Miles

Miles Davis said “Less is more.”

I certainly agree with the king of cool in regards to music, make-up, mayonnaise, and the length of blog posts and I seem to have really embraced it in regards to frequency of blog posts. However, I don’t think this little adage applies to my months of February and March where a more apt description would be something like, “More… is More fun.” This is my roundabout way of apologizing for how long its been since I last posted something which might be kind of rediculous because that assumes you were upset in the first place. Either way, it has been a combination of laziness and busy-ness that has prevented me from writing anything and whether you noticed or not, I am going to try to catch you up on the fun part of the More.
I left you last with an intense cliffhanger about my house. Finally… reprieve. My house is little, yellow on the outside, and pink and blue on the inside. It looks like a nursery where half of the house is expecting a boy and the other a girl. I have a sweet little front porch area that is utilized to watch the amazing sunsets behind the melon fields that are just down the road. I have yet to see an un-awesome sunset here. February through April is melon season which means very big business around here. That also means trucks and busses hauling workers and harvests day and night down my street. Throughout the day I can see the heat vibrating off the bent backs of the workers milling up and down the rows and rows of green. Not to worry, they get a little breeze when the boss comes to check on the fruits of his labors from his helicopter. I have a pretty big yard area (mostly just one giant pile of rocks) and a pila/washboard/shower/toilet area just outside my back door. There is a rickety old barb wire fence around the house but I am happy to allow the yard to remain a major thouroughfare for kids and animals alike who both love to stick their head in the door to see how I’m doing. My neighbors have 2 goats but they decided that they like my food scraps more and have made my back porch their more or less permanent residence. As far as furniture goes, I am still living in somewhat of a spartan manner. I have a bed, and a little dresser for clothes in one room, a hammock in the other, and a mini-fridge and one burner stove in the kitchen. I swept AND mopped today so the floors are looking mighty shiny. I found out they’re blue! Who knew? This would be a great place for a picture of my house. My camera is still broken and makes all the pictures come out all psychedelic like the one at the top.
That guy, the famous Steven Zamora, has pictures and will soon give them to me so I can dispense them to you. Don’t worry. Perfect segue to start talking about hosting my first visitor. You guessed it. Mr. Steven Zamora. If you tell me you’ve ever seen a more beautiful mustachio, you are a liar. He stepped out of the cab wearing that marvelous strip of hair above his lip, a v-neck undershirt, and below the knee khaki shorts. It wasn’t until recently that I found out I am way out of style and looking might 40 year old manish in my above the knee shorts. He had a backpack full of clothes and canned sardines but it turns out the clothes just consisted of 8 of those same shirts and I therefore never saw him in anything else. I freaking love that guy. We went on some adventures for awhile and made it back to my little town just before I had to take off for a week long training thingy. I assumed he would want to hit the exciting central american backpacker road full of Germans, cock fights, and cheap beer. But instead he opted to stay by himself in my house and take over my life for a week. As far as I can tell nothing was screwed up too bad but we’ll see. Actually everyone loved him as much as I do and he seemed to have really made himself at home. In fact, when I walked in the door after being gone all week he made sure to repremand me for not wiping my feet. That weekend we threw an epic party for Graham who (tear) left to get back to Scotland or Sweden or some other magical place where fog sticks to your cheeks like chocolate. The party was awesome enough to keep Steve around for an extra week and I think he left satisfied. He has since cancelled his return flight and is kicking it in Guatemala.
I had a second visitor last weekend: a new health volunteer who just got to country and was sent to see how I live. When the power went out, we were left with no fans which means no sleep unless you are used to losing a few pounds of sweat into your sheets. We sat at the dinner table at 3am and ate all the yogurt that was going to go bad. Welcome buddy.
February also meant that school finally started which means that I finally have something to do besides walking around with my backpack on trying to look busy. I do a little english class for the teachers, make my pops proud by showing the little-uns the importance of keeping our teeth in existence, started a basketball team for the girls in what would be the equivelant of middle school, and intersperse all that with some music/art activities. The moms at the kinder all banded together to thank me for putting work into the dental hygiene demonstrations and gave me a lovely gift of pepsi and pop rocks. Their hearts were in the right place. Its been great and things only keep piling on. Holy week is coming up which is a big deal in these parts. My plans are still undefinitive but it is generally a time for the beach seeing as it is considered the hottest week of the year. When are you coming to visit?