Pretirement

“if you’re in the market for a new baby, i hear guatemala has good ones.” mike and jenny said “OK, sounds good,” filled out a bunch of paperwork, and came down here last week to pick up wil. i’m sorry to say it, but that’s more or less all i know about the decision process that led to wil becoming my newest cousin.

mike and jenny started the adoption process a few months before wil was born. that was about fifteen months ago. the US state department website quotes the average here as nine-and-a-half months, so they’ve spent the last few months trying to be patient while doing everything they could to get wil home soon.

meanwhile i’ve been moving further and further south down this continent of ours, reading jenny’s email updates in dodgy internet cafes and hostel computers. with every frustrating setback they experienced, i got a little bit closer. i was in chiapas when the news finally came that the paperwork was cleared and mike and jenny had a flight booked for late march. two adults to fly from st. louis to guatemala city, two adults and a baby to return. we emailed back and forth and arranged to meet up last sunday, and i arrived on the night bus from flores at dawn sunday morning.

i checked into my hotel and caught a taxi to where mike and jenny were staying. even in our four days in the same city, doing the same things together, we were approaching the city so differently. i ate breakfast at a strange woman’s house after she picked me up on the side of the road. mike admitted to shaving with bottled water. i saved them like $1.50 on souvenirs (half of which have “guatemala souvenir” knitted into them here for some reason) and they used this flimsy justification to pay for pretty much everything i did with them.

jenny and i went to the worst museum ever. i went to the zoo when they were busy at the consulate. we took a day trip to antigua. we saw a place where they cut jade and to an old convent. i spent a creepy three minutes in a crypt trying to find the light switch. then i found it and took a cool picture of a skull. there was a candle-making workshop. the candle makers liked wil and they gave him a candle in the shape of a duck that he’ll either eat or treasure forever.

it was a full day for wil and they went home to guatemala city. i was moving on to antigua so i stayed there and said goodbye to them in antigua on a pretty cobblestone street. jenny brought a picture of me with my backpack on to show everybody that i’m not getting too skinny. we had a great time. i like my family. i’ll see the rest of you soon!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.