This week—Holy Week—the entire country shuts down. Our children are off school and we’re off work. Also, because it’s a crazy busy time at all the vacation hot spots (read rivers, ponds, and beaches), travel is a sticky mess and prices are jacked through the roof. Therefore, we opted to go Nowhere. (I told you we aren’t any good at being tourists.) In other words, we are having a self-imposed staycation.

The first part of the break was taken up with my brother and church and regular stuff. But then on Tuesday, while my husband was spending 12 hours on buses, the kids and I found ourselves at home with nowhere to go for an entire day for the first time in forever, or at least a couple months.

As homeschoolers, this used to be a common occurrence. Many days we’d just be banging around the house together, reading, cleaning, cooking, studying, fighting, writing, etc. But since we’ve been here, we’ve been on an entirely different schedule. We get up early and then go our separate ways for hours on end. A strange woman shows up at my door to mop floors and scrub the toilet. There are neighbor kids to play with and lots of errands to run and then we shut down the day extra early so we can do it all over again the next day.

I like this routine we’ve carved out for ourselves. It’s reasonable and fairly balanced, as far as schedules go. So with an entire week of no childcare (I mean, school) and no house help (oh crap) looming before me, I panicked just a little.

“I don’t know how those homeschooling moms do it!” I fussed to my husband before bed one night. “How do they live with their kids all day long? I’m going to go out of my mind!”

But I’ve been pleasantly surprised. After that awful Sunday, things have gradually gotten better. The kids are settling down and sinking into our agendaless existence. I didn’t realize how pushed we’ve been to get up, get out, and go, go, go. Even though ours is quite the laid back lifestyle, it’s a lot more than what we’re used to.

So Tuesday morning, I woke up to the sound of a steady rain on the tin roof and my older son’s voice droning on and on as he read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to the other kids. We spent the day doing some Spanish study, reading aloud about the aboriginal people of Australia, and playing Spot It. I made granola and the kids played Ticket to Ride. We had rest time and writing time. Things went downhill around 4 pm, but we worked it through and ended the day with a couple chapters of The Phantom Tollbooth.

Yesterday, the rain continued—the only difference was that my husband was here with us. There was more book reading and Spanish study. My husband got out a 1000-piece puzzle and then rigged up a light so we could distinguish between the varying shades of blues and greens. I don’t think we’ve ever done a puzzle together, but we are, amazingly enough, very into it.

Before we left to come here, a wise friend told my carpenter husband: You are not going to Guatemala to build anything. You are going to build a family.

I always thought we had kind of already built a family, but I’m beginning to see what he meant. It’s different here, removed from all we know and rely on. Here it’s just us. We’re still the same people, very much so, but we’re growing and changing together. Sure, we still fight like cats and dogs, and yes, we get homesick and cry for our stateside friends, family, and pets, but we’re on this adventure together.

Heck, we’re doing puzzles together. Something is obviously different.

As I mentioned, my brother visited us for a week. Life was low-key and simple while he was here.

*He and the kids cooked up some snails and crabs legs. The kids ate
the crab legs and he ate the snails (though part way through he
announced they tasted of “pond bottom” and quit).

*He played lots of 10 Days in the USA with the kids.

*We went to Cobán for church and afterwards paused in our trek across town to watch a soccer game.

*My brother was about as fascinated by the market as I am and took to making trips to town and coming back with random food.

*He visited the kids’ school with me and went with my husband to Bezaleel.

*He borrowed a neighbor’s guitar and sat out on the porch strummin’ and a-hummin’ while the children fell asleep.

*He
got to experience riding in very full buses. (In the above photo, you’re looking at five of us.) Once we counted 28 people
in a 12 passenger van. It always cracks me up when the ayudantes (bus
assistants) tell us to make more room for people because there is
supposed to be four in a row, or five (or six or eleven or whatever),
and we just look at them blankly because, hello, we can not shrink our
leg bones, thank you very much.

*He wanted a picture of himself with a gun-wielding guard, so I (and
the guards) obliged. We agree that it was the most excitement those
guards had all day and probably all week.
 
*The only touristy thing we did was on Saturday when we went to a reserve and hiked up to the top of the forest to see out over Cobán and Chamelco (sort of).

I want to start getting to know this area a little better. There are so many incredible things to see in Guatemala and the best place to start is right where we are. However, because simple day trips with six people can end up being quite pricey, and because it’s much easier to stay at home than to try to navigate the aforementioned stuffed buses, I often don’t even bother. But a friend mentioned this forest reserve to me. She said things like “close by” and “easy to get to” and “cheap,” so we slapped sunblock on everyone, filled water bottles, and set out.

Despite the fact that we chose the absolute worst time to visit a reserve—between 12 and 2 pm when all the animals and birds are snoozing their way through the shimmering heat of day—and despite the fact that the guide sprinted instead of walked, and despite the fact that a couple of my kids have no endurance for long, uphill, speed walks in the woods whatsoever, it was a splendid little foray. We got to do stuff like power walk through lush woods and see out over the whole of Cobán and glimpse a Toucan and examine an ant hill and see the most incredible camping spot ever—a perfectly level area shaded by two huge stands of bamboo and with a thick ground cover consisting of dried bamboo leaves. The reserve has gardens and pineapple plants and rhubarb (which I wanted to steal) and a swimming pool and velvety soft boxer dogs. We can go back any time to picnic, swim, and hike, the owner said. We just might take him up on it.

I have so many things to write about that I made a list. But the list is so long that it daunts me. So I’m skipping out entirely and doing a new, off-the-top-of-my-head list.

1. The other day my brother asked my younger son this question: if you could see either Jesus or Obama, who would you choose?

“Jesus,” my younger son promptly replied.

Just as I was getting ready to ask why, he yelled, “No! Wait! Obama! Because if I see Jesus, that means I’m dead!”

2. You know what I can’t get here? Real vanilla. There are cheap vanilla flavorings, flavorings that are way cheaper than our cheap vanilla extracts in the states. Like, fifty cents for a big ol’ bottle of brown stuff that stains my fingers like tobacco juice. Not that I’ve ever stained my fingers with tobacco juice…

Actually, I have found real vanilla extract. It was in the fancy grocery store in Coban. Silly me bought one little (super expensive) bottle because I made the assumption (which, in situations such as these, I always pronounce ass-sue-nump-shun) that because the store was selling it, therefore the store carried it. WRONG.

This is a new concept to me. In the States, if a store carries an item, it will be there so money-wielding patrons can purchase it. And if, by chance, they are out, then a near identical item can be found in the surrounding shelves, just with a different brand. And if, for some odd reason, the other four variations of the same item are also not there, then I can ask a store worker to rummage in the back of the store. And if that doesn’t work, then I can ask the store to special order it for me, or at least give me a rain check. And if that’s not good enough, I can always hop in my van and drive to one of the other six large grocery stores in my town and look there.

I’m just a wee-bit dismayed.

Also, I have yet to find a steady source of bread flour.

Signed,
A Real Vanilla-Less Baker (who is actually surviving just fine)

3. I read this post first thing this morning and it made me very, very happy. Practically gleeful.

4. I read this article (the tip-off link came from the aforementioned blog) a few days ago, then emailed the link to some family and friends, then made my brother and husband read it, and then read it out loud to the children (while my brother and husband listened) because it is fascinating.

5. This is my husband, a.k.a. The Mama’s Minutia Blog Filter, giving me “The Look.”

(Except usually “The Look” doesn’t include a smile.)

Because I tend to say whatever pops into my mind, and because he’s routinely horrified at the things that come out of my mouth, he proofs almost every one of my posts before I hit publish.

Usually, he just grunts his approval or mumbles something vague and entirely not pride-inducing, such as, It’s fine, and then I shriek, That’s all? Come on! It’s A-MAY-ZUH-ZING! and then he rolls his eyes and says, Sure, whatever, and then I kick him out of my desk chair so I can sulk in peace. So when he reads a post and then says, Um…, I pay attention and you all reap the benefits.

(Psst! Notice the gray hair. Gray hair on men is extremely sexy, me thinks. Can I get an amen?)

6. Right now my husband—oh husband of the graying temples—is on a bus on his way back from Guatemala City. He and my brother left our house this morning at 3:15 so my brother could catch his 11:30 flight back to the big bad states. They got to the airport at 9 am, and my husband, after doing a bit of poking around town, caught the noon bus back. He’ll be home in time for supper. The reason I’m writing this is so that you know that if, by chance, you should decide to come visit us, you can make it from your front door to our front door in one single solitary day which means, obviously, we’re practically neighbors!