we, tall, pasty extranjeros, are walking targets for the machete-wielding ladrones in less foreigner-friendly San Pablo La Laguna.

Closer to San Marcos, the lakeside is suddenly peppered with massive estates resting a half football-field's length back from the shore in perfectly maintained, flower-, tree- and fountain-filled yards. These foreigner spectacles are offensive, flaunting wealth greater than neighboring townships possess collectively, and these private residences have hogged the beachfront, rendering Atitlàn almost inaccessible to actual Atitlànians.

Worst of all, the white invaders are hippies of the fruitiest sort. San Marcos is a town populated by dreadlocked backpackers practicing every sort of "art" and "technique" except basic hygiene. Alternative practices run the gamut of "seriously, you're an idiot" from spirituality-on-superhippy-steroids yoga to ESP. We chatted up a space cadet couple who were renting a room in their lakeside castle a kilometer shy of San Marcos, interrupting their -- and this is not a joke -- "Cranial Mayan Massage" session when we appeared. "We practice alternative sciences," they droned. "I do a little mind reading," informed the woman, amongst a litany of other "sciences" I can't remember for the vomit and laughter I was struggling to surpress. We agreed to wait fifteen minutes for the "cranial massage" to end so the guy could accompany us to town, but for all their practiced powers the pair was unable to detect our deception. The moment the resumed chanting and rubbing we dipped, impervious to the "ancient energy fields" running directly from the mountain through the property into the lake, tractor beams to filthy rich foreign loonies.

We caught the last daily lancha back to San Pedro, and I hummed Death By Stereo's "Hippie Holocaust" as we skipped across the choppy waters. After dinner Ricardo and I enjoyed a light cocktail of mota and rum, then embarked on an entirely stereotypical mota-affected evening. Our every lazy movement was dictated by munchies, intentions frequently derailed by hysterical fits of laughter, as we proceeded to patrol back-and-forth the town central strip, zombie-stalking snacks, making laps to re-up the moment we'd licked the last crumbs or flecks of icing from our hands. In between we were accosted by an unusually hilarious array of english-butchering drunks and a guy -- who may not have been especially poor -- who asked for (and received) bites of our food. How I wish I'd been eating carrots instead of coconut cake...

A mean Patìn

I almost killed a precious child on Saturday. I was standing on Mildred's doorstep when I rocked back into the street, taking a small step down and catching just enough of a sprinting doll's toe with my heel. She entered a flight parallel with the ground, challenging Guatemalan Olympic long-jump records before she skidded across stones on her forearms and face. I felt awful, especially because I'm useless at comforting kids in Spanish. A teen sitting on a moto who'd witnessed the collision transpire grinned at me.

Sunday's lunch was typical San Pedronian fare called Patìn. A hunk of flank steak marinated and cooked in a tomato salsa with lime juice was served beside a multiple avocados-worth sized mound of perfectly mashed and seasoned guacamole. Tortillas and tomalitos served hot from the comal were provided as modes of plate-to-mouth transport for mountains of the lumpy green, onion-studded condiment-turned-side. Patìn is pushing rellenitos for el mejor comida tipica.

Completing a delicious day, I spanked out my first few tortillas, several using less common but more durable (and thus more resistant to beginners' blunders) blue corn masa. For dessert, school-and-housemate Ricardo baked a killer, cumpleaños commemorating strawberry-peach cobbler. The suspense: will my birthday strike unexpectedly again?

Change

Why is making change in Guatemala so difficult? I've handed business as little as Q$10 for a Q$3 or Q$5 purchase and put them in panic mode, some daughter summarily summoned from the next room to skamper across town begging other businesses to break my bill. Q$10, mind you, is less than US$1.50. No less than half the time, San Pedro La Laguna's bank is unable to change any bills, suggesting people holding the essentially-unspendable-unless-you-want-to-buy-the-whole-store Q$50 and Q$100 denominations spit out by the ATM "try again later." The stories I've heard about severe cash shortages sweeping Guatemala in years past were, I believe, not exaggerated.

Saturday I was lucky to find a tienda that could change Q$50, picking up four packages of then ungobbled galletas for Q$8.50. Chiky-brand variations cobertura de fresa, de vainilla, and the new Chiky Blak, galletas con sabor y cobertura de chocolate, were all tasty and standard, but the star of my in-room cookie fest was Arcoiris. Each of the eight cookies had a square butter cookie base, topped with four colored mini-marshmallow humps, alternated so as to be diagonally consistent punk and white, edges slightly melted together to form a unified marshmallow mound. Not only were the marshmallow puffs topped with coconut flakes and colorful sugary specks, but inside the foil package was a fast food condiment squeezepack filled with chemical-red fresa-flavored goo, to be smeared or dotted atop the cookies. A perfect interactive cookie experience for those wowed by processed sugars. A dream come true.

At night, speaking of dreams, I dreamed about moonpies.

Birthday surprise!

Saturday morning while running my usual footpath out of San Pedro toward a tiny coffee farm -- its stone huts and giant concrete clearing for trying harvested beans alien interruptions in the volcano-base jungle growth, the jagged path an imperceptible scar of humanity cutting through the vegetation, winding the hills above the shores of Lake Atitlàn -- I passed a peculiar sight: a middle-aged man, whom I've passed before and whose vacant eyes never register our encounters, was trudging though the dirt toward town. A taut string ran from his right hand, his dangling right arm trailing his body ever so slightly, leading a handfashioned wooden dumptruck loaded with mandarin sized rocks. Five hours later we crossed paths again in San Pedro's center, the dumptruck still in town, clattering over cobblestones, having emptied its load, the man's eyes downcast as he muttered to himself (perhaps about the presumably incredibly slow progress of whatever construction project he's undertaken). Where he materializes from and where he goes I've yet to discover, but he was wearing clothes so I assume somebody is looking out for him. (Or maybe the listless wanderer was just shellshocked from the daily and nightly firework bombardments that keep Guatemalan skies filled with flashes, pops and booms reverberating through alleyways. Usually I can't identify any particular occasion, so maybe some Guatemalans just enjoy preserving, reliving their war-marred recent history?)

Midafternoon I was summoned downstairs for a birthday cake five days early, Mama Meli having mistaken the dates. Which is better, actually, because she'll be in the capital on the 18th, so I got to hug and thank her in person. The carrot cake -- unfrosted yellow cake interspersed with carrot shavings -- reminds me that even though I'm having at least as much fun as (The return of Choose Your Own Analogy!):

a) ...kids (before bedtime) at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch...

b) ...the pleasantly mentally handicapped for whom smiling and giggling are as involuntary as heartbeats...

...there's no substitute for Mom's homecooking (and Dad's twice-yearly homemade pizzas) and my family and friends freezing back home.

(Keys To) The Other Bible Belt

Another day, another pastry orgy in my dreams. Through three months of traveling, I can recollect two dreams, both featuring casts of pies and cakes. Not Heidi Klum. Not Heidi Klum covered in pies and cakes. Just spreads of delights baked with love by aproned geriatrics.

Won't it be cute if I end up dating an Evangelical Church youth group president? Firmly infatuated with my Spanish instructor, my flirtations reciprocated in full, I'm now a devotee to Chapin courtship, passing evenings posted in the doorstep of my maestra's house, a doubletake worthy white oddity for the gawking and whispering enjoyment of passerbys.

This is territory with obstacles more daunting than any supposed divine wrath. Not a man of bastante patience, Evangelical principles demand a man of demasiado patience. Some cravings even pastries can't cure.

Ah, well, if the biggest stress in my life is wavering between practicing my corruptions on a 22-year-old angel or entertaining eager streetstalkers on the short path to motherhood, that's a damn fine life.

Don't worry, Mom, no "surprises" for Christmas.

Mas Hermanitos

Rarely do I remember dreams -- twenty times a year being a generous estimate -- but yesterday I awoke from a midafternoon slumber with images indelible: In my slumber I was attending some sort of college reunion attended by nobody I knew, in a long, L-shaped arcade framed by food stands. The meal itself of no consequence, at some point while I was cleaning my plate the hall magically transformed into a dessert bazaar, walking space sandwiched between stands serving plated portions of every sort of pie and cake and orgasmic imaginary hybrids of pie and cake, pie crusts filled with cake, covered in neon-colored icings. Ice creams and cookies, brownies and lemon bars begged to be piled together in sink-sized bowls.

When I awoke I was still in feverish, a rude porcupine rambling about my stomach, my mattress an oversized sweatsponge, sheets and blankets wrapped around my shivering body like coverall sweatbands. My return to San Pedro La Laguna, until this morning, was tortured, night and day tossing in bed, unable to purge whatever demon plagued me (in what, although contrary to my beliefs, may be a divine reprimand for my return to false pre-meal prayer, my thrice daily ode to the Carolina Panthers and Davidson Wildcats). Yesterday I feigned focus in my four hour return to Spanish class, hoping the Ciproflaxacin would keep calm my screaming bowels until noon, pushing tortilla-tinted burps out the side of my mouth, away from Mildred.

I know my perception of Guatemala City is skewed for having passed my stay with the monied few, chauffeured about -- and thus kept clear of public buses which, statistically speaking, are as likely to lead you into armed robbery as they are your intended destination -- pampered as though wholly incapable, but I loved to contrast to San Pedro. Major cities are fascinating beasts, hubs where gang-controlled corridors of cracked concrete and graffiti and razor wire border zones of plush highrises and residences -- and the requisite razorwire!

December 7th, national event Quema Del Diablo is another Chapin excuse for drinking, fireworks and burning trash in the streets -- much like sports celebrations in West Virginia. At 6pm our party of adults and kids -- gathered at Ana Maria's for an unrelated fundraiser - congregated in the streets where several paper-machè devils strapped with belts of firecrackers were torched, flaming and exploding until only crude wire frames remained, kids running wild with sparklers, bottle rockets launching in quick procession. This, as was transpiring on our block, transpired across Guatemala, and Roberto assured my with considerably more mayhem (and excitement) when perpetrated by the less safety conscious.

Ana Maria and Roberto were gracious and accomodating beyond reason. Juanita cooked up delicious eats and her son, Hector, was quick to interrupt me and correct my Spanish pronunciation, help most adults eschew giving for fear I'll never complete a thought. Groundskeeper Simon's stable of loving youngsters (Neddy, Karin, Esmeralda, y Liliana, names as interpreted through conversation), plus Ana Miriam, the cute and sarcastic daughter of one of Ana Maria's school's working staff, are my newest adopted hermanitos. The days of escondidos, futbol, and tickling (which is great fun until a gang of kids incapacitate you with their fingers) flew past. If only I hadn't been so well sheltered from the harsher realities of Guate, perhaps I could've been mugged of my passport and thus required to linger longer, in proximity to the US Embassy. As it is, I promised my hermanitos I will return, and that was before Monday morning when I departed, Esmeralda, Neddy and Karin peeking from behind a window near the stairs descending into the carport for who knows how long, waiting only for my appearance to hug me goodbye. Adorably, Karin gifted me a Spongebob action figure, a gesture of kindness unquantifiable. From a family of less means than I'll ever know, from children who can't afford to simply replace toys, a gift I certainly don't need but with which I'll never part.

Guate on the spot

Post-Aruba I'm back in Guate, again in the many caring hands of Ana Maria y Roberto, her hilarious preacher husband, and the saintly housekeepers and their shy but playful kids. Again imprisoned in their classy fortress each night, barred from venturing outdoors lest the ladròn-fed hounds gnaw and chomp off my limbs, this is containment I'd not mind never escaping. Ana Maria y Roberto are a kind and patient pair, lugging me through the city, introducing me to coworkers, friends, and family -- a number of whom are chicas bonitas! -- worried every ten minutes that I might be bored or hungry, prepared to go to any lengths necessary to return me to a state of perfect satiation. The price of admission into this charmed life: Me dijo Ana Maria, "Que intentas platicar."

And I do nothing but. Chatting days away with any of the legions of females Ana Maria forces to expend time entertaining me, I haven't glanced at my notes on Spanish tenses and conjugations and usages and exceptions in two weeks, instead content to butcher the language and hope my conversation slaves find it "charming." And sometimes I'm actually funny, like when I forget that Spanish is a gendered langauge and casually disclose my deepest secrets: "Cuando era niña..."

I'm returning to San Pedro La Laguna Monday morning to further my studies and flirtations, but I'm going to miss Guatemala City. As is customary in Central America, and just as in San Pedro, in Guate I've been catered to like a long-lost and limbless war hero son escaped from the cruelest of POW camps during his first day home. (If you're wondering how a brainy torso escapes from a POW camp you're missing the point.) I wouldn't be permitted to spend a dime if I torched the residence with a flamethrower.

Everyone in Guate is impressed with my eating prowess, both the sheer quantity I can hide inside my lean frame and my unwavering appreciation of everything edible. I've been introduced to more of natures' exportation-eluding gifts, orange-fleshed tropical fruits nisperos y sapotes; today I encountered my favorite brand of enchilada, a la tostadas, served openfaced and piled high in pyramidal reverence to Tikal with layers of lettuce, seasoned beef, onions and beets, topped with slices of hardboiled egg. Taking advantage of a household where alimentation isn't limited by economics, I'm eating weeks' worth of fiber at every meal, cleaning bowls of black bean tracks with every last crumb of flaky toasted bread, feeding my so-far resultless routine of pushups with slabs of protein stacked to small animals stature. And during an afternoon outing to Antigua I was encouraged to pacify my pastel pangs, ordering a cold two layer beauty: the upper layer fluffy yellow cake, the lower moist-to-the-point-of-oozy and fruit-filled, a juice saturated cakebase bleeding blackberry purple onto the plate with every silver prong's puncture, all wearing a dense offwhite cream cheese coating, a separatory slab splitting the layers as well.

These perfect memories -- coupled with my broken conversations and games of futbol and escondida with the housekeepers' kids and those at the Colegio -- are enough to outweigh my thirteen pound nightmare: Boliche. Until two nights ago I hadn't bowled in ten years, that distant assault on my confidence consecutive losses to goobers I was babysitting, managing to miss the pins even with the gutters buffered by bumpers. The recent debacle was worse, turning to face a table full of cute girls after each and every gutter-bound throw, forcing a thin, quivering smile, all the while praying a bowler worse than me in any adjacent lane would lose his ball in back swing and, with luck, that its trajectory would mercifully crush my cranium. After the first game, Patrick USA's on-screen scoring row displayed a doubletake-worthy 59. Four frames into the second game -- aware the bowlers in the surrounding lanes were operating sans ball-flinging spazz, instead spinning balls into strikes, maneuvering their legs on release with professional flair -- I'd unseated just 19 pins. All hope evaporated, having failed to pick up even a spare all evening, I unleashed consecutive strikes. Wearing my first genuine smile of the night, time on the lane expired and we exited. Unlikely to ever again throw consecutive strikes outside of Wi Sports, I've officially retired from bowling.

But that's not to say you won't catch me at a bowling alley chugging pitchers of brew, maybe hovering around some kid's birthday party begging for crumbs of cake, lumps of icing stuck to the serving tray.

"Does it say slavery?"

Aruba’s first world finery is two worlds ahead of Central American anything, the disparate locales linked only by gargantuan tropical fruit, each home to freakish papayas larger than any infant not scion of Shaq. And, I guess, relaxed standards of public toileting: exploring Aruba we passed a cute, naked three-year-old girl, standing on the side of the road, hands on her hips, pelvis thrust slightly forward, almost sassily, like a professional model at practice, at first glance presumably peeing, actually taking a standing dump.

Aruba is almost perfect: sweaty weather and turquoise seas; unlimited drink-and-eat access spanning a ½ mile of beachfront resorts (“Yes, I need six White Russians made with Stoli, and fourteen of the seared tuna appetizer. Make it snappy and you might land two Washingtons.”), including dietary essentials lacking in my Central American diet: vegetables, protein, and soft-serve ice cream; big screen TVs with multiple sports and movie channels; and my beloved parents and brother, aunt, uncle, cousins and a boyfriend. The only imperfection in the fantasy for our trio of single twenty-somethings is that were not twelve, the Divi All Inclusive crawling with families toting preteen princesses but nothing legal for us, even by possibly permissive Aruban standards. We’ll see how many days and drinks it takes to transform sun-wrinkled, pudge-bellied tourist moms into eye candy.

The last few days in Guatemala leading up to Aruba saw changes of scenery. There was a shuttle bus connection to Chichicastenango’s sprawling Sunday market, a massive, tourist marketed maze of vendors selling some essentials and many more lengths of intricately patterned fabrics and traditional clothing, bags and crafts, all fashioned by impoverished hands and all accompanied by the same shouted encouragement to purchase (which is the official phrase of Chichi and, traditionally, the first phrase spoken by infants): “¡Buen precio!” The competition between vendors and the necessity of feeding one’s family make Chichi a bizarro eBay, sellers undercutting each other's already low prices to win access to tourist wallets. The ride to Chichi also featured an incomprehensibly heavily guarded checkpoint, randomly placed on a mountain road, at which an armed man among many threw open the sliding van door, bent at the waist until his head was even and parallel with the floor, and demanded, while his eyes scanned beneath seats, “Algunas frutas?” Not drugs. Not weapons. Not children we might be smuggling for international slave trade. Grapes. And if you don’t give 'em up, you’re gonna need ‘em to plug the holes in your chest.

After Chichi I spent a final night in San Pedro La Laguna, enjoying as usual the variety of death metal shirts international aid services have distributed in hyper-religious countries, leaving legions of young men oblivious to the irony of their satanic Sunday’s finest. And after a brutal four-hour chicken bus ride across unpaved Guatemala highway and mountain passes -- the driver testing every bolt in the bus’ construction by hitting every meteoric-crater-sized “pothole,” enduring a lengthy sermon from one of the all-too-common obviously mentally tortured travel-preachers, always exhibiting at least one serious physical defect as well, who suddenly stand up in the middle of a packed bus, holding a bible in one hand and an overhead rail in the other, arching their backs and embarking on an animated screech fest, “Jeeeeeeeeesus Chriiiiiisto!” – I made it to Guate, La Capital, where, again, thanks to international aid, it’s not unlikely to be robbed by a thug wearing a neon-colored Looney Tunes hoodie.

For a family friend’s thoughtfulness and her friends in Guatemala, I landed in the generous care of Guatemalan elite, living in an every way modern and first world palace just outside the city. My bags were carried and my meals prepared by the live-in family of house- and groundskeepers. The huge garden- and tree-filled property is surrounded by a military-grade brick wall topped with razor wire, five or six massive, trained attack dogs prowling the premises at night. In order to keep my throat from resembling a platter of pulled pork bathed in tomato sauce, I wasn’t allowed out of the house once the roaming killers were released for the night.

La Capital is unlike rural Guatemala, it is modern, marred by US fastfood, marked with malls and at least one Hooters too, and the people, on average, stand taller than my waist. I indulged in Guatemala’s most popular street eats, pollo frito y papas fritas, at the ubiquitous Pollo Campero chain. And I drained a few hot mugs of homemade Atol de Elote, a delicacy with the color and consistency of snot from a winter cold, spotted with bits of corn kernels, a liquid version of Pan de Elote. I toured the city with a family friend, Eddy, and enjoyed sights like El Mapa en Relieve, Plaza Mayor de la Constitución, a museum documenting and displaying historical artifacts and another tracing the history and evolution of ropa tìpica.

Then I flew away, but not before tormenting everyone in my smell radius at the Guatemala City airport’s security checkpoint (and again in Miami) when I had to remove my one well-past-well-used pair of all-purpose sneakers. (For the benefit of everyone I have encountered since, I succeeded in washing my well-exercised, sweat-stiffened wardrobe here in Aruba, the first wash in a month.) Family fun commenced immediately upon reuniting in Miami International Airport, the extended family waiting for the same connection to Aruba. As reports were breaking about the outbreak of coordinated and deadly terrorist attacks in India, CNN was reporting the rather unnewsworthy in a bottom-scrolling text bar: “President Elect Obama Condemns the Attacks.” Kerry, Tony, and I exchanged “No shit” glances and discussed headlines that would actually be newsworthy: “President Elect Obama claims responsibility for the terrorist attacks!”

On the flight to Aruba, while we were filling out our immigration cards, my cousin Tony and I wondered aloud where the “Slavery” checkbox was located in the “Purpose of Visit” section, our stated purpose finding a Venezuelan slave trader interested in purchasing my brother. My cousin Lindsey, in one of those classic lapses of thought everyone -- save the blessed mute -- experiences from time to time to the delight of anyone in earshot, asked, quite concerned, “Does it say slavery?”

Since landing, we’ve enjoyed sun, sand, snorkeling, and, for the three young-lads searching for an elixir to induce hallucinations halving or quartering the age of drunk tourist moms and grandmas dance-lurching as nightly entertainment, a horrible day-after blackout, for me a Top 20 all-time hangover that even endless bowls of soft serve burying mounds of chocolate cake couldn’t cure. As reported by my aunt and uncle with whom I reportedly shared a lost conversation -- while awaiting a pizza and panini I’d ordered in a fit of B.A.C. overwhelming consideration for my stomach’s next-morning wellbeing -- a few minutes into our exchange I suddenly raised a hand to my lips and began poking and tracing the flesh, slurring, “Are my lips moving? Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” Meanwhile Kerry milled around, holding two drink cups in one hand, one upright and filled, the other parallel to the ground, empty. All this after an impressive day of productivity and exercise and avoiding the bar; I'd remained alcohol-free and vegetable-full until 8pm, yet I was unconscious and bloated on greasy junkfood by midnight. I blame it on SoCo and lime. I'd ordered two Soco and limes and two White Russians for me and Kerry to share, and when the bartender asked if we'd like ice in our SoCo and limes, of course I replied no. Who puts an ice cube in a shot glass? When he returned with two cups filled with warm SoCo and a wedge of lime hanging from each rim, I realized I'd missed obvious clues.

I’ve only been quick and sober enough to document a few of the hilarious conversations and exchanges in my omnipresent pocket notepad, like my mom’s description of the daily lives of scallops: “They go around clappin’ their clams.” And her imaginative extension of logic, concerned because my father hadn’t informed the credit card company he would be vacationing in Aruba: “They’re going to call the house (to verify a foreign purchase), nobody will answer, and they’re gonna think we’re stabbed.” Or when Tony and I argued age-appropriateness in the pursuit of females, Tony claiming he, being twenty-one and three years younger than me, is subject to different basements and ceilings in target ages; I countered with typical sleaze, adamant we share the same basement and ceiling ages, coining my new mantra in the process: “Eighteen to the grave.”

Como siempre, time with my family is absolutely priceless. Now back to Guatemala, enjoying my occupational travel and Spanish language acquisition, counting the days until the next reunion.