today its....early spring, late fall, mid summer....

I don't know why, but as long as I can remember I have "classified" the days. I would walk outside and say to myself what sort of a day it was (especially if it was a day that was not in the correct season.) Well in Guatemala they don't really have seasons (just wet and dry), so any time it feels distinctly anything- its out of season. Today it feels like a perfect spring day. When I woke up a bit of cold air was nipping at my toes, but I could feel the warmth of the sun in my chest, it was begging to break out of the clouds. Not being able to see the clock, I crawled out of be, trying not to wake Laura. It was earlier than usual, the parents and the kids weren't off to school yet, so I could hear bustling. Ben was sleeping on the futon and I was a bit chilly, so what did I do? I crawled up into my parents bed! This is a delight I haven't enjoyed for a long time, it felt so right. The warm sunlight streaming in from their huge window, me curled up, and various family members coming in and out. Lydie cuddled with me a bit, Mom rubbed my back, and Davie gave me a kiss.
It was a pretty perfect morning.

lack of posts

It has been a while since i posted. i have 2, not 1, but 2, excuses! First the camera stopped working. Yes indeed, I do not know why but it has a mystery problem. I don't much like to post without pictures, becasue I am not a great writer and pictures add the visual element my writing needs (since hand motions are out of the question.) Second the night that Mom and Laura came home ( a bit over a week now) I got sick. Good timing really, if it had been a week earlier their would have been slight chaos. Not only did I start to get sick, but Mom and Laura brought so many good things back with them, I tried to deny the sickness. I threw myself into furiously cutting, piecing and sewing my quilt I had long been awaiting. I was staying up all hours, getting up early, and ignoring everything else but my quilt. By Thursday I was completely dead. I was extremely sick and couldn't do anything. I was so close to finishing but couldn't. I smooshed the quilt to the side and gave into rest. Friday I realized that in my frantic quilting, and horrid sickness I had completely shirked all homework and schooling for the week! So Friday, Saturday and Sunday I spent trying to rest and play catch-up on homework. (You can see by the extreme laziness of the past week how completely horrible it would have been if I had gotten sick when I was in charge of the kids.)
I am finally feeling better, though a pervasive runny nose still plagues me, and I think.......drum roll.....ready to finish piecing my quilt! I have already been looking into designs, colors, and textures for my next (two) quilts so I am feeling anxious to complete this one. I will post pictures as soon as I can!

markets

After three weeks of bemoaning the fact that I was unable to go to the market in Antigua, as I did not desire to drive there, another CAM missionary, teacher at CAG, and friend, was kind enough to show me one right by my house! I am sad at the wasted time of buying at Piaz (the local Wal-mart) produce instead of fresh market foods, but there is nothing to be done except use my new knowledge! I was so delighted to find this small, indoor, market which was stocked with ample fruits and vegetables that I didn't barter this first time around, being too overcome with joy in simply being there and the much lower prices. I did find two very interesting finds along with my normal purchases, 1. yams (which up till now my family thought did not exists in Guatemala) and 2. mora- blackberries! perfect and waiting to be made into a yummy dessert.
I personally love to eat blackberries with fresh cream or frozen yogurt (from Passion Berri) but here they have to be washed first if they aren't going to be cooked, and that gets sort of messy. So I resorted to the timeless and wonderful blackberry pie with a flaky butter crust. Katie has become the resident pastry chief (making all the crusts for my various projects) and obliged me again in this project. Here are a few shots.


It turned out wonderful, sweet and juicy, warm and delicious.

Crazy Conner Craft Class

I normally-well don't really liking crafts. I never signed up for the craft elective at camps, and never saw the point in having a bunch of tacky stuff around. Yet somehow I seemed to always be doing them. I remember the summer of S.E.N.D. where the Conner's basically ran the camp with 5 of us involved in teaching classes in the morning and afternoons, and what was Crissie's class? The Crazy Crissie Conner's Craft Class! (Where may I mention one girl sucked paint up into her mouth through a straw!) Anyways, recently with more free time than usual, I have *gasp* started to enjoy and do more crafts. I think it is because I have found useful crafts not resulting in tacky junk such as card making, letter writing, (you saw the Valentine's ones), etc., etc., Yes I have found a delight in crafts. I spent a good hunk of a day watching the BBC version of Jane Eyre and cutting out pictures from magazines (thank you Mrs. Stewart!) to be used in crafts. And that very evening came a chance to use them. Katie's friend had a birthday the next day and we made a pretty extensive card for her. The pictures didn't come out too good but the card was pretty cute.

Crazy Dinners

So we like to have a bit of fun at dinner these days, meal time is almost never the same but somewhere between 5:30 and 7:00.
The dinner this evening was in honor of 2 people.
1) Papi Lepu; he was the first person that every made me twice baked potatoes and I still think his are the best.
2) Heather O. because I can never eat potatoes without thinking of her, and her excellent and sooo fattening mashed potatoes or he families sinful potatoes!

So we had twice baked potatoes and because I didn't have any large potatoes we just used the small ones I had. They ended up being twice baked potato bites, and I think we should suggest them to sonic! Imagine the deep, loser-ish sounding sonic voice saying this..."Craving a loaded baked potato on the run- come to sonic and try our new twice baked potato bites!" HA.

Anyways they were very good to say the least and were enjoyed with Pringles, which of course must be made into duck bills.

We are losers, and we know it =D