Water Conservation Appreciation

Wednesday 3.31.10

This morning I woke up at 2:30 and I knew it was bad. Without getting into the gruesome details I’ll just say that neither end of my body was happy with something I ate or drank yesterday. Like Sunday, I spent about 6 hours of that day awake, either using the bathroom or trying to fall back asleep.

Around 5pm I started to feel back to normal, and I needed more water to flush the toilet, so I volunteered to help carry water. Water is only available here in the house between around 10pm and 4-5am, so during the day if there’s not enough stored up from the night before we take pitchers down to lower ground where it runs more frequently or is stored and carry it up to the house. I thought I volunteered for one pitcher. That wasn’t even enough to fill the tank of the toilet for one flush. I carried 5 pitchers (all on my head, thank you, just like a normal Guatemalan mujer) and the whole time had that song from the end of The Jungle Book stuck in my head. You know, the song where the woman goes down to the river to fetch the water and then the young girls starts singing about how that will someday be her, then Mogali follows her into civilization. Though I could only remember one line so kept singing it over and over in my head until I was done carrying water. I was so tired by the end of it, that’s what happens when you lose all your body fluids in a day and have only have had two bananas to eat.

I have a new appreciation for the concept of water conservation. Every time I flush a toilet for the rest of my life I will always think about the 7 minute trip it took to carry that one pitcher of water and how the top of my head feels now after doing that a few times. Now, I understand very well the importance of flushing toilets, but I also know better now the difference between understanding a water crisis, like we say we do in the US, and actually feeling a water crisis every day like the people do here. I’ve only lived here for a total of about 6 full days so of course there’s no way to describe what it’s like for the people who have lived here their whole lives under these conditions, but I can describe the difference between people who understand what a drought is but never actually have to live through the hardship of one and the people who only have running water for 7 hours a day, the hours when most people are asleep.

A Mujer Kind of Day

Tuesday 3.30.10

Today I was the epitome of a mujer (woman): I made tortillas, I carried stuff on my head without it falling for a large distance (two times, one was groceries, one was four chairs), I wore a skirt and sandals into the wilderness, I diagnosed the ill (chicken pox, which apparently is very uncommon here), I went to church and started helping to make an alfombra (literally, rug). I mujered it out.

An alfombra is basically a rug made up of flowers, fruits, colored sawdust, or other things of that small and plentiful sort that one can find and make into a rectangular piece of art on the street. During Semana Santa, the holy week of Easter, people dressed in purple carry big statues of Jesus and sometimes other cool dudes and ladies through the streets very slowly over these alfombras. Yes, that’s it. If you’re thinking that alfombras are not very cool than you are right, but all of Guatemala seems to go crazy over them and I have to pretend that I’m crazy about them too. It’s okay, I can hang. All we did today was collect sawdust, sift it (because, don’t you know, only the finest sawdust in the land is good enough for a plastic replica of Jesus), and then dye it different colors to make a picture or a pattern in the church tomorrow.

On a downer note, when I arrived yesterday I was informed that the place where I was storing my things had been broken into and my baggage had been rummaged through. I brought as much stuff as possible with my on my site visit so I wouldn’t have that much to bring the second trip, and I left it in the “hotelito” where I stayed those four nights because that’s what I was told to do. I was never given a key nor told that I should lock the door when I left. I was never told that the window was unlocked and open nor that it even had the capability of being open. I was shocked when my counterpart called me on Thursday telling me that it looked like someone or something (he imagined it was a dog because it looked like things had gotten eaten) had gotten into the room and went through my stuff. I found out yesterday that it was in fact a couple of small children, and we know who they are, who had crawled through the window and started eating my stuff. Weird stuff.

They opened about a dozen of my tampons. They ate some of my shampoo. They took and/or ate all of the packets of instant hot chocolate that I had. They ate their way through some of the standard issue medicine the Peace Corps office gives us. They took my dozen sharpies and all 12-15 of my favorite favorite pens in all colors. They opened up both glasses cases, removed the glasses, and only took one of the cases; the glasses were left strewn about on the floor in the midst of hot chocolate powder. They took my Oakleys, my best pair of sunglasses that I have had for 5 1//2 years without losing. So much for that. I brought a little extra of everything bathroom: deoderant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, chapstick, etc… There ain’t nuttin’ left but one tube of toothpaste. They took my deet. They got into my makeup too, took some and left some. I don’t get it.

I was told that they were eating stuff. I don’t know if I believe that. I didn’t see what the room looked like after they were done destroying it, but I really wish I had because maybe I could have figured out what they were actually doing. I was also told that it was two really young kids, maybe 4-6 years old. I don’t know if I believe that either. Part of me realizes that I really should have asked for a key, should have asked if the place is secure and safe. Most of me didn’t want to be a confianza-killer. I don’t want to blame anybody, but I really didn’t know what else I could have done to prevent this from happening. My counterpart told me how worried he was and I really wanted to tell him “well, you should be worried. This is your fault. Why didn’t you lock the door or bother to tell me the window was unlocked?” But of course I can’t do that. I can’t do or say a lot of things that I’ll be wanting to for the next few years.

On an upside, I did go for a beautiful 2 or 3 hour walk today with my host sister. Here the mujeres wear their traje, traditional skirts blouses and sandals, everywhere. Into the field, to church, on hikes, even playing basketball. So we went with our skirts and sandals and completely inappropriate clothing for a hike mostly on a dirt trail but partly through horse pasture, over and under barbed wire fences, through wilderness and in mud puddles. It was great. It was beautiful. I want to be able to do this everyday, and as long as I can convince someone to go with me I think I can. They just don’t let women do those kinds of things by themselves - at least not me, or not yet.

¡Ya Llegué!

3.29.10

“I already arrived!” A favorite saying of Guatemalans when you have just returned from, well really, anything. “¡Ya llegó!” Or, interchangeably in the tú form “¡Ya llegaste!” They don’t really have anything better to say to me than “you have arrived”? Well, I have arrived at my home for the next two years.

Population: 1,050 people.
Churches: 4 Evangelical and 5 Catholic.
Population of cows: probably more than people.
Population of chickens: definitely more than people…and tastier than people, too.
View: Priceless.

Yes, I know that was cheesy metaphorizing my incredibly beautiful site (if metaphorizing is even a word, because Microsoft doesn’t seem to think so but I disagree) to a discover card commercial, or whatever credit card does that, but really, being able to see what I’ve seen today makes the lack of water for 17 hours of the day worth it. From my room I can see more shades of green than Crayola can think of silly names for. And besides the brilliantly blinding neon shades people here insist on painting their houses, greens and browns are just about all I can see. It’s exactly what I asked for.

I was actually supposed to arrive at site on Sunday, however at around 2:30am Sunday morning I found myself throwing my guts up in the pila (you should all take not that it’s much easier to hurl into a pila than into a toilet bowl). That didn’t stop until 10am, however I had no way of knowing when it was going to stop and had no intention of even chancing throwing up on the camioneta, our public transportation system here, so I laid in bed the entire day. I think between 9pm Saturday night and 6am Morning I was only awake for about 4-6 hours, and nearly all of that time was spent either throwing up or waiting to fall back asleep. I’m just glad this was a 24 hour bug and not anything worse. Today I woke up well rested and without any sort of stomachache, headache, or bathroom problems so I made the 7 hour journey to my site in El Quiché.

Anybody that knows me pretty well knows how much I hate driving. I hate being in the driver’s seat, I hate being in the passenger’s seat, I just don’t like traveling. This is different somehow. Sitting down with my huge backpack pressed to my torso, at the same time being squished between two or three other people on a bench that was really made for two, breathing in the humid regurgitated air of humans who probably haven’t showered in three or four days…oh, I guess that’s me too. But somehow that didn’t seem to bug me. I just had a great time looking out the window the entire time, listening to my podcasts, and thinking about what I was going to do with myself for the subsequent two years.

That worry is starting to become more concrete day by day now. What am I going to do with myself for the next two years? I’d be nothing but content just to go for walks and hang out with townspeople and learn, but what I’ve heard of so far about my work just doesn’t seem like enough. Perhaps that’s where my desire to learn how to be a self-starter will come in handy. I should be glad for this opportunity to be able to do basically whatever I see fit, whatever I observe as a need in the community and can help with: that’s exactly my job. I can do whatever I want! I do flip-flop back and forth a lot, meaning hundreds of times per day, with excitement to worry and happiness to confusion and 360o worth of emotions in between and all around.

The swearing-in ceremony didn’t help much with this distress, either. Thursday we were all “sworn-in” as official Peace Corps volunteers where we recited the very same oath as Vice President Joe Biden took, as many other officials have taken in the past, and then spent all of Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday hanging out together in Antigua having fun. It was a lot of fun. I got to spend a lot of time with the closer friends I’ve made these past three months and I also got to spend time with some I haven’t really had the chance to get to know that well which I really enjoyed. It’s not even that saying goodbye was hard; because it wasn’t (sorry to any of you PC amigos who happen to be reading this), it’s just that goodbye’s have never really hit me at the moment of departure, they hit me when I have a story to tell, or a joke to tell, or I see a picture or read a phrase that reminds me of a certain person and they’re not there to share the moment. The difficulty in saying goodbye isn’t in actually saying goodbye, it’s in not knowing how to tell others how much their friendship actually means and how much they’ve helped me through the past months even though most probably don’t even know it. Even people who I’ve had only a few conversations with; lengthy ones, superficial ones, philosophical ones, comical ones, have helped me understand how true of a statement it is that we’re all in this together, and there’s nobody better prepared or better able to be a good friend during these next couple years than the friends we’ve just made during training.

I probably sound more pessimistic at this moment than I actually am. I’m not, actually I had a great rainy day today, am sitting in my new house in my very uncomfortable bed (bringing the thermarest was definitely better than bringing a sleeping bag), my stomach is full and I was even brave enough to touch a spider today! Yes, it was huge and gruesome and wanted to fight me to the death but I just picked it up with my bare hand, you better believe it, and shooed it across the floor. Okay, so it was just the size of the head of a small screw, but for me, baby steps. It’s probably growing to gigantic proportions somewhere hidden in my room and going to come out and eat me alive one night. If you ever don’t hear from me for over a week, you could just assume that’s what happened.

Back to the point, I’m not being pessimistic, just rambling a little. I want to get back into the habit of writing at least every other day and this brain-dump is me making up for the past week or so. I am feeling overwhelmed about having responsibilities and having to take care of myself in a completely foreign place, but at the same time those are the exact reasons I joined the Peace Corps. I wanted to be put into an difficult situation. I wanted to be challenged, doubted, I wanted to be uncomfortable and because of all these challenges I want to discover things about other people, myself, the way the world works, and just stuff in general. I wish I could think of a better word than “stuff”, but that’s all I’ve got. I want to learn stuff. Actually, that makes some sense to me. I don’t really care what I learn as long as I learn something real. I’ve done so much learning already with my hand being held I can’t even imagine how much I’ll be able to learn out here on my own. On that optimistic note, I’m going to write goodbye, feliz noches, and to any of my friends in California or the US or in Guatemala, if you ever see a photo, phrase, hear a joke, or just have a moment that makes you think of me, you’ve got to know how happy I’ll be to hear it.

The Coldest Night

3.18.10

Last night I woke up a dozen times in the middle of the night not able to sleep because I couldn’t feel my toes. I even have a space heater in this little “hotelito” I’m staying in which I cranked on high for the entire night. I have a wool blanket doubled over, another thick blanket, long underwear both top and bottom, another pair of pants, a long sleeve shirt and a jacket, and two pairs of socks. I still was freezing. This isn’t even the coldest month of the year, nor is it the coldest room I’ll be staying in in my two years here. Yesterday I saw the outsides of the two available houses for me to rent – both are incredibly small but absolutely beautiful. When they say about businesses “location, location, location” I can’t help but think the same thing about these houses. The first three months I’ll be staying with a family but after that I want to move out on my own, and because there really isn’t much of a selection of available single-person houses here, I’m guessing other options really aren’t going to come up. I only saw the inside of one of the houses, but it has basically two rooms maybe 12x12 each give or take. There is no bathroom inside nor is there a kitchen so whatever I need I’ll be responsible for hooking up water lines and stuff. There is electricity, though, and it has a dirt floor. The other house looked a little more modern from the outside, so it may have an indoor bathroom but I don’t know. I do have the blueprints for building a composting latrine so there’s always that option for building one outdoors. I don’t think I’d mind that. It’s a small compromise to make to have such beautiful surroundings, to be able to wake up every morning to a beautiful view of either mountains and clouds or a meadow and stream. If I can get inside the houses again I’ll show pictures.

Tonight I fell asleep in church. I lasted about an hour and a half before conking out, and then I was in-and-out for another good 1 ½ hours. I will consider it an accomplishment if I can teach just one Guatemalan person how to sing from the diaphragm rather than the nose. Most of the people I’ve heard sing here actually can hold a key, but they just don’t know how to control the pitch or how to make it sound anything but whiney. Everybody who sings here sings at the tops of their lungs while figuratively plugging their nose, seriously, that’s exactly what it sounds like. It makes 60 year old women sound like they’re 6.

8 Year Aniversary

3.17.10

Today is the eighth anniversary of the school here, and because of that, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to participate in “buhyah”, the walking around of the town with firecrackers, fireworks, and whistles and just making a lot of noise. When my alarm woke me up at 3:30 I was so confused as to why I was waking up that early; I thought it was a mistake and I almost went back to sleep without a second thought until I heard kids already starting to make noise right outside my door. The walk was fine, although all the little girls wanted to walk holding my hand which didn’t really bother me besides the fact that we were walking in the complete dark up and down steep hills on unstable territory. I would have much preferred to have my hands to break the inevitable fall (actually, I didn’t fall but almost a bunch of times). We arrived back from our buhyah around town at around 6:30 to have a breakfast of rice and beans, and then I went back to my room to take a nap. I think between 7:00 and 7:45 I slept a good 42 minutes of sleep even though I woke up probably 7-8 times. I like those short periods of sleep where you sleep really deep, wake up for a second, then fall back into your deep sleep. Every time I woke up I had the feeling that I had a really vivid dream, which also made me feel like I slept longer, but I just can’t seem to remember any of the details.

I went into a meeting with some members of the organization APRODEFI: Associación PRODEsarollo de la Familia Ixil, and also some teachers and staff members of the school, where I learned a great deal more about my responsibilities and the town and the organization. APRODEFI is an “associación”, which basically has the same meaning as a small non-for-profit organization in the US. They have two major projects going on right now:

1) School. The school I’m staying at is a function of the association and their work. Developing an environmental education curriculum for the school and ultimately the community will be one of my primary duties

2) Finca (loosely, farm). The association recently purchased a plot of land which I’m going to see Friday on which they want to plant coffee, other crops, use for livestock, and which also has a forest they want to use for wood. They have a company that wants to come in a log all the trees in the forest and they are willing to pay just about enough to cover the remaining debt the association has from the purchase of the finca. Though, the president says that deforestation is their last choice and they really hope that together with my input we can find a better solution to keep at least some of the forest and also get them out of debt.

Here are the six things I learned how to say in K’iche’ (Kihk-chey)

1) Good Morning Buenos Días

saq’arik (Sak-ar-eeck)

2) Good Afternoon Buenos Tardes

ix b’e qíj (Eesh-pe-eecsh)

3) Good Night Buenos Noches

xok aq’ab (Shook-ap-ab)

4) Good Bye Adios

b’ena (p-e-na)

5) Response to “good bye”

ew (hey-oo)

6) How are you? Cómo está?

jas a b’anom (has-ap-anom)

I’ll be starting classes in K’iche’ during the next couple weeks. I’m glad it’s not absolutely necessary for my job (there are some people in my group where only 10% of their population speaks Spanish) because I don’t have the memorizational type of memory; it’s going to take me a long time to remember all the words and phrases, but I do feel extremely lucky to have the chance to learn such an ancient dialect.

I just can’t say enough about how beautiful it is here. Pictures are coming, though there’s no way they could do justice to how this feels and smells and looks in real life.

First Day at Site

3.16.10

My first day at my site, my new place of residence, my home for the following two years really only consisted of about two hours: arrival at 6:45pm and falling asleep around 8:30pm. I left the Peace Corps office in Santa Lucia, Sacatepéquez at 11:00 that morning with one of my counterparts, Marta. A counterpart is basically like a boss and a co-worker all in one; they are somebody who knows enough about the work that I’ll be doing that they’ve been assigned to be the one I should go to with questions, but at the same time not exactly working “above” me. I have another counterpart named José who had to leave for another engagement and could not return with me, but he’s the president of the organization I’ll be working with and really seems to have it together. Yesterday We drove in a pickup truck with one other girl I’m in training with and her 4 counterparts, or at least the 4 people who came to collect her. We sat three in the front seat and the rest of them in the bed along with all our stuff. We traveled in this manor until about 3:00 when we arrived in El Quiché, the city where we parted ways. There we took a microbus to a town called Nebaj which took us about 2 ½ hours, though I’m told 2 hours is more realistic. From there we loaded onto another microbus to my final town, an Aldea of Chajul, of 1,050 people. An Aldea is a small town within a municipal region, and usually there are many Aldeas found in more rural municipities. For security reasons, I’m not allowed to post the exact location of where I am to the general public, but if you want to put a thumbtack on your map for me email me and I’ll tell you. On arrival I was greeted by nearly the entire population of students who stay at the school I’m going to be working with. The school has the capacity to host 30 female and 30 male students in dormitories, as well as hosting tourists in a mini-hotel (which is where I’m staying for the next few days) with two rooms with two beds and two rooms with just one. The school campus also has a comedor, basically a cafeteria, a multi-purpose room, a basketball/fútbol court, and bunches of classrooms including a music room.

The ride between Nebaj and my Aldea was such a tease! We left Nebaj just as dusk was approaching as well as the fog rolling in with it. I could see well enough out of the windows of the microbus to see my surroundings, but the dusk and the fog obscured just enough of the details to give me a taste of curiosity without being able to fulfill all my eyes wanted. The low light dulled all the colors into hues of blues and greens and grays and the fog blurred the outlines of all the figures and allowed me to see only what was most close to me. The fog also creates this amazing depth of field experience where what’s close to you looks really really close and what’s far away looks almost surreal and untouchable. It was a beautiful drive and I can’t wait to see more of it during the daytime.

On a change of subject, water only runs here in the late evening through the early morning so showering must be planned well ahead of time. I’m told that other times of the year this is not the case, but that March through May water is scarce and usually not available during the day. I tried to take a shower last night to avoid this problem, only to encounter a nice smelly piece of poop in my shower. And no running water. I’m not that disappointed because I didn’t need to shower that badly, but it does say something about an organization that wants so badly to host tourists, has put a whole lot of funds into building these quarters to have them, but didn’t think that not having reliable water would be that big of a deal. It’s not to me but I’m not a tourist. The toiled won’t flush nor will the sink run if you don’t have water: those are necessities if one wants to host tourists. They are also things that can be solved quite easily. You can have a big 5 gallon bucket with water on hand and use that to fill the bowl to flush, and you can use the same bucket with water to rinse your hands over the sink. It disappoints me, but doesn’t really surprise me, that these aren’t things they’ve already thought about.

The rooms and buildings are absolutely beautiful. All the wood things, the doors and windows, desks, tables and chairs, benches, bed frames, curtain rods, are all made by the older students here in a woodshop class. They made these things to furnish all the rooms here and also they sell them in a local market. There are basically two levels of basic schooling here in Guatemala: “primario” students are usually between 6-12 years of age while “basico” students are usually between 13-16 years. The basico students take more advanced classes but also take more practical classes: carpentry, weaving, cooking, etc… and at this school the weavings and wooden goods are sold in a market to help subsidize the cost of the school. When I go to buy furnishings for my house in 3 months I know exactly where to go.

For the first three months here at site I’ll be living in my counterpart’s house, the president of the organization, with his wife, two kids, and wife’s mother. It will be a little different than the situation in my town now because there won’t be nearly as many people living there and now I also have the option of eating with them or not. I’ve opted to only eat lunch with them and find other means of eating for breakfast and dinner. I’m thinking fresh fruit for breakfast and avocadoes for dinner. I saw some huge avocadoes on the drive up here from Nabaj and my eyes grew to twice their size in amazement. As of now I’m really looking forward to these next two years especially after seeing how organized my counterpart is. I can’t wait to take a walk around the town tomorrow and see everything in the light!

Site Assignment

Saturday 3.13.2010

Yesterday was probably the most exciting day since I arrived in country nine weeks ago. I haven’t written much in the past few weeks, I think because after returning from Field Based Training where we spent a week together in the field learning different tools and tricks for our next two years of life, my daily routine here became just that: routine. It’s not like I was disappointed or bored with my past few weeks here, I have just been ready to get out of this training period and get to work! Well, yesterday that became more set in stone than ever because I learned exactly where I will be, what my town is like, and the type of work I’ll be doing for the next two years of my life. I can’t explain the waves of feelings that have been running through me for the past 13 hours since finding out at 3pm yesterday (yes, the math is right, I woke up at 4am this morning with too many thoughts in my head to go back to sleep so I decided to write and listen to music).

If you look at a map of Guatemala, you’ll see one large squarish department (like states or provinces) on the very northernmost part, the Petén, and then there are four more departments also on the northern line. From West to East we have: Huehuetenango, El Quiche, Alta Verapaz, and Isabel. I’m going to the dead center of the Quiche living in a town of 1,050 people, 100% of which are indigenous (meaning of Mayan descent) whose mother tongue is the Mayan dialect K’iche’ although I’m told to believe that most of them also speak Spanish. I’m told there is electricity and running water as well as a good cell phone signal, which means I will be able to purchase a wireless card for my computer and have wireless internet. I feel like I don’t need to be connected all the time and abuse this internet opportunity by being online all the time , but I think it will be useful having the internet as a resource for my work and I do look forward to staying more in the loop with current events and news. And of course I’ll want to be sharing my photos. I don’t know too much more about the site, but I will be leaving on Tuesday to visit for 5 days so I will write more about it when I get there.

The project is what’s most exciting. I am a first generation volunteer in this site, which means that for most of the people I’ll be meeting next week, I’m the first gringo they’ve ever seen in their life! I will be organizing and managing a Ecological Park in the Cajchival Mountains, focusing on environmental education, internships for the local students, and income generating projects. We have caves and ceremonial alters (whatever those are…) and a lot of other really cool stuff that I’ll find out more about next week! I received a 15 page folder about my site that touched just briefly on each of the aspects of life there; just enough to get me really excited to visit and also really anxious because 15 pages really isn’t much information. I just want to know already! But in all seriousness, the project sounds really great and exactly what I asked for. I said I wanted a smallish town, to work primarily in environmental education and outreach, to be the trail breaking volunteer for the site, and most important, I wanted to be surrounded by green. Whenever anybody asked me what I wanted most out of a site all I had to reply was “verde, quiero ver verde”. I want to see green. When we first got to country we were all scared into thinking that the Peace Corps was like the army; you sign up and then you get what you get. My experience so far has been that they really do observe you and listen to your preferences and abilities and match you with what you’re best qualified to do. I think all 18 of us in my Sustainable Community Tourism program are equally pleased with their sites.

Feeling these waves of a new emotion I’ve never quite felt in my life is pretty great. It’s this incredibly complex mixture of anxiety, excitement, nervousness, happiness, curiosity, uncertainty, and a lot of confusion and looking ahead to this big blank page. There have been so many little milestones, so many times in my past months here where I’ve had that aha moment of, wow, it’s really happening. Yesterday was that aha moment but in jumbo-sized font, bolded, underlined, italicized, in the craziest type of word art you could ever find in Microsoft Word, and then printed up 100 times and posted billboard size all around me. Yeah, it’s really happening.

Two weeks from today I will be saying my goodbyes to my host family here and leaving for about an 8+ hour camioneta ride to my new home in El Quiche. I’m probably not as nervous as I should be. I think I have too many emotions running through me to know exactly what I’m feeling, but I can say that the one thing I was most nervous about, my Spanish level, I’m comfortable with now. I arrived in country at a level of intermediate-medium, and yesterday I tested into advanced-low which means I jumped two levels (I think the actual terminology of the levels is a bit generous). I can get across what I want to say fairly easily using usually correct grammar. I can explain in quite a bit of detail what exactly the Peace Corps is, what my experience is as far as work and school and volunteering, and what my interests and hopes are related to my next two years here in Guatemala.

I can even explain the honeybee waggle dance.

I can explain that, although I’m not Catholic or Evangelical or Christian, the important parts of religion to me (using the term “religion” very loosely) are the community bonds and the fact that everything that has life, all people and animals and plants, came from the same place and all deserve to be treated with respect. It doesn’t make sense to me to divide people into categories based on religion and treat each differently because those differences are so small compared to what we all have in common.

All in all I don’t really know what to expect out of the next couple years, but so far I am so pleased with all the open doors and windows and moon roofs and crawl spaces, and all that good stuff. Looking forward to tamales tonight for my icing on the cake.