Today I’m going to talk about parties. That’s right, the good ol’ Guatemalan fiesta. You might wonder how I can possibly be so swamped with work that I can barely allude to its quantity or confounding complexity, but still have time to shake my rump to the mad beats of banda (Guatemalan country music, the kind that talks about trains and scorned lovers and working on the range). That’s a funny joke, so please laugh now.
…I’m waiting.
No, the truth is, it’s hard to find time during the week, but everything grinds to a halt on the weekends, where my schedule would normally be chockablock with commitments were I back in the US. I say with almost no irony that the -end is perhaps the hardest part of the week to get through. This week, however, I had a lot of things worth doing.
Francis’ 19th birthday was Friday, who you may remember me saying in earlier posts is the younger of my host sisters. At the moment she’s a hairstylist in Jocotenango, a medium-sized town on the way to Antigua, but aspires to be a doctor once she’s saved enough to go to University. Currently she has no idea when that will be.
Her birthday was a sight to behold: The family said they expected 70 guests, each of which was to be served a plate of tortillas, rice, bread, soda, and pepian, the traditional dish that seems to only be reserved for the most special of occasions—weddings, funerals, the arrival of pasty-looking gringos, and birthdays. It’s a good thing, too, because it takes all day to prepare, and the cauldron that Doña Mayra was slaving over must have contained more than 5 or 6 gallons of the soupy brown liquid. Being boiled in it were 4 full chickens that would later be dismembered so that each guest would receive a piece with their serving.
The preparations were extensive. In addition to the thorough cleaning of the entire house (including my room, though no one would go in there but me), the spraying down of the dirt parts of the yard with water and the putting up of dozens of balloons and streamers, the dress code was strictly enforced:
“Hey, Chepe, are you going to wear that to the party?” Don Tereso asked me, 6 hours before the party began.
“I hadn’t thought about it, but I think so. Yeah, probably,” I said, looking down at myself. I had bathed within the last dozen hours, and tossed on a button-down that I had only worn 3 or 4 times since it had last been laundered on the unforgiving cement of the pila. Jeans, with hardly a smudge on them, completed the ensemble. I had even shaved within the last few days, and this look had been acceptable at every “formal” event I had attended in San Lorenzo since arriving. Damn, I was looking fly.
“Oh,” he replied, clearly not sure how to proceed. “It’s just that you need to wear a tie, slacks, and black shoes for this. Do you have a suit? A suit would really be better.” He looked at me hopefully, hoping that I had somehow smuggled a suit into the house without him noticing.
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I do have the other stuff though,” I said, feeling more shlub-like by the second. “I’ll wear the best that I have.”
Six hours later the guests came and I felt horribly overdressed. There was not a suit in attendance. Ties were limited to my neck only. Oh well.
After riding the sugar high over the next few days from too much cake, Anna presented me with an interesting proposition. “Joe, my host sister’s not going to be home tonight, so we’re going to have a slumber party at my place. You’re coming, right?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Sleepovers in San Lorenzo are all but unheard of, and co-ed sleepovers maybe one of the most scandalous things you can dream up around here. It didn’t matter that Anna’s host parents and other host sister were going to be home, and it definitely didn’t matter that the boys would ultimately sleep in one room and the girls in another. I assumed that it would be talked about for weeks afterwards by the gossip mill that operated out of the community pila.
I said “what the hell” and agreed to go. It was going to be fun, and I needed some more of that. It was Saturday, after all. When 8:30pm came, we all went over to Anna’s house, changed into our PJs, and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail on my computer. Halfway through, I looked up and only Allison and I were still awake. I settled back into my position, blinked, and the credits were rolling. I had slept through the bits about Castle Anthrax, Tim the Sorcerer, and the Knights Who Say “Ni.”
Apparently we had slightly miscalculated the stamina of people who routinely go to bed at 9 and wake up at 6. By 10:30 we were too exhausted to do anything but call it a night. As I fell asleep for the second time, I recalled the sleepovers I used to have with the Crew, my best friends from middle and high school. Soda-fueled video game marathons until 4 or 5 in the morning were not uncommon, and shenanigans always ran high. It seems that I have since turned into an old man.
The cap to the weekend came, of course, on Sunday night, when I declined my family’s invitation to go to church in favor of catching up on homework. When they came home they called me downstairs. I went, expecting that they just wanted to wish me good night. Instead, I found myself eye-to-eye with a face not unlike a 70-year old man’s badly scalded scrotum.
Not knowing what else to say, I exclaimed, “Wow. That’s a big turkey!” Eluding me were more insightful questions like “whose turkey is it?”, “why do we need a turkey?”, or “are you aware that your turkey is currently taking a dump on your shoes?” When I got over the shock, I figured out that it was for someone’s birthday in a month or two, and that there had been a sale on live turkeys outside the church they had gone to. That must be some church.
That’s all I’ve got for now, though I know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for the news on my co-. As of a few minutes ago, I found out I’ll be working for the next few years with Lauren D. from Indiana. I’m sure you’re all excited to Facebook stalk the hell out of her. Let me know if you turn up anything juicy.
Also, please peruse this week’s pictures at your leisure. They can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week8?authkey=Gv1sRgCJiF5ey5i-DauQE.
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