My mother was right

I just got back to Flores after a fortnight of zipping around Guatemala. Two weeks ago I went to La Capital for a couple of meetings, and, very exciting, to welcome Esteban as my first visitor. Well, it was a lovely time together, we started out in the colonial jewel of Antigua, and in an attempt to escape the rain headed up to Cobán. Here’re pictures from our trip to Semuc Champey, a limestone bridge on the Cahabon river a few hours from Cobán. Hiking to this overlook point turned out to be the last activity I felt good for, because after this I started to succumb to a general malaise. I guess when I was shivering in bed with multiple blankets despite the fact that according to some “it’s not cold” and I had very little appetite despite being very hungry, it was apparent something was wrong. But after a week together our time came to end and Esteban headed back to UCSB and I went off to Quetzaltenango (Xela) to visit my old Spanish maestra, Lucky, and her 9 month old daughter Montserrat (Moncie). That is when the itchy itchy on my legs and feet began, and let me say that while it felt so good to scratch them, it felt so bad to stop, so I started making up itching rules which I would alternately stick to and then violate. No itching with my hands. Okay, as long as I don’t use my fingernails. Okay, fingernails, but lightly. I can rub my feet on the bed. Okay, I can only rub my foot with the other foot, but no toenails. Okay, just stop completely. Mmm, maybe just with one finger. Despite the times I would be scratching my shins and wanting to cry, I had a nice time with Lucky and Moncie. Moncie is so funny, if she’s awake she is eating and Lucky keeps a constant stream of different foods flowing her way which Moncie demolishes with her two bottom (and only) teeth. She seeks out food too, we were all lying on the bed when she woke up from her nap and I guess she sensed the cake lying in foil that some neighbors had dropped off, because she went for it. Did she smell it? Does she know food comes wrapped in foil? Well, she wrested it from the foil herself, and she does not get kicked out of the bed for making a mess and I admit to having rubbed my legs in the crumbs on the bedspread to get in a surreptitious scratch. While I was visiting there was a special treat, because my first full day in Xela Moncie’s preschool put on a production of Blanca Nieves y los Siete Enenos (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves) , in which Moncie appeared as a little bunny rabbit. So… cute… Ah, and all those who spoke out in outrage will feel satisfied to hear that at one point Lucky casually asked me who else in my family is a redhead. Hear that? Who *else*, as in who in addition to me.




(http://laurel-guatemala.blogspot.com/2007/01/pelirroja-nunca-mas.html)

Anyway, after 3 days I headed back to Guatemala City with the intention of immediately catching another bus back to Flores. It should have been all day and two buses, but I missed the second bus and decided to spend the night in Antigua instead of waiting around in Guatemala City until the night bus. Coincidence is a funny thing, because me and this one guy have it big time, and while at some point he probably counted it as destiny now he might see it as bad luck. When my parents visited me in February, I went with them to Lake Atitlan and while crossing the lake on a boat I met Fernando, a man in the thread business who happened to be reading, of all things, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” (http://laurel-guatemala.blogspot.com/2007/01/7-or-8-habits.html). He gave me his business card, and that would have been the end of the story except the day after my parents left I was walking by myself in Antigua and he and I came to the same street corner at the same moment. Thus we went on a date last February, the night before I was leaving to go up to Flores, and while we had a nice time I didn’t feel particularly compelled to continue it over the phone and eventually stopped answering his phone calls. On this recent trip visiting Lucky I even told her this story and she called me a rompe-corazón, a heartbreaker. Well, as destiny or luck would have it, I got a chance to break his heart a second time because on this recent trip which should have been from Xela to GC to Flores in one go, when I decided to spend the night in Antigua instead of attempting to continue on that same day, I got off the Xela to GC bus at a GC McDonald’s to use the bathroom, and who is sitting there in a booth when I walk by? We were both surprised, though I only stood there gaping for a minute before I excused myself to continue on to the bathroom, having just gotten off a bus after 6 hours. When I came back, though, we chatted, and I ended up telling him that I’d stopped answering his phone calls because I’m not much of a phone talker in general, I’m even less of a phone talker in Spanish, and, well, I kind of had the feeling he might have taken our relationship potential a little more seriously than I had. He was like, “well, you know, I live in the moment,” but then he went on to tell me that remembering that I was coming back in September, when September came around he called me repeatedly (I had to buy a new phone chip with a new phone number when I got here, though) and went to Antigua multiple times and looked around in the places where he thought I might hang out in the hopes of seeing me. In my mind I was like, “um, yeah, that’s kind of what I had in mind when I said you took it seriously,” but because I felt bad I invited him to come to Antigua that night and hang out, which we did, though I’d already told him that there was no chance between us. This did not prevent him from feeling a certain hopefulness as we said goodnight, however, which I squashed on the spot and then apparently squashed again the next day when he called me while I was on the bus to Flores and I didn’t answer. I guess after his previous experience with me, this time he’s giving up earlier. And thus I came back to Flores, where I did get the bienvenida from Memo and family, who were all happy to see me and I was happy to see them. He and I were talking and to catch me up he told me that he’d had dengue fever while I was gone and started to list his symptoms and I was like, “Gee, I had pain around my kidneys too… wow, I had a bad headache… shivering you say? Sounds familiar… Rash?” My case apparently was much milder than his, though, because I never asked God to strike me dead nor did I start getting my affairs in order, but it was bad enough. Apparently it has a two week incubation period, so I think a mosquito passed it between us and he and I were sick at the same time, 500 km apart. Well, it feels kind of good to know that I weathered my first tropical disease, and to have a name for it instead of just being some weak-sauce tourist suffering from unfamiliar food. I am practically all better, though I am still occasionally alternating between ecstatic moments of scratching my ankles, followed by a steeling of my resolve to not touch them. And I should have listened to my mother and gone to the doctor when she suggested it instead seizing on her anecdote about the time the doctor told her to take Benedryl to clear up a rash. For her, it worked like a jiffy. For me, it made me sleepy, unable to conjugate Spanish verbs, and didn’t relieve my itchiness, though hopefulness made me try two times.