Week Two

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The time is flying past. But I'm back to a Spanish keyboard so expect lots of mistakes!

Sunday afternoon I did get to the \presbyterian church in La Esperenza - there is urban area area the way there. The music was slower tyhan I rememberf in my childhood, and we had a very slow organist then! Of course it was the pastor playing! He invited my to preach and Valeria and I to sing but Valerie turned him down for us! My sore throat seems better today so hope it was a minor passing thing. We took a taxi back and Valerie paid for both of us as I put my last Q20 in the offering. But the driver got lost and could not find my address. Once I started walking but he came and got me again.. Finally he found it and he wanted another Q10. I gave him all my loose change, which was about Q2.

Yesterday we took a 40 minute trip to a small Mayan village about 20km from here. It emant using the mini-buses to a very crowded market and then a chicken bus (they are all old American school buses). There was a Mayan shrine behind the Catholic Church (sort of) which has behind glass what is said to be a skeleton found 200 years ago when they were digging to build houses. Some archeological students wanted 40 years ago to take it and test to see if it is real but between the time they were there and the time they returned to get it two babies were born with holes in their ehads and \i think another abnormality so then the community refused permnission, feeling the abnormal births were punishment for giving permission originally. They don't care if it is real or artificial. It is only about two feet high and the face is really all you see as it is fully dressed with crown and cape - the face is maybe 2 inches high and the glass case is very dirty and it is dark so you cannot see much. Therfe is an Xray hanging with many other plaques on the wall that is supposed to be of a man cured of a disease showing the saint in the xray. People go there to light candles of all colours, either to reqeust particular blessings or to ask for punishment for others. It cost me Q10 to take a picture of the room which is quite dark and we think there were rats scurrying around in the ceiling. The big RC church was closed so we didn't see the inside of it. Many people light candles at the Mayan shrine and then go to confession at the RC church.

On the way back about 25 of us were packed into a mini-bus and the kid who hangs out the door window soliciting passengers was still looking for more! The cost was Q1 for the minibus and Q1.50 for the chicken bus.

Learning and remembering the uses of the two different verbs for {to be} is driving me nuts. One student told me yesterday his father speaks twelve languages and the only way to go is forget writing and just listen to the sounds.

Tonight at 6PM we ahve a mini-conference on the Mayan calendar. Tomorrow is teaching English to kids again, and Thursday is a movie on the suffering of kids during the war years. Saturday I have decided to skip the hike up the volcano with the Scouts in order to go with the school to Huehuetenango, a regional government centre in the mountains about 2 hours from here. we will also see near it an old archeological site of Mayan ruins of the Mam people, the second largest of the 22 language groups in Guatemala. I'm not sure I'm ready for a volcano climb anyway as they are quite strenuous.

Hasta la vista!

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Comments

[Graham Salkeld]

ive been reading
hi al me and my dad and mom were watching the blogs flow by and i didnt realy get as much info from it as they did so basicly this is a question.