September Reportage

Returned nearly a month ago now from four weeks in the States—forgive me for the overlong hiatus—to a flat tire, dead car battery, and no Internet connection. Amazingly, I was able to resolve all three in under two record breaking hours. The year’s luck looked promising until the clutch on the Volvo went out on the eve of our one-year anniversary in Guatemala. How fitting! I called Darvy, our troubleshooter, who showed up with a stretch of good rope and towed us from Antigua up the mountain to San Lucas with his ’84 Nissan hatchback. Two weeks and two days and it’s still in the shop. Business as usual.

So we bought a green All Sport Mazda MPV family cruiser with 92,000 miles. The power locks don’t work and we blew a tire the second we had it, but I’m loving this thing. It seats 8 Americans, and probably 12 or 13 Guatemalans.

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I started teaching a couple weeks ago at the Christian Academy, and while I still feel like an imposter (I hated school, every minute of it), I am enjoying it immensely. Kristin also started counseling at the school today. It was weird for us both to be on campus again, only on the other side of things.

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Wednesday night I’m heading down to see the U.S.-Guatemala match with the Principal of the Christian Academy, Kevin Fry, who invited me just this morning—his treat. He warned me the only tickets he could get were in the “U.S.” section, unfortunately, and if we don’t dress appropriately—in support of Guatemala that is—we’ll likely get tortillas (if not worse) chucked at us.

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We also celebrated Cristian’s 3rd birthday today with Beetleman.