{"id":629,"date":"2010-10-04T22:47:18","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T04:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=629"},"modified":"2010-10-04T22:47:18","modified_gmt":"2010-10-05T04:47:18","slug":"no-hay-tal-cosa-como-%c2%a8una-via%c2%a8-lo-siento-johnny-luke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/no-hay-tal-cosa-como-%c2%a8una-via%c2%a8-lo-siento-johnny-luke\/","title":{"rendered":"No hay tal cosa como \u00a8una via\u00a8 (lo siento Johnny Luke)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosophically \u00a8one way\u00a8 has never meant much to me, but\u00a0when it pertains\u00a0to traffic and streets, I have always thought it was a pretty easy, and\u00a0necessary,\u00a0rule to follow.\u00a0 That is, until now.\u00a0 I have never seen such a blatant disregard for una via<\/em> before.\u00a0 Not even in Italy.\u00a0 Or\u00a0Indonesia. \u00a0Last week while driving me home after our farewell Carol dinner, Michelle announced that we were\u00a0going in the opposite direction, of course she\u00a0mentioned this to me\u00a0as we were actually driving\u00a0the wrong way on a one way street\u00a0to mi casa<\/em>, which is also on a two-way, one-way calle.<\/em>\u00a0 Almost every day, I see a bright, puffing camioneta backing up on 15 avenida<\/em>, confronted by una cola<\/em> of honking motorists going the right way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Little Mario...wait until you see what he can do to a pi\u00f1ata!<\/p><\/div>\n

Ahhhhh, Xela.\u00a0 I\u00a0love all these little things so much that I’m forcing myself\u00a0to stay a little longer.\u00a0 There are a couple of reasons I am not coming home on Sunday.\u00a0 1) I don’t want to lose momentum with my crappy Spanish just as I’m going into the subjunctive and 2) Stef’s 10-day trip to Honduras this week would have made it close to impossible for me to complete the project I started here.\u00a0 I\u00a0could conceivably finish in NYC, but it would probably take longer and it is hard enough to pin Stef down even when he is here.\u00a0 Oh yeah, and I thought of a third reason, I really want to be here for d\u00eda de los muertos<\/em>…a holiday I have always been really \u00a0interested in\u00a0but\u00a0have never actually\u00a0spent in a Latin American country…and wouldn’t\u00a0it be\u00a0a shame for me to return home\u00a0just three weeks before?\u00a0 So I changed my ticket.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The pi\u00f1ata before Mario.<\/p><\/div>\n

Well back to catching up.\u00a0 One of the school activities last week was for us Spanish students to entertain children from a nearby orphanage.\u00a0 Although the afternoon was really delightful in so many ways, it was equally sad and heartbreaking\u00a0and I honestly had to look away or walk away several times for fear of breaking down and just crying.\u00a0 Special thanks to Rory for making me laugh a few times which kept our minds off the\u00a0gravity of the situation.\u00a0 A few of us went Hogar Temporal<\/em>\u00a0to pick up about 15 children at to bring back to Celas Maya for some games, hot dogs\u00a0and arts and crafts.\u00a0 Some were developmentally challenged, one child was blind and one was in a wheelchair.\u00a0 We were all piled into a pickup and for some reason unbeknownst to me (and I would also think Chris and Rory), we just HAD to drive up THE steepest hill in Xela to get to the school.\u00a0 Didn’t the driver know that there is no such thing as one way in this town.\u00a0 So after we rolled backwards down the hill (yes, I was in the back of the pickup, at the back as well), I thought for sure the driver would just go another, less steep way.\u00a0 Claro que no.<\/em>\u00a0 He just gunned it up the hill while I endured the longest squat of my life.\u00a0 And instead of thinking about the more likely possibility of death\u00a0or dismemberment, I just couldn’t stop thinking of a time I went skiing, coming off the lift of\u00a0the bunny hill,\u00a0when a toddler on skis was\u00a0kinda in my way and I really couldn’t move out of the kid’s way because, well,\u00a0I’m really\u00a0an uncoordinated doof,\u00a0so I sort of ran into him\/her to stop and then proceeded to\u00a0use him\/her to pull myself up.\u00a0 Not\u00a0my proudest moment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was just hoping I didn’t have to use one of these poor kids as leverage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This kid could really kick. At one point, he had a bit of pi\u00f1ata poking out of his waistband. <\/p><\/div>\n

The whole afternoon was pretty intense\u00a0and I’m just hoping those kids at least had some fun.\u00a0 They seemed to be having fun.\u00a0 Especially little, adorable\u00a0Mario, who\u00a0went to town on an\u00a0empty pi\u00f1ata<\/em>.\u00a0 When we first got back to the school, after milling around aimlessly for\u00a0a bit, we were about to all get in line to take a group photo.\u00a0\u00a0The plan was to \u00a0make picture frames with each child to hold their copy of the photo.\u00a0 Once we were getting in line, two little girls, around 8 or 9, just instantly came over to me and wrapped their arms around my waist\u00a0and wouldn’t let go.\u00a0 My cheeks were in so much pain trying to repress the sob that was right at the base of my throat and fighting with my eyelids to burst out, that it took every ounce of countercry in me not to get all Three-Wishes-of-Billy-Grier<\/a> on these poor children.\u00a0 I actually had to begin thinking what would happen if I just started bawling in the middle of all this and that hypothetical spectacle actually made me laugh enough in my head\u00a0not to cry.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Using one of Rory’s juggling balls to help decapitate \u00a8The Incredible\u00a8pi\u00f1ata.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

I’m trying really hard not to think about some of the things that bothered me about this activity because I think all in all the children had\u00a0a great time, so I am consciously toning down my\u00a0Tricianess.\u00a0\u00a0They were all so\u00a0cheery and affectionate, but my stomach still hurts a little when I think about it.\u00a0\u00a0 We played\u00a0\u00a8pato, pato,\u00a0ganso\u00a8<\/em> so they got to run around a bit.\u00a0 I personally could have done without watching\u00a0the desperate\u00a0scramble for hard candy on a cement floor and the ensuing sugar overload, but I doubt the children were anywhere near as worried as I was\u00a0about how much soda they were drinking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One of my tasks was to apply MOUNDS, and I mean MOUNDS, of ketchup and mayonnaise to hot dog buns.\u00a0 Anyone who knows how I feel about mayonnaise should know how difficult this\u00a0was for me, first of all, to apply MOUNDS of mayonnaise to anything let alone a Bimbo<\/em> hot dog bun and then mixing it with\u00a0ketchup and then\u00a0actually having to\u00a0serve\u00a0them to adorable little innocent children.<\/div>\n
So when I get a little sad thinking about those beautiful children, the lives they lead, the affection and love they crave and deserve,\u00a0and how helpless I felt that afternoon, I just think about how much fun one little boy had kicking the papier mach\u00e9<\/em> crap out of a pi\u00f1ata<\/em> and I smile a little instead of crying.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So after we rolled backwards down the hill, I thought for sure the driver would just go another, less steep way. Claro que no. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}