Two of my pics...from the back of the bibliobus and a mother and child in San Antonio, last week.

Today, we visited Santa Maria Cauque, another pueblo. The kids swarmed the bus immediately and we had a lot of fun trying to find the types of books that they needed for homework (human sexuality for the older kids or colonial Guatemala pics that the younger students used to draw pics from the drawings...the younger students wanted Winnie the Pooh books, but there werent any on the bus...) Chad entertained a large group of kids with the one magic coin trick that he knows. I gave away Highlights magazine stickers to the kids (thanks manang bev) and we traded for the ones that they favored the most. I had 12 young ones swarmed around me trying to get more than the 3 each that I gave initially...if I didn´t know the spanish name for a sticker (tortear is turtle, i forgot) they helped me out. Of course I found the local bakery and bought 8 cookies for our teachers and fellow PROBIGUA students. I took a pic of the machine that local women were using in a tienda, they bring bowls of husked corn and it grinds into meal for making tortillas.

by the by, this past martes (tue) kristi, the cook at the hotel, taught fran and i how to make tortillas. there´s actually an infinitive for it, tortear. to make tortillas. so it was fun and funny to see the two americans mess up making something that young children can do...of course pictures were taken. we ate them afterwards, hot, with queso fresco. darned good.

in the evenings, chad always stays and chats with kristi and now we´re teaching her a bit of english. i almost typed ingles...yes, i´m immersed...it´s really helped me improve conversationally, because i can practice what i learned during the day. of course you know that i love to cook and to eat, so much of my conversation is what is that vegetable, how do you make chicken pepian or mole or whatever...that´s how we got the tortilla lesson...it´s so wonderful to stay in a place where you feel like part of a family or a friend instead of just a random tourist renting a room for a short time.

this family has a son who is a lawyer, in his young 30´s. he lives in the part of the house that we stay in and he delights in talking to us during dinner and afterwards, engaging in conversation, spanish only of course, and he´s funny and he especially loves hanging out and talking w chad.