It’s 2:30 in the afternoon. Luvia just left. The chairs are sitting upside down on the table and the floors are still damp from her vigorous and repeated moppings.

My husband and all four kids just left to do some errands. They have to go get more minutes for the phone, stop by a sewing shop and drop off some fabric to be made into curtains. The children are also expecting a treat. Maybe they’ll bring home some sweet bread for a bedtime snack.

There is granola in the oven and some potatoes. We’ll have fried potatoes and eggs for supper.

I am sitting in my bed, propped up by two pillows, the computer on my lap. Next door (on the other side of the wall), the carpenters are tapping away on their project (an addition to this house, but not for us). A bus just roared down the road. The fan in the far room is whirring loudly as it attempts the impossible—to dry some clothes. I am eating Wilbur Buds and fighting to keep my eyes open.

This is the second time I’ve made granola. The first time I used oatmeal that I got out of a bin in an upscale grocery. There were a few dried beans in the oatmeal (from the bins next to the oatmeal), but I thought nothing of it and just picked them out before proceeding with the recipe. However, when we sat down to eat our much anticipated meal of regular granola mixed with cornflakes, we kept biting down on something hard.

“There are rocks in this granola!” my older daughter exclaimed. She spit out a piece into her hand and we studied it.

Rice! Bits of rock-hard rice were all through the granola! I had to throw it out, much to my dismay. I’m not used to ever throwing food directly into a trash can, but here there are no chickens to feed…yet.

I mixed up a second batch of granola today and then burned a small bit of it. I’m still working out the kinks of the oven. It has some pretty violent hot spots. Luvia asked permission to take home the burnt parts.

“Do you have chickens?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ll grind it up and turn it into a drink.”

She also took two of our empty milk jugs home with her. For carrying coffee, she said. I’m glad things aren’t going to waste, but it’s awkward, having our trash be someone else’s treasure.

The rainy, cloudy, cold weather continues. Someone told me that here the cloudy days aren’t as oppressive as they are in the states, but I beg to differ. Here, they are equally oppressive. The difference is that here the streets are crowded with people walking everywhere, regardless of the weather.

I am so glad I brought my twinkle lights (yet to be strung up), little lamps, and votives. Also, we bought two lamps to reduce the strain on our eyes—the bare, overhead light bulbs don’t provide sufficient lighting and we’re constantly squinting.

The inside of our house is very wet. Water seeps in through the concrete walls and runs down. They are wet to the touch. We can’t hang anything on the outside walls because of the moisture. I asked Luvia if this is how all the houses are and she said no. This house wasn’t built properly. Houses are supposed to be dry inside. Which is both encouraging and discouraging.

(Note: I said that we can see our breath and that is true. However, I’m figuring out that it’s not because of cold—though that may be true sometimes—but because of the wetness. It’s so wet that in the act of exhaling, steam is created. At least that’s what I think might be happening.)

We are looking for another house to live in. I actually really like this house—the size and layout is quite nice—but the lack of outside space, privacy, and natural light, not to mention the leakiness and mold, constitute some pretty big drawbacks. We are going about fixing this place up, buying furniture, putting hooks in the (inside) wall, though, because it may be a little while before we can find another place (if we can find another place).

A couple days we walked into town to do some more shopping. We do this almost every day. We buy what we can carry, get some groceries, discover a few more shops (oh, they sell chicks here! here’s a carpenter’s shop—let’s order some chairs! here’s where I can get flats of eggs! here’s the ATM machine! forks! I found forks! etc.) Some kids had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at a hotel.

While we were waiting, I suggested to my younger son that he burn off some of his energy by racing to the far end of the courtyard and back. So he did…several times. And then when the littlest one was at the far end, my older son asked if he could run, too.

“Fine,” I said, “just keep your head up and watch where you’re going.”

The boys took off, running at breakneck speed towards each other with their heads down. At the last minute, they realized they were going to crash, so they both swerved. But, oh horror, they swerved not around each other but into each other—BAM, they hit head on and both went down. My younger son bounced off his brother, spun around and smacked the pavement, nose first. My older son landed beside him, gasping for air and whimpering.

The older boy was fine, but the younger one had a bloody nose. The bridge of his nose had a red-purple mark, and at first we wondered if it might be broken. (It’s not, we don’t think, and though it was still a little swollen and sore in the morning, he didn’t complain about it anymore.) What a fiasco! (But at least I got to meet the hotel owners and learn the prices—it’s a nice place to stay. Visitors, anyone?) (Actually, if you come visit us, we won’t put you in a hotel. We’ll hold you hostage in our house and show you all our crazy and never let you go.)

PS. The granola turned out perfectly. No rocks. Yay.

I’ve pretty much stopped reading other blogs. Tooling around on the computer, sucking up the internet access, is a pleasure of the past. (I’m hopeful that I’ll someday be able to sit in my cozy bed and peruse the web, but at this point, sitting on a hard-back chair in a damp room full of dirty laundry and nothing else simply isn’t conducive to anything pleasurable.)

However, the other day I happened to glance down at my blog feed, and I spied the title “World’s Best Pancakes.” Pancakes are simple. They do not involve hard-to-find ingredients like cocoa powder or fancy spices or extracts or quinoa. So of course I had to look.

Lo and behold, I had all the ingredients! True, the recipe called for a lot of butter and butter here runs about a dollar and a half a stick, but for our Sunday morning pancakes, a splurge was absolutely and positively appropriate.

I made a single batch, served my older son, saw his reaction, and promptly mixed up another batch. We ate every single pancake.

Ruth Reichl describes these pancakes as sweet, salty, and crispy, and she is exactly right. They are less cake-y and more crepe-y, but not so crepe-y that you would associate them with crepes. I fried them in vegetable oil (see above comment about butter) and, much to my surprise, that may have made them even better (think donuts). The kids took turns eating (only one skillet to fry them in and two forks to eat them with), and my husband ate his with a spoon.

I’ve decided to keep Ruth’s title. If we can eat these pancakes in our little, scraped together kitchen in northern Guatemala, than they truly are an international affair.

World’s Best Pancakes
from Ruth Reichl’s blog

I am not sure why the recipe calls for that 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, but if Ruth put it in, I figured I better would too.

After making the pancakes the first time, I had the recipe memorized. See, they are truly are the world’s best pancakes—you can carry the recipe with you in your head wherever you go!

1 stick butter, melted
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
4 teaspoons sugar

In a bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, and oil. Add the melted butter and stir well. In a smaller bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Add the dry to the wet and whisk lightly.

Slick a hot pan with oil (or butter) and spoon in the batter. Fry until the batter bubbles and the edges look a little dry. Flip and fry on the other side. Serve hot, with syrup.

Ps. My apologies for the poor photography. I am working in yellow rooms with no natural light which makes clear photography nearly impossible. Maybe I’ll get a handle on it…eventually.

It is 5:53 in the morning. I am sitting in bed under a mountain of blankets. I’m wearing three shirts, long underwear, and wool socks. It is cozy. I want to go make my coffee, but I’m afraid the harsh kitchen light will wake the children, so I’ll wait a little. The kids need their sleep.

We traveled out to our house on Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday was our first day of work. Today is Sunday. We should be going to church, but instead we are skipping. We need a day off. I am going to make pancakes, and then we’re going to head into the neighboring city in search of some hard to find items, like floor mats.

We are living about 5 hours north of Guatemala City in the department of Alta Verapaz. The capital of Alta Verapaz is Cobán, a fairly large city with a McDonalds and Walmart. We live in Carchá, another fairly large city-town, about fifteen minutes from Cobán. Bezaleel is about 10-20 minutes from our house, out towards Chamelco, another town that we have yet to visit. The name of our neighborhood where we are living is Chajsaquil (Chak-sa-keel).

The transition has been very hard on our younger daughter. The older kids are mostly going with the flow, and the youngest is acting out by having superhuman amounts of energy, but our younger daughter is the one who is struggling the most, at least for now. You know how when you’re maxed out with stress and frustration and then you drop a plate on the floor, it breaks, and you burst into tears because you just can’t take it any more? That’s how she is feeling. She has no buffer for frustration, and let me tell you, there is certainly a lot to be frustrated about!

It wasn’t until we got here that I realized that my children have never been uncomfortable. They have never been away from the support of friends and family. They have never moved to a new town. They have never ridden in taxis with bullet holes in the windows or ridden buses while standing up. They have never seen mountainsides covered in steaming trash. They have never seen legless beggars. They have never not understood the dominant language. They have never had house help. They have never been locked into a house that they can’t see out of.

The bickering level are through the roof. They are loud. They scream when they are mad or hurt. Because we have no privacy—the front half of the house is against the road and the back half (the house is two long rows of rooms with one central hall) is joined to the neighbor’s house and a construction site—all their loudness makes me and my husband tense up and stress out.

A couple nights ago when my husband was out running errands, I completely lost it. The kids were fighting and interrupting and running in circles, and I broke down and cried. Then I called a meeting. We sat in the girls’ room and I explained how hard this is for me. I explained that I didn’t like it that we weren’t out in the country like I had hoped. I said I didn’t like it that they had no place to play. I told them that when we first went to Nicaragua, I hated the place. But over time, I grew to appreciate it, even love it in some cases.

My younger daughter sobbed, begging and pleading to go home…and for me to buy her an American doll. My younger son started sobbing, too, because he doesn’t want to have to leave Wilmer when we go back to the States. We talked about ways we can make the house more cozy (we pretend we are the Boxcar children).

What helps, I said, is figuring out one or two things that we can do when we’re feeling really bad. For me, it’s lighting some candles or stringing up some twinkle lights. Maybe, I suggested to the kids, for you it’s alone time? Maybe it’s having a snack? Maybe it’s writing an email to a friend? I promised them that we would make the house cozy, but it will take time. Everything will take time.

Our Situation: Pros and Cons

Con: There is no yard/place to play outside.
Pro: There are many little rooms in this house, so everybody can have some alone time.

Con: The house is a concrete with tile floors. It echoes something fierce.
Pro: As we get furniture, the hollow, tomb-like feeling will lessen dramatically.

Con: We have almost no furniture. Let me clarify: we have beds (comfy ones), two bed stands, a table, six chairs, a sink, a stove, a small refrigerator, a hutch, a desk, a dresser, a book shelf, and one four-legged stool.
Pro: We have money to buy furniture. The stove is large—six burners!—but…

Con: It delivers a wallop of an electric shock when using the ignitor, but…
Pro: It lights easily with matches.

Con: Our house has no natural light. The windows in the back of the house open directly into the neighbor’s house (and you can see through the cracks), so we are covering them up with curtains. The windows in the front of the house are made of opaque glass. We aren’t supposed to keep the front doors open (the best source of natural light) because of security issues.
Pro: There are a few translucent sheets of roofing so some light filters through. Also, you can prop open a few of the opaque pieces of glass so you can see out as far as the road.

Important Pro: A bunch of people worked long hours to fix up our house for us. At the outset, there wasn’t even a sink in the kitchen—we would’ve had to walk out the front door and around the side of the house to the pila (concrete sink and water holder) for our water. We are extremely grateful for all they did to improve this place. And for all the cons, I actually really like the house. It’s the lack of outdoor space, privacy, and natural light that bothers me, but these are more location and situation than actual living space.

Con: We haven’t seen the sun since we got to Carchá.
Pro: They say it will come out sooner or later.
Con: I don’t believe them.

Con: The roof leaks and water runs down the walls and puddles on the floor and there is lots of mold which means that my husband is having trouble with allergies and asthma. The youngest is having lots of stuffiness, too.
Pro: Laying a rag on the floor where the water runs in helps to absorb a lot of the wetness and minimize the slippery floors.

Con: Our washing machine doesn’t work and the clothes take days to dry so they mold in the process. Also, we have a week’s worth of very dirty laundry and we’re running out of underwear.
Pro: There is another North American couple in town and they gave us the key to their house and said we can use their washer and dryer.

Con: They are in Honduras now and we don’t know their address.
Pro: I have their cell number.

Con: We only have internet access in one room of the house—the one that we’re using to store our mountain of dirty laundry and that has a river of water running through it.
Pro: At least we have internet!

Con: There are cockroaches.
Pro: There isn’t one.
Pro Take Two: At least there aren’t many cockroaches.

Con: It is freezing cold. In the morning you can see your breath! And there is no, I repeat, NO, heat.
Pro: Yesterday we bought a queen-sized comforter for our bed and for the first time I was warm at night.

Con: There are so many basic items we don’t have.
Pro: I am deeply grateful for every single item we brought from the States.

Con: We feel isolated, lost, and disoriented.
Pro: Wilmer! He comes in during the day to help us run errands, play with the kids, take us to the school, etc.
Pro: Luvia! She is our house help and I adore her. She comes at 8 in the morning, about three times a week, and gets right to work washing dishes, scrubbing clothes (that don’t dry), mopping floors, washing the bathroom. She takes me to the market. She links arms with my daughter when they are walking down the street. She takes time to teach the kids Spanish. She braids the girls’ hair. She gives me hugs and makes me coffee.
Pro: other North Americans! There is one couple and one single guy, all of which work through Eastern Mennonite Missions. They know a lot more than we do and are very willing to help out and show us around.
Pro: all your sweet comments and emails! We savor them all. Thank you.