Monica, my moody host daughter

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Hola mi amigos. Today is a special day, for you are receiving an update just three days after my last update! Muy bien. Don't get your hopes up though, this won't be a regular thing, I'm in town because the one cash machine that takes my stupid English Debit Card (despite the fact that all the banks have Cirrus displayed) was broken last time I was in so I had to return. In fact, due to the shortness of the time, I am going to give you a few extracts from my diario. The only update I have to the below is that I think I have a second case of the shits coming on and was very glad a few minutes ago that the internet place had a toilet I could use.

12 8 07

I woke from my collosal sleep at six thirty this morning to be ready for the trip to Ceibal that Mateo had organised.ñ Breakfast was fried platanos and bread. I arrived before everyone else except Oli, just as I had done yesterday morning, and we waited in the light rain as everybody slowly arrived. I bought some fruit and bread for lunch and tried a fruit with a big stone in it that I had seen the locals in Santa Elena buy in the market. You eat them skin and all and they were bitter tasting. Hannah, who used to live in Costa Ria bought them. I wonder if Costa coffee comes from there. She is very pretty and a nice girl but so thin that I often think she looks like she had cancer when she is wearing her headscarf.

We got on the two microbuses that had been diverted from their usual route into Santa Elena for our use. There were about six Guatemalan teenagers, a whole load of volunteers and the drivers, friends of the driver and the money boys. The money boys usually sit in the back, direct people where to sit when they are tryinmg to cram in as many people as possible and take the money whilst the microbus is on the move. There were four of us on the back row and each of us on the end had our shoulders sticking out of the window

(To summarise the rest Ceibal was good - I hope the beginning of my next diary is better than that one)

13 8

I didn{t go to sleep as it happens, I just6 lay on my bed and listened to music and read a bit of 'Tom Brown{s Schooldays'. I have still not found out why it desrves to be a Penguin Popular CLassic but I will talk more about it when I{m finished. Then, there being no library because it was a Sunday, I actually learnt some Spnaish. I have found a second wind I think. This afternoon despues de mucho trabajo, I slept for about three hours and missed the start of my Spanish lesson (again). I was going to make it my last anyway. Instead I tried to learn some words and some grammer and I came along somewhat.

I got up half an hour or so earllier this morning because I felt I had been too lazy and had too much fun recently but on my way up the death hill, I ran into Sophia who redirected me to the school just by mi casa where Monica, my moody host daughter attends. It is a primary school that opens in the mornings only but today it had been shut for a teachers' meeting. Those who had taught in the school before we sceptical about this, they said actual teaching was probably an hour and a half a day and the rest of the time the kinds messed about, ran into each others classrooms and the teachers pretended to have important business to attend to. I would like to fo in one afternoon and see it all. What's more, there was one teacher who stayed and taught (the good one) suggesting the others took off without reason. ALl the kids turned up despite the directos insistance that they had been told on Friday.

Anyway, we took the opportunity to clean up the school...

14 08 07

!Hola! Rosa is shouting at Jerson again, it really is quite tiresome. I was working at the school again today, up at six and there fore seven after a breakfast of pancakes with piña marmalade. They really are pretty good and I always take care to add muchos to my gracias on these days in the hope that my appreciation means I get them more.

We had three more truck loads today. There was a whole lot of trash in that there school. We got it done more quickly though because we had all the systems down, for example how best to stack the truck so that we could empty it quickly at the dump, which is as much work as loading it almost. The kids from a couple of classes all came out to help for a while too which speeded things up but worried me when a little boy would push a wheelbarrow full of concrete blocks around and others would try to carry it down steps, or when wet slippy would was dumped on said steps. I did two of the trips to the dump and was thoroughly tired afterwards. I have a lost a lot of weight too and my shorts keep dropping to around my hip bone. My tan is coming along nicely though. There was only one tarantula today...

Well there you have it, a short summary of my last few days, savour the detail while you can.

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