How to Clean a Yoga Mat and Other Tales From a Typical Sunday in Blue Creek

Note: The story that follows is not only true; it is just one day, much like all of the other days that constitute my life.

I woke up late, around 7:45am, after hearing English speaking voices walking down the road towards the river. The tourists at the guesthouse are always so ambitious, setting off for the cave as soon as they've inhaled their tortillas and downed their Nescafé. I respect that. I lay in bed for a few more minutes since I was bit tired after the late night last night. It was movie night at my host-family's, translation: I bring my laptop and any DVD that I can find and 12 people crowd around the screen on any old bucket that they can find. Last night's feature flick was a pirated copy of The Brothers Grimm, complete with bad sound, dark picture, and the occasional interruption of someone in the theatre walking in front of the hidden camera.

Before that, however, they wanted to show me some scenes from "Kung-Fu Hustle," the most terrible movie I have ever had to watch in my life. I won't go into the details, but I will go off on a little rant about the curious obsession with Kung-Fu movies among residents of the Mayan villages. I thought it was an anomaly among people in Blue Creek, but apparently lack of electricity does not stop people from firing up their generators or solar panels out in the bush so that the family can crowd around and watch some 2nd rate Japanese Kung-Fu that has been dubbed into Spanish and may or may not have English subtitles that may or may not matter since most people can't read much English. Anyways, the terrible Spanish dubbed Kung-Fu and pirated Brothers Grimm kept me out past 9:30pm.

Where was I? Oh yes, tourists walking to cave, me laying in bed. I got up and decided I was going to do nothing and was pleased with the plan. Oatmeal and coffee for breakfast, washed dishes and then set out to get caught up on some sewing I had been meaning to do. Just as I was threading my needle, a small face popped up at my back window. Well, hello Sandra Mas, I said a little surprised. Up to this point, my home-made curtains had kept the kids from peeping into my windows, but apparently my neighbor kids have now discovered that they are just tall enough to get their chins on my window sill. Sandra stared me down, then looked around my room, and when I asked her what she was up to, she just responded with a casual nothing. Oh, I said, well maybe you should come around to my door to visit, it's not polite to peep in people's windows. Oh, she responded as she kept staring around my room. She left to go sell at the river, but about an hour later she was back, at my window, peering under the curtain. I tried to explain again that if she wanted to visit, she should come around front, but to no avail. Three times during the day she stopped by my window, looked at my pictures, played with my cat, and stared at me.

I finished my sewing and moved on to cleaning and then lunch. More tourists walk by just as I am sitting down to eat my left-over tamale, beans, and salad. I don't mind the tourists, but I'll be honest, I don't make much of an effort to be friendly. Occasionally I will be walking down the road and strike up a conversation, but when you have a hundred or so people coming and going each week, it gets a little tedious to have the same conversation over and over again. So I have taken to doing as the locals do, sitting in my house, blatantly staring at the visitors without expression on my face as they walk by to go look at birds, monkeys, or small Maya kids. The rest of the afternoon was spent fixing up my latrine a little (I finally got a toilet seat) and taking a walk to go visit. Around 4:00pn I worked up the energy to go for a run, the 4th one in the past 8 days, aren't you proud? I stretched out and set out down the road. I hadn't got but a quarter mile before I crossed paths with a muddy gringo on a serious mt. bike. The bike had a number on it and he was all decked out like he was in some race. I was sufficiently confused, you just don't run across too many American Mt. bike racers on the dirt roads leading out of Blue Creek. However, I did give him a confused smile and a hello before continuing on my jog. Thirty minutes later I was at the end of my run just as the rain was beginning to come down. I made it back to my house as it started to pour and did a good stretch and cool-down on my yoga mat. I needed to go bathe, so I changed and strolled out into the rain with my plastic bag full of shampoo, conditioner, soap, and red shower poof. My yoga mat needed a wash, so I hung it over my clothesline on my way to the river.

What a glorious way to end a relaxing, uneventful day. Dusk was coming as the rain came down in sheets. The surface of the river bubbled with the water and I stood waist deep, letting the rain wash through my hair. I laughed at my friends across the river as they were also enjoying the rain and the river. I realized as I looked up at the jungle, the birds, and the iguanas in the trees, how much I love my life. Bad Kung-Fu, peeping kids, weird tourists and everything, this is my life and it's not too bad.