Well... this week our posts will probably take a different tone as we practice living here more than we visit. We'll get back to touring next week, but Chris is in class four hours a day this week and so our options for jumping from town to town are more limited.
About his class: his tutor's name is Florinda and she is Mayan. It won't surprise anyone to learn that Chris quickly discovered that she has a genetic renal disease from which her mother and daughter also suffer. He is probably the only student at Jabil Tinement whose first vocabulary word is kidney (rinon). Her family lives above Panajachel and worships in a cave in the hills just above our place. Her parents both work for the same American man who has a vacation property here, and they have for 25 years; they are gardeners. Her mother--who is illiterate and speaks only Kakichel--gave birth to 12 children but only eight survived, and she has two children of her own: a two year old and a five year old. Both of her children go to school for now, but she told Chris that many Guatemalans drop out of even public school because of the expense of school supplies like pencils and notebook paper and probably the income lost from the children not working. At the end of the week, Chris is going to bring some basic school supplies for Florinda's children.
Because he didn't defy death enough yesterday in the incident that will heretofore be referred to as The Last Time Chris Ever Kayaked, Chris rented a rickety mountain bike in town to get back and forth from his class, and the chain fell off on his first trip up the hill. He is going to see about an upgrade tomorrow, but I would be surprised if they had anything that was much fancier than falling apart.
I spent the time Chris was in class writing, and since I had more than five hours of uninterrupted time I started at the beginning and read through the whole piece before putting any new words down. It has been a very long time since I have had the luxury of time to do that and I had forgotten, actually, some smaller scenes, including one about Frank McCourt. A sad irony.
Something that is hard to understand is that everyone claims it is winter here right now, including Florinda. I don't really get it, because we haven't passed the equator and we are in the same hemisphere, but they call this winter and it is their rainy season according to our Rough Guide. We experienced only one staccato burst of rain last Monday, but in the late afternoon today there was a slight shift in the air, the temperature dropped just a bit and right now there is a fantastic lightening storm outside as I write this. Our second floor has huge picture windows at either end, with the lake on one side and a mountain on the other and it is spectacular: the sun is setting, there is a pink swath beyond the volcano and beneath purple-grey clouds. I wouldn't be shocked if the power goes out here in response to storms, and the thunder and lightening is like a call to arms: each time the sky lights up, we both sit up a little straighter and take stock of our surroundings again.
Last night we played each other in an online Scrabble club Chris registered us for and if that makes us sounds lame, consider this: a person who decided a great user name for herself would be SUSIESUQ (yep, not susie q but susie suck) thought it was interesting enough to pop in and watch us.
P.S. Congratulations to Liz John on her engagement!
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