What's Good About the Being Home

Both Isabelle and I are settline in a bit more today. I've made a list of the things I love about being home.

• Having Robert around. He's great fun to have around and we have a very easy, fun relationship. He's also a super parent with Isabelle, sharing all the caring when he's home.
• Driving my car!! I love driving and love having a stick shift. I love how wide and smooth the roads are.
• Not having to remember to use the filtered water for anything we eat. I kept looking for it on the sink yesterday and today any time I got a glass of water or made Isabelle's bottle. The same goes for being able to use the tap water when I brush my teeth.
• Being able to eat at any restaurant I want to and not wondering if I was going to pay for it later with gastric distress. Also, being able to eat fruits and vegetables without washing them with vegetable soap first.
• Being able to leave out food in the kitchen for more than a moment without having to cover it so the flies won't land on it.
• Having my own high chair so I don't need to base Isabelle's feeding times on when someone else will be using the high chair.
• Clean air (we have emissions and burning standards) and less noise (we have noise ordinances).
• No-one building a house next door.
• Did I mention being able to have Robert around?
• A really big house, and I can leave things out if I want to.
• Not as much humidity.

Things I still miss about Antigua:

• Being able to walk everywhere. It's made me appreciate the Portland area's high density regulations because there is more stuff in walking distance than other places I've lived (especially West Valley, Utah where not only couldn't you walk to things, but you had to drive 10 miles for most things - yuck!). I loved walking down the streets.
• How much the people in Guatemala love children. Almost no-one could be near Isabelle and not tell me how beautiful she was, ask her age and name, talk to her, and reach out and touch her. She's confused when we are near someone here and they don't do those things.
• How friendly the people are. Even though my Spanish was almost non-existant, they almost all tried to understand and help me and liked just talking. If I said hello to someone on the street, they said hello back.
• The smaller personal space. In Antigua, once I got used to having so many people so close, it was almost like a dance.
• Really cheap and fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Chicken buses and the drivers calling for passengers.
• The feel of being in the 50's or 60's in the US - no seat belts or seat belts only as a mild suggestions, nurses wear starched white uniforms with little pinned on "hats", big groups riding in the back of pickup trucks.
• Herds of Tuk Tuks on the roads.
• Amazing Chocolate from Chocotanango. I still have some that I got just before I left, but I'm almost out. I got several boxes as thank-you's for people here, but I may not have the will power not to break into them.
• Absolutely fabulous pastries. And these wonderful stacks of frosted sourdough donut holes that were sold in the oldest bakery (paneria) in Antigua.
• Women in all types of clothing. All the beautiful Mayan clothes
• The mix of people, from traditional Mayans to city people to business people to tourists.
• Gardens in the middle of houses.