Two days ago we visited a coffee farm, una finca de cafe. And we saw the coffee trees, intermixed with sugarcane and banana trees. Everything you need, really. We had a tour and explanation of how coffee is roasted, and that espresso has less caffeine than coffee roasted shorter times, for regular coffee. They also sold chocolate, powdered with 10% sugar, 10% cinnamon, and we sampled some. It wasn´t quite as entertaining as our tour with the eccentric farmer of macademia nuts, but it was still good. I forgot something about the former tour- when we arrived, he told us about his church, that it was wonderful, would cure all your ills, would change your life, etc. And brought us to this little tiny house very minimally constructed but private, with grass for the floor and trees and plants growing around and inside, and when we walked inside, it was a bathroom! He said one time he didn´t go to the bathroom for 5 days, but then he did in this bathroom and it was a religious experience and he consructed a skylight right above the toilet, some kind of plastic that isn´t transparent exactly but allows light to shine down on the toilet. He is a character. Tonight we go all night by bus to Guatemala city, then to Tikal, a huge mayan ruins. Sleep all night on the bus then wake up in Tikal, more or less. Then Saturday we will return by bus to Guatemala city, to the airport.

Today after class we visited a macadamia nut farm. It was a few miles outside of town. We took a bus with an adminstrator with our school. He is really great. I guess he gives tours and accompanies students on tours, but we seem to be almost the only students right now. IT is still the rainy season and not as many tourists and students as there will be later. So it is awesome, we get personalized tours! He speaks english, mas o menos. I try not to speak spanish to him all the time, because my dad can{t really understand. But I try to speak spanish most of the time with whoever I meet. So we went to this farm today. It is beautiful, and very laid-back. It is rainy season here, which i think is like 5 months long. everything is lush and verdant. he has all kinds of trees, and the nut trees grow all over. The owner has been there I think 15 years, I forget. He{s from california and is pretty . . . anti-establishment, I guess. Maybe bordering on anarchist. He has very strong ideas about genetically modified plants and food crops (they are bad), paying taxes (bad) and buying houses (bad. he and his wife have lived in a trailor on the farm for who knows how long). He gave us samples of their macadamian nuts and they were delicious, and chocolate from nearby, which was awesome, and some assistants there gave us face messages with nut oil. He gave us a little tour of the little factory, where they husk or whatever the nuts, sort them by size and dry them. some they dip in boiling salt water for 30 seconds to season, and they are awesome. It{s an environmental cause for this guy, because he said the nut shells absorb huge quantities of carbon, and also a social program. This is a much more lucrative crop than corn or coffee, and they give many sapling trees to poor rural pueblos en guatemala. It was really fun. We had a typical guatemalan dish for lunch, like a spicy red soup with chicken and this small green squash like a pumpkin, called pepian. Que rico!
He said you{re only as big as the love in your heart.

So we found a taxi on the street and negotiated a price with him. His car was clunking along a little bit, but I didn´t worry. But after 15 min he pulls over to this gas station with other taxis in it and tells us we are going to take a more comfortable taxi. So he gives us to this other taxi driver, and we´re just like ¨uh, ok.¨ The traffic is insane, like Peru, but one thing I never saw in peru is not just packed-full buses but people hanging on the outside of the bus! I asked my teacher if they have to pay, too and she said of course they pay! They are paying for the transportation, not the comfort! We were driving at rush hour, so our 45min route took 2 hours, mas o menos. Our taxi driver had a hard time finding the house of the family we are staying with. He stopped and asked a few police officers around town. By this point it was dark and raining. He didn´t get stressed out, though. Finally we found it. Our family is really sweet. They have a little tienda in the front of their house, so there are often people around. Our teachers are awesome. Classes are one-on-one, and both my dad and i love out professors. We came in today, saturday, for class as well, even though usually there is no class and we had to get different professors. They were really efficient and good, as well. We were going to take an overnight bus to Tikal, this MAyan ruin 8 or 12 or 13 hours away, depending on who you ask or when you, I guess. But we have been advised that a huge storm is coming in that way from honduras, so we should wait till next weekend. I hope next weekend is sunnny and the storm has passed. ´My brain hurts from conjugating verbs. It is rainy today. Yesterday was sunny and a guy from the school gave us a tour around the town. We saw two white-shirted jehovah´s witnesses, two white boys, white shirts, riding their bikes. They are everywhere! We saw a pair in our layover in miami, too. There are beautiful ruins of cathedrals mixed in with the town. We walked through the central park, and this little girl followed me for 5 minutes, trying to sell me some colorful cloths. I talked to her a little bit, asked her her name and if she went to school. She was nine.

Yesterday we went to US air express, instead of us air, but they checked us in and we went through security with without waiting in line. It was awesome. We landed in Miami and took a taxi to little havana, calle ocho. In the airport, I heard a guy speaking creole on the phone and I was so proud of being able to recognize some words because I am a dork. Then we were talking to our taxi driver about the different communities in Miami and he said the haitian community is the second largest after the cuban community and that he is haitian. I studied creole for like a week, so I told him ´´Mweh vle aprann kreole.´´ I want to learn creole, and he was entertained by that. He took us to the restaurant I had read about, EL Pub, en calle ocho. IT has a big rooster out front, really big, but we forgot to take a picture. We got awesome rice and beans and plantains and cuban coffee. IT is rainy one minute then sunny the next, so we bought an 8 dollar umbrella for the downpour and walked along this street, where evereything is in spanish and everything is speaking spanish. It´s stereotypical cuban guys smoking cigars everywhere and we pass this assocation of dominoe players, and one guy invites us in in Spanish, while also pointing to an english sign that said trespassers could be arrested. It was kind of a mixed message so we kept moving along. We were looking for shoes for my dad. We kept walking and came out of little havana into rich and fancy miami and it started raining harder and harder but it was warm so it was okay. The wind was blowing so hard it blew our umbrella inside out but my dad kept trying to fix it. It was hilarious. Then we got to this shoe store, super fancy three story glass building and we walk in, dripping wet with our mangled, mangled umbrella that my dad refuses to give up. We find him some cool black sneakers, the coolest shoes he´s ever worn. THe clerk helping us is cuban and only lived in miami two years and was really helpful. More helpful then if she was from here, i think.
We get to guatemala while it is still daylight, and I don´t want to look like such a tourist as to ask our language school to send us a taxi, so we go out to get our own taxi. ok, the bell rang to go start classes! more later

I think I miss Peru. I listened to this latin guy read spanish poetry last night and i am pretty sure he is my soulmate but we will never see each other again. Then tonight I went to a bilingual church in Bridgeton. And I talked to a couple who were in Lima when I was. I miss it!

ps. i didn't mean to invite you guys specifically to read bad poetry. i just made the blog private so i had to invite you in case you ever felt like reading . . . thank you for indulging me.

So I am living at home right now, and I'm actually having so much fun. When I'm home for more than a few weeks, it means I don't have a job. I also have zero friends here. And usually I am going crazy. But this time is so nice. Partially, because I have a plan. I'm applying for volunteer positions with Mennonite Central Committee. One is teaching english in Iraq over the summer. One is a sort of public health liaison type person in Nicaragua. But I have like 6 months before any of those begin, so I applied for the census job, and I am applying to be a substitute teacher here in NJ.
I've also been visiting friends in different places and going back and forth to philly. It's been so cool seeing everyone.
But even just being at my house is so nice. For one thing, I think I'm still not accustomed to the luxuries of heated houses and hot showers. My life in Peru was somewhat uncomfortable. Not because it was in a third-world country, but because I was broke. And living essentially alone in a tiny apartment. So it's luxurious having a fridge full of food, having food cooked for me, sitting in a heated living room with big fat couches. My little brothers have turned from little tiny kids into friends, and my parents are friends, too.
Last night we watched "The Invention of Lying." It was really interesting. Ricky Gervais co-wrote it and produced it and starred in it. I want to say more about this movie later.
This weekend has been so fun. My mom made these awesome soups and we watched movies and went outside in the snow. I feel happier, it's really weird.

“I’m gonna’ miss you like a child misses their blanket” Fergie says.
That’s about right,
how I loved you.

sans reason, logic, judgment
some natural affinity in the beginning of course, and affinity
even still
some esteem interest desire of course
I’m not an animal

but maybe careless, maybe a child, blanket in hand
an instinctive turning toward warmth

once comforted,

dropped forgotten

like a blanket or like
nicotine scotch cocaine

addicted no longer to pleasure, fulfillment
but to adequacy,
maintenance
want you even when I
have you

but you turn out in the end, disappointingly,
to be . . .

a person

requiring something of me and so
I am forced to
decline your
offer of sustenance
but just
barely and
sometimes I am still a child, a junkie, and in my dreams I find satisfaction
but it’s never you.