I'm starting this post from the bed of my simple, sweet room in Eybi's house. I hear Sophie sneeze and cough and snort through the paper thin wall separating our rooms, and I'm sure she can hear me reciprocate. I've got my green hydro-flask steaming with onion, garlic, ginger, orange, cinnamon, thyme, honey tea. A tea with the precise vile flavor of something that's got to be terribly good for you.
One day. I will be able to make it through an entire month without coming down with some sort of illness.
Gosh, I can't wait for that day. Come soon? Please? Tomorrow?
Eybi returned home early in the week with "gripa," which seems to be Guatemala's version of a nasty cold. And now the only creature in the home sans gripa, appears to be Mini, the family's friendly schnauzer.
But Mini has other things to worry about. Like being stuffed inside a laundry basket by a precocious twelve year old.
But here in Guatemala, I imagine Fuego erupting again, blanketing this colorful city in more than a layer of dust and sand. And the fact that Eybi and Sophie aren't freaking out about the ominous rumbling instills not a single iota of calm into my frazzled nerves.
Because Guatemalans (I'm learning) haven't got nerves. Whatever nerves they may have had have long since been frazzled into nothingness after centuries of living in a country with thirty fucking volcanoes.
Example.
I was in bed on Sunday night. Naked (because I prefer to sleep naked whenever possible) when the room started to move. My wooden headboard began to shake and bang against the wall behind me. The doors of my armoire swung open and shut, like Madame de la Grande Bouche, from Beauty and the Beast.
I panicked, still unsure of what was going on. Because I'm a Colorado girl, and earthquakes are a phenomenon far outside my realm of "normal".
Silvia said that earthquakes often happen after big volcanic eruptions. Is this an earthquake?
I stood up. And felt like the room was spinning, as if I'd drunk two glasses too much wine. I quickly, dazedly, wrapped myself in my towel and popped my head into the living room, to see if Eybi and Sophie were panicking.
They weren't panicking. They were still singing to bad American music and cleaning the kitchen, not bothered in the slightest.
Freaking Guatemalans.
Well... if they're not worried, that probably means I shouldn't worry either. So... I should... go back to bed?
I nervously clambered back into bed, keeping my towel close by. Just in case.
"Did you feel the earthquake?" Pancho texted me.
"Yes!" I wrote back. "I was nervous."
"It's normal," he replied. "We could have five or six a year."
"Ooookay," I heaved a sigh as I texted, "I'll try to calm my heart."
"Just be ready for the next one."
...
"And do what?" I asked. "Do you think there will be another one?"
"Jajajaja. You never know!!!" was my friend's reassuring response.
"... You're not making me feel better, Pancho."
"Jajajaja. Don't worry, be happy. I'm having a drink."
So. This is how Guatemalans deal with earthquakes. They "don't worry, be happy" them. And they have a drink.
Silvia also texted me.
"Hola, estas bien?"
She included a googlemaps image of the earthquake, where it had struck and its 5.8 number on the Richter Scale.
"Era muy fuerte!" (it was very strong) she continued.
"Si! Tengo mucho miedo," (Yes! I'm very afraid) I replied.
"No te preocupes! Es normal!" (don't worry! It's normal!) Silvia tried to calm me down.
"Pero personas de Guatemala siempre dicen esto!" (but people from Guatemala always say this!) I protested.
"Descansa!" (Calm down!) Silvia insisted. With a laughing, crying emoticon.
"No me gusta este respuesta. Estoy preocupado!" (I don't like this answer. I'm worried!) I refused to be calmed. Like the abundantly sensible human being I am.
"Vivimos en un pais sismico, tenemos mas o menos 1600 temblores en un año! Es bueno, para que la energia se libere!" (we live in a seismic country, we have more or less 1600 small earthquakes in a year. It's good, so that the energy is released)
"Pero esto terremotto era muy fuerte!" (but this earthquake was very strong) I texted back, still reeling from it all and wondering why no one else appeared to be reeling with me.
"No fue terremoto! Fue temblor," (it's wasn't an earthquake. It was a "trembling") Silvia continued in her quest to calm her anxious student.
"Pensé que Godzilla estaba fuera de mi ventana," (I thought that Godzilla was outside of my window) I sent Silvia a GIF with a rampaging monster.
"El terremoto tiene destrucción! Y esperamos que no occura!"(earthquakes have destruction. And we hope that this doesn't happen) Silvia clarified the difference between a temblor and a terremoto.
This is a country where the earth makes such a habit of moving about that people need to have two words for earthquake.
...
Note to self, Bourget. Never again live in a place where people need more than one word for "earthquake". Live in places where people need lots of words for sunshine. For rainbows. For sunsets. For butterflies.
I slept fitfully that night. As has been my norm, as of late.
Switzerland can't come soon enough...
I fly to Switzerland on Wednesday morning. Which seems like no time at all to someone who isn't tired of living in a land bursting with earthquakes, volcanoes, and parasites (and not nearly enough cheese). And to someone who doesn't have a handsome Swiss fellow waiting on the other side of the ocean.
To someone without these things, Wednesday is only a little less than a week of waiting. But to someone with these things, Wednesday feels interminably far away.
I met Massi in Tikal a little over a month ago. We shared some adventures in Guatemala and Mexico, and then he flew back home to Switzerland. But not before we'd decided that we liked "us" quite well enough to want to give "us" a chance.
So I'm flying to be with him on the interminably far away Wednesday.
We'll spend a month and a half together at his home in Switzerland. And then I'll fly to Colorado to be with my little sister (who is busily making a baby) and my best friend (for her 30th birthday).
And then I'll go back to Massi in mid-October.
This fellow. Turned my life entirely upside down in approximately two weeks.
And I'm just... I'm just so, so happy with the way my world looks now.
Since my next stop is Switzerland, my very money-conscious hobo brain has been thinking about the things that I need that are cheaper to buy in Guatemala than in Switzerland (which is everything, give or take). So I headed out early on Monday morning to snap some photographs, visit a lab for a stool analysis (to see if I still had any manner of parasites camping out in my gut), and to buy some more contact lenses.
I think I'm the most pragmatic vagabond there ever was.
...
If I ever start another blog, that will be the name. The Pragmatic Vagabond.
Anyway. There are probably many other things I need... I made a mental checklist of my possessions (it doesn't take me very long). But...but I sincerely doubt that Fat Ellie has capacity for much more. She's fraying at her seams already. Poor old lady.
Okay... so don't buy more things. Just pick up the boots you already paid for in Pastores. And just trust that everything else will work out.
My Spanish class with Silvia was very... err... animated that afternoon. I related to her my experience of the earthquake, and how I'd been quite naked when it had struck.
"Aimee," Silvia laughed. "No es posible dormir desnudo en Guatemala! Necesitamos estar listos para un terremoto." (Aimee, it's not possible to sleep naked in Guatemala. We need to be ready for an earthquake)
Note to self, Bourget. Never live in a country wherein you have to sleep with clothes on because there might be an earthquake.
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