We are staying at the moment with a local family, of Melida Ortez and Domingo Rodrigez.
The first week they had 3 granddaughters staying with them = Melida 8, Melani 5 and Mariordi 4, but this week only Melanie remains.
We have a plain room with shared toilet and shower (hot - yeah!) which is in a 2 storied building seperate from the family's quarters. At the moment 2 other students live here as well, they are both from USA.
Kent has class each day from 1-5pm, one on one teaching with Flora and lots of learning. Spanish is both easy and very hard to learn, lots of words are very similar but there are lots of endings to learn.
Carol has been exploring the pueblos surrounding the lake with Gary (her brother-out-law,ex-brother-in-law, whatever).
They have travelled by 'picop' = pickup truck where you get to stand in the back and feel as well as see the scenery. On one foray into the hills above San Pedro they met and befriended a local family wh speak the local lingua 'Tzutuhil'. They visited them several times and attended a womens group meeting with them at which the women and children sang.
At one fiesta in a pueblo called San Pablo the local patron saint was carried through the streets on a huge heavy patform and 30' strings of crackers were lit in the streets as well as some huge aerial mortar shells.
We thought they were dynamiting a road or blasting rock somewhere but no it is just for celebrating. We were joined this week by another of Carols' brother-out-laws, Bob, also from USA. Bob and Gary have now travelled on to greener pastures and we may well meet up again for more adventures.
We are still enjoying out time here, the only bad things are the price of restaurant food and the loud speaker system in the church across the road which celebrates with drums and trumpets for 2 hours every evening. We intend to move on to Antigua on Sunday and maybe north from there to taste a day or 3 on the Caribean coast in Guat and Honduras before heading to the West Coast again and south to Nicaragua.
