Anybody know what time it is??!?!?

So...I am afraid I am a terrible homemaker! Not a huge shocker, I would rather throw cocktail parties then tend to the domestic responsibilities of the home, but I have reached a new low, bigger than a disgusting dinner. Not a single clock in the entire house has the right time...and we are not talking a few minutes off here and there....they are all blinking crazy hours and I am refusing to change them! But before you judge me too critically, I do have an excuse! The rainy season is upon us here in Guatemala and it rains so incredibly hard and wild that our power goes out, every single day, sometimes 3 or 4 times a day! Thank god we have a generator the size of a small country, so it only goes out for like 30 seconds, I mean people are losing their homes in the torrential down pour and I am worried about keeping time. (Trivial, seriously, but I have to admit I am relieved we do not have to worry about a lot of the problems Guatemalans face every day.) Anyway, I did try to keep up with it, but after a week of changing the clocks several times a day...I threw in the towel....it was too annoying, the rain wins and I don't care. And honestly, I sort of like not know what time it is...is that weird?!?!? I feel like this makes us more latin and I am totally embracing it!

But seriously, the weather is NUTS here right now. You all saw the pictures of the sinkhole....it rained so hard the earth opened up and ate an entire blocks and all the buildings, people, what have you that went along with that piece of real estate.

And it continues to just pour...I mean the temperature is still perfect here in the land of eternal spring...but this rain has got to go. It pours here like I have never seen and I am from Oregon! I KNOW rain. I mean this stuff is nuts, it pours sideways, so umbrellas don't help, you can't see anything if you are on the roads, and forget roads, you are forging rivers with your car and then it whips up the left over ash from the crazy volcano eruption, so you always have grit in your shoes....it is really gross!

And speaking of crazy...we live in a place where a volcano erupted! Pacaya, the volcano we are so happily hiking here just a few months back

exploded for the first time in 12 years...what are the chances that it would happen while we are here?!?!?! It was acutally pretty incredible and nothing like I would have thought. No molten lava running down the streets Pompeii style, there were however fire balls shooting up in the sky that did kill a few people nearby, but surprisingly it just rained black sand, tough, gritty, sand...and there was no ash like what is left over after you grill out, actual sand almost gravel particles. It covered the entire city, we had an ash day (sort of like a snow day, but creepier), and watched all the locals shovel the mess up for weeks, they are still shoveling it up.

And it is still everywhere you look. (I kept a jar of it just in case we forget.) CRAZY!

(This is our deck...usually all you see are our boring cream colored tiles.)

(We were the spectacle of all the building. I think we are the only people in our entire building that has ever washed our own car....look at that crazy black stuff, from the core of the earth the to hood of our car!)

(I don't think the pool will ever be the same again!)

But enough about the weather...boring! We got the first part of the bid list for our next post today...we are just 6 months into our 2 years here and starting to think about what happens next. I cannot believe it....and I forgot how it felt when we got our first bid list. It is a crazy mix of emotions, first, very exciting, this list holds our future, but very scary, this list hold our future and we have no control over it, and a bit of anxiety, you have 2 weeks to decide what you think you want to do for the next two years of your life, and then you hand it over and it is decided for you. Incredible. Will keep you posted!

And even though we have a year and a half left of our Guatemalan adventure, I guess the shock of the new list made me sad about things I would miss from here....and I had a few great sightings today that are so classic Guatemala:

1) A group of Guatemalans all dressed up in their finest native dress all huddled on the side of the road waving at a plane taking off. This always kills me -- the whole family comes out, I am sure from some remote village that is hours away from the city, and someone is taking a trip for the very first time. It is a totally an affair, and really touching to watch...even if they looked like a bunch of crazy people on the side of the road waving at the sky!

2) Two more great t-shirt sightings. This will never get old to me. The first was on the local news, a woman receiving aid because her home was destroyed in hurricane Agatha (oh yeah, we also had a tropical cyclone hit) and she was wearing a shirt that said, I kid you not, "Young, willing and available" Seriously! The second shirt was a kid hanging off one of the local scary busses..."Everybody loves a Journalism Member" it's too funny to me!

3) But I think the best sighting today was the soccer fan gathering...oh World Cup Fever has taken over Guatemala! On the side of the road, right next to a taco cart someone had hauled in their huge tv, put it on top of a truck, plugged it who knows what, the lighter outlet? and a crowd had gathered to watch the Argentina vs. Greece match....in the middle of the day, in the middle of the street! I wish I had my camera!

4) More of a random side note. I am not sure if I have written about this is past posts, but we have a neighbor that has a parrot that likes to crow like a rooster at 3am every morning. I cannot think of anything more annoying or bizzare, well that was until yesterday. Someone just got a really gross looking poodle, that likes to sit on the roof of their house and bark at everything it can see, which is a lot from the vantage point of the roof. And what kind of dog wants to be on the roof, and who puts their dog on thier roof?!?!? It is really weird, and I think may be more annoying than the parrot-rooster thing, which I thought could never be topped. Guatemala is so weird.

Anyway, more observations to come....sorry it has been so long since my last post! Between dodging crazy weather, working, working, working (I got my first big donor!!!!), and getting ready for the VIVA MEXICO trip...I have neglected my postings. But don't fret, a day does not go by without something nutty happening here in Guate!!!! More to write soon!