Mystery vegetable.

We went to the Spanish school today to arrange for Chris's classes next week. He will go four hours a day for five days and work with a one on one tutor for $90. He asked for a maestra who could sing and the woman said that people only sing in the shower. He starts Monday at 1 p.m., and I bet he will get his teacher singing before the week is through! I was torn because the school seemed so charming... there are tables for two set up all around the garden... but I'm going to spend the time writing instead.

From there, we walked to the shore and found a boat to take us across the lake to Santiago where we spent several hours wandering.

We didn't find out until we returned to Pana that today was a designated market day in Santiago but it was relatively clear because the streets were filled with vendors, again selling everything one could imagine from Bic razors to wood carved masks to shrimp. The markets are surprisingly quiet. On rare occasion, someone will bark their wares but mostly no and so the natural sounds of the women and men at their tasks are audible, like the sound of the women making tortillas: they are a small standing ovation to the rest of the vendors, surrounding their small grill clapping masa from one hand to the next and then throwing the patties down to sizzle on the stove. The smells are powerful and rich.

We also visited Saint James Church which was lovely. Chris commented and I agreed that aesthetically this was the most beautiful church we have seen yet in Mexico or Guatemala and was in very good repair which helps. The statues of saints that line both sides of the church are all covered in traditional Guatemalan attire, which is colorful and beautiful. The church has a tragic history, as does the country--one of their beloved American pastors, Father Stanley Rother, who served the parish from the 1960s until the 1980s was assassinated in the rectory in 1981 by death squads on behalf of an aggressive right wing faction of the Guatemalan army, who was not in favor of the church or the sanctuary it provided the people of the region during the war. He was killed in 1981; 10 other Catholic priests were assassinated the same year.

Each village we go to is marked by a distinctive style of dress and Santiago is notable for the purples the women wear in every shade from pale to deep and the men wear white short pants with black stripes and colorful woven belts.

We stopped for lunch at a taqueria (not to be confused with the Prosser student of the same name) and had vegetarian tacos that were so good Chris asked the man behind the grill to show him what all they contained. We won't easily re-create them because they had some vegetable in them that we had never seen before and probably will not be able to pick up at Jewel.

I finally decided, after being faced with such skillfully hand-woven textiles in every direction, to buy a huipile, but my gargantuan head wouldn't fit through the neck holes of any that the woman showed me at the booth at which I inquired. It probably didn't matter because I am more likely to hang the fabric as a decoration in my home than to ever go to a tailor and have the sides sewn up to wear (in the smaller villages, the huipiles come unfinished, as long rectangular pieces with neck holes), but in the moment I declined and moved on. Not much time had passed, but Chris and I were back at the shore looking for a boatman to take us back to Pana, when the same woman shuffled up with several more huipiles for me to try, having left her "store" and followed me in the hopes of making a sale. These were made for the big-headed among us so we bought one, and it is lusher blues on lush blues and just gorgeous.

The boat ride back would have caused a trip to the emergency room for anyone with hemorrhoids: the lake was choppy, the boat small, and we were sitting right at the front, but it provided a stellar view of the mountains and volcanoes and the town of Panajachel from the lake.

It was another good day, in a string of them. Chris made a nice dinner of cold salads and bread and wine and I'm off to bed to dream about what tomorrow will bring...