Breakfast for Dinner
I wandered the city on Sunday waiting for my school to open at 2 PM. After paying the 80 quetzales (about $10.50) for my two night stay at Dos Balcones Hotel I dodged a lunch request from Dean and headed over to the school. I had waited for this time to give me more clarity on how life in Xela may look like for the next few weeks.
Lucky for me a group of 20 high school students from the Bronx just slipped in the door in front of me. Not the quintessential small town, rustic, Guatemalan language learning I was counting on but … I´ll take it. After about a half hour a cute little lady named Gabi arrived and she was introduced as my host family. Smile, mucho gusto, smile, hola, smile. We leave the school and hop into a spanking new car sitting right outside. I assumed car´s were reserved for the elite so I was feeling pretty good about what life in Xela was gonna look like. I haven´t seen the car since but I´m pretty lucky to be where I am. Gabi is 23 and the daughter of Elena, my Guatemalan mother (sowwy Mom). There is another daughter Hailey or Hadey or something like that. She has a cold which is gross and keeps whining about stronger medicine. She´s 16 and a sweetheart!
I arrived at their house at about 2:45 in the afternoon. Was offered a tamale type thing with rice and chicken which was delicioso and, as you can imagine, Elena was impressed by the speed and verocity in which I consumed it. I told her I ate everything, all the time, and a lot of it. She was pleased. Between the time I finished that and the time my next meal was served I sat in my room, reading and acting busy. 7:30 rolled around and I was famished! I thought maybe that rice thing was dinner and I sort of panicked. Who eats at 3? and then not again? I snuck a bite of a Clif Bar I found in my bag from a previous trip as to not make it seem like I was eating and didn´t need dinner. Thirty minutes later I was called into the kitchen for a fried egg, and besides the artery clogging amount of salt on it, it was fantastic!
That night we watched two movies: The Fox and the Hound and Tierra de Los Osos (Land of the Bears) both in Spanish. Elena was loving them! as was I, and they were easy to understand, as they were speaking at the kind of level I need to be talked to in. then… Buenos Noches and I hit the sack, hard! I swear my pillow is made of concrete.Not a complaint! Just an observation and concern for my general chiropractic health.
They are such a great family and very kind. They help me with my Spanish and have a lot of patience while I try and describe, painfully, that I am reading a book about Guatemala. I am very grateful to them and am looking forward to more meals and Disney movies in my home away from home.
