Reunited with Old Guatemalan Friends
Although the majority of my time here in Guatemala has been spent behind a computer and I've been bummed that I haven't done a whole lot of exploring, I realize that this ball and chain will soon be broken in a few days.
I've been using Mark and Andrea's kitchen table as my office. I've been programming and cutting sites pretty much ever since I got to Guatemala. And I still have quite a bit more to do. Little Ruben even asked me once when I wasn't behind the computer, "Why aren't you on your computer?" as if he were asking me why I wasn't breathing in air.
It's sad how much time I've spent inside, but I finally got a little bit of a break. This weekend, William and I met up with some of my old friends from when I lived here for seven months in 2005 as a computer teacher.
[In the photo: Me, Blanca, Melony, William.] Blanca is a secretary at the school I used to teach at. We would get together occasionally with a group of friends and hang out at the mall or whatever. Melony is Blanca's sister and one of my former students. It was so good to see them both again. When we got together we, hung out "SammyK style".
"What is SammyK style?" you ask. Well, quite simply, we went to Mark's house, moved the kitchen table to the side to open up the floor. I turned on some good music to dance Salsa, Rumba and of course West Coast Swing. We even did a little "funky line dance" action.
Afterwards we all ate dinner whilst talking about language and culture differences. They taught me a few "cool young" phrases like, "Que rica esta vaina," which always gets a laugh when I say it. I'm still not clear as to what it means but it's something you say when something is really good.
In return I thought them about the never-ending game called "doorknob". If you don't know what that game is, ask a young man about it. It has to do with passing gas. In English there are so many ways to talk about passing gas - fart, rip one, pass gas, poot, toot, cut the cheese and so on.
Nobody in Guatemala talks about this normal bodily function that everyone does. Yes girls, you do too. Don't lie. But it is such a taboo subject here, that they don't even have a verb "to fart." Are you serious? The closest thing they have is for one to, "throw gas."
So, needless to say when I brought up passing gas and the endless "doorknob" game for the topic of conversation, both girls laughed hysterically.