Roof Dogs

It's Saturday and I went up to the roof to eat my breakfast, where it's nice and sunny. The neighbors have dogs that pretty much never leave their roof, keeping watch I guess. Doesn't look like a life with a lot of affection, but they do have each other. There's a female weimaraner and a male dauchund, and sometimes they both peer over the side of the building with the dauchund standing underneath her, since she clears him by about a foot. They're always excited to see me.















Although sometimes the excitement wears off.

She looks like she had puppies at some time in the past. With the little guy? Perhaps he surprised her at a moment like this?





Anyway, here's the view in two directions from the roof. Of course that's the tip of a volcano in
the skyline of this photo, and at the end of this street you can kind of see the market near the house.






View over the neighbor's roof. Check out the black lace panties!

Tooth Hurty

It's kind of funny that I'm now scheduled for the first root canal of my life, and that it's going to take place in Guatemala. What started out as mild discomfort in the right side of my upper and lower jaw, brought on, I thought, by my history of brushing my teeth with too much gusto, became an intense pain that didn't allow me to sleep for more than an hour at a time last night. Since it was at its worst when I was laying down, some of us around here reached the conclusion that there's probably an infection in my gum, so I ran out and bought an anti-inflamatory and antibiotics, which don't require a prescription, and my old maestra and friend Lucky called her dentist and arranged an appointment for me, and offered to drive me. I had to abort my lesson early today, as it was excruciating sitting there and I'd had some luck in alleviating the pain by moving. I'm sure when people saw me bailing early on my lesson they thought I had explosive diahrreah, as that's the usual reason. So I took a walk just to do whatever is the good thing to my blood pressure that makes my problem hurt less. It hurt so much! The whole right side of my face was aching, with locales of intense pain in my upper and lower jaw. The good part of the story is that I used the time to walk to Pais, a supermarket recently bought by Wal-Mart, and there I found some cereal I'd been missing. I can't handle much more white bread! The walking didn't really help, but then the drugs started to do their thing, and I felt so much better by the time Lucky swung by to pick me up that I thought it surely was an infection and that the antibiotics would fix it and that'd be that. To make a long story short, the dentist sent me across town to get an x-ray, there is an infection, but the problem is I have a large filling in one of my teeth that's too close to the nerve and it'd be best if it came out. This is the same thing a UCSB dentist told me over a year ago, but I guess I was waiting to be really motivated to remove the filling. Lucky said she'd heard of getting a second opinion before, but most people didn't go to another country to do it. Today the dentist drilled it and wiggled some wires around in there, getting gook out, and I have some cotton balls which I need to replace thrice daily in there until my next appointment in 10 days, at 5pm on a Friday. That seems like kind of a funny time to have a root canal, but anyway. Luckily it happened here and not in the wilds of Petén. And it's funny that I actually had my dentist appointment today at 2:30, because that's the punch line to an oldie but goodie. What time is your dentist appointment? Tooth hurty.

Kind of a bad day, but I'm grateful Lucky ferried me around and waited for me, and that now that my anesthesia is wearing off it's not hurting anywhere near as badly as it was. And if this root canal ends up being a good one that lasts a long time, I'll be happy to have spent around $105 on the whole thing, which I understand is considerably less than I'd pay in the US. Yay bargain dental work!

7 or 8 habits

So it seems that I am now obligated to listen to an audio file of 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' and then read the follow up 'The 8th Habit'. It all started harmlessly enough. The Señora of my casa is the critical point in a love triangle, composed of her, her business associate Rodolfo and her boyfriend Jorge. They are part of the parade of people who come through the house and the café she owns, although because they were on 'una pausa' when I first showed up, I didn't meet Jorge for about a week. When Jorge re-entered the scene, Rodolfo said he never wanted to see la señora again, but he was at lunch the next day. Anyway, as far as I can tell, Rodolfo makes very little effort to be understandable to me in spanish, maybe because his real desire is to practice his english with me. At first I didn't mind too much because I was eager for the opportunity to show that I am not a complete dumbass. But then he quickly steered conversation to 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' and offered to make me a copy of the audio files if I furnished a blank disk. So then each time I saw him after that, it was 'do you have the disk?'. So I got the disk, then it took several queries before I handed it over, and so now that I have the files I think the next line of questioning is going to be whether or not I've listened to it yet. So to keep things smooth I'd have to listen to the disk, I reckon. The practicing english kind of irks me, because I would be unintelligable to him in english if I spoke at my normal rate. But I speak in a way to be understandable to him, while he doesn't do that for me in Spanish. Possible self-absorption. In him, not in me. My own is already well known. Anyway, maybe these 7 or 8 habits will prove to be useful, as I've already been using a trick I learned from the Simpson's episode where Bart gets a copy of 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pre-Teens'. When someone (a time suck or something like that) comes in your work space and starts talking, talking, talking and you want to get back to work, you stand up and thank them for dropping by and accompany them to the door. And I think I've been dismissed in the same manner as well. Maybe there are some other gems awaiting me?

No more girl talk

I have a new spanish teacher this week, and it's no more girl talk around here. It's grammer drills and the revealing of huge gaps in my spanish knowledge. She'll ask me, for example, 'when do we use the conditional?' and I'll give a weak sauce answer, and her eyes will roll back slightly and then she'll break it down. So discouraging because it's turning out that I know less spanish than I thought, but ultimately for the best. She says we're doing this because I already speak 'bastante español'. Better than ninguno.

Hot, hot, cold

Today I went to this place called Fuentes Georginas with some ladies from the language school here. It's so nice, the hot water comes out of a lushly green mountain-side and then three pools have been set up to capture it. I ended up having the most pruned up hands of my life. They're still not normal, almost 6 hours later. To get up there, we had to take the bus to this nearby town called Zunil, then find a pickup to take us in its bed up a twisty mountain road for 20 minutes. It's funny all the risks that I'll take in a foreign environment that I wouldn't do at home. At home, I feel antsy if I'm in a car without a seat-belt. Here, hopping into the back of a truck is just a normal way to get around. When we were done, there was a group getting into the back of a pickup to go down the hill, but we didn't realize it was a family group and not a for-hire situation so we asked if we could ride too. One lady was like, "Sorry, it's full" but then the father of the family was like, "Sure!" and it ended up being a pretty crammed ride in the back of the truck down the hill. The ladies were all wearing traditional Mayan clothing, but it's much rarer to see men dressed that way. The whole thing was very generous of them, because they gave us the ride for free and gave each of us a piece of fruit. Now I'm back in town and freezing again. It can be pretty warm on a sunny day but the nights are always cold here. I bought a big puffy down jacket at a used clothing store here. I thought I had found a resale store specializing in clothes ditched out on by travelers, but my maestra said that corrupt officials began a business of importing large amounts of donated clothing from the US and then reselling them. Apparently it started back in the 1970s, when there was a huge earthquake and the US sent large packages of clothing as a donation. Somewhere along the way, the clothes became available for sale instead of just being handed out, as was supposedly the intention of the donors. The tradition continues. Well, it was much warmer than any of the other coats I encountered here, and when the saleslady asked 20Q for it (like $2.50), I said I'll take it, even if it looks pretty 80s.

Pelirroja, nunca mas.

Today my maestra Lucky told me that I'm not really a redhead. Now that Miranda from Sex in the City, now she's a redhead. I'm more of a blonde. I've never been challanged on this before, I just kind of sputtered.

You can learn a lot about a person in 36 hours of one-on-one conversation. She's not going to be my maestra next week because it's recommended to switch it up and try differnt accents, different teaching styles, so I'm going to have another lady named Yadira next week. But I'm going to go to her house on Sunday for lunch since we like each other so much. If all goes well, she's going to adopt a baby girl that a 16 year old at her cousin's church is giving birth to next month, and she's very excited. I found a used copy of Dr. Spock's "Como Cuidar a los Ninos" at a bookstore here, so I gave that to her as a gift. It's updated for the 90's, I'm not sure if his advise is old-fashioned but I told her that my parents referred to it in my babyhood and she said that in that case she's guaranteed to have a wonderful daughter. So that's a shout out to Mom and Dad!

ka-CHING!

Got cash today, out at the mall attached to Hiper Paiz, the market recently purchased by Wal-Mart. The whole adventure took about an hour, and you wouldn't believe how many people will cram into a mini-van. Even more than usual since we weren't wearing clown costumes. En route home I saw two boarded up banks, the BancoCafe and Banco del Comercio. Which bank will fall next?