Journal #18

Monday, September 11, 2006

This weekend we visited the Casa Popenoe. It is an old colonial style house that they have open for tours every day. It belonged to a family that lived here many years ago and it is a typical Guatemalan house. It was a self guided tour and we were there about 30 minutes. It was neat to see what the inside of the original style homes look like. There was one really neat part. Upstairs there is a room that has hundreds of little houses for birds built into the walls. There are windows where the birds could come and go as they chose, but they had a place to protect themselves and get food. It is a really neat thing to see. I wish we had taken pictures.

Sunday we went to worship and afterward we wanted to go somewhere a little nicer than Burger King or McDonald’s for lunch. We ended up at a restaurant called “Las Palmas”. Can you believe it? It was not a Mexican restaurant either. Anyway, everything about the restaurant was excellent. The service was great. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was beautiful. We tried attaching photos of our experience there, but it is not working today. We will try again tomorrow.

Saturday morning I got the opportunity to accompany our “Senora” to the market to buy food for the weekend. We went to a different area of the market than where Chad and I have been. The prices were unbelievable. We bought 4 pounds of potatoes for about .50 cents and 4 pounds of tomatoes for about .75 cents. She bargained with people and even told one man that she would buy from him but his prices were higher than someone else’s. Oh well, there are tons of people that shop there. Chad and I returned Saturday afternoon because he wanted to see where I went that morning. I could not get over how much of the food had disappeared in a little more than half the day. There are so many vendors, that I know some of the food has to go bad before they sell it.

Chad and I were walking a talking about the things the local sell here. It is a wonder that any of them make any money because they all have practically the same things that they are selling. We went to an area Saturday afternoon that has souvenir type items. Each booth that we walked passed, we saw the same things. They sell authentic blankets, jewelry, table linens, clothes, etc. The only difference we could see was the colors are all different. They even have the same patterns. It is just amazing to think that they make money selling those things.

Well, we have 13 more days of class and we are counting. We are continuing to study hard and learn a lot. Chad will have his Grado B test probably next Monday or Tuesday. I began Grado C today and hopefully will finish late next week and get to move on to Grado D the week before we leave. This is my teacher’s plan. We are communicating more openly and the fear of messing up is gone. When we do say things wrong everyone is so willing to help us say it correctly and explain why. That is a great help.

Shelly