The watermelon story

There was a Guatemalan woman at Mariam's work, ROCA, who attended regularly scheduled meetings with her fellow expatriates. She would tell Mariam about these meetings, and Mariam couldn't understand why they were always having these "watermelon" meetings. Turns out, it was more like when I thought people were saying "for all intensive purposes," when in reality, they're saying "for all intents and purposes." Try saying "Guatemalan" with a Guatemalan accent, and you get watermelon. In the same vein, there was a kid who thought he had something called "65 roses" because he kept overhearing his parents talking about his cystic fibrosis. Erin had a little article to this effect in her room at the PFT lab. Any of you have misheard phrases or lyrics (my two favorite are "tryin' to keep my teenage driving age" in that blind melon song which apparently is "tryin to keep my jeans dry today" and- this one is uncanny, and may ruin this song for you- Nina Simone crooning "let me keep the pie" instead of "ne me quitte pas") that you want to share?
Ok, that was supposed to start of this blog of our travels with a bang- more of pfft if you ask Mariam, but whatever, she's not typing. Here's the scoop: we're heading to Xela, Guatemala, for 4 months to see if we can learn Spanish and help out with whatever people there need help with. We're leaving in a week. Still in the planning stage, which is exciting, because it involves realizing all the contact lense prescriptions and cavities we're not going to have time to fill, the clothes and other basic necessities that we'll have to go without, and basically all the ways we've crapped the bed. The bed-crapping is palpable, I guess you could say. Which is fun, in its own cute, anxious, malodorous way. Mariam has just promised to write the next post.