Thanks, to everything I miss

In light of Thanksgiving, here are a few of the things I miss:

1. Friends and family: number 1 for a reason, but really, this entry, like American society, is about appreciating materialistic things. I wrote that last sentence when I first started writing this entry, and had to come back…definitely miss a lot of material things, but also a lot of experiences unique to the states.
2. Thanksgiving in CT. For the friends and family, definitely, but also for the Manchester Road Race every Thanksgiving morning, and of course, for the food and the resulting food coma.
3. Refrigeration. We don’t have a refrigerator, and hence anything that needs to be kept cold, we need to use right away. Often we just don’t buy it. A huge portion of this entry is going to be devoted to foods and beverages that I would normally keep in a fridge.
4. Fresh Milk. Ultra-High Temperature Pasteurized milk just isn’t the same, and the real stuff isn’t even available.
5. Bicycle culture: I miss being able to ride everywhere, geek out about Shimano 7900 and Sram XX, talk about how carbon fiber isn’t really all that rad, and make fun of people for trying to coordinate a colorway.
6. Trail maps: For lack of having anyone to mountain bike with, the lack of maps makes mountain biking even more frustrating. The same goes for hiking. Dear god, I hate paying for guides, and I will never take U.S. outdoor recreational infrastructure for granted again.
7. Cold cuts. Cured meats are hard to come by here, and I don’t have a fridge, again. I could buy bologna at some of the tiendas, but I don’t really like bologna, and even if I did, the stuff here looks like garbage. Taylor Gourmet, Neon Deli and Noonie’s, you spoiled me rotten.
8. Cheese. See refrigeration. But even when we do buy cheese to eat the same night, the cheddar tastes almost the same as the mozzarella, and there’s no feta to be had. The queso fresco’s pretty damn good though.
9. Draught beer: really only exists in Guatemala City and Xela.
10. Microbrewed beer, and a variety of choices in general: Here we have a single dark beer option, Moza, then Gallo and a few other equally boring and watery pilseners/light-colored lagers. A hoppy IPA, please.
11. Snow. If global warming ruins my trip back home for Christmas, I’m gonna be pissed.
12. Great coffee. Guatemalan coffee’s great, as far as the beans are concerned, but the attention to preparation is lacking, with a few exceptions. Definitely a luxury in DC to have at least a half dozen great options for an excellent cup of coffee.
13. Hipsters. I’m kinda serious, we only have hippies here, and there’s a huge difference.
14. Music. I miss hearing new music at work and in coffee shops, online, and passed down by friends. And going to shows. Guatemala needs a Black Cat, and some bands that aren’t playing reggaeton or some hippy bullshit. One night we walked by a bar with a guy playing “Reggae-Flamenco Fusion.” Awful, and to make matters worse, his stage name had something to do with elves.
15. New England Macintosh apples in fall.
16. The internet at home, without having to go to an internet café. I think we’re working on this for our return in January.
17. Ben Tabor. Just kidding.
18. Grapefruit juice. Fresh would be grand, but I’m really talking from a carton, with pulp, when I wake up in the morning.
19. Twizzlers. This is really Stacy’s thing. So far my mom and Jennifer Holder have sent them. Mad props, yo.
20. Comfortable furniture. The bed’s perfectly fine, and we have some wooden chairs and a bench constructed by yours truly, nbd, but there’s something to be said for couches and heavily-upholstered armchairs. Such a spoiled brat.
21. Tap water that I can drink and use to rinse my mouth when brushing my teeth.
22. Being able to flush the toilet paper.

All that being said, I’m thankful that I’m here with Stacy, and that I’m lucky enough to take a few months to slow down from the normal pace of life in Guatemala, learn about coffee from the ground up, eat some great (if often questionably sanitary) ethnic food, and travel and experience life in another country with an incredibly rich culture. I’m just looking forward to being back stateside next Thanksgiving.

cositas y gracias

Rise and shine, it’s cherry-pickin’ time! School here has been out of session for a little over a month now. But for many Pedrano families, this three-month vacation falls in line with the coffee harvest. Years ago, all the children were sent to the family campo to pick coffee cherries. I’ve spoken to locals (in reality, most parents here are more or less my age) about their childhood days in the coffee fields. Picking the plump red fruit from the tree was a job for the whole family. With a plastic basket or bag strapped around their waist, the workers scan each tree for the brightest red, the ripest berry and pluck it into the basket. (Hopefully Kevin and I will get to visit a campo and pick some coffee berries soon.)

Today, there are less children doing this work, but many families in San Pedro still have small plots of coffee trees to tend to this season. There is an old, abandoned coffee finca at the end of our road, hence the road is called Calle Finca. Kevin and I walked out there yesterday and passed through some small huts still occupied by a few families. The finca facilities seem to be in good shape, but are not in use anymore. At the very end of the road, there is a footpath that leads down to the lake- Playa Finca. There were a few families enjoying a Sunday picnic (as well as bathing and washing their clothes- the lake is so useful, ha), so we decided not to swim here. But there was a newly constructed dock and a little visible sand/dirt; which is hard to come by in town because the lake has risen so much and is continuing to wash away the earth.

We went to the oldest town on the lake last Saturday, Santiago Atitlan. It was a very interesting place, very traditional and quite spread out. We forgot to bring a guide book (or even look one over before we left, so we probably missed something) but the trip was fairly productive. Kevin got his hair cut for Q10 ($1.25!!!!) and I got to talk to a yoga instructor about a teacher certification program and his experience living on a sustainable farm at the base of the volcano.

Last week, I had some terrible allergies (first time in months!) and today I’m feeling much better. The wind has finally died down, and the weather is beautiful! The sun is strong and warm, but under the shade of a tree the air is refreshing and cool. What disparity from the autumn chill at home, eh?

Kevin and I have been thinking a lot about Thanksgiving this week. We are really going to miss our holiday family time, and we’ve enjoyed sharing our Thanksgiving traditions with each other. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we’ll be creating any of our own here, as we have no access to the typical Thanksgiving staples. In fact, we don’t really have anything planned for Thursday, although Kevin is determined to make mashed potatoes (yessss!). We’ll have to get pretty creative :) and we’ll try to document the experience, of course.

Then on Friday, we’re heading off to Copan, Honduras. I must renew my passport before November 30, and rather than go to the city and pay for another stamp, we’re going to take a short vacation so I can be outside the country for 24 hours. We’re looking forward to seeing the Mayan ruins of Copan, but not too excited for the actual trip. Getting here and there in this country is never easy. It will likely be a ten-hour drive, and we have to stop in Antigua and switch shuttle companies. Then once we get to the border, we will probably have to pay exit and entrance fees (although there is a Central American Four agreement, which implies that tourists pass FREELY between Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and El Salvador) because all the government officers are corrupt and bored. Thus is life here.

Please enjoy some turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and vino for us on Thursday! Finally, some things I’m thankful for:

-health! The fresh food I’m eating and daily yoga and meditation I’m doing here have given me a new perspective on feeling healthy.

-friends and family! Always you are in my thoughts and I’m sending health and happiness to you this week

-Guatemalan generosity! For the wonderful people and the abundant land and nature here, I am thankful to be a part of it.

-opportunity! I have been so fortunate this year; being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people. I am so grateful for the opportunities that have been presented to me and hope that I can keep the positive karma flowing.

-Kevin: I am thankful and so lucky to be here with you- te amo.

ps: feliz cumpleaños nana! wishing you a wonderful day! besos y abrazos!

Coffee Fest and Guate the city

Reggaeton performance at CoffeeFest. Too much of it everywhere.

So, Guatemala City. Not exactly my cup of tea. But I was there for CoffeeFest. Get it?

I’m tired, so the only jokes that come might be really terrible.

Seriously though, I’ve lived in Lima, and I expected all of the noise, dirtiness, and chaos that I actually sort-of came to like in Peru. Guate has that, for sure, plus Lima’s love for reggaeton, which I could not and cannot come to appreciate, and then bastardizes it with some strange perversion of the American dream centered around two of my least favorite aspects of Amuhrica: malls and chain fast-food restaurants with supersized parking lots. With reggaeton. From walking through Zona 10 (the Zona Viva in Guate), I gathered it’s the collective Guatemala city dream to own a store in a mall, take your girlfriend on a date in a different mall that’s 4 blocks away, then dance to reggaeton on Calle 15, Zona 10. If David Byrne ever decided to make a sequel to True Stories, and felt like replacing all the awesome Talking Heads songs with Daddy Yankee, this must be the place.

Obviously I’m going to complain a lot in this entry (I couldn’t even avoid being gringo-ripped off for cab fares in Guate, which pissed me off to no end, since I take a bit of pride in bargaining skillz), so I’ll say that all in all, going to Guate for FEDEPMA was an overall positive and at times interesting, if often frustrating, experience.

After getting into the city on the chicken bus and making my way to a hostel near the airport (it’s pretty tough to find dirt cheap and safe options in Guate – many thanks to Stacy for helping me find the first night’s room over the phone since her guide book is way better than mine), I made it to CoffeeFest, albeit a bit later than I had hoped.

CoffeeFests are held in the US, and presumably in other parts of the world, and in Guate, it was held at the office of AnaCafé, the national coffee association. The fest, in addition to a strange exhibition area that really had very little to do with coffee, consisted of the national barista competition, a cooking competition utilizing coffee as an Iron Chef-like central ingredient, and the national cupping competition.

Cupping is a formalized way of tasting and comparing different coffees, and this competition was essentially a way for coffee geeks to battle it out to see who had the most refined palate and most highfalutin vocabulary for describing the variety of berry their coffee most closely resembles. I love coffee, and I do appreciate that cupping is important in the world of gourmet coffee, but I really don’t get the point of competing for the title of ultimate cupper. If you’re going to overcompensate, I figure there are way more interesting and more masculine ways than wearing a medal around your neck that essentially says “I have great taste buds, I´m so awesome.”

Anyways, I had the chance to not pay attention to the cupping and instead watch some baristas, including our friends Gersón and Nery from Fat Cat Coffee in Antigua, compete for the chance to go to Colombia for World Barista Championships. Also somewhat geeky, but whatever. The baristas had to prepare 4 espressos, 4 cappuccinos, and a signature drink in 15 minutes…don’t feel like explaining this anymore. Nery and Gersón unfortunately didn’t do as well as they would have hoped, so they didn’t make it to the finals.

Gersón pouring for the judges.

It was a good chance to hand out some samples of our coffee and talk with some of Guatemala’s best baristas and the judges, who will hopefully provide a bit of feedback on the beans, even if they’re not interested in buying any. The Belgian judge was as unwelcoming as a hard cobblestone on a low-spoke count wheel, but other than that they were good people who seemed genuinely interested in FEDEPMA, or at least acted like it. Gersón and Nery and their friend Frosty (he’s pretty pale by Guatemalan standards, and apparently used to be chubby) were great as always, and it was awesome to talk to Percy Ramírez and Charles Babinski from Intelligentsia. Doubtful our product quite reaches Intelli standards, and they already have direct trade agreements with at least 2 fincas in the country, but good contacts nonetheless.

And really, Guatemala City isn’t all that bad. Saturday happened to be the lighting of a huge fake Christmas tree sponsored by Gallo, the national cerveza. It was basically a giant street fair, and it probably was a good thing I wasn’t with Stacy, since I took full advantage of the opportunity to indulge in some highly questionable street food. Plus, before the Christmas tunes and Guatemalan Rockettes started (cue me leaving), there was a live performance by Malacates, the first semi-decent Guatemalan pop group I’ve heard since getting here. Emphasis on the semi, but definitely listenable, so a small victory I guess. For that night I switched to a hotel in Zona 1, which although a bit more dangerous than Zona 13, is also in the heart of the city rather than right near the airport, so I felt a bit less imprisoned by isolation, and had a good starting point for early market breakfast and shopping for a few necessities on Sunday morning.

And Frosty gave me a few pointers for places to check out. For one, he works at Bajo Fondo Funk, a great bar in the Zona Viva with a vibe somewhere between Black Cat Red Room and the Red Derby, owned by a musician in a funk band called Entre Todos. And Café Injerto, the café of Finca Injerto, an organic coffee farm in Huehuetenango that has won both Guatemalan and world Cup of Excellence awards. If you’re a coffee geek, their café in the city has 5 different ways of doing black coffee, including siphon. Pretty awesome.

Anyways, made it back to San Pedro on Sunday. There wasn’t a direct chicken bus, so I had to take a chicken bus part way, then two different microbuses (think minivans crammed with about 15 people, or if you’ve been to Lima, the combi. Not the least stressful trip home, but here it never is…hasta luego.