new faces, hiccups, cream floats and turds don't, smell of money

Being back in Xela without my homies felt and still does feel weird.  So I've been spending more time working on a few different things.  Just finished the website for our sister school (my first!) and we're already being included in some of the top search rankings, which for an SEO-based industry is a thuper duper thing.  Annnnnnnnnd, it's my first paycheck in 7 months!  Then I just got this gig rebuilding a website for a Mayan midwife cooperative.  Yeah, never would have imagined that.  Tech and my experience in that bitch goddess industry has come in handy for me.

Finally got the quote to ship our garden from Oakland to Xela for a cool $2K.  Uh, not gonna work bro.  So we're redesigning a more basic model that can be shipping easily as checked-baggage or I could just make it here.  We just need someone to bring down the electronics. (LO I'm looking at you, gracias prima).  Continued teaching my classes which I think I'm going to stop.  Like any school, there's kids that are dying to learn and take advantage of opportunities and those that don't.  AKA what I call the cream vs. the turds.  And yes, turds float sometimes, but I'm not going to sit around and hope that some turd floats eventually.  So for the past few weeks I've been giving the kids tasks and assignments to test their real level of dedication to this interchange program.  So it looks like I've now got a group of 8-10 kids and have gotten the green light from the headmaster to create an after school program.  Pikaw.  And yes, you might be thinking to yourself right now that these are people and that how dare I compare them to turds.  Well sorry but grow a pair.  What do you think the SAT is.  I just use more blunt terms than some odd numerical scale.

Cena nights, often synonymous with my-blackout-night-of-the-week, felt odd two weeks ago without all my friends.  And the newbies that I had met seemed like granola veggies that didn't drink and laid out their clothes on Saturday night for the Sunday service.  Well after spending two weeks eating odd meats on the street and partying until 4am with them I can safely say that I was wrong.  Like on Friday we went out to the ush spots then ended up wandering to an after hours bar where guys left and right were hitting on my friends. I just told the ladies to say that I was their brother.  God that's def one thing I love about latin culture.  So then I spent the next 2 hours talking to these guys, having them ask permission if they can dance with my friends and apologizing if they inadvertently touched them (I handed them a no touching rule).  Claro que si, we eventually ended the night at Bar Gay (original eh) and foot long hot dogs (made of pork, thank you).

Went to the Sunday market at Chichicastenango yesterday, about two hours away from Xela. They sell pretty much everything there, including foooooooood.  Fried whole trout with all the fixin's, yeaaah.  It was also pretty interesting that everyone there spoke K'iche as their native tongue so the market had a kinda Apocolypto feel to it.

Ok back to work.  Look for updates to the Kijani site soon which will include new pages about our pilot projects.

One Family One Garden Program

Oakland and Guatemala gardens

Alas, my life is not all beaches and partying.  For those of you who are interested, here's the link to our preliminary blog chronicling our pilot OFOG program between Oakland and Guatemala: http://www.kijanigrows.com/blog/

We'll be publishing most everything here til we migrate to our in-progreso website.

cuidense

pirates, garifuna, rogue waves, diving, endless buses

Just got back from my border run.  What a trip.  First we took two buses then a short boat trip to Livingston, on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala.  A really weird place.  First off, the people there have a slave background (thanks to the brits) so most everyone is black and their primary language is Garifuna, which is some bastard creole tongue.  It's on land, but it's so remote that you can only access it by boat, clearly giving it an incredibly isolated feel.  The lifestyle there is essentially like that of Pirates of the Carribean.  If you're not fishing, you're drinking.  So since Claire doesn't like to fish, that's what we did.  We met a local drunkard (apparently one of the best boat mechanics around) and drank for the majority of the day.  He was already cross-eyed when we met him so it turned out to be quite an interesting conversation.

The next day we took a "speed ferry" across the Caribbean to Punta Gorda, Belize at sunrise.  Enhanced, skipping across the waves and rocking out to SHM as the sun came up was thuper cool.  From PG we took a bus to Big Creek and then a water taxi to Placencia.  Beautiful beaches, laid-back atmosphere, just what I needed after a few months in the mountains.  We spent a few days putzing around the beaches, laying in the sun, gorging myself on seafood etc. and we had a snorkeling trip out to the cayes.  After an hour on the boat we showed up to our "own" island about 100 yds long and 20 yds across, surrounded by shallow water reefs.  Actually some of the best snorkeling I've ever done...diving would have been unnecessary.  After a couple trips around the island immersing ourselves with reef fish, we hopped in behind a fishing boat that was cleaning its catch.  F yeah.  In 10 feet of water packs of eagle rays, manta rays, nurse sharks and the highly endangered (yes, i'm a nerddd) hawksbill sea turtles fed all around us.  God I love sea turtles, espesh when they're as big as I am.

So after a few days in Belize I was planning on coming back to Guate but I.Just.Couldn't.  So I followed Claire to Honduras.  We hopped on a boat to cross the sea to Puerto Cortes...rough seas, maybe 6-10ft swells and a cramped cabin.  Kinda had a refugee boat feel to it.  And for some f'ing reason, latinos have the same habit of closing all the windows on the boats as they do on buses.  They don't want to mess up their hair on buses and don't want to get a bit wet on the boats.  So they'd rather sweat balls and wallow in their sea sick misery without any fresh air.  Whatever.

So as the people around me started to get greener and greener I told myself, "F this noise, I'm stepping to the back and getting away from this inevitable vomit party".  Left just in time, phew.  I was hanging on the back of the boat for dear life, chatting with my new Norweigian mate when from the corner of my eye I spotted a rogue wave coming right for us.  I couldn't do a thing, save mutter a few words to the Almighty possibly, so I just held on and we got pummeled by the wave.  After that I just had to laugh at God Captain Dan style, "Wahhhhhahaha!  Is that all you got God!?!?"  No, not really.  But it was an interesting customs experience showing up soaking wet and without shoes.

Five hour trip to La Ceiba, which is like a trashier version of the Jersey Shore btw, spent the quick night there, then hopped on a ferry to Utila off the coast.  Spent 5 days there diving and lounging island style.  Lobster burgers, fried fish, shrimp shrimp shrimp...yeah....But good god, I could never live there.  I met tons of expats that showed up and just never left, cause they love to dive and the "omg super awesome party atmosphere there".  Uh yeah.  It's a town of like 1K people and it only takes an hour to walk across the island.  I'd shoot myself.  When they told me I was missing the party of the year by leaving on Friday, I casually asked how big it was.  "LIKE 700 people raving dude!" was the response.  Sorry, I don't have time for amateur hour, I came to dive, not to feebly attempt dahhncing.

Sorry, I digress.  Pretty good diving, though I know there's much better out there.  I do have to say I was incredibly happy to have the experience again of pissing myself at 60 feet below the surface.  When you're virtually weightless and floating amongst splendidly colored coral reefs it's a struggle between your mind and your potty-trained body.  But when you just let go of all worries, it's kinda like nirvana when you blend all three together.  We also had a chance to dive a sea mount, which again, bc I'm a huge nerd was like a wet dream come true.  A sea mount's basically a mountain in the middle of the ocean, so all the surrounding currents push up on the mount, bringing bottom nutrients to the surface.  Plankton eat the nutrients, small fish eat plankton, big fish eat small fish, etc.  You get the point.  It has all the f'ing colors of the rainbow in terms of aquatic life down there.  Swimming around in schools of thousands of trigger fish and skipjack tuna etc, was awesome, not to mention pissing yourself while doing it as well :).

Spent the last two days on a series of boats and buses to get back to Guatemala.  I was taking a hike through the forest here when I ran into a beautful young vixen.  "What are the chances of this??" I asked myself.  We started talking and she was actually really cool...a highly educated Guatemalan with a similar interest in environmental science (hence the hike through the forest).  After talking for 30 minutes or so, I started to hear someone boldly preaching the word of God in espanol.  "Repent and you shall be saved!" he proclaimed.

Confused, I wondered, "Am I having a Moses burning bush moment or something?"  And still the voice grew louder and the conviction stronger.

I wearily opened my eyes with drool running down my face to my forearm pillow on the seat bar in front of me.  I was squeezed between 6 Guatemalans in a chicken bus barreling through the mountains as a makeshift preacher exalted God's glory and the bus chaeuffer hung out of the bus like a hysterical hyena shouting at passerbys our direction and to get onboard.  "Xela! Xela! Xela!  Suban! Suban!"

Right. Twas back in Guatemala.  And boy does it feel good.  Over and out.  Godspeed.