Easy Like Sunday Morning

I just looked at my wall calendar and September is almost over! My dad just bought my ticket home for Christmas, so before I know it I'll be on a plane back home for the holidays! I am beyond excited to go home for Christmas. My parents and grand mother came to Guatemala last year for Christmas, but it just wasn't the same. I wonder how I will do with the snow... when I came home in April I over-dressed and forgot how humid it can get in Ohio. Here it is always spring weather and there is no humidity so you can wear anything and always feel comfortable. I am excited for the Holiday spirit, family and friends. I am excited for traditions and Christmas morning with delicious breakfast (I so miss bacon and sausage...). I am excited to curl up in blankets and watch tv. I am excited to just spend time with loved ones :) In less than 3 months I will be home!

So I made a to-do list today and of course I did nothing on that list. I subconsciously made the decision to not do anything today :) Or in other words I was just too lazy. However, while I was sitting around the house - doing nothing - which usually means staring at the walls (I'm serious), dealing with Tuk being really annoying by not leaving me alone - probably because I don't walk him enough - I decided to make a wish list. It is more like a wish list to keep myself in my site instead of traveling to Xela every weekend. I decided I would like to start a garden on my patio. I would buy cheap tins you can find in the market, fill them up with dirt and plant flowers and herbs. The market sells little herb plants for cheap. And since my patio is basically walls of cement block, I am going to make shelves out of the recycled wood on my patio. I think this will make my landlady happy - it will show that I'm taking care of her house. Unlike last time when she took my pila away. I came home from vacation to find the pila she installed upstairs on the patio gone. I think that was her way of grounding me for leaving it completely dirty, moldy and unfortunately filled with cigarette butts ---- let me explain. So this pila, which is basically a sink that Guatemalans have to wash clothes and get water, was outside, uncovered, and there was also no lighting on the patio. So I could never use it because I didn't have a cover to prevent dust, bugs, flies, etc. from getting into pila, after 6:30 I couldn't see anything to do my dishes - so I just stopped using it all together and used the downstairs one. Well, my friends Phil and Rey had their birthday party at my house because I had space to hold the 20 people that came. And within our friends there are smokers (not me) so they used a rusty old tin can to throw their used cigarettes in. Well, before I left for vacation I put the can in the pila and covered the whole thing with wood in case my landlady came to use her part of the house while I was gone. And while I was putting wood on the pila the tin can tipped over making one side of the pila totally black with all the old cigarettes. So I freaked out a little because I should have just thrown the can out in the garbarge weeks before. So I told myself when I got back from vacation I would clean the disgusting pila. Well.... she beat me to it. Opps. The pila is now locked away in one of the downstairs rooms that she only has keys to. I saw her son not too long after the pila situation and pretty much in a nice way told me it looked like I wasn't using the pila so his mom put it away. Soooo - I'm hoping a garden will mend things over. I haven't seen her since she took the pila away, and not gonna lie, I'm a little scared when I do :)

So to the list. Id like to start the garden next month. I would also like to start cooking more. So if any of you have some favorite recipes you would like to share, send them my way!! Every Thursday night my site mates and I get together to cook. Since I'm really the only person with creativity when it comes to dinner options, no offense to my site mates, it would be nice to share new meals with them. AND, I FINALLY bought a kitchen table, haha. It only took like 9 months. And it only cost 8 dollars.... goes to show how poor I've been. I also plan on disciplining Tuk more. Yesterday he sprinted clear across the steet chasing a poor, scared to death little boy because he thought he wanted to play with him - nope. I'm pretty sure the boy thought he was going to die. Then Tuk caught site of a little girl and started chasing her. I literally had to body dive to get him to stop running after her. Then in the process the girl and I slammed our heads together, she fell on her knee, I thought I had a concussion and there is stupid little doedoe-bird Tuk hopping up and down ready to "play" some more. The poor girl, before I had the chance to see if she was alright, ran away half limping and holding her head. I felt SO bad. The whole night I was waiting for someone to knock on my door and yell at me for having a crazy dog. So Tuk will need some more conditioning work, bad! As for other list items, I plan on reading more and studying Spanish more. It is a small list, but I look forward to the possibilies it can bring.

Sundays are my favorite part of the week. They are so relaxing. Besides today - I usually get all my work done early morning Sunday and have the rest of the day to relax. Since being in Guatemala I have really enjoyed waking up early, you can get so much stuff done and still feel like you have so much time left in the day. This is one of the reasons why I want to have this wish list so I can include Saturdays as another day to relax. I think when I get back to the States my mind will be too occupied with all the technology that surrounds everyone on a daily basis that I'll forget to really enjoy a simple, stress-free, humble day. So I want to take advantage of that here as much as possible.

Happy Sundays everyone!