A Day in the Life of a Guatemalan

Sitting at Giovanni`s house, enjoying the breeze. I spent the day here today learning the daily life of a Guatemalan. I arrived around 8:30am or so. The goal was to learn how to make tamales. This is quite a lengthy process, and as I learned today, they only really make them for special occasions like Christmas and birthdays. Amalia, Giovanni`s mom, told me they were making them especially for me... wow! When I got here, she had already made the corn mixture and the sauce that goes inside. I got to help chop sweet peppers and wiped off tons of banana leaves in which to wrap up the tamales. I took a break, went to the Internet Cafe with Chris and came right back here in lieu of going to workout. This was my chance to learn the art of tamale making!

I returned and the ladies were wrapping up all the ingredients in the banana leaves: the corn meal mixture, a piece of chicken that had been marinating in the sauce, some sauce, a couple of raisins, a prune, and a slice of sweet pepper. The folding of the leaves takes a lot of practice. In the time it took me to wrap about 10 of them, the ladies had done probably about 100. I am learning, though, and Amalia said that is the hardest part of the lengthy process.

Meanwhile, World Cup soccer was on in the other room. I got a couple of glimpses of the Brazil/Holland game, and got to watch almost the whole game between Uruguay & Ghana. I finally got to watch a game! I must say I`m glad that Brazil lost and Uruguay won. Now rooting Spain on to victory!

Overall, I had a sweet day, learning more intimately how the people live here. This particular family has lots of animals, including a dog, a cat, a parrot, and tons of chickens (with chicks!). Thankfully, I missed the slaughter of the hen this morning for the tamales! :) The atmosphere is very hot and humid (not unlike Atlanta), and there is currently a breeze, thank God, because there are no fans or A/C. Yet with the breeze, other smells are wafted through the house from the neighbors & the street, such as car exhaust, marijuana smoke, and animal droppings- nice. I will never again complain about having to get my emissions checked!

Yesterday was pretty sweet too. I took all the kids to a sweet water park about an hour away. It was both fun and relaxing. The kids don´t get to do stuff like that very often and I was thrilled to be a part of it. It was interesting to see that somethings don`t change from culture to culture and that youth will be youth.