Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Post-Christmas Guatemala Update

Well, you haven't heard from me in a while because the freaking internet has been down throughout large portions of the country since Christmas Day. It's still down in various places, including at our house, but my dad has it at the office, and I am posting from . . . thence. Or whatever.

Anyway, Christmas went pretty well. I spent Christmas Eve helping with this and that, and then we had our traditional meal of chalupas and enchiladas at 3:00 in the afternoon instead of the usual supper time. The changed time was the result of cataclysmically bad planning on the part of person or persons as yet undiscovered. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we couldn't get out of going to Fraternidad Cristiana (my parents' church). One of the orphanage girls was dancing in their Christmas program, so we all had to go, which disrupted all of our Christmas traditions.

Going out somewhere was the last thing I wanted to do on Christmas Eve, so I wasn't particularly please. Brett was even more peeved. We sat next to each other and . . . "commiserated" during the service. It was two hours long, and I've been to far more painful church services in my time. There was a really terrible "adaptation" of A Christmas Carol about halfway through, but the only thing it had in common with the original was the first name of the main character and "God bless us, every one!" at the end. I guess it was also trying to be It's a Wonderful Life and . . .The Godfather. It was bizarre and confusing, and most of the lines were riddled with obscure slang, so it was difficult to understand. Didn't really work for me.

Anyway, we returned to do the same old thing: watching the kids open presents, doing fireworks, bringing the kids' stocking over after they went to bed, and then we went home and crashed. Christmas Day was a fine affair. I didn't get many presents (since I hadn't really asked for anything besides a couple of plane tickets) but I got a lot of money which will come in quite handy.

To briefly summarize the ensuing days: I went to Alumni Day at CAG and saw various people. Afterwards Rachel and I went bowling with Asa, his younger sister Rachel, and Miss Rensch (my math and science teacher from high school). Last Friday we went to Panajachel, my favorite place in the world, to welcome the New Year. Pana is a small town on the edge of a gorgeous lake surrounded by volcanoes. It was very pleasant.

In the meantime, we've been amusing ourselves with this and that. Micah got the first season of Lost for Christmas, so we watched all of that. Freaking show is nothing but a big tease . . . grrr. We've also watched season two of Monk, we'll make a start at season three before we leave. That's such a great show. Rachel and I played through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for X-Box together. Micah got it for Christmas. It's a pretty good game as long as you can utterly ignore the source material and the wretched camera angles . . . *cringes.*

So, that's all the news for now. I'm sure I'd have posted a great deal more about all of the above if we'd had internet, but that's the way it goes. I'll be back in town on Sunday afternoon, and I can't wait to see everyone. Farewell 'till then.

Posted by Jared at January 5, 2006 12:06 PM | TrackBack