Semana Dos- Tiempo pase rapido

Sunday- Dia 7

Ate at Sabe Rico, yummy refrescas, comida organica, y muy lindos jardin. It would be an intimate, romantic dining spot, if it had not been mid-Sunday with Ron and Christian, Ron arguing in Spanish with the waitress about why we could not order from the lunch menu until 2, and Christian giving a scathing review of the jugos organicos con granos, which he described as being “green and tasting like grass”... and yet they both claim this is their favorite restaurant in Antigua (la comida y jugo fue muy rico). Hung out with Sara and Matt at Bagel Barn to blog and study verb tenses, then heard Ron’s Sunday sax solo at Sobre Mesa. Finished the night with a trip to Café Rainbow for drinks, tapas, y musica typico de Jack Johnson en espanol… a great band that we hope to hear again next Sunday. I love their drummer- he’s like a curly-haired puppet pounding away happily on his drums. They look like they’re having a ton of fun playing.

Monday- Dia 8

Today was again busy and flew by. Spent longer than I wanted uploading pics and finishing the JMG blog… glad it’s over, and I won’t ever take so many pics again! Observed more than helped in the primaria classes, although I did get Marcella to ask me to print a class set of multiplication tables after I explained to her that it might help with students who didn’t know their math facts yet. Poco a poco…. Lesson with Majo and rode back to town with Ron to go to Alexis’ birthday party at Ciencento, where it turned out no other teachers showed up, but all the volunteers did. Gracias a los voluntarios, I said. We have all kinds of free time on our hands. A bit depressing for me, I asked Alexis how old she was (20) and she asked how old I was, to which I said, “No necessito saber. Mas que tuyo.” Dinner con mi familia, sopa de frijoles negras y chilaquiles (more like an omlette here). Copied my lesson notes since I’d left my notebook at the school, and now I’m too tired to do much else than knit a bit and head to bed. Apparently I start sounding like Dr. Suess when I am tired. No puedo pensar mucho. Estoy terminando por la noche!


Semana 2- Can’t believe I’ve been here 2 ½ weeks already. I quickly ended my journaling routine after week 1. Sadly there is much of the second week that I cannot even remember at this point. I spent many days helping in Marcella’s room, although I don’t think I accomplished much more than the multiplication tables, which I’m afraid the kids still don’t know exactly what to do with, although they happily pasted them into their notebooks.

Wednesday I went with 10 other volunteers from Scheel Center & Dreamer Center to shovel mud out of houses in San Miguel-Ciudad Vieja… very depressing, yet impressive to see the whole community joining together to help their neighbors. I am still surprised at my own cultural block against understanding the reasons for shoveling 3 feet of mud out of a house that has been utterly destroyed except for the cement floor and cinder block walls. Hard for a chic who takes insurance and money for granted, to comprehend how little these people have and how much they value the little that they do own.

Friday night we went to Ocelote to hear Ron’s Friday gig, and made friends dancing with Adam, the new Trinity grad volunteer of the week. We seem to be arriving at a rate of about one per week, to continue through August, which is sort of fun because it makes every week seem new and an excuse to reaquaint ourselves with the city (ie, lots of nights out!) Hecho a Bailar gave Nele a lesson, and Christian outdid himself cha-cha-ing with me. Saturday 7 of us went to Lago Atitlan (see pics), obviously all of us craving the shameless-tourist experience. The weekend went on to become even more ridiculous, with la lluvia, 35 dancing reinas hablan en quetzechal, mas de 24 horas de la lluvia, spiders in my bed, co-ed slumber party, Farkle!, Llaki que conosces todos los gringos en Panajachel, transportation fiascos (gracias a Dios por Katitlan! Tu eres la mejor guia, mi amiga!), mas lluvia, el tiempo guatemalteca, el method extraño del transportation en bus en Guatemala (¿José Miguel? ¿José Miguel?), demasiado lluvia!, y cansions americanos traducté en espanol para Hecho a Bailar… loco!
By Sunday night, I was soo happy to be dry and sitting at Luna de Miel with a massive crepe de Nutella y frase con alemendos y the manzanila, meanwhile plugged in to every electronic device I brought with me (texting on my American cell phone to find my missing roommate, answering a call on the Guatemalan cell, IMing with Dan, uploading photos from my camera, checking e-mail)-- that I didn’t even care how ridiculously American I looked. And a good thing I was there, too, since apparently the only way to really get in touch with people in Antigua to relay important messages is to run into them in a café (as my roommate’s friend did just then). Like the other day, when I was walking down my street, thinking about how I needed to call Majo to change our lesson, when instantly she appeared, speeding toward me on her motociclette in the rain. Who needs technology when you see someone you know every 10 minutes?