July 22nd

I’m not gonna bore you with the usual story of our nine hour bus ride to Chumuk Champey, me puking on people or about me saying very embarrassing things in my sleep…..I’m just gonna say it was a long sweaty bus ride to the middle of nowhere and that we managed to squash a chicken, I lost my shoe and looked like a mental patient at the end of it all…

July 20th

I wake up and brush my teeth with Guatemalan tooth paste made from fish oils, while trying not to swallow my toothbrush from horrendous gagging. My dad gives me a weird look… he has fish flavored powder in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Looking accusingly at me he turns his back to my face and empties the powder in his glass. I give an involuntary shudder and manage to shudder spit all over the mirror. I clean up and go to breakfast.

In the middle of some very rubbery, green colored scrambled egg it suddenly feels like my stomach is being eaten from the inside by a carnivorous chicken. I double over in pain and grab hold of my stomach. My hands never reach my stomach as my head smashes into the table on the way down. My instincts kick in and tell me I should get my face out of my plate as fast as possible. Not thinking I oblige. I snap my body up off of the table, being the pro I am I manage to tip my chair backwards and land spread eagle on the cold tile floor, all my glory exposed.

I jump up, give a ineligible Squeak that should have meant I’m fine and run of to my room. I hear my dad apologizing for my behavior like a professional.

In my room I wash my face, cry into a paper bag, wash my face again, quietly sneak out the back door and go to school.

I manage to convince my teacher to play scrabble in Spanish with a couple other students. Not finding any words I ask my teacher to help me, after ummming and humming for a while she increases my vocabulary significantly. I now know the words for hickey, male prostitute, dumb ass and can say ” Did a male prostitute give you a hickey, dumb ass?”. My teacher told me this is the first time she has been proud of me.

After classes a bunch of students decided to go to a macadamia nut farm, like a lap dog I tagged along, my dad didn’t go…instead he ate away at his keyboard.

At the farm everybody was offered helmets for protection, I declined. Karma happily used this opportunity to dump four macadamia nuts on my face, I swear I saw a cloud wink at me. My face bruised, we move on. I look like a clown with make-up.

Paining I hand over sixty quetzals for a black box of nuts the size of a shoe and try not to slobber all over it. At our house I flip up the toilet seat, sit down with a grunt, lovingly take the box out of my pocket and gingerly open it…it’s empty. Karma’s a —–.

Destroyed, I cry myself to sleep. I dream that the world is a huge macadamia nut.