Tis the (Easter) Season…

A journal entry from Saturday, April 11:
Today was such a great "Peace Corps" day. Mostly in the non-work-related sense, I guess I have to admit, because though the park I work in was absolutely crawling with Guatemalans on their Holy Saturday holiday, I didn´t feel very useful - too new to know how the park handles so many people (I think this is how anybody new on the job is bound to feel.) I learned a lot though.
But today when my host mom Emiliana and host dad Arnulfo came with the whole family in the back of the toyota pickup to get me for an extended-family picnic lunch, it was as if I were among my own aunts and uncles and cousins. It´s so strange how at home I feel here with them! We explored caves, we jumped rope forever, and the food itself was pretty similar to what we Roskes might´ve had at a family picnic. The chatter of aunts and the rambunctiousness of the cousins was so familiar! But I guess the emphasis here should be less on how similar it felt, because of course it was completely different; the point is moreso that I already feel like I could belong, eventually. There were so many moments when I thought, I should have my camera for this, I really want to remember this... jumping rope with the kids but especially when the adults joined in, running around with the toddler Irene and thinking up all the possible imaginary uses for the sticks she found for us, hearing my little host brother Hugo explain my name over and over to his cousin (even though the only time I ever hear Hugo say my name is when he says thanks after meals), sitting and chatting with Emiliana and her sisters tía Rosa and tía María in the shade of the big cypress tree as the sun was slanting beautifully through the giant pines, the needles drifting down to join the laughter below. This family reunion ranks (not that it´s a competition, oh actual family members reading this) among my favorites, though it wasn´t even my family! Well, it is now, in a way.
And I guess I can´t totally write off work today. As I was collecting garbage with Doña Delfina at the end of the day I started talking with an older woman who had come with her family all the way from the capital. While her complaints about our rudimentary bathrooms made me at first write her off as a high-maintenance, non environmental type, I soon realized I shouldn´t have judged so quickly. She and her elderly mother and I talked and talked about why they had come all this way to our little private park, that they value the space and the existence of a clean and healthy natural area. They get it! We talked about the problem of trash management for a while, because they sympathized with me walking around bent over for an hour cleaning up other people´s mess, and they were so adamant that what we´re doing in our park is reallyimportant. They were so encouraging to me personally, that I´m in Guatemala working hard on something like this, it simultaneously humbled me and made me proud of myself. And thankful that by pure serendipity I stumbled upon this great conversation with these two older ladies. Sometimes, I am amazed at the way human beings can connect with each other, under such unlikely circumstances, if we´re open to the possibility.
Same goes for the evening I spent at the home of Don Nico (our park guard) and his wife Doña Delfina, after the three of us had cleaned up the park and walked home. They are my neighbors now that I live up the mountain in the village near the park. I told them I didn´t mind walking the extra little bit past my house down the mountain to theirs, to help carry things the rest of the way, though I knew that meant I´d be staying for a little while. I didn´t realize that "a little while" actually meant I´d take my leave three mugs-full of coffee and two huge Semana Santa breadrolls later. But I had such a pleasant time with them. Either I´m getting the hang of social graces in the different social spheres that exist here in Guatemala or it´s simply that this family, parents and all those kids, are just good people. It´s amazing how good people can be found anywhere in the world - I´ve decided the planet is absolutely full of good people like Don Nico´s family, who will send the aunt and the 8-yr-old daughter to walk with you in the dark up the mountain to your house, one clinging to each arm as we ascend the mountain in the dark, unable to see our feet but walking in sync anyway as we watch the brilliant stars instead. The evening ends with many hugs and kisses and "Adios"es and "Cuídese"s, and I am left with a heart that overfloweth.