Birthday Wishes -- Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

I'm starting this post from my twin-sized bed with coral sheets and a beige comforter. The walls are honey colored wood and I can see bits of green where the dwindling sunshine peeks through the cracks.

There are eight window panes. Most of which face one of the most beautiful lakes on which I've ever set eye. Even from my bed, I see blue volcanoes shrouded in puffy clouds and soft mist. Verdant leaves of tropical trees frame the volcanoes perfectly, and I heave a deep, contended sigh, thinking, My goodness, what a perfectly splendid place to be overcome with explosive diarrhea. 

I'm ill.

I'm tremendously ill.

I have never, up to this date, been overcome with explosive diarrhea whilst traveling. And I believe I haven't been nearly grateful enough for this unusual phenomenon.

But Lake Atitlan is a special place. Everyone gets sick here. Nary a soul is immune to its intestinal charms (exceedingly unpleasant bacteria). Everyone gets sick here one time. It's like the chicken pox of the lake.

A chicken pox that is exacerbated by the rainy season.

Which has just started.

Hence, all Atitlan's visitors must spend a few days in dire misery, desperately sprinting to the toilet every half hour or so, then sitting for a few minutes in incredulous wonderment as a veritable monsoon of not quite breakfast, not quite mint tea spurts from the behind. Those afflicted spend the time musing how in god's name the human body can continue to produce... stuff... with such great enthusiasm and seemingly without end.

I'm past the incredulous stage at this point. I've concluded that this infinite diarrhea is caused by one of two things.

A) my body is cannibalizing my gall bladder and sending it down the rollercoaster of enthusiastic death that is my intestines.

B) Magic.

We held a ceremony Sunday night, welcoming in the new moon with two hours of chanting and candle lighting. I enjoyed singing with a group for the first time in a long time, and felt all kinds of nostalgic over the years spent in choir and voice lessons.

I hope singing can become a part of my life again. Goodness, I miss that. 

To close the ceremony, we all lit candles to symbolize intentions for this new moon cycle, and then stuck them in the garden around the yoga shalla. As I lit my candle, a moth flew straight into the flame, fizzled a bit, and then fell into the pool of wax to die.

I stood stock still for a moment, stunned by the suicidal moth, and then went to plant my candle in the garden, trying not to read into the slightly foreboding omen.

I taught the restorative afternoon yoga class on Monday, did some acro with a few stragglers and then went down to dinner.

Guatemalan women carry these up a very steep mountain on their HEADS. They make me feel like such a pansy. All of them. 

The bicycle that works as a blender, a coffee grinder, and a maker of delicious peanut butter. 

Where we discussed my, ummm.... not Coloradan accent in great depth. When in such an international community, people are always asking where you're from. At the Yoga Forest right now, we boast residents from Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, England, Wales, America, Germany and probably a good half of Quebec. So this is how the conversation generally goes:

"Where are you from?"

"Colorado."

"Really? You don't sound like you're from Colorado. What's the accent?"

I always feel insecure about how my accent has evolved into something a bit Irish, a bit French, a bit German, a bit... umm... whatever else people can hear in my newfound placement and lilts.  I don't do it purposely -- it's just... well, comfortable for me. But I really thought about it on Monday night. And I believe that I started making the transition out of a Coloradan accent when I was sixteen. When I was in homeschool high school and studying Aristotle, I discovered that my mind wandered off far less when I read aloud. However, the next discovery happened to be that this activity hurt. I grew hoarse within a few minutes of swallowing my sound. So I imagined pushing it forward. I pushed the sound forward into my nose and out in front of my mouth.

And began to sound vaguely British. Evidence of this is found in the fact that when I volunteered at an English immersion program for Spaniards in 2011 -- well before I went to Ireland -- most of the Spaniards commented that out of all the Americans, I spoke like I had the smallest potato in my throat.

So as with most things in life, I've spent the last few years finding the things that suit me best. Including how I speak.

"I'm a linguist, and you sound German," said my shuttle mate on the way to Panajachel.

"I think you sound a little French," a woman commented at dinner on Monday.

"No, it's all Irish," another contradicted.

"I thought it could be because you're from a city so close to all the Mormons," was another (valid) conjecture.

"I have no idea what it is. But it's soothing," remarked an Australian.

And we spent the next half hour discussing the various accents and placements of all those around the table. I found myself wishing I hadn't deleted the entirety of David Allen Stern's Acting with Accents  instructional CDs from my computer.

It was during this lively conversation that I started getting the feeling that something was quite wrong with my belly. Quite wrong indeed. The cacophony of disgruntled rumblings and seismic shiftings in my intestines made me wonder if the next comment would be,

"Actually, you sound a bit natural-disasterish. Yes, I'm getting very distinctive lilts of earthquake. And perhaps mild flooding."

Side-note: I actually experienced my first seismic activity the other day. I was chatting with a German girl about the role of yoga in her life and noticed that the rafters of the building were having a spirited dance party, sans dancers.

"Was that an earthquake?"

"Yes, Late Atilan is on a fault line. There are many earthquakes here."

"Was that an earthquake?" asked Phillip, a Welsh chap living in the neighboring cabana.

"Yes, Lake Atitlan gets them all the time."

"Oh... well, I was just meditating on my root chakra and all of a sudden the earth started to move... hmmm...." and Phillip paused for a moment, pondering the meaning of this strange coincidence, and then moseyed back to his cabana and meditation.

I hardly slept a wink Monday night. Which isn't surprising, as I've suffered unwaveringly consistent insomnia since I landed in Guatemala City on the 8th of May. Perhaps it's because my body is adjusting to the dramatic change of climate, culture and scenery. Or perhaps I've grown a little too attached to the comfort of sleeping with Boy's arms around me.

Perhaps it's a bit of both.

But this was insomnia punctuated with excessively grumpy belly grumbles and mad rushes to the composting toilet -- forty steep, muddy steps down the mountain in the dark and then a wee bit off to the right. During one of the mad rushes, I slipped and jolted my neck out of place.

So it was with a throbbing neck and out of control intestines that I led my first vigorous yoga lesson at the Yoga Forest the next morning. As I get such an incredible high from teaching Vinyasa, the class went well and no one could deduce the tormented state of my gut... but then I went down for breakfast and proceeded to die a little.

Part of my duties as resident yoga teacher include making the salad for lunch. This is normally a perfectly pleasant activity and involves me wandering around raised beds, snipping off salad leaves and uprooting blushing radishes. However, nothing that included the word "movement" sounded remotely pleasant on Tuesday morning, so Hayley was empathetic enough to give me the morning off.

I was feeling ever so slightly better in the afternoon, so instead of resting, I very brashly decided to stumble 25 minutes down a mountain into town to talk to Boy.

Because even riotous intestines won't keep me away from a Skype date.

(I kind of love that guy)

I felt abysmally bad by the time I reached Circles Cafe, but a two and a half hour chat with Boy was worth it.

(I kind of love that guy)

However, the majority of our conversation was spent with me running in and out of the toilet. Pooping out peppermint tea in quantities that seemed vastly disproportionate to what was actually in my cup.

The walk back up the mountain broke me. I returned to my cabana (which is the highest on the lake) and promptly curled up into a bagel and started to cry.

I'm just... so... thirsty. The stomach pain isn't nearly as bad as the dehydration. The nausea... the headache... the fucking cotton mouth. Everything I drink goes straight through. 

I missed dinner that night. I wanted to try drinking some tea, but didn't have the energy or willpower to walk down the hill to the outdoor dining room. So I stayed alone in my cabana, holding mouthfuls of water without swallowing, just enjoying the feeling of moisture.

There is no way I can teach class tomorrow, I thought in a panic. Shit. I've only just arrived at the lake and I already can't do the work expected of me. Ach. This feels awful. 

So when my roommate came back from dinner, she contacted Hayley and asked if she'd be able to teach the morning class. Which she (with great understanding of my predicament) immediately agreed to. This is something wonderful about having an illness that everyone gets. The empathy and consideration I've experienced from the staff and guests at the Yoga Forest has been nothing short of marvelous. People are giving me medicine and hugs and understanding willie-nillie, left and right. And telling me not to worry, in a couple of days my intestines will return to normal.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I'l be 26.

My birthday last year was spent hiking to the top of a mountain in Croatia, drinking wine, eating chocolate and prodigious amounts of cheese.

This year?

My birthday wish is to a) talk to Boy and b) have a solid poo.