I have a feeling that the events of this morning will come to be one of the funniest and most told stories from our times in Guatemala, but right now in this moment, it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life, or at least in the top 3.

I am quite at home here in our Encanto house as Luca fondly named it a few years ago.  I know how to change over the gas when one of the tanks is out, I’ve learned how to tell when the pilot light is out in the dryer, I know where the cistern is and how to turn on our pila, we’ve had the bomberos come to the house to fill the cistern when it’s run out,  so needless to say we have a handle on how to manage the house.  That is until I blew up the kitchen today 😣

We got an alert that we were going to be without power and water today from 6am-7pm. So yesterday we prepped to ensure our fridge would make it through the power outage and filled the pila with water so that we had water to flush our toilets. 

At 5am I got up to ensure that the most important of things was done which was making the coffee. I turned on the oven for a French toast bake that I prepped to throw in the oven.  But then… the coffee machine didn’t work, and I got busy fixing that and checked the oven to ensure it was getting hot.  The pilot light has known to go out often so when the oven wasn’t getting hot I went to light it again.  Well apparently it had indeed gone out and the gas was building in the oven for a while and my relighting of the pilot light set off quite the explosion.  If anyone remembers the movie back draft… you now have a pretty good visual of what took place right in front of my eyes.  A huge rolling ball of fire came up and out of the oven with enough force that it moved the entire oven almost a foot forward in my direction.  The ball of fire 🔥 then continued up towards our domed ceiling.  The force of the explosion forced out the kitchen window along with all the bracing for the window that was screwed into the cement walls.  Needless to say between the sounds of the explosion and my screams I woke the whole house… well most of it. My brother later said if you want to know what Volcan Fuego sounds like erupting… that was it.  I am pretty sure I was in complete shock as I stood there not knowing what to do next with peices if the wall all over the kitchen (thank God for plaster walls). My entire body was shaking in shock and I can only imagine how crazy I looked. My mom later told me that my slippers (the only thing burned thank God) were in front of the stove and not on my feet.  It wasn’t until then that we realized I had been blown back right out of them. 

Also I would be remise not to mention that we all were also woken up at 1am by a magnitude 5 earthquake that was only 56 miles from us.  It was definitely not the start to the day that I was looking for and day continued on with a few more snafus including a couple more broken things and me running close line like right into a metal support wire.

On the bright side when I went to shower and looked in the mirror I still had my eyebrows (I was certain they were burned right off), we have yet to lose power or water, the stove was able to be fixed and didn’t need replaced, and the broken kitchen window may lead to a window that is able to be opened (I’ve been wanting this for years) so things might just end on the upside after all.

And you can’t beat the view from our rooftop in the morning.