kicking around during sleep-inducing skies

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Not too terribly much from the weekend, pretty slow, pretty low-key.


Elizabeth left on friday, i felt really bad, i totally missed her leaving, the internet sucked me into a time warp and i fell out of it many hours into the future where Elizabeth was not. In her place, however, was Dori. Dori is a funny cookie. Also this weekend, two more showed up Erica and Roca, travelling together they are on their way to, or from, mexico, not sure which. They remind me of the kinds of squatters you used to see on south street in philly before the Baby Gap and Reebok moved in. Roca doesn´t speak much english, but he gesticulates energetically with fast sweeping gestures and lots of sound effects. Like Palo, we wonder what cartoon he ecaped from. And what cartoon villian is going to try to capture him and return him to a land of 2 dimensions.

We took, Anneliese Palo Dori and I, a bike ride to Parramos. Palo wanted to givbe a skateboard to a kid there. We wanted to get out of the house. It was a good ride.



Somewhere along the way Dori and i got into trouble, almost simultaneously our bikes both fell apart. We were pretty much at Parramos at this point so we scootered our bikes to the closest bike shop.

My chain straight up broke.

Dori´s rear derailleur fell apart when she stopped to see what was wrong with me. She´d never seen that happen before.

We split with our comrades, Palo took my camera to get a picture with the kid, so unfortunately no hay fotos de the rest of the trip. Sorry. But i can tell you about it.

So we went to a bike shop where we asked to use their tools. It was nice that all either one of us needed was a chainbreaker to get us working again. Though my problem made for a much easier quick-fix return than Dori´s. The folks were really nice, they even brought us water to wash our hands with.

Dori and i figured that they (Anneliese and Palo) were going to take a while so we meandered further into town in search of papas fritas. Several roadside stands proved useless. Though one did tip us off to a restaurant around the corner. We went there and had, what turned out to be, the most expensive papas fritas we will ever have. The highlight of the meal, though, was discovering Tostaditas- a local brand of chip that are so good. We both are determined to find them now (supposedly they only exist in Chimaltenango).

It was nice to have a chance to chat with Dori, she goes to Oberlin and studies, uh, i forget. Something about English with comparative something or other. We commiserated about the confusing nature of gender identity amongst our peers, particularly the language- when i´m referring to former him as the gender neutral they do i use the plural or singular verb form to conjugate?

Our lunch makers were really nice and talked to us a bunch. They sponsor lots of Peace Corps volunteers and have dozens of pictures of them everywhere.

Back at the shop, i decided to shave, but apparently forgot how.

Though, my mustache is pretty sweet.

I look more like Borat than the American Gothic guy. (That´s what i was going for with my pitchfork and all)

Palo got sick-feelings again and Carlos promised to bring him something to drink. Having done this once before, and it being slightly terrifying, we thought we could play a prank on poor sleeping Palo.

Dori found a piece of rotten fruit in the kitchen and we thought it would be perfect to pose as an "herbal remedy" akin to the nastiness that Carlos made us drink the last time. So we stuck it in some boiling water and added tumeric for color.


Groggy Palo thought it was gross and didn´t take the bait. We tried to keep straight, but could help laughing. He believed us though, even through the laughter- it really was the kind of crazy thing Carlos would totally be like "yeah, drink this."



Hopefully all of the new blood will make for some more interesting stories throughout the week.
I´m thinking yes.