Remember back when you were a kid and you thought the coolest thing ever would be to have a pet monkey? Well maybe you didn’t. But I did. I saw some show on the Discovery Channel where a family had pet monkeys, and after that it took my mom a while to convince me that people don’t have pet monkeys, just on that show. So I gave up on my dream. But it’s back now.

            Last night we got back from a trip to Huehuetenango to visit Don Salomon’s nephew and his family. They’ve got a pet monkey. Chyeah. A pet monkey. It lives outside they’re house in a cage. Tino (Salomon’s nephew) said that his friend gave the spider monkey to him as a gift. Its name is Matuté and it eats leftovers, anything but lemons. And she loves ferns. I’m not entirely sure monkeys are supposed to live off of human food. Haha. Tino took it out of the cage on a leash and we walked it down to the soccer field and it climbed on top of the goalposts and just chilled there for a while until Josseline (Tino’s daughter, 15) brought it a Pepsi and some Cheetos, then it came down for a snack. It held on to the Pepsi for a while, but dropped it on the ground when it got bored. Then we took in the kitchen. We fed it a raw egg (it slurped it out of a little hole in the top) and a piece of cake. Then it tried to climb on the counter to get another. Haha. Also it really like getting its hair cut, but doesn’t like being tickled.

            I went with Don Salomon and Doña Mery to see some Mayan ruins which was pretty cool. The steps on those temples are steep. I walked up the sacrificial temple (the biggest one) and my legs were sore from it. Then we waited a little until the museum opened and looked at the gift shop there and Doña Mery saw a stuffed monkey that makes noise when you squeeze it so we bought it for Matuté. The museum was pretty cool, there was a map of all the places that that city traded with and some of the stuff was from real far away. There were some arrowheads from Tenochtîtlan, the Aztec Capital, which I think is pretty close to Mexico City, a.k.a. real far away. And they didn’t use horses either, everything was by foot I think. Pretty intense.

            So when we got back we presented Matuté with her gift, the baby monkey. She wasn’t too fond of it and did just about everything she could to keep her distance from the stuffed monkey. Then I distracted Matuté by giving her a haircut and unbeknownst to Matuté, Tino velcroed the stuffed monkey around the real monkey’s waist. Then we put Matuté back in her cage. The stuffed monkey was a light tan color and Matuté noticed something dangling from her side, then she did a double take, realizing it was the stuffed monkey and jumped about six inches off the ground in terror. Haha. Then she franticly jumped up on the wall off the cage to get away and saw monkey was still attached to her and nearly fell off the wall in fright, and finally just grabbed it and threw it onto the ground. We were all dying with laughter.

            Later that night Criswar (Tino’s son, 13) and I played some MarioKart 64 on their N64. I didn’t have too much luck against him though. I did manage to beat him a couple times at Foosball though.

            When we were leaving we packed all the stuff into the back of the pick-up and I picked up a box to put it in and it started moving. Turned out there was a turkey inside the box, of course. Ya know, cause that’s how we transport turkey here. The guy at the parking lot was in for the same surprise when something started moving in the backseat when he moved the car. Haha.

All in all it was a great trip. Now I’m sitting back in Uspantán in front of the fire. It’s nice and cozy. But anywhere else in the house it’s freezing. And that’s in the house. I can’t even imagine how it must be for the people out in the mountain’s around here. They don’t have beds or blankets, so they just sleep as close as they can to a fire, and often get burnt Don Salomon told me.

My Spanish is coming along well, but it’s nowhere near perfect and I was reminded that the other day when Don Salomon told me that we were driving by one of his favorite restaurants and I looked out the window and saw what I thought was the sign, I said, “Oh, ¿Chumpas de Cuerro?” No, that’s not the restaurant. Turns out that means Leather Jackets. Hahaha.

 

Johnny

 

            Guess I kinda lied about that once a week thing. Sorry about that. This time I’m seriously gonna try for at least once a week. Haha. Sheesh I don’t even know where to start. My Spanish is mos def getting better, which is nice. I’ve had four dreams in Spanish. The first two times I was like why the heck am I speaking Spanish? I speak English and so does the person I’m talking to. But after the other two dreams after that just seemed like it was normal to be speaking in Spanish. I don’t mean to brag; I just want you guys to know that I don’t feel estranged by the language difference, which is real nice.

            The family here is awesome, I really like them. Definitely the type of people I’d want to hang out with if they lived in Seattle. Don Salomon and Doña Mery are rad. We watch TV during breakfast and whenever there’s an action movie on that’s what we watch. Haha. They’re big fans of Sylvester Stallone. He’s to Guatemala as Van Damme is to Zambia (a.k.a. a real big deal haha). They’ve got like 50 years on me, but I don’t really notice the age difference all that much, they’re great friends. Today at breakfast Don Salomon said to me, “We don’t have adopted kids, just kids.” Doesn’t really translate all that well, but they treat me like I’m part of the family. Out in Uspantán they’re who I spend most of my time with. There’s another family that lives with us that helps with the farm and cleaning the house. They have two kids, Elbin (17), and Cristobalina (19). I play soccer with Elbin sometimes and I might not actually be hopeless at it. Haha. I’ve improved quite a bit since I got here. I played “Slap” (a card game) with them and they loved it. They said they normally go to bed at like 9 and we played until like 11:30. Haha. I also taught some other people “Cucharas” (Spoons) and they love that. They don’t exactly understand that you want to be sneaky in taking the spoon (“GANÉ!”) but we have a great time playing it anyways.

            In Guatemala City I stay with Sheley (Don Salomon and Doña Mery’s daughter) and most of the grandkids. There are 4 kids that live there. Abner (15), Mary (17), Graciela (22), Nancy (24). I think those are they’re ages. Mary is Sheley’s daughter and the rest are nieces and nephews. And then there’s Nancy’s fiancé, Mario, who I met back in April when I came here, and Hugo (17), Abner’s friend, and Miriam (23), who works at the hospital, they all spend a lot of time around the house. It’s kinda like my house in Seattle, people always dropping by. Which is nice. Makes me feel at home. I got Abner, Hugo, and Nancy hooked on Arrested Development already. Haha. Not all the jokes translate, but they still love it. For those of you who don’t know what Arrested Development is, go rent it. Now. TV at it’s finest. I’m also gonna watch The Fall with Don Salomon and Doña Mery, but it doesn’t have subtitles so I’m gonna try and translate while we watch. Wish me luck. Haha. And if you don’t know what The Fall is, go buy it. It’s reinspired me to want to make movies.

            I’m gonna make some videos about a school here and the hospital and try to make them websites too to raise some money. Money’s tight in the U.S. right now, but it’s much tighter here. Even aside from the fact that this is a developing country. The economy here is suffering even more than it is in the U.S. Don Salomon told me that in the last year or so the price of most food that the people eat (chicken, corn, rice) has almost tripled. The Hernandez’s haven’t had any help from they’re friends in the U.S. in the last 4 months because of the economic situation, even though the economic situation is worse here. They haven’t been able to help the schools around here because of that or the family here. The family that lives here is in need of money as well. Because of how the economy has been here in the last year a basic job is hardly enough to support a family (I’m not even entirely sure it is enough). If any of you feel called to give to the school here, the hospital, the Hernandez’s, the family here, please let me know, and we’ll figure out how to get the money into the hands of the people that need it. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be money, if you want to give school supplies or something for the hospital, let me know and I’ll figure out what the needs are. But more than anything money is tight right now, the school and hospital don’t have money which means that the teachers and hospital employees are going without pay. Also the school has a hydro-generator (or whatever you call it, a water powered generator) and there is an incredible river right by the school where they want to put the generator, but they don’t know how to do it. From what I’ve heard they have everything they need to install the generator, aside from someone to lead them. So if any of you know anyone that could help with this let me know. The pic of the waterfall is about 100 m past where the last guy that said he would help said they should put the generator. I’m not sure what happened, but he left, I think he was old or something. Haha. I’ll post the videos on my blog so when I finish them so you guys can get more info about the projects going on down here.

            A couple weeks ago Don Salomon and I picked all the fruit from the trees on they’re property, that was a lot of fun. This is the part where you get to find out what the heck I meant by fishing for avocados. Haha. There is a pond under the pear and avocado trees here. Don Salomon and I started picking the fruit by him climbing up in the tree (he’s 72 and climbs trees like a monkey), picking the fruit he could reach and tossing it down to me. After he got all the fruit he could reach he shook the branches of the trees as hard as he could and pears and avocados started raining from the sky into the pond. This is the part where I found out that pears floa t, a nd avocados don’t. The pears where pretty easy to get with a stick since they were floating, but for the avocados I had to use a fishing net. Haha. Now using a fishing net is not as easy as it sounds, I don’t know if you’ve done it before, but I always thought it sounded pretty simple, ya know, just toss the net and that’s that. Oh no, my friend, it is an art. Kind of like decapitating pigeons (the things you learn on a farm in Germany). First, you must pick up the net, and make sure it’s open at the bottom, then fold about a third of it over your right arm, put one of the weights from the bottom in your mouth and gather three or four feet of the bottom of the net in your left hand and somehow toss it so that it lands open (I haven’t figured that part out yet, it always seems to land in a clump for me). I managed to catch about 15 avocados though. I told Don Salomon that it would be difficult to catch fish because I think they’re quite a bit more clever than avocados. I was right. I couldn’t catch any fish, no matter how hard I tried. Haha. I think the least Don Salomon caught on a throw was 3, usually 4, and once or twice 5. You wait and see though, before I come home I’m gonna be a master fisherman. Haha.

            Two days ago Don Salomon, Elbin, and I went out to the school I was talking about earlier. It’s about an hour drive from Uspantán on dirt roads and then an hour hike in from there. It was the graduation of the school and I got to be the official photographer. It was pretty cool. The school amazed me, I expected maybe a couple little houses, but they have a great building. It’s a horseshoe shape around a covered concrete basketball court with skylights and a bunch of classrooms make up the horseshoe. They don’t have electricity yet, because no one knows how to install the generator, but that would give them enough power for 100 outlets I think. And the school is way out in the middle of nowhere because it serves 5 “aldeas” (villages, towns, not quite sure what the literal translation is). I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful the countryside is out there, I’m gonna put up a few photos, but really you have to see it in person to understand it. There’s a spring about half a km from the school. It’s epic. A big underwater cavern under the hillside, I’ll put up a pic of it. The water is super blue. It’s awesome. Don Salomon says the water is clean enough for Gringos to drink from the river; Sheley tested some of it in Guate City. Then there are the waterfalls, I’ll put up some photos of them. The water by one is more than 2 m deep. I can’t wait to go back with my bathing suit.

            Well that’s all for now. Hope this makes up for two weeks of not writing. I miss you guys. Hope you’re all doing well.

 

                        Johnny