Week 29 - This is What it's Like When Worlds Collide

As some of you may know, my father, in a fit of what can only be described as impulsivity derived from paternal love and relatively cheap airline tickets, came to visit me this last week. Much of the visit was very good, but what struck me was not that it was so good to see an old, familiar face (indeed, the oldest and most familiar), but the way it reflected my image back at me.

I suppose I should clarify that last sentence a little bit. I’d hate for you to think that I was so self-absorbed that I need to see myself in every situation. What I mean is that my dad is someone who knows virtually nothing about contemporary Guatemalan mores, and speaking Spanish is, put lightly, not his forte. In essence, he is exactly like I was when I first arrived.

When I first joined Peace Corps, I knew nothing, and it forced me to construct a new world of familiarity. Everything was new to me. Even the people with whom I came were entirely foreign. They had different educations, interests, Spanish abilities, stereotypes, and accents. Obviously, to survive here, I had to make their acquaintance.

Little by little, I became more knowledgeable about my fellow volunteers, about my host country, and about Spanish as a language. But in doing so, it remained entirely divorced from my life back home. There was no pollution of old relationships—to the people or the culture—that crossed from the old to the new. My point, if I have a point, is that everything that I’ve built here has been unique to this place.

So when my father came to Guatemala it was unexpectedly more complicated than simply having a loved one come to visit. It’s difficult to overlay separate lives, and it felt like a profound collision of my old world with my new one. I’m not saying that I am necessarily an entirely new person, or even that I’ve consciously worked at reinventing troublesome parts of my personality, but I found it uncommonly difficult to straddle both personas: I was the dedicated PCV during the mornings, then the concierge during the afternoons, the translator throughout the day, and the young adult off with his friends after my he went to bed. I loved having him here, but it was a role I wasn’t prepared for. It was a role that others had filled for me during my first weeks in country.

Mostly it felt weird to be in a condition where that was possible for me to do.

It’s happened only one other time in my life: My friend and former roommate Will L. once visited me while I was studying abroad in Athens, Greece during the fall of 2008 just before the U.S. presidential election. While there I wrote weekly emails with almost as much religiosity as I do here. Being a digital packrat, they weren’t hard to dig up. At the time had this to say about his visit:

“I'm finding my ability to speak and understand Greek has improved noticeably. I guess that's to be expected, given that I came to Greece knowing nothing and now know at least a little something, but Will really made me realize that my language classes are not necessarily the poorly-organized jumble I thought they were. I surprised even myself by having a mildly intelligent exchange with a shop owner while Will looked at all the trinkets and t-shirts that stores near the Acropolis try to hawk to tourists like, well, him. I won't go into the meat of the dialogue, but I assure you it was ripe with comments concerning where I was from, what I was doing in Athens, and the didactic nature of Sophoclean thought and its pertinence to the contemporary geopolitical climate. That is, ‘go Obama!’”

What strikes me with this is that it is virtually identical to how I feel now. My question is, is this a normal phenomenon? I’m not talking about the slow acquisition of acculturation or linguistic competency, but rather that it seems virtually impossible to see how far you’ve come without literally standing next to someone on square one? I suppose on some level it’s like anything else, the athlete who doesn’t know how good they are until they disgrace their old training partner; the child who must stand next to last year’s penciled height mark on the doorway to see how tall they are now.

I guess it really doesn’t matter; if you’ve read my other posts you know that I haven’t been too shy about making sweeping claims about personality changes. “I’ve gotten more mature with this,” or “my that has improved substantially.” Still, having a stationary target to compare myself to really helped me to see what’s really going on. As a result I feel mildly refreshed; I looked forward to going back to San Se, to continuing my life rather than staying in Antigua, the tourist heaven I idealized so much during training.

To paraphrase the immortal words of the Pampers jingle, “Mommy, wow! I’m a big kid now!”

Sorry, I forgot my camera while he was here, and so, like last week, there aren’t any accompanying pictures. Next week, I promise…

Week 28 - An Albeit Short Ode to Coffee

In the land of the volcanoes, it’s the little things that keep you going. Perhaps as a semi-intended continuation of last week’s entry, I’d like to talk about that little thing that keeps me going: Coffee.

When I walk into a good coffee shop, you can immediately tell: Only the good ones rely exclusively on their java. In a culinary Darwinism, the good coffee survives and is allowed to spread its bean. It's the ones that water down their menu--even their selections--with too much choice that you have to be aware of. The caramel macchiato with soy milk and extra whip cream, while ephemerally tasty, really isn't about the beans, and the twice-as-large price tag makes it attractive as a profit subsidizer. Still, the good ones are small, with the espresso machine confronting you before anything else. My coffee shop du jour, the Refuge, is a simple hole in the wall about the size of my bedroom. Its L-shaped counter is made of varnished white pine, and it has only 4 drinks on the menu. The lime-green espresso maker sits front and center, dispensing bean-based truth to its gathered disciples.

It’s amazing how much of the stuff I can put back throughout the day if I’m not required to leave the easy proximity of a pot. What’s more amazing still is the nuance in flavor that I can now detect. The old, shriveled beans that have hidden in the permafrost of a freezer since the dawn of, well, freezers, taste much less complex than the babies that were roasted this morning; The slightly burnt, acidic taste of a mediocre drip blend is a 9^th grade Sadie Hawkins compared to the melodious Tarantella created by a professional-grade machine.

Then of course there’s the difference the barista makes: Try as I might, I will never be quite as good as the near-mythical Alex in Antigua, or the dedicated entrepreneurs of El Museo in Huehue. You taste that in the ambiance, and the little flourishes at the end: The garnishes, the designs in the foam, the graceful slant of the sugar spoon against the ceramic. Presentation, while not everything, rates a solid “important.”

But I think it's the routine that I like the most, those infrequent moments where I have the opportunity to read the paper under the avocado trees of my favorite coffeehouses. It feels so sophisticated, especially compared to the rest of my life, to read meaningful articles and ruminate on the lacunae of the global political process.

Will I ever be the same in my predilections for a good java? Can I go back to the mouthwash that I drank in my darker moments of college? God, I hope not.

Also, my dad is currently here in Antigua and, like a few weeks ago, I am finding it hard to write a meaningful entry. Still, if I let it go for a single week I’ll never be able to maintain my near-perfect adherence each week. It’ll be better next week. I’ll have no distractions (or fun, no doubt).

Signing off…

Week 27 - Early Mornings: Suck.

They say that the morning starts out with a quiet calm, and those up early enough catch the worm. Let me tell you: If the person weren’t so sleep-addled, they would realize they have no need for a worm to begin with. After almost 7 months of Peace Corps life, I can tell you that my relationship to the dawn has drastically changed.

The day's genesis isn't always bad, it just feels that way at the time. When I first stir at 5:10am, wipe the sleep bogeys from my eyes, and stumble over to the toilet followed by the percolator (rarely confusing the two pots), I can hardly appreciate the way the mist rolls through the trees and down the mountain behind my house. I can barely stand that soft chirping of sparrows, and truly despise the rustic call of a rooster echoing along the valley.

Gone are the days of forcing myself to bathe as soon as I awake. Our shower is solar-heated, and while you can have a truly divine experience later in the afternoon (just before the rains), at 5am it’s no better than the river. My body has awoken to a hot shower almost every morning since 8^th grade. Even those terrible 8:30am “1a” classes in college usually were preluded by a quick rinse. Now waking up at 8:00 seems like an unfathomable luxury. Oh, how spoilt was I!

During high school I always took a certain amount of pride in the maximal efficiency of my morning routine. It was a team effort, not unlike those rapid pit stops during Nascar races: Wake up at 6:33, out of the shower by 6:45, dressed by 6:48, and out the door by 6:55. I had memorized each split, and the slightest slip from any of my pit crew—“Dad, get out of the damned shower!; Mom, peanut butter that bread faster!”—was enough to upset my morning. Today it’s the same race, but a different course, a solo dune buggy sprint across a feral landscape: Up by 5:12, urinated by 5:16, coffee started by 5:18, pack my bag for the day by 5:21, coffee off the burner by 5:22, and then head back to the bathroom to brush, primp, and deuce. Of course there’s usually no water that early in the morning, so precious minutes are wasted going to the pila with a bucket and bringing back enough water to manually trigger the flush mechanism.

By the time I return to my room for the second time, my coffee has cooled enough to drink, and I spend a few more minutes feebly trying to appreciate it while reading an online article of the New York Times. That first taste of coffee, now taken with a half-spoon of sugar and no milk, is good, but my dozing taste buds can hardly make the distinction between this organic, hand-picked, from the finca previously just-for-family-but-now-also-a-few-select-gringos and that brown swill that's patented by Nescafé.

I toss on my pants—those same dungarees that I’ve been wearing with adroit comfort for 22 consecutive days now—but the coffee has already begun to stagger in its daily war against the tentacles of that beast Slumber. In a final excruciating feat of masochism, I make my bed and flop out the door.

The time says 5:55am.

I live on the very outskirts of town, and walking to the center to beg a ride up the mountain takes just under four minutes. By the time a suitable chariot is found, the caffeine is starting to hit my system. I perk up a little, especially now that the siren song of my bed is drowned out by the chug of a poorly maintained combustion engine and a concentrated effort to not fall backward out of the pick-up bed. The wind is fierce, and I’m jealous of those older/cooler/more pregnant teachers who have secured a seat in the cab. My butt begins to hurt from the rock-strewn road’s constant jolts. I tell my butt to shut up. I’m in the Peace Corps, damn it. It reminds me that this is not that type of hardship it signed up for, and furthermore, I’m talking to my ass. Point, butt.

There are only cars moving along the mountain in the early morning and in the mid-afternoon, so while we are coming up the mountain workers are usually coming down to work in the lower fields or in Huehue. Despite the fact that they see me almost every day, the workers, all indigenous, gawk and whisper. I’ve become more brazen, too; while they stare at me coming up, I stare back. Neither side is willing to give in, their bemusement against my indignation, so we rotate like geriatric sprinklers, hardly blinking as we pass. This uncomfortable dance finishes when the road finally makes another of its ungainly switchbacks, blocking us from each other’s view. In the wind I hear a final Mam catcall of me’xj (pronounced “mesh”; lit. guy-with-the-hair-made-of-corn-silk). Despite the fact most people in the US would consider my hair to be some synonym of dark brown, here in Guatemala there are only variations on the shade of black. Since mine is not equally jet, I automatically get lumped into the category of “blond.”

Trying to distract myself from my growing discomfort allows for a lot of planning: I plan my walk. I plan my pit stops. I plan how I’m going to get back down the mountain, and if there’s anyone I can guilt into giving me a ride. I typically visit two schools each day, and and that means four to seven miles of walking. If I finish early for the day and don’t want to wait for the afternoon cars, it means another ten or more to get home. The Peace Corps does not allow me to own a motorcycle, and the mountains are too steep to use a bike. I often fantasize about owning a hang glider.

The truck stops and I get out. The time says 7:15am. I have reached my job site. It’s time to begin my day.

The photos, an equal mix of work and the walks between, can be found at https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week27?authkey=Gv1sRgCL31itPUieWRqgE

Week 26 - American Appetites

It’s an unexpected truism that patriotism expresses itself differently when you’re an expat. Take for instance my typical celebration of the 4^th of July in the US: Maybe hanging out with some friends, drink a few beers, eat a few brats, and call it a night after trying to blow something up with tiny explosives. Here—and I have it on good authority in almost every Peace Corps country—the 4^th of July is one of the biggest celebrations of the year. Perhaps it’s because it’s one of only a few US holidays we get to officially recognize here, or perhaps it’s because all the volunteers come—even those from the mythical Oriente (East side of the country)—and you get to see people you ordinarily don’t, but it’s a party atmosphere all weekend.

I ‘m not going to go into too much detail of what I did. Most of it really doesn’t translate well into an anecdote; do you really want to hear about me eating 3 burgers and a hotdog in only a few minutes and then the stomach-situated misery that followed? I didn’t think so, though I will say at the end of the day it was totally worth it.

Instead, I want to focus more on the sense of patriotism, and more generally, the connection I felt to other Americans on that day. I felt it too when I was in Greece in 2008, awaiting the presidential results that would put Obama in the White House. I’m not by nature prone to what more outspoken conservatives would call “patriotism:” I don’t wear a flag pin on my lapel; despite Rush Limbaugh’s abhorrent philosophies, I’m pretty sure he’s not a Nazi; and, except when I’m in the company of a select few, do not elongate—while simultaneously dropping most of the vowels from—the word “terrorist” (Will, you’re a dirty, dirty trrrrist!).

And yet, I find myself feeling pleased to hail from the United States. Is that really patriotism then, if I only feel it with other Americans, a beer and a burger clutched in each hand? I suppose it doesn’t really matter. More important, at least to me at least, is that Guatemala feels a little bit more familiar…

…I’m writing this in a café in Antigua called Y tú piña tambien (And your pineapple also), and the proprietor just came over and offered me a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. I figured that it deserved a shout-out.

…And now, upon leaving, I see that he charged me for it. Asshole.

But back to the matter at hand: Is it because we are all, at least in some sense, banded together as expats that we express a common ideology? I don’t think so. We’re all in Peace Corps, and I think that forms the basis of our connection. Patriotism is secondary to talent shows that make people look like endearing fools.

Indeed, when I arrived at a bar on the actual 4^th of July (the Peace Corps’ celebration was on Saturday), I was turned off by the profligacy and boorish representation of what being “American” meant to most of the patrons, only a few of which were Peace Corps. Beer was flowing, shots were shooting, and the playlist was chockablock with southern twang. Granted, it was a “redneck” themed party, but still. I’d be remiss if I suggested that I don’t occasionally party also (and let’s face it: The three lead guitars of Lynyrd Skynyrd are hot enough to melt your face off). There are a lot of volunteers who have a problem with how we portray our culture to locals, but what gets me is the projection we’re emitting of America to each other. Is this who we are? Where have I been?

Sorry this installment is so short. I’m still stuck in Antigua while I wait for the roads to be unblocked by protesting farmers and an “emergency security meeting” tomorrow afternoon at the Peace Corps office, whatever that means. My mind is other places at the moment.

Pictures at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week26?authkey=Gv1sRgCLujsNvIquKIDg

Week 25 - Falling Off My High, High Horse

I think by this point you’ve all heard my half-hearted griping about the fíjese que’s, the impromptu holidays, and the general state of disrepair in which the Guatemalan school system finds itself. It still all holds true, of course, but I find myself having, given what transpired this week, a harder time sitting on my high, high horse.

The MINEDUC (Guatemalan abbreviation for the Ministry of Education), in conjunction with the San Se mayor’s office, sponsor a trip every school year not for the students, but the teachers of my district. They mostly pay for transportation costs, but are also able to finagle discounts that would be otherwise unobtainable on a smaller scale. I was pleased, but not terribly surprised, when my boss, the CTA (Superintendent) invited me to go along, given that I am, in some sense, both a teacher and an employee of the MINEDUC.

Who knew Guatemala has a perfectly respectable waterpark in the middle of the southern jungle?

I was torn. On one hand it seemed like a great way to build confianza with my teachers. On the other, it was exactly the kind of non-accountability that I’ve grown so frustrated with. This two day trip, on a Wednesday and Thursday, was another glaring testament to the maxim, “teachers refuse to do anything during the weekend.” Much of the trip seemed to say, “Students? What students?”

Forget that this was a trip to the Guatemalan equivalent of Six Flags with a quick stop off at the beach first. Forget that it was heavily subsidized by the MINEDUC. Forget that it was perched comfortably between the ordinary work days of Tuesday and Friday. Well, maybe don’t forget that part; that’s kind of my point.

There seems to be no continuity, no flow, to the school week. It’s as if an axe murderer is lopping off a day here, two or three there, until the supposedly nine month school year feels like 3 or 4. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good vacation day as much as the next person, but it honestly feels like the MINEDUC panders to the teachers over the students, always forgetting—or ignoring—which ones are the children.

You might think that I would forgo the trip as a politick statement of my distaste for this style of education. You give me too much credit. Officially speaking, it was the chance to build relationships with my coworkers, and more personally, create friendships so I’m not stuck in the house every night after 4pm. Also, Xocomil (sho-koh-MIL) is a Mayan-themed water park. It seemed worthy of an anecdote.

Wednesday morning I woke up at 3:30am so that I could be waiting for the MINEDUC bus by 4. By this point a lot of the teachers know who I am, or at least my face, but I think they were still a little surprised that one of the two gringos in town was headed out with them for the coast. Lauren, perhaps more overtly dedicated to her principles than I, declined the invitation.

Only about 40 teachers came on the trip, and when we reached the beach at Champerico around 10, we immediately hit the surf. Well, I waded in with gusto, remembering just how hot the beaches can become. Swim lessons are not very popular (or indeed, available) here, so few teachers know how to cope in deep water. Combine that with a strong riptide and vicious waves, and only the most daring went past waist depth. The majority dipped toes.

We packed it in after lunch, where I had caldo de mariscos (crustacean stew). As I think I’ve noted in other posts, Guatemalans don’t put much stock in making it easy to eat food. The stew was excellent, but it was pretty shocking to see a miniature ocean biome floating in front of me. 3 crabs (shell on), a dozen or more shrimp (shell and heads on), a fillet of fish (possibly tilapia, skin on), and fifteen tiny mussels floating around the soup like a rocky garnish (shells opened, but attached). When I was done, there was a graveyard surrounding the bowl and nearly as tall. Filling, messy, delicious.

That night we stayed in Mazatenango. Some teachers, tapping hidden reserves of herculean energy, suggested we hit the discos after dinner. I was born with no such assets. I called it a night around 7:30 and was asleep by 8.

The next morning we finally got to Xocomil. It’s been quite some time since I was at a water park, but I can assure you, those I went to in my youth were nothing like this. Towering step pyramids, painted in garish colors, poked above the banana and palm trees. From your vantage point at the top, just before sliding down, you could see miles and miles of uninterrupted forest. Virtually the entire park was fill with teachers from other districts, apparently equally drawn by the MINEDUC discount of half-priced admission and free lunch (total cost for the day was 50Q, or roughly $6).

There were really all of the rides you’d expect at a large water park in the US: Waterslides for both inner tubes and people without, giant slides, a lazy river, and wave pool. Were it not for the exotic views, it could have been anywhere.

I spent the day alternating between two groups of people, and by the time I was done I felt like I had created some foundations for friendships that will last me while I’m living here. I think it helped to be seen in a less professional, stiff environment. Everyone bends over backwards to properly greet and acknowledge the titles of others. At Xocomil, standing there in my oversized bathing suit, laughing, wading, floating, just like everyone else, I think it helped me be seen as a real person. I’m still a light-eyed, English speaking, sorely burnt oddity, but now slightly less so.

So was it worth it overall, swallowing moral indignation in favor of further establishing myself here in San Se?

I hope so.

The pictures, of which there’s only one (it’s hard to take pictures at a water park!),  can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week25?authkey=Gv1sRgCNT89MuHjszl7AE#5623078790259948386

Week 24 - The Faux Fixety of Time

I believe it was Shakespeare who once said “Time: What the fuck?” Sometimes it passes slowly, sometimes quickly, but rarely do its distortions feel like both at the same time. That may, in fact, be a lie. When I was still at Carleton I felt that it was full of long days and short months, supposedly quick papers that turned into marathon slogs, and hourly battles between my fatigue and jump starts at the coffee shop. Still, deadlines teleported to the present, terms ended spontaneously, and somehow college concluded in only four pinched years.

I really don’t write a lot of papers here but, like Carleton, I find myself marveling at the time paradox. It’s been 24 protracted weeks, give or take a day, since I last saw my oldest friends, drank water from the faucet, or fell asleep in America. That means it’s been six miniscule months of riding camionetas, exaggerating religious fervor, and straining to understand what’s culturally appropriate.

It really depends how I look at it, a sort of “glass half full/half empty” situation. If I think about the last time I was in the US, it seems like it’s been forever. I’ve changed, the US has changed, as has our relationship to each other. Where has all that time gone? My life back then was just that—a different life. I’ve found new parts of myself that I didn’t know existed, unknown reserves of patience and strength as well as buried flaws and irrationalities, and used those as tools of reinvention. There is a truly significant break between what I was and what I am. It’s been years since I was Old Me.

On the other hand, if I look at my time here, it’s passed in almost a blink. The time blurs and meshes together into irregular chunks, so it feels like it’s been only a few hours since I wrote Week 23, a few days since I got to site, and perhaps, with a huge burst of mental reckoning, a week or two since I was getting Spanish lessons around a kitchen table during training. Indeed, I’ve only been New Me for a couple of seconds.

The day I left Minnesota, my brother, an RPCV himself, and I sat in a commercial bar in the airport, styled to look beaten down and faintly dive-like. We sipped mass-produced microbrews in a booth at ten in the morning, much more for my sake than his. As my tremoring hands gripped the contoured pint glass, already steadied once a few hours earlier by a mother-sanctioned slug of bourbon, I remember him telling me, no matter what, to stick it out for the first six months.

“If you make it through the first six months, you’re probably fine,” he told me, suggesting that it takes at least that long to feel comfortable in such new surroundings. “It’s not the physical hardship that gets you; you get used to that pretty quickly. It’s the mental stuff that’s the hardest, the loneliness and feeling out of place; the boredom. The sense that what you’re doing doesn’t benefit anyone. You’ve got to get through that.”

I looked up from my beer and the little circles the glass’ condensation made on the wooden table. I didn’t really believe him about the physical hardship. He had a house with electricity and running water when he was in Namibia. I was positive I’d be shitting in a bucket stored under a reappropriated army cot, picking the tarantulas off me with improvised salad tongs. Still, six months seemed like an eternity. Even as I prepared myself mentally to go, I was sure I wouldn’t last. Parts of me at that moment hoped that I would get injured and medically separated within the first few weeks, sent home for something that wasn’t shameful or my fault.

“I know you’re scared, Jóbalo,” he said, calling me by a pet name that only older brothers can get away with, “but just take it one day at a time. Every night that your head hits the pillow is a victory. And when it gets really hard—and it will—just keep telling yourself ‘for better or worse, this too shall pass.’”

It’s usually the nights that are the hardest. After I’ve eaten my solitary dinner and finished my single serving of dishes I perch on top of my bed and don’t know what to do with myself. It’s in those undistracted moments then that the longing resurfaces, that desire to see my roots, my friends and city, sharp and disorienting and animal; like a hook twisted along my guts, pulling me backward and up from somewhere behind my navel. In all truth I still can’t face the idea of 21 more months without an element of panic insidiously seeping in. And so I think of the months I’ve been here instead, stroking the number like a baby would a security blanket. It grows longer and more solid every week, better able to remind me that despite my occasional misgivings, I am still here. I am succeeding here.

And now that it’s been six months—that length of time that seemed like aeons to Old Me—I see what he meant. He has been prophetic, a slightly taller Yoda with a curly Jew ’fro. I feel more comfortable here. I still have low moments, moments of panic, but they’re not met with the same canned responses to the silent, landscaped question:

“What. Am I. doing, here?”

I am here because I enjoy it. I am here because I want to be. I am here because the alternative would be a cubicle in a hospital talking about interest rates and potential repayment plans, making ten times the salary I make now with one tenth the thrill. I am here because life’s an adventure and I want to push myself, to be that indomitable spirit that’s alright with looking like an idiot in the name of self-improvement.

Old Me wouldn’t be comfortable with that.

Please find the pictures, a veritable clip show of my service, here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week24?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ25md_hjvv0nQE

Week 23 - Decadence and Luxury in the Third World

A lot of people conceive the Peace Corps to be a life of discomfort, loneliness, and mental anguish. It’s hard, I won’t even attempt to deny it, but like anything, you acclimate. While I risk eroding the illusion that we’re all superhero ascetics (for the record, we are), you get to a point where intestinal parasites, irregular utilities, and large arachnids don’t bother you. You find that you can go months without a proper shave, and, with hardly any effort, your life continues to proceed without you 2600 miles to the north.

One of the main reasons I joined the Peace Corps was for the excitement and adventure that it promised. My service has certainly offered me the opportunity to explore the highest and lowest emotions my psyche has to offer, and also put me in situations that I never thought I’d see or experience (Heads Should Usually Remained Attached, On Second Thought, Let’s Change that…), but one thing that has been lacking has been the sense that this is any sort of luxury vacation.

This past weekend I had the fortuitousness to experience luxury that would have qualified as “luxury” even if I were still in the First World. It was awesome.

About an hour outside of Xela exists a medium-size town called Zunil. If you grudgingly pay a very smug man 20 quetzales, he’ll take you up into the mountains, past the road’s switchbacks framed by pines and the patchwork of farm plots tucked against the slopes, until you arrive at what is almost certainly God’s bathtub.

When Kate, a recently-made non-PC friend, and I got to the parking lot of the Fuentes Georgina, it was deserted save for a few idling parking attendants, who instructed us to continue along a path leading even higher than the several thousand feet above Zunil we were currently standing. The heavy wooden bannisters and the bare rock face quickly gave way to a clearing and, proudly displayed in its center, three cascading pools, the roughly-hewn flagstones lining the bottom dyed green from mineral deposits. The steam shone golden as it curled off the water and became backlit by the sun.

There was just one other duo there, and we were easily able to pretend we had the place to ourselves. For the first glorious hour we joked about the unfamiliarity of true decadence. This was what traveling is all about, right? To find those hidden gems far away from the norm, soaking in (sometimes literally) their charms?

Changing into my bathing suit, intentionally bought when it was uncomfortably tight, I noticed that it seemed in danger of slipping off during the next particularly boisterous bought of cavorting. I appreciate a good cavort now and again, and this boded ill.

“Can you get a bathing suit tailored?” I asked myself as I examined my weak muscle tone and general level of abdominal pastiness. I’m going to have to start on that P-90X stuff that all the volunteers keep talking about. Running and weightlifting are practically impossible here. Of course, more exercise means more weight loss, and thus more tailoring.

Kate and I surveyed the pool before us. Irregularly shaped, with two walls butting against the rock face that fed it with its boiling waterfall, it could have been mistaken for a natural lagoon if the underwater tiling didn’t give it away. Had we come later in the day, the café and bar making the third wall would have been far more inviting. Instead, it was impossible to ignore that it was nine in the morning, almost, but not quite, entirely the wrong time for a beverage. It was too late for coffee to sound very appealing before a hot soak, and not quite late enough to sanction a brew.

The fourth wall of the pool created a walkway between the largest, hottest, and prettiest of the pools, and the second in all three categories. Underground pipes from the first, assisted solely by gravity, cascaded water that kept the second’s temperature more or less constant. The same occurred in the third.

I dipped my toes into the first pool. It was hot, but bearable. I immersed myself up to my knee, and right about then decided that I was too much of a weeny to go any further. The heat, to which I had hoped I would acclimate, did not seem to get any cooler. Instead, words like “searing,” and “ohmygodthisissohotican’tstandit” kept thumping themselves against my consciousness. Is this the way a lobster feels as it contemplates the final moments leading up to the great beyond?

“What do you think? 140 degrees? 150?” I asked Kate as she walked up beside me. She shot me a look that clearly suggested I needed to re-zero my internal thermometer. “Forget this, let’s go to the cooler pool.”

Kate’s example and snide allusions about my manliness eventually got me up to my chest in the main pool. When I tried to move however, my zen-like concentration on penguins and snow days was instantly broken, and we spent much of our remaining time alternating between pools number two and three. While they were certainly cooler than the first, they were plenty warm enough to work away at our muscle knots and induce that sleepy, sluggish feeling that hot water brings. I hoped the minerals would be good for my skin, but found myself wondering what the students at my 15 schools would say if the gringo walked up dyed as thoroughly green as the stones. I’m already huge here; would “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” translate, or would it be taken as a polite, though obvious, statement of personality?

After several hours, our skin seemed irrevocably pruned, though still depressingly similar in color to when we had arrived. Throughout the morning, the cloud forest kept sweeping in dense fog, then lifting it just as suddenly. We didn’t even get bronzed; I’m still rocking the farmer tan.

Eventually other obligations reminded us that we couldn’t stay forever. Standing fully clothed a few minutes later, I surveyed my surroundings one last time. This wasn’t mental anguish, and I’m not even that lonely, I decided. Is Guatemala simply the Posh Corps, or have I found a hidden gem?

The photos for this week can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week23?authkey=Gv1sRgCPv7vNPVwpjJQw#