Bromas de mi Padre Anfitriona

I sometimes have a hard time understanding what my host father says (although I usually get most of it), but he is a funny man. Two of his jokes / funny sayings in particular stand out to me. They were obviously told to me in Spanish so I hope that not too much will be lost in translation.

1) Two fleas are standing on the street corner talking and waiting. As a dog approaches by one flea says to the other "adios here is my ride." I think this nicely exemplifies Guatemalan's attitude towards dogs and why I do not let the chuchos (dirty street dogs) touch me.

2) So Guatemalans eat A TON of bread. There is always a basket of many different types of bread on the table at each meal ("French bread," sweet rolls, etc). This is not counting tortillas that also accompany almost every meal. Cafecito (coffee around 5pm) is also accompanied by bread. I have stopped eating the bread all together. I figure that tortillas and some other type of carbohydrate (potatoes, rice, or pasta) is good enough for me. As my old roommate Mia would say, carbs on carbs. I told my host family that I don't like to eat bread every day because it makes you fat (an exaggeration, but I couldn't figure out how to go into the specifics in Spanish). To which my host dad responded "El pan no engorda, la persona engorda." Which basically means the bread doesn't get fat the person gets fat as a way of saying that bread doesn't make you fat. Touche, but I'm still not eating it.

I also live with the funniest kid. Memo (his nickname) is 13 and is obsessed with the Titanic theme song. I at first thought that his repeated playing of this song was a joke, but no. He is also learning how to play this song on the recorder. Yes the middle school learning of the recorder has made it down to Guatemala. And lucky me I think that the only children in the entire world who like to practice the recorder live in my house.

On the phone