Water

This past week I lived with a new family in Xela. They were really nice and super welcoming and have an unbelievable love of all things hip-hop and reggaeton. My first night we took a trip to Hiper Pais, which is basically the Guatemalan Walmart and listend to Eminem, 50 Cent and Snoop Dog the whole way there. I´m not so sure if they know the meanings of any of the words, but I felt pretty confident that if i played them the Orishas i wouldn´t receive any stunned looks of embarassment.

The week was complicated by the fact that there was no water from Monday afternoon until Sunday morning. I smelled. A lot. Apparently, with the aid of the Japanese embassy, Xela is installing a new water system in order to increase the potential water pressure that the pipes can hold. The project was so succesful that when the water was turned back on on Wednesday, the increase of water pressure was so high that several old pipes burst, resulting in the prolonged suspension of water for four more days while they repaired the old pipes. I would like to think that this sort of accident could have been predicted, but I´m no engineer.

So Saturday morning when I woke up, my family informed me that if i was interested I could come with them on a little excursion to the grandfather´s house, which was located on the other side of town where water service had already resumed. We would all shower at his house. I jumped at the opportunity, as I had played soccer for two hours on Thursday night and hadn´t showered since Monday morning and had no faith that the promises that the water would return by mid-day would be met (i was right, water returned mid-day on Sunday, not Saturday, and we´ve been told to expect further interruptions).
So we packed out bags and headed down the street to wait for a microbus to take us out to grandpa´s house. Grandpa supposedly lived "muy cerca". I´m not sure grandpa actually lives within city limits, which would explain why he had water when most of the city did not, but I did not care. Grandpas house had a shower! And grass! and all was wonderful. I was clean and ate cake and drank coffee with a super cool grandfather who was dancing in the living room to blasting christian rock when we arrived and who is a drummer in a marimba band. That was my favorite shower that i´ve had in months.