Beware With the Kid!

I think all of us have been naughty unless once in our lives. And if not, I have a big notice for you; you are one of the most boring persons in the planet! Obviously there are people that commit more pranks than others and there are different kinds and levels of pranks. My parents say I am one of the naughtiest persons in this world. But I think that every dad and mom thinks his or her son or daughter is the naughtiest kid. Anyways I think I will give myself a 9.9 in a scale of 10 in the gravity of my pranks. How would you score yourself? Or maybe the correct question is: How would your parents grade you?

I am naughty since I was little. I thought before writing this, about one particular example, but there are many other pranks I just can`t omit. One of the first ones was when I was like one year old. My mother said she was working while I played in the floor. But she noticed that I was mysteriously quiet and I was anymore in the same room with her. She called me and I didn`t answered, I just stayed quiet while my mom looked for me a little concerned already. Suddenly she heard a big noise, like if there had been a little explosion in the house. She immediately ran to the room from which it came from and found me sitting still in the floor. I was sitting next to a socket, which had smoke coming out from it. When my mother moved closer she saw a black and twisted spoon stocked in the socket. Then she looked at me to see if I was all right, and all I said after threading that spoon in the socket and being nearly electrified was: se enojo la luz (light got angry).

A half year had passed when my mom noticed, again I was to quiet. But this time, since I was older, when she asked me what I was doing I said: nava (nothing). Then she saw a lot of black hairs coming out of the back part of the living room couch. And when she got near she saw the disaster! I had cut my hair with her scissors and also my poor dog`s hair. I wasn`t too bad, but my mascot was all full of spaces without hair, and even its skin could be seen. That time I was spoiled, and my mother said a phrase I would never let her forget:  “Why did you do this to the dog? It loves you a lot!” And after that, every time I did something to my poor dog and my mother spoiled me I said: “It loves me a lot”.

When I got two my parents sent me to school, I didn`t cried in my first day, but they said I looked at them really offended. This was one of my most naughty years. I bit my classmates daily, and my mom spent half of her time writing apologizing notes to the parents of the victims. It didn`t matter I was the smallest one in my class, I always fighted for the things I wanted. No one in the kinder garden got safe from me, I even bite my best friend Julito but I was too proud to apologize and I said he had hit me with the lunge box before. One day when the celebration of Valentine’s Day was made in my kinder my parents received a phone call. There had passed only 2 hours when they had to pick me up from school to drive me to the hospital. What happened was that I found a chili plant in the school named “chiltepe” and I started playing with its juice. But all of a sudden my eyes started itching so when I scratched them all the chili`s hot juice fell into my eyes and it really burned. My mom asked the director how could they had a chili plant in a kinder garden, but she said the chili plant was in a special garden that was locked and only she had the key. And everybody was trying to discover how I, a two year old, found the way in.

Obviously I made hundreds of pranks after these ones for example I destroyed a statue. I was 4 years old and I was in a museum with my parents. There was a huge bronze statue in the entrance that was the face of the museum. Its art was that it was made of many bronze arms that were putted in top of the others and weren`t welded they just stand up for their perfect balance. But when I saw it I just saw a perfect place to lie down and take a break, but I misbalanced it and all the bronze arms got separated and fell into the floor. That day we didn`t entered to the museum, but I learned the reason of the posters that say “don`t touch”. So, tell me, have you ever learned from one of your pranks?

Nice Climate? I Will Say Bizarre

I think all of us, Guatemalans, are lucky to have such a climate. In my opinion, if you ignore all its security, economic and politic problems, Guatemala is a great place to live in. It has been blessed with a perfect climate that helps everything grow well and fastly. Here you can throw a seed in the earth and if you come back in one week I can ashore you there is already a small plant with small green leaves trying to open its path through the earth. Maybe these could be seen as something insignificant, but a great part of the country’s economy depends on it.

Sometimes we don’t appreciate things, as the climate, until we lose them. Last year we suffered a big catastrophe with Agatha. For many people this name means the loose of their beloved ones, a curse, or the destruction of their houses and jobs. This huge storm was devastating for a lot of people but especially for poor people that was the most vulnerable. Maybe people never imagined how a windy day or small rain, the one of the winter afternoons, could turn into a strong storm as Agatha was.

 I remember that week pretty well, and it was all rain. It never stopped raining; the sky was always full with gray and creepy clouds, and all my yard’s trees shacked as if they were small daisies instead of big and strong oak trees. I was, as always, sick and with that cold climate I wasn’t able to go out of my house. All I saw about the storm was through my window and TV. I was in school vacations and I got to say that they were some of the saddest and most boring vacations I have ever had. All the days instead of watching my favorite TV shows I saw news with my parents about the storm.

One of the worst things of this storm was that it occurred in the wrong place in the wrong moment. Because most of Guatemalans that don’t leave in the capital city have small cardboard made houses, with no floor or windows. These houses are also built in mountains and insecure lands, and erosion makes the houses fall apart. Also it occurred after the sand rain. Yes, I said sand rain.

Maybe in other places it rains or snow falls. But you remember when I said Guatemala’s climate was really special? Well, that is the proof; instead of a simple rain in Guatemala we had sand rain. What happened was the same that had happened centuries ago with the Vesuvius. The Pacaya volcano expulsed a lot of stones, magma, fire, and ashes from its crater. Then these ashes went up into the sky and spread all over the city, and since it was dark approximately at 8:00 p.m. no one noticed. Later it started falling from the big and smoky clouds as rain.

I remember at first I thought it was normal rain, because with the sand there was also normal rain falling from the sky. But when I saw my balcony I got really surprised when I saw it was full of sand. I went out to see what was going on and I got really impressed. I thought I was crazy when I felt I didn’t got wet with the “rain” and all my body was turned black. But when my little brother said it was raining sand I was shore I had seen everything.

It was not the first time it happened here in Guatemala. But last time was like eighteen years ago and I wasn’t even burned. And my parents were in a trip so they didn’t saw it. Doesn`t matter how much problems this rain brought to our country I feel fortunate and lucky to be one of the persons that saw it and felt it. I don’t know what other bizarre events our special climate will bring us, but it would have to be something really strange to impress me more that this “rain”. Sadly I think Agatha is not going to be the last storm, because meteorologists are already announcing another one is coming this winter, but we can pray so that it wouldn’t take so many lives as Agatha did.

A Significant Person

May be I`m not the best one describing this person, because I just see him an hour peer week. And he is also a really mysterious person. He can talk with you for hours about his life stories without letting you know anything of his personal life. You might think it’s impossible, but he finds the way to hide himself with his eloquence and honesty. He is also very unpredictable, and always surprises me with every new detail I get to know about him. But without mattering I can`t understand his secret life, my piano professor has been someone significant in my life.

Everything started when I was ten years old. In that time my father used to school and back home. And I went to school a half our later than I actually do. But that half hour really mattered, because all the birds were already awaked, and the sun was already up in the sky to illuminate the day with its warm light. There was no morning fog; instead, the sky looked of a clean light blue. You know, the color in which the sky looks after a rainy night. It was January, school had just started, and since there was a lot of wind, there were no clouds.

That day when I went out of school and my father was driving home, I saw an announcement. It was hanged in a big oak tree in the school`s street. It had the shape of a piano, which caught my attention, and it had a telephone number written on it. I started shouting and pointing at it in the minute I saw it, So that my dad putted attention to it. When he saw it he fastly wrote the number in a ticket. And I made him promise he would call to that telephone number.

I had been talking about taking piano lessons with my dad years before, but there were no piano teachers that gave classes in the weekend. And I didn’t had other free day, for I had ballet classes all the week. So, I had no teacher, but I had bought a keyboard already. And I was trusting that whoever had hanged that announcement would be my teacher. If he had not been the one, I would probably have left the keyboard unproductive again.

Finally my dad called the professor and my first class was on Saturday of that same week at 7:30 am. The day before, I didn’t even slept, because I was too nervous about the class. I started imagining how my professor would look like, how he would give me the class, and what he would teach me. In the morning I dressed up, and without even taking breakfast, I went down stairs to wait for my new professor’s arrival. When the door got opened all my doubts and questions about him were answered. There was only one thing left; the class.

My professor talked to my parents a long time before the class, and I only received like 20 minutes of piano lessons. But they are still some of the most important minutes of my life. Because once I started playing the piano I couldn’t stop. I think it became part of me. And as the piano, my professor became very important to me. He is kind, polite, and he dedicates a lot of his time to teach each of his students. And every time you see him giving classes, you can easily notice that he really loves what he does.

There had passed only 9 months or less when my professor asked my parents if they would like to keep a piano in the house. And he said I would be able to play it instead of the keyboard in reward of the favor we were going to do to him. They obviously accepted the deal and by the next class I was already playing that beautiful black piano.The reason for which I mention this is not only because it really meant a lot for me to have a piano, but to show you the kind of person he is. Because I know his house, and he has plenty space to keep this piano. But he decided to give it to me. And he set up the proposal as if there were my parents and me the ones that were making him the favor of keeping the piano, when he was the one who helped us.

Now 5 and a half years after the day I met him I steel don’t know too much about him. But I know he is from El Salvador, that he has a 5 year old child from his second marriage, that he plays the accordion , he had directed a chorus, and has parents in China. I also know that he is around 60 years old. Not as my little brother used to think when he asked my parents our professor had knew Beethoven.

My piano professor is one of the best professors I know. Because he has not only helped me wining the first places in various piano contests, but he has also helped me finding my style. Every musician has one of his or her own, which makes him or her unique in comparison with the others. I like to play pieces in minor, mostly Beethoven`s sonatas, and I like more dramatic pieces than lovely and romantic ones. Other thing that identifies me is that I seat really separated from the piano, in the edge of the piano bench. This is funny because people always ask me if I don’t feel like falling down, because that makes them nervous. And last week someone asked my professor the same question when he was playing the accordion. So we just laughed and he continued teaching me the Pathetique Sonata; which I have to rehearse until I see him again in Saturday. Maybe this time I can learn more about piano and of one very significant person in my life.

I really don`t know why, but when I read the words changing places I think of moving places. Maybe moving and changing is not the same thing, because not everything moves, and almost everything changes. But I think both of them bring us to something new. Every time a color is changed in the sky or a person crosses to the left instead of the right, something new is created in result. Life is full of decisions to take. And some people is afraid of taking them, but I don`t see myself as one of them.

I always have loved to throw myself into the world to see what happens, but sometimes, this makes me imprudent. A good example was when I decided to paint my room of light pink. I have to say I hated that girly color in the moment I first saw it in my wall, but my parents had already bought a gallon of that expensive paint. With every brushstroke I wished for any other color, but that was how my room had to stay. The drama didn`t lasted to long, by the second day, I got truly in love with my pink room. The color was well, and was the same I chose in the paint store one day before starting painting. And it took me sometime to realize that the problem was in me, because I got refused to change.

Last year I decided to paint again my room, because it was nice for an eleven year old, but I was fourteen and it seemed to girly for me. I have some problems taking decisions some times, so my mom waited a whole year for me to chose a color, so that she could buy the paint. That day we didn`t stopped painting, My throat felt tight and rough, and my head hurt for the smell of the paint, but I wished a lot to see my room with its new colors. I chose to paint it all white with one brown wall. So that it combined with my furniture, which is all white with dark brown details. Other pro about painting the wall brown, was that I could chose to have my room with almost any color, and I wouldn`t be forced to have only pink or yellow things. After a long time of waiting, the moment of truth arrived; my mom would start painting the brown wall. I crossed my fingers and wished with all my heart for it to look nice, and it did.

My room looked pretty nice, but it needed more color, because it was all brown and white. So in a trip my parents, my brother and I did to Antigua I buy a bedding of patch work. It was of a strawberry red with small yellow details. It looked perfect in my room, because my room mixes modern style with Guatemalan and Spanish culture. I have an iron, rustic bed head, and other iron details. My room has three windows, one in the roof a small and circular one in one side and a big one in the brown wall that extends from the roof to the floor with a colonial style that opens into my balcony.

Sometimes when I see my room I try to remember how it used to be. And I feel a little melancholic because I know that is not only the room the one that had been changing, also me.  That little girl who had painted her room of light pink now prefers it dark brown. And all the toys and dolls have been changed for makeup and an ipod. The bedding that used to be light purple or pink and full of flowers is now light red. In my closet I have more high heels than sneakers, and more elegant blouses than Tshirts. Now, my mirror is higher than it used to be, so that I can see my face instead of just my chin.

Many things of my room have been changed with me, but others have stayed. Maybe I don`t sleep with my teddy bear anymore, but I steel kip it to remember how I felt every time I hold it when I was three years old and my parents had just bought it. My room didn`t changed alone, it changed because I changed. And all my infancy toys had not changed; they were just moved to other place. Some were gifted to other girls that need them more than I need them now, and others like my teddy bear stay to help me remember how everything was before.