Guatemala, in sickness and in health

I´ve made it to the halfway point of my Guatemala trip, although not without mishap. Shortly after writing my last blog entry, I started feeling a little off. After my first day at the projet on Monday, I came home, and couldn´t sleep because my stomach was hurting so badly. Long story short, I didn´t make it into the school in Guatemala City on Tuesday, because my body was busy expelling the toxins that I´d ingested in the local cuisine, leaving me weak and feverish. Luckily, I recovered enough to make it into school on Wednesday, and started eating proper meals again on Thursday. Oh food, my old friend, how I missed you.

School has been going okay as well. The grade 2´s and 3´s have learned that I make a fun jungle gym, especially the boys, and they spend much of their time hanging off me. The grade 4 &5 girls have been a little slower to warm up to me, but I´m starting to have stilted conversations with some of them. Which is really my main obstacle - my near total lack of spanish. I mean, I know enough to do tourist stuff, but when it comes to being in a classroom for a full day, I´m mostly pretty lost, and have admittedly felt kind of useless much of the time. When I take the bus in in the morning, I´m filled with dread - not because the school is that horrible, but I think because the atmosphere of the neighbourhood is so depressing and opressive that it hits me like a strong smell every time we drive into Guatemala City. (Although, then again, that could be any of the number of actual strong smells that pervade Guatemala, such as diesel fuel, garbage, etc.)

Anyway, in a nutshel, the days are long, and not easy, but they have their moments. Many of the kids are so cute they make me want to puke - but in a totally good way.

This past weekend, I got to be a tourist for a couple of days. On Saturday, I went to Lake Atitlan, a deep lake surrounded by volcanoes a couple of hours outside of Antigua. The air was fresh, and the town I stayed in, Panajachel, was laid back and pretty - a perfect respite to my hectic urban Guatemalan week. I hung out on the beach there a bit - not a spectacular beach by any means, but any beach in a tropical country can´t be all bad. I took a boat trip to a nearby city, Santiago. There was a music festival just outside of Santiago - after getting off the boat, I took a Tuktuk there ("Tuktuk" being a type of taxi that consists of a scooter with a contraption built onto it to allow passengers to sit behind the driver. I presume it´s named after the sound it makes.) After riding in the tuktuk along the lakeside, passing mayan women washing clothes in the lake, I came to a field in the middle of nowhere where a makeshift stage was setup with a big band playing latin music, while a mostly white audience sat or stood or danced. That night, I ate dinner overlooking the water, with the lights of the town of San Pedro visible across the lake like a cluster of stars, and a quarter moon in the sky bright enough to make the silhouette of the nearby volcanoes visible.

Sunday, I went to Chichicastenango, famous for its sunday market day. As advertised, it was huge, crowded, busy, and haggle-tastic. I bought a bunch of crap, since that´s all there really is to do there.

Anyway, I´m exhausted as usual after my day of school. Hasta luego!