Wednesday, June 21, 2006

some thoughts...

ok, so i've been making a note of things i want to write here but keep forgetting to, so here you go. first of all, i don't think cars here have to pass smog, becuase none of them would. the chicken busses are especially horrible, spewing great clouds of black black smoke from their behinds. also, it rains pretty much every afternoon, around 3:00, but is warmish in the mornings. there are funeral homes everywhere, i'm not sure why. i guess maybe a lot of people die? who knows. also, everything here is super cheap (at least the stuff that i buy is). today kirsten and i went out with dulce to look for a sweatshirt for kirsten, and i told here that i wanted to buy a watch (i've been carrying around my alarm clock) and a calculator (so that i know how much i'm paying for stuff). i got the watch and the calculator for 10 quetzales each, which is about $1.40 each, and i also bought a bottle of water and a box of tic tacs for 5.60 quetzales, which is around 65 cents, i think. dulce also showed me a yarn store, and i bought two skeins of really pretty wool for 6.50 quetzales each, which is like 85 cents. also, a house call from a doctor is around $20. i like guatemala a lot. furthermore, i saw a gym called shaddai gym, and if i'm not mistaken shaddai is another word for god. the moral of the story is, the gyms here have weird names. also, when people answer the phone here, they say "alo?" and when they hang up they say "feliz dia" (literally, happy day). i'd never heard other spanish speakers say either of those things before. another thing i hadn't anticipated was the music. the radio is usually on in my house, and yesterday i heard "hollaback girl" and "another one bites the dust", both sung in spanish. it was hilarious, and dulce told me she likes the english versions better. for something completely different, last night i had a dream that sophie brinker (sorry if you don't know her, she's a friend of mine from band) was driving me somewhere in her car, and we were driving on a river, and then a great huge snake came underneath the car and lifted it up, and then we crashed into a family who were riding bikes on the river, and there was a little boy in front. then we went to a university to get medical attention, and part of my skull had been ripped off but they just put ice on it and told me it would be fine. anyone want to interpret that?


so, last night another student came to live at our house, her name is sonia and she's 19 and she's from germany. she's really pretty, but also really quiet, because she doesn't speak any spanish and her english isn't great. she's staying here for three monthes though, so hopefully that will change. this morning we taught the girls numbers in english, which some of them already knew, so it was a little easier, but they were still really squirrely. in like 10 minutes yosta (i think) and i are going to meet to make a plan for tomorrow, when we'll teach them colors in english. today on the playground we played tag, but when you tagged someone you were supposed to yell "treinta!" i think, which means thirty. i don't get it. maybe i heard them wrong. also, the youngest in the class is 4, and anna, the old one, is 12. we had them all tell us how old they were in english, that's how i know. tomorrow night they're having merengue lessons here, i hope i meet some people so that i can stop hanging around with kirsten. she doesn't seem to mind, but i'd like to diversify my options a little. also, she's 27, i'd like to find some folks closer to my age. there's a guy who's also volunteering at manuel ortega named matt, and i think he's my age... anyhow, i know they're out there, i just have to find them.

hasta luego!

Posted by Sarah @ 4:01 PM