Dawn on the roof
It's cloudy, so the sunrise isn't quite as spectacular as can be, but nonetheless this is definitely the best part of the house at its best time of day. Flat concrete strewn with some leftover building materials, a wonderful view of the city with mountains in the background, the sun rising in the middle of a yoga routine, and complete solitude.
Living so close with so many other people is a joy and a challenge. A joy because I never have to be alone if I don't want to, because I never have to cook and eat by myself and because I don't have to trust my own far from remarkable social skills to make new friends. They're already here. A challenge because I'm a person who needs space and solitude to rest and who'd rather hang out in groups of two or three than of 10, at least most of the time. The roof is my answer to the first challenge, we'll see with the second.
There are, of course, many other things about Guatemala so far that can be characterized as either joys is challenges. A sample:
Mercado central (central market): definitely joy, with more fresh fruit and vegetables, dried herbs, colorful beans and lentils and any other kind of food that doesn't need a fridge than I've seen in one place in my life.
Pulgas (bed bugs): a challenge, but after spending two days washing bedding and spraying the room with insecticide (I'm sorry, it was an emergency!) their absence have turned into a great joy.
Nawal, A'peró, Las Melaza, la Garífuna and Señora Pu (restaurants): joys. Nawal is a Palestinian bakery and take away lunch restaurant with Malmö-quality falafel. L'aperó serves the world's best pizza, AND has outdoor seating even at night, which seems to be almost unheard of in this city. Las Melaza is the perfect lunch place with local food, with the perk of great vegetarian alternatives (which I'm pretty sure they make up on the spot when we ask for them). La Garífuna serves huge and delicious plates of Caribbean food and at Señora Pu you sit around the tiny kitchen and watch (and smell!) as your traditional maya dish is being prepared.
Spanish: both. I hear approximately 142,8. new words an hour, on average. Some stick, some don't. I get terribly tired at times from always thinking in a foreign language, and increasingly frustrated when my grammar messes up in the middle of a sentence of when a word I was sure I knew just hides somewhere in my head and refuses to make itself known. But then there are those moments when I realize I've been talking and laughing and joking in Spanish for hours without even thinking about it. Those times when I hear a word or a grammatical structure come out of my mouth that I wasn't even aware I knew. And wow.
Love
~ me
Kommentarer
Trackback
