Ha! The first Thanksgiving dinner together started in an open air garden of a restaurant near the central park. I ordered something off the vegetarian part of the menu that promised to be veggies in some Guatemalan sauce with tamales on the side. Sounded good! The princess does love tamales. Well before the food even came we found ourselves invited to sit with a bunch of interesting folks from the US who are here working with an organization named Common Hope. They seem to be doing some really great stuff here, and Liana and I enjoyed the company of the staff and volunteers. http://www.commonhope.org/ The princess got lots of attention, including hugs, lots of silly faces, assistance emptying out the diaper bag, and even got to be read to by someone who wasn’t mom! Mom got to have extended periods of adult conversation, sometimes lasting for minutes! AND the princess dined on tamales in a really nice picante sauce, had a little potato and I think we managed to get a little squash and carrot into her too! It could not have been a finer meal. In addition, mom solicited parenting advise from the various medical professionals and experienced parents around the table, who seemed to think I’m not screwing up too badly at all! And to top it all off, the whole event turned out to be not just Thanksgiving in Guatemala, but also the 5th anniversary of the 21st birthday of one of the women present! If she and I had had the time to talk a little more, I would have enjoyed hearing details of her time here in Guatemala during hurricane Stan. She is a pediatric nurse, and although she was in Guatemala City at the time of the storm, she headed over to Atitlan to provide professional assistance, and apparently stayed quite a while. She got sort of dazed and sad and with that look of suspended disbelief as she described the aftermath of the mudslides. I thought about being a young woman, just about her age, living through the aftermath of the Mexico City earthquake. The pain and disbelief in the young woman’s eyes looked almost like I might have looked in a mirror a couple of decades ago. I would have told her as much, but our precious minutes of exclusive adult conversation had ended, and the princess again dominated my attention.

It is evening time, and the princess is asleep. Fireworks are going off, and I’m not sure why. We need to get up early in the morning, to be in Guatemala City by what started out as a 9 AM appointment but seems to have transformed into an 8:30 appointment. Please may the princess sleep well. I think all of her congestion is gone, and I hope that she will sleep through the night.