Estoy mojado de la lluvia

Ok. yoga was interesting. I went for the first time monday night, and the room was completely packed and the instructor spoke English. Tonight there was only three of us, and the instructor spoke spanish. I had a little bit of trouble, but it's not hard to figure it out by watching.

Tuesday Hilda couldn't go with me to Cantel, so Hugh and I had to ride the busses by ourselves. I knew the way there well, but on the way back there's a change from the chicken bus to a short ride on a van to near the house. I didn't know which van to get on, so we just walked. It ended up being a longer walk than I thought, but it wasn't terrible. Later that day, hugh was supposed to go back to Cantel with Christina, the intern, without Hilda again so he could do his work taking surveys. Apparently they waited for an hour for the bus to the specific part of Cantel they needed to get to, and it never came, so they took a different one, went the wrong way, and walked a couple miles to Juana's house where they were supposed to meet.. and Juana wasn't there. No one was. So they went back to the bus stop where we catch the bus back every tuesday, and Juana actually got off the bus there, and told them she wasn't aware they were meeting today. She waited with them for the bus, and then Hugh got off at the same place, had to walk all the way back to the house in a thunderstorm. He was in a surprisingly good mood. He likes physical activity anyway, but he also told me while he was out there that he just kept thinking "well I could be washing piss out of rugs right now" (his former job was cleaning oriental rugs.) Plus he was with Christine, who apparently knew her way around more or less, and has that beautiful Guatemalan patience.

Wednesday I just wrote about, with my class in Xela making glue monsters for 3 hours. Then we said goodbye to Patrick, one of the friends we've made down here who left for Ohio.

Today in Xeavaj was pretty good. We had a long class, and I was a little annoyed through most of it. My students don't concentrate! They keep making mistakes that they know better than. They kept over and over making sealed loops and forgetting to insert the chain to attach it. They would make the same mistake over and over, and I'd have to keep giving out new wires. It was only because they were talking, not because they didn't know better. And then there was another woman there who hasn't been to more than one or two classes, when Marta and Pascuala and others have come to 8 or more, and she wanted to work with silver. I made her practice for a long time, and stupidly gave her the package of earring parts after I saw an improvement, and not after I saw consistency. She screwed up her first attachment, so I had to take it away from her and get her to practice more. It annoyed me, obviously. I felt bad later though when she was too nervous to cut the wire because I had criticized how she did it earlier. It's hard to tell what's too harsh. And she didn't speak a word of spanish, which I don't always know at first since they all nod like they understand whether they do or not. So I guess she was just learning from me showing her and body language and tone of voice, which probably just emitted annoyance. I'm sorry, Maria. The happy ending is that she got it after a few more tries and made a couple pairs of perfect earrings. Everyone did today. I'm out of materials though. Officially. I have 2 more necklaces to make, which take about 30 min. each, and which my students in Xela will probably do. I don't know what I'm going to do until Ben gets here with the new materials (if Lupe remembers to order them.) The new ideas aren't solid enough to mass produce. I need to wait another week to see how the girls from Xela did with their embroidery projects, too. I think in Xeavaj their going to have a class on how to make soap next week, so I don't suppose I need to worry about having earrings for them to make if they're going to be learning something else. The Xela class has the new earrings to play with, it's Cantel I'm concerned about. I don't want to bring tons of glue into Juana's house to get all over her floor and have her 5 little kids playing in. That's not going to work. Maybe I can do what I did in Xela last week and just bring lots of stuff and have them play, though I'm afraid it's not in some of their natures. I'll talk to Hilda about it.

Otherwise, I haven't had anymore trouble with Xeavaj trying to sell me things. Marta is constantly begging me to print the pictures of her so she can send them to her boyfriend in the states, but I keep avoiding it or forgetting it because I have to take my camera to a photoshop to see if they can access my memory card, etc. It's not easy and I don't particularly want to go through the pain of trying to talk technology in Spanish. It's bad enough in English. I feel for her though. She said her boyfriend's been living there for 4 months, and is coming back in November because there will be work for him here by then. She and her mother in law keep asking Hugh and I when we're getting married, and I turned it around on her today, but all she said was "when he gets back we have to go to the municipal building, and have a ceremony in the church." It was a little more exact than our answer. I'd still like to know why she lives with her boyfriend's mom and not her parents. One day I'll be able to ask.

Well that's it for now. Buenas noches.