This post is meant to convey first: humor and b: humility.

Beyond that, please take it with a grain of salt. For flavor. And oyster pearls.

I woke up this morning with a food hangover (still digesting the pan from last night) and realized one of many things.

Number one: I have to go to work.

Number two: I don’t want to.

Number three: I am always going number 2.

I went downstairs because seeing my host mom sets things right, usually.

I look at them with wild Einstein hair, dust emanating from my scalp wafting into the sunlight. I cannot hide. I’m like Linus without a blanket or fame. And I sit as they speak K’iche’. A baby is there, big puffy cheeks and adorable. I want to squeeze him and eat his face and hold him but those babies are used to being wrapped up all day attached to one person: their mother. I am secretly envious. Either way I know I can’t pry him. I notice how unusually pretty I find the mother. She must think I resemble a moth.

My host mom tells me she’s leaving for El Monte and offers me a variety of foods. Have you eaten? Do you want aguacates? I don’t think you should have them because your stomach is hurt (she thinks things that aren’t warm upset my stomach).

I tell her: No thanks. She says maybe you’re not hungry because it’s early. Eventually I ask her if I can buy more cafe from her tonight because I’ve run out. She says “to moler?” and I say “sí.” She says for now you can have some of this, take however much you want. I scoop out grounds and put them in a cup to go. She comes upstairs. Natalia here is your boiled water. Try drinking this to see if your stomach will not be upset. She leaves. She comes back. Natalia? Hey are you gonna eat those beans? Because they are gonna go bad. I proffer them. These? She shows me how to pull off the tails. You say how they are going black? That means they will go bad soon and you should eat them. They looks like sperm tails. She peels one. I pick up another and say: like this? I find one in which the sperm tail is removed but the cascara is still fully intact. She says: no you need to remove at least part of the shell so the inside will cook. You can remove the entire shell or you can just remove this top part. Up to you.

Why do people call redheads carrot tops when the tops of carrots are green?

So I boil my water, pour in the grounds, let the grains simmer, turn off the gas, strain the grounds and pour in powdered cream: one of the biggest personal comfort griefs of yet in country. I can make coffee here. Yes, that I can do.

I put a giant pepino and my pix (tomatoes) in a bucket named ‘uva’ (because it’s purple).

I approach the pila, I pour in pila water and grab my sponge. I begin to wash every vegetable with dish soap. Then I pour the beans in the water too. I wash them with soap and the sponge. Then I decide why not I’ll start to pelar each little bean. And when I say little bean, they’re actually quite large. Ranging from the size of a quarter to the size of well, a quarter times two because I can’t think of anything else. Silver dollar? They’re large. They’re like funny legumes. Maybe they are legumes. And maybe all legumes are funny. I decide that they are. And I am picking the tops of them off and tossing them back in the water because I can’t pour them down the drain and I’m too lazy to find some place else. Drains are only for water and waste here. No solids at all because the pipes are too small. The sun is coming in hot as I stand over the pila, my coffee getting cold inside.

But I just keep picking off the bean tops with my thumb nail. At first I think “you’ve gotta be kidding me. I gotta do this to eat?” But I don’t gotta do this to eat. All I gotta do is pay my family to feed me but I’m too coda. And then I see that the sperm tails float to the surface. They are beaming up at me and you know what they look like? Excuse my Frances, but they look like dirty butt cracks. And I think about how the universe is mocking me with these cascaras because I have been pooping like it’s my job, never normally since I got to site. And here are these bean shells, all the dirty butt cracks floating to the surface. I gotta take care of my butt and legume butts. And the legume butts only make matters worse for my butt.

And it’s my fault that I am drinking water from an ecofiltro, which is illegal (not actually) but unadvised. I bought it because, again, I am coda. And now I am in the hole 300q and all I do is poop into another hole four times a day, emergently.

But the real hole I am in is work. I do not want to go.

Because it donned on me today, in streaks of fuschia and tangerine, that I am going to work two years for free. Did I know that before? Yes. Did I know about diarrhea before? Also yes. But now knowledge and reality are holding hands and skipping across the plane. Vacation is over, school starts next week, sure I don’t have a set schedule but I am responsible for going.. every day.. I didn’t like work when I was paid for it. And now I’m a volunteer. Who got me into this? Oh, me. The one peeling the floating butt cracks.

Well poop.