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Living La Vida Loca-Or Not?

So for some time, I´ve been wanting to write about time-Guatemalan time-and how it is affecting every aspect of my life.

Time here is relative-nothing is ¨on time¨at least not by my standards at home. In the past , when I first arrived, I would spènd entire days frustrated that I couldn´t seem to get anywhere or get anything done…but lately…I think I´m liking this ¨Guatemaltecan tiempo¨-and I´ve got no choice, anyway, but to go with the flow!

I´m just trying to have a sense of humor about it all-after all, there is no other choice!

For example:

I needed photocopies one day, for my art class. In my mind I had the enormous photocopy shops of the USA in my brain…but such effieciency was not to be… I was eating lunch with a Guatemalan friend, and had mentioned before the meal that I needed photocopies. She said this would not be a problem, and she had a friend nearby who had a copy machine in her pharmacy shop ( I should mention that most little shops have a multitude of businesses under one roof-for example, right now I´m in an ¨internet cafe¨ that also sells containers of gas, helgados(ice cream) and religious music, which is blasting so loud it´s hard to focus on my words and not write the lyrics!).

So, after lunch, off we went to the friend´s shop. It was 12 noon. My class was all the way across town, at 3:00. We entered the shop, and my Guatemalan friend explained what I needed-30 copies total, or 15 booklets of two pages each.

No problem, says her friend. I looked at the ancient photocopy machine in the corner and thought to myself that it didn´t look up the task, but decided to go with the situation. My friend reassured me that it will only be about 15 or 20 minutes…so we went a walked around for about half an hour, and when we returned…only two copies were made. This didn´t look good to me, so I suggested we find a different shop. But the woman reasssured me, it was no problem, really! Apparently someone needed some legal copies right away, so she had done those instead…. so off we went again.

When we returned, in about half an hour, it was grim. Only 8 copies made! The photocopier had run out of ink, and her husband was unhappy and wanted her to close for lunch. He was very grumpy( It would seem men here don´t cook.) and she was close to tears…still, when I decided to go somewhere else-she wouldn´t give me my originals! So I was stuck there, waiting. Since she was upset, we were trying to be nice about it all. Meanwhile, people were coming into the pharmacy for medicine and candy and so on….she was the only person helping all these people. At this point it was 2:00, and still not many copies.

We decided she needed another half an hour, so we walked around some more. When we returned..total chaos! People had come into the shop, and all of them were helping this woman assemble the booklets. She was in tears, and when she saw me she said, my husband needs his lunch right NOW!

So three hours later..I had my 30 photocopies. I literally never walked so fast in my life to get to my class on time. I had to walk all the way across town-since taking the bus and expecting it to actually get there rapidly would be ridiculous!

Which gets me to the topic of the buses…when you want one, to go to a particular location-it´s rare one actually shows up. If it does it is so crammed with people that I prefer to walk!

Here´s another example of Guatemalan time: I asked for my windows of my house to be repaired.(I´m the only one with a few broken windows..). This has proved incredibly complicated. I asked for them to be reapired about two weeks ago-and here´s what happened:

There is a guy that repairs windows in my area, so my family called him and he said he would come-two weeks ago! So after it was pretty obvious he had forgotten or something, we called again. Turns out he hadn´t forgotten-he just hadn´t gotten around to it yet.

Okay, I told myself, they will get repaired, he will come. Meanwhile I am freezing, due to the fact that it is the coldest month here of the year. Okay, I told myself, as I could see my breath at night and every morning. Okay, I told myself, as I developed a desire to sleep in ALL of my clothes that I brought with me.

So, nothing happened..he never showed up. I mentioned this fact to my family, and they decided to take it upon themselves to repair the windows. It turns out the glass is sitting by the front door of a house on the property, and all they needed to do was cut it and glue it into place. (So why didn´t they do that before? I have no idea!). Of copurse , there is a glitch-they have no glass cutter, and no putty to glue it into place. Someone goes to Xela to find a glass cutter, buys it, and then somehow one of the jkids plays with it and it is lost. A different person says they will buy the putty, but apparently this proves very impossible for some mysterious reason.

Everyday I go off and hike in the bosque, visit friends etc. Everyday I give them the key to my house. Everyday they say that this is the day that either the repair guy will show up, or that they will do it themselves. Everyday I come home to no windows. When I ask why, everyone just shrugs..other stuff came up, I guess.

Finally, I used the duct tape I brought and cut up a bunch of cardboard. Now I have cardboard windows-and I am not so cold at night.

Why did you do that, they ask me. We were going to fix it. Really.

I said, that´s okay..I´m sure it will get fixed..eventually. Like in June.
Everyone laughed and said, Well, now you are becoming Guatemaltecan!

It is kind of nice to not rush around everyday, just relax. Having experiences like those above gives me a clearer picture of the difficulties of life here. It is diffficult to get to work on time, for example. The bus may not show up, or whatever. It´s difficult to make set plans or say you are going to be anywhere at any particular hour-anything could happen. You could be online and the power goes out(happens to me alot here); you could be walking down the street and get attacked by a dog(has happened to me); you could take three buses and walk loads to meet someone, but be stuck in the hot sun in the street waiting for them for two hours (has happened more than once to me).

The only solution is to smile and buy some ice cream from the street vendor walking by..and wait.

gigi

It is La Vida Loca!



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3,539 responses to “Living La Vida Loca-Or Not?”

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    This year’s Super Bowl halftime show was hardly a fashion extravaganza, with headliner Kendrick Lamar keeping things simple in a backwards cap and motorbike-style varsity jacket, which he kept on throughout.

    And without the costume-change roulette we’ve come to expect of halftime shows, the internet fixated on one item in particular: his jeans.

    While not quite the bell-bottoms of decades past (the 1970s and the 2000s, specifically), the Compton-born rapper’s washed denim pants flared out at the knee and dragged beneath his heels along the stage at Caesars Superdrome in New Orleans. His silhouette stood in stark contrast to that of record producer Mustard, who made a brief cameo in a pair of outsized jeans straight from the West Coast hip-hop playbook.
    Opinions were, as ever, divided on social media. Some users described Lamar’s flares as “women’s jeans” and “Hannah Montana pants,” earning him comparisons to everyone from Jennifer Aniston to country singer Lainey Wilson. Others joked that their moms were looking for a similar pair or that they nodded to millennials, for whom flares were a teenage staple.

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    Local officials in the town of Wooler, Northumberland called in bomb disposal experts after workers involved in a planned overhaul of Scotts Play Park found unexploded ordnance, the parish council said in a statement sent to CNN on Monday.

    Two bombs were initially removed by the British Army, the UK Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The parish council was then advised that a full survey of the area was required, according to a council spokesperson.
    Bomb disposal company Brimstone Site Investigation then uncovered 65 10-pound practice bombs and smoke cartridges on the first day of works, with a further 90 practice bombs recovered on the second day.

    The company told CNN that the bombs date from World War II.

    According to the parish council, all of the bombs need to be found and removed before the park can be reopened. It said 174 devices had been found so far.

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    This year’s Super Bowl halftime show was hardly a fashion extravaganza, with headliner Kendrick Lamar keeping things simple in a backwards cap and motorbike-style varsity jacket, which he kept on throughout.

    And without the costume-change roulette we’ve come to expect of halftime shows, the internet fixated on one item in particular: his jeans.

    While not quite the bell-bottoms of decades past (the 1970s and the 2000s, specifically), the Compton-born rapper’s washed denim pants flared out at the knee and dragged beneath his heels along the stage at Caesars Superdrome in New Orleans. His silhouette stood in stark contrast to that of record producer Mustard, who made a brief cameo in a pair of outsized jeans straight from the West Coast hip-hop playbook.
    Opinions were, as ever, divided on social media. Some users described Lamar’s flares as “women’s jeans” and “Hannah Montana pants,” earning him comparisons to everyone from Jennifer Aniston to country singer Lainey Wilson. Others joked that their moms were looking for a similar pair or that they nodded to millennials, for whom flares were a teenage staple.

    But those suggesting his style was outdated, or gender-inappropriate, may not have been paying attention to the recent resurgence of flares — in both womenswear and menswear. After all, Lamar’s jeans were designed by one of the most influential figures in modern fashion, Celine’s former creative director Hedi Slimane, before he departed the French label in October.

  9. JordanPEN says:

    Cute baby animals bring visitors to zoos and aquariums. What happens when they grow up?
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    One of the best things that can happen to a zoo or aquarium is for one of their resident animals to go viral.

    Just look at the multi-hour-long lines to see Moo Deng, a pygmy hippo in Thailand who has become an internet sensation following her July 2024 birth. The sassy animal is now a full-on brand, with Khao Kheow Open Zoo selling Moo Deng merchandise and even releasing a single “by” the hippo in multiple languages.

    Meanwhile, Pesto — a baby king penguin who was eating more fish than his parents by the time he was a few weeks old — is also an online celebrity, with human stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Katy Perry stopping by to meet him.

    But what happens when these cute animals become, well, less cute? The Sea Life Melbourne aquarium has already been planning for the next phase of Pesto’s life — and answering questions from the public about his changing appearance.

    It’s normal for king penguins to lose their feathers by the time they’re about a year old and become confident swimmers. As a result, a spokesperson for the aquarium says, guests have started asking why Pesto looks different — or why they can’t find him at all.

    “We are getting a few guests thinking we have moved him off display completely,” says the spokesperson. “Most of the team’s time is spent pointing him out to guests because he looks so different now.”
    The bottom line is that cute baby animals make money.

    Admission tickets are only the beginning. Many zoos and aquariums offer special “behind the scenes” or “zookeeper for a day” packages at much higher prices. At Sea Life Melbourne, standard entry tickets for adults start at $51, while the Penguin Passport — which include a 45-minute tour of the birds’ area and a look at how their food is prepared — is $199.

    The real jackpot, though, is merchandise. Stuffed animals, T-shirts, fridge magnets, keychains, kids’ books and other branded products are a major way for zoos and aquariums to make money.

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