Guat You Say? Also Available for Children's Parties

Well, I just had the best day ever! It was Petrona's birthday today - she is one of the shoeshine kids I hang out with in central park most afternoons while I'm practing poi. Petrona's 9th birthday happened to fall on the same day as my Mum's birthday, and since I am not in the same locale to celebrate with Mum (happy birthday Mumsies!) it was a good excuse to throw a party for the shoeshine gang! I don't know who had more fun, me or the twelve kiddliwinks who for the most part work every day in central park shining shoes, selling chewing gum and making hair wraps for tourists. I must say that decorating party tables, screaming at nothing, dodging water balloons and inciting pinata violence are all things that I would like to do more of...

There was one thing that set this party of kids aside from any other kids party I've had the pleasure of being invited to. Every single one of them set aside a piece of fried chicken or a piece of cake to give to their parents when the party was over. I don't know about you, but when I was between the ages of zero and seventeen these kinds of altruistic thoughts were happening about as frequently as my desire to do the dishes or clean my room. I hang my head in shame and I am humbled by the beautiful nature of these children. All day, irrespective of blood sugar spikes, they were holding each other's hands and helping each other up and down in the playground and whatnot. If I reminisce to my childhood, I was the kid standing near the food table gargling all the little franks and then complaining of a stomach ache. Or piqueing out hard on fizzy drinks and becoming an obnoxious tyrannosaurus before remembering that I was really shy and trying to bury myself under the food table (with a bowl of little franks).

Yeah, I probably could have spent the same amount of money and done something more sensible like contributed to school fees or house rent. But I remember times when someone did something magical for me because magical occasions help kids to remember that they are special beings. This is especially important for kids who have been working since the age of four or five. Send in the clowns! Make it rain like a boss! Direct route to Hogwarts! Still, I do hope there are more sober and straight-thinking people out there taking care of these kid's school fees and rent, because if this is the future of Planet Earth then it is to be protected, nurtured and encouraged at all costs!

The table looked like this for about three seconds.

Miguel throws his meathooks into some papas fritas

Petrona was so excited when the cake came out that she cried! 

Petrona has her cake and eats it too thanks to prankster buddy, Dulce.

Oooh, another piece of candy...Oooh, another piece of candy...repeat until there is no more candy.

When all the snatch and grab subsided they all laid the candy out on the grass and shared it out fairly. How many kids do you know who would do that???

It was pretty much impossible to get anyone to be still after all that candy, but they insisted on this photo in the ruins. There's only ten kids here...I don't know where the other two went.

Jose assuming the ninja stance while Miguel photo-bombs like a boss.

Catching up with Petrona the day I returned to Guate.

Oh yeah did I mention that I'm back in Guate? 

The Canadian embassy decided that they required a police certificate from Guatemala declaring that I had not been involved in any shady antics. I think this is kind of dumb because in this country you can pretty much bribe your way out of anything. Anyway in order to get police clearance from Guatemala you either need to turn up in person or send your passport through the mail. I would rather smother my arms in beer batter and throw them in a deep fryer than send my passport through that gutter-like black hole of a postal service traversing Latino America. And so I find myself yet again in a country that I just can't seem to leave. I'll be kicking around in Antigua until (or if) I get the all-clear from Canada. 

 Rewind a couple of weeks back to the road-trip from Texas to North Carolina! Two solid days of driving for Lauren, too many coffees and a couple of cans of freeze-dried apocolypse strawberries later saw us finally crawl out of the Avenger to be birthed into the Bible belt of America. It's a beautiful drive, with more forest in Arkansas than I ever imagined would still exist in the States, and more churches than are possibly needed in every place we drove through. In Memphis we drove by a Mega-Church...you know the ones, they're bigger than Walmart and a preacher is being filmed for television and he makes people in the crowd speak in tongues and lose their shit. I would have liked to have gone inside to check it out in more detail but we were aiming for Nashville on the first leg of the trip. By the time we arrived in Nashville it was 2am and we were so tired that the motel we ambled into didn't look very suspicious. Even the name 'Apple Annies' seemed legit enough. The shrewd, scantily clad women slinking around like sewer rats looked a bit odd I suppose but when you're that tired it looks as normal as anything else going on in the circus that has started in your brain because dimethyltryptamine is leaking into your synapses unbeknownst to you. But the mirrors everywhere all facing the Californian Kingsize bed in our room were a dead giveaway. Whatever, we enjoyed the biggest bed we'd ever slept in, and if the dude behind the counter thought we were strange customers then good on him.

The next day's drive was more of the same, although swap all the aforementioned scenery for the delectable Smoky Mountains! I need to get back there for some hiking someday. I saw baby deer, armadilloes, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, opossums and more! You name it, it was smashed into the tarmac and starting the slow rot to dust. Is it really that difficult to slow down for wildlife? I don't know...it just seems ridiculous. Lauren and I still got out of the car to poke a freshly bludgeoned squirrel. I know it's the closest I'm going to get to one of those elusive rodents, but with its eyes glazed over and staring at nothing it's just not the same.

See what I mean about too many coffees? Lauren wore her pyjamas for the entire roadtrip, and when we got to North Carolina a spider crawled out of them. The spider shat on her pyjamas and then walked away to continue being a boss somewhere else. Lauren still continued to wear the pyjama pants for days afterwards. This is a true story. I love you Lauren.

 I was only in North Carolina for a couple of weeks, sleeping on an air mattress in our lovely mate Sarah's laundry with Lauren. Ever shared an air mattress with a buddy before? If one of you moves the whole bed moves. I move a lot in my sleep. I'm sorry Lauren. But seriously we humans can adapt to any conditions. I even slept on the laundry tiles one night because I was getting up to pee every half an hour and when you get off an air mattress it makes grunting sounds like a warthog truffling around for snacks. That night of sleeping on the tiles might have been the deepest sleep I've had all year! If there is one major evolution in my consciousness that I have experienced this year it is in the sharing of space, and allowing any space whatsoever to be the space that I am the most happy in. For those two weeks in North Carolina that laundry was the best bedroom ever and I slept like the dead. I am extremely grateful to lovely Sarah and people like Sarah who open their homes to dusty travellers and allow us to share in the portion of reality they inhabit. Rabble rabble, I am rambling and the pictures will tell the story...

I like this old-school factory scene from North Carolina, because it reminds me of the front cover of one of my favourite Pink Floyd cd's - Animals.

Old-Salem in Winston-Salem is like walking through a scene from The Crucible, although it's not the same Salem (that's in Massachusetts)

Pointless waste of life, innit. Which war? All of them. Really fucking pointless. Who wants to play in this park? No one except for the woodchuck who trolled through here as we were climbing trees looking for Cicadas bursting from their old skins.

Lauren found a cicada. Muy divertido.

Trees in the States grow to astounding sizes and I felt like I was in an enchanted fairy garden at all times. 

I bought some LED poi in the states. Check them lights yo!

These muso's were cranking out the rock, and I am so thankful for the burst of delightful live music I enjoyed in the states.

Picnic at Hobby Park with Emmy, Lauren and Sarah. Picnic contents as follows - Chocolate peanut-butter bars, chili mango strips, chocolate coated potato chips, block of chocolate, and one pack of sushi. Strange tummy sensations ensue.

Well if you're going to call all the candy silly names like Dippy Goos and such, I'm going to buy more because it's funny. Oh wait what just happened!!!

Nothing too crazy happened in North Carolina to speak of. Sarah's partner Chuck introduced me to the hilarity that is 'disc-golf', where you use a frisbee instead of a golf ball and attempt to pot said frisbee into a net at the end of each hole. Needless to say I was really, really good at this. Good at throwing the frisbee into the trees I mean. As I keep repeating, the plethora of squirrels is more than enough amusement for me and I don't need to worry about potting a frisbee in a net. There were squirrels chittering all over the course...it was all I could do to refrain from squealing.

Oh yeah and as well as working on illustrations for a children's book, I've also started playing around with new painting techniques on the side. For your viewing pleasure...none of these are finished but show and tell is fun.

 Aaaaand all of this brings me back to the now, where I find myself in the fine company of this outdoor lounge that is a common feature in Guatemalan homes and the like. This is my home until Canada decides I'm worthy of an entrance stamp. If there was one awesome thing to come from being in the States it's the realisation that I don't do well on stodgy food...back to a wheat-free vegan diet for me! Oh and I quit coffee too! The comedown had me looking like I was lead zombie from Day of the Dead. For four days, absolute horror. I was so vacuous that on one walk in the park I fell asleep on the grass and I have absolutely no recollection of lying down. I bought a portable blender to help with the 'Kelly goes straight edge' cause.

I made a quick weekend trip to Monterico which is a few hours in a bus from Antigua. Just in time to watch BABY TURTLES hatch and scuttle across the sand into the evening loam. Is anything as cute as a baby turtle? Squirrels come close and that is all.

And with any luck my next post will be from the powdery mountain known as Whitewater in Nelson B.C! Adios!