Juicing my mind grapes

So this Saturday I've been extra busy learning new things.  Here's what I learned today:

1. A pregnant woman's touch, in Guatemalan culture, can apparently cure wounds.  I was helping my local friend Naomi with her English homework (she's in her first year of university) and while we were working, a woman from the community approached, with her young son who had just burned his finger.  She wanted to buy burn cream, but Naomi's store didn't have any in stock.  Naomi, however, told the woman to go get toothpaste and have a pregnant woman rub the toothpaste on her son's burn.  That would do the trick, she explained, since everybody knows that pregnant women have a special touch.  The mother agreed and left to go find the toothpaste, and the pregnant woman.

2. I now can bone a chicken!  Jareau is making his very scrumptious chicken-dumpling soup tonight (which will certainly be featured on The Campur Cook) and had me come over to watch the process of preparing the chicken breast.  After I got over my initial squeamishness at handling the slippery carcass, I dove right in and boned my very first chicken!  I even held the chicken heart before throwing it into the stock pot. 
Maybe next time, I won't feel the need to scrub my hands with bleach afterwards. 

3. In a collectivist society, my front stoop is not my front stoop, but everybody's stoop.  It's always bothered me that people sit on my front stoop (blocking my exit) on market-days, and later leave their trash/cold tortillas behind.  Today, when I was leaving to run to the market, I open my front door to find that my stoop has been temporarily converted into a cement-mixing pile for the workers paving the pathway in front of the tienda next door.  Instead of mouthing off to the construction workers, I muttered my annoyances in English and managed, with difficulty, to circumnavigate the cement pit.  Upon later reflection, I decided that this is yet another one of those culture isms that I just need to get over.  In America we have such a strong culture of ownership: we freak out if the neighbor's dog even looks at our lawn.  But what for?  My front stoop is not inside of my house, and therefore it's fair game.  Everyday I find my "that's mine-this is yours" tendencies to be more and more embarrassing.  So I've resolved to get over it, suck it up, and from now on, walk around the cement pit, the seated strangers, or the sleeping chucho, resentment-free.  After all, it's everybody's stoop.