Well done

One month in Guatemala!

An unbelievably fast-flying thirty days in my adopted country.

One month of Canchenicity.

One month of not only remembering, but reliving!

One month, remarkable not for any whiz-bang, earth-shattering, glow-in-the-dark, capital ‘E’ events... but rather, remarkable for how sweet & easy the transition was.

Which, now that I think about it, isn’t perhaps all that surprising. After all, I’m returning to the life I lived for eleven years!

Add to that the fact that more has remained the same than has changed in Guatemala during the past four years, and it makes perfect sense that I feel so at home here.

As far as my “achievements” go, I’m going to cut myself a bit of slack (is that legal?) This was definitely a month of transition, a time for rebuilding “la vida Canche.”

Still, in the great To-Do List of My Life, I was able to check off the following boxes:

 I found an apartment in the Edificio el Centro, and moved back into my “old neighborhood”.

 Against all odds I managed to get my hand-cranked, hamster-on-a-treadmill-powered, once-owned-by-Ben-Franklin, sell-it-on-Ebay-as-a-collectible, calculator-wannabe, excuse for a computer up to (what we will ironically refer to as) speed. That is to say... I can now download photos from the camera, edit them in Photoshop, and upload them them to the internet (aka:here.)

 I’ve reconnected with “mi gente” over coffee, at the movies, during marches, while dancing, in Antigua, at work, on the streets... in short, it turns out I have a social life. (Who would’ve thought?)

 I’m now a morning person. (Pause for the laughter to fade.) Ok, maybe “morning person” is a bit of a stretch. After all, I still get out of bed each morning with all the energy and enthusiasm of a damp sack of cement. That said however, I am up (if not awake) at 5am every weekday morning, and the first to arrive at the office, by six a.m.

 I write often in my journal, and have kept the homepage (um, mostly) up-to-date.

 My diet has become frighteningly healthy (fruit! salad! rice! beans! soup! veggies! er... coffee!) and with all the walking I do, the “have-another-slice-of-shadow-cake” pounds are quickly melting away.

So, OK, it hasn’t exactly been a Nobel Prize-worthy month. It’s been more of a “hey, you know what? I think I’m going to make it!” kinda month.

For my first month back... that’s not so bad.

Posted by elcanche at May 15, 2004 07:29 PM