just so excited!

as promised yesterday i was going to bring my camera to school so that i could show you how environment helps learning. true to my word i brought my camera and with my teacher went for a little walk around the sprawling lakeside grounds. it was a beautiful morning and i was more than happy to being my lesson not at a desk rather strolling and chatting and taking photos. we ended up walking for more than an hour before we finally made it back to school (rough i know) and when we returned nico, my teacher, started to look rather pale (and for an indigenous  guatemalan, that is not an easy). i was quite to point out that learning spanish and ignoring his well being was not something i was prepared to do and so my school day was cut short and i took full advantage.


on my way home i stopped for a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from one of the three competing juice sellers a few steps from my front door. that in itself is hilarious, the town has a population of 15 000 people and only three street juice vendors, what i find rather amusing is that they have their stalls within 10 feet of one another. when a local or tourist alike walks by the shouting beings. "jugo! jugo! tres Quetzales! jugo de naranja! tres Quetzales" i have been living here at my family's casa for a few days now walking by these stalls at least 1/2 a dozen times a day and it is always the same thing as it is for EVERYONE "jugo! jugo! tres Quetzales! jugo de naranja! tres Quetzales" in fact as i sit here typing away just outside my window every few minutes the competition for customers resumes. what makes it even better is that all three stalls sell exactly the same fresh fruits and charge exactly the same price! too funny.


after my oj i walked on down to this cool mayan store that a friend told me he bought a necklace with his mayan astrological sign. cool store, nice lady and very cool necklace. it turns out that my sign based on the date of my birth is "AQ'ABAL - the night"

so there i am paying for my new cool necklace and reading about my sign when the lady asked if i'd mind running up to get some copies of the description as it was her last one. no problem, happy to help (especially after negotiating down the price). she told me where to go but my spanish is not so good. after entering shop after shop i find myself in the shop that is the front to me casa and as it turns out there is the photocopier. copies made i head back down the hill (san pedro is built on the side of a volcano, ergo uber hilly, i will delve more into this in a later post). in retelling the fact that me casa is also where the copier was she starts to grin wildly. "gloria es me hermana" (she is my sister). i go on in poor spanish. Gloria is my mom here in guatemala, she is amazing, you are her sister so that makes me your nephew! well now we are both laughing and have had a good hug. and i ask her with a big smile, so now that we are related is the price the same (of course i was joking and in fact felt a bit bad for negotiating a lower price from what is now family) again we both laughed an i went on my way. yet the connections kept coming! upon returning to me casa, i retell this to gloria, my guate mama, and she loved it, then goes on to tell me that her niece owns cafe cristobalas, this is the place i blogged from yesterday! the place that grows its coffee in the back and serves it in the front! after i gushed about how much i loved the coffee she tells me that cafe cristobalas is the coffee that she has been serving me for breakfast lunch and dinner (much like my nanny and pappa, once i they get it in their head that i like something, come hell or high water whenever i see them i will surely get one). of course gloria doesn't prepare it with the skill of her niece and it is a bit watered down but a bit watered down fresh organic coffee that was grown in the backyard is MILES better than anything i have ever got in canada. :-)


my new found connection with gloria and her whole family has brought the two of us together even closer than before. now i have been invited into the "living area" that she shares with her family and am now typing away in there 'office' (a room with a desk and phone jack). you are family she tells me, no problem, whenever. 


not wanting to waste the whole day away, i will leave you with my delicious street food experience from last night...after spending some time with some friends and deciding it was time to go home i went on my way. but on the way i passed by the bbq chicken lady, immediately my stomach said, time to eat. por favor, pollo? nope she was out (a testament to the deliciousness of night time snack) so i opted for the sausage...mmmmm, amazing i might even wager better than the chicken. on the plate to split sausages, a large dollop of refried beens and doused in spicy sauce and of course the 4 fresh and warmed tortillas. it was so very good i toyed with the idea of having another but having only 10Q in my pocket precluded my strong desire to gorge myself on spicy street sausage and tortillas. what did i learn....always keep an extra 20Q tucked away for you never know when and where you will find yourself (in other words what time of day and which street stall you stubble across.)


i hope you enjoy these photos, i loved taking them.

school view