April 7, 2009 Perpetual Stagnation

Sunday was our one-month anniversary! We’ve been living here at the Casa Blanca for a whole month now. My Spanish still sucks, we don’t necessarily have any new friends, and we haven’t saved any money. But still, it’s been a good start. I’m comfortable here. This house feels like my home, as much as it can.
I’m still infuriated by a few things, spiders no longer the most prominent on that list. They’ve backed off, mostly, recognizing that this is human territory. I still get shivers at the sight of them, but I can coexist. And that’s all that matters. The garbage situation annoys me mostly because we have a bin for “organic” waste right under the kitchen sink. You know what goes in there: all the stinky stuff: eggshells, banana peels, onionskins – and that attracts these tiny little flies like nobody’s business! I don’t like trash in my kitchen, least of all when it attracts flies.
Water is also a little bothersome. You can’t drink what comes out of the faucet, it’s lake water and the lake is polluted. So you buy these big jugs (water cooler jugs) for drinking and cooking, and when you run out you have to call a tuk tuk driver and pay him to bring you fresh water jugs.
But the most annoying thing. The thing that most keeps me from feeling completely comfortable is that I can’t communicate with most of the people around me. My Spanish is appalling. I can’t even think of what I want to say. Except very simple things, and even then I’m too shy to actually say it. I stay quiet nearly all the time when we’re around Spanish speakers. I’m embarrassed to have people hear me speak English. I’m embarrassed to be such a stupid gringo that I can’t even speak the language of the country I’m in.
So on Sunday we went down to the Hotel Jinava, our next-door neighbors, and had breakfast (they gave me a menu in English, could tell just by looking at me what I am) and asked about using their beach. They said we could use the beach anytime we buy anything, so after breakfast we went and got our beach towels and our sunblock and sat out on their little strip of sand. We even got in the water! It’s full of grass and who-knows-how-many critters, but it felt really refreshing.
I think it was a good way to celebrate our first month. Jumping in this magical lake that beckoned to us from over two thousand miles away and called us out here. It’s been a great experience. I get along well even not knowing Spanish. And I’ll learn. I think it’s time to go to the Spanish school here in San Marcos, immersion doesn’t work too well if you’re chronically shy and self-conscious. I’ll get it. I will. We’re planning to stay here at least until the end of August, if I don’t know Spanish by then, please kick me in the shins.
I don’t know if any Oakland friends read this. Maybe Oaklanders are too cool to keep up with silly blogs. But we’re too cool for Oakland, so there. I’m just kidding, we’re not too cool for anything I know of. But Sal and I have decided not to return to the Land of Oaks this April, as was our plan originally. So who knows when we’ll be back in those United States? We probably won’t go to California soon anyway; we need to visit Sal’s family in Georgia. Hopefully I’ll know Spanish when we go visit them! I’d love that, and I bet his parents would too.
Sigh. You want to know the truth, Internet? I don’t want to wait another year to get married at all. I want our future now. I want to marry my sweet wonderful perfect man this summer and go on a relaxing honeymoon for a week or two in Jamaica (and get my dreads back while we’re there) and then go live cheaply in Europe for about six months. And then I want to publish my book and win lots of money for it and build us a house and finally adopt a puppy. And once the puppy is grown up we could make a baby. That’s what I want.