Week 17: Luz al final del túnel

A couple things happened this week worth sharing, although I can't say they're too exciting.

Numero uno, I tried some new fruits! (see? Very exciting week.) One was a custard apple (anona in Spanish). I think it looks like a dragon egg. Inside, as the name suggests, are a couple dozen fat shiny black seeds surrounded by creamy, custardy sections of fruit. You eat an anona by picking out a seed encased in fruit, sucking off the pulp and spitting out the seed. They're really delicious.



The other fruit was called loquat (níspero in Spanish). The best I could describe one is "a fig that tastes like a half-dried apricot whose hollow center is filled with fat brown seeds". I don't have a picture of them, but these are also tasty. Having the opportunity to try both of them is another one of the small pleasures of having my own place again; I buy a lot more produce these days, and I get it all from the mercado.

Numero dos, I bought my plane ticket home. The date is January 6th, 2011. Unfortunately, this is about two months earlier than I originally intended, but money and research constraints have forced me to change plans. The money aspect is simple: I just don't have enough of it to stay in Guatemala. But even if I stumbled across a pile of gold tomorrow morning, I'd still have to go back to the States early to work on my research for medical school. I had originally planned on getting IRB (institutional review board) approval for said research while I was in Guatemala, then coming back in March with it ready to be churned out. However, I've discovered that getting a proposal accepted while the primary investigator is out of the country is next to impossible. So I have to head back early to make sure the proposal gets approved in time for me to complete my research before 4th year starts back up at the end of April.

On a related note, Caleb is coming to visit on December 20th to spend a couple weeks traveling around Guatemala with me. After that we both head back to the States together. So this means I have roughly one more month of class and clinic. Suddenly it feels like I have very little time left here, but with a ton of things left to do.