Tengo Tos que no saldra

oh no! It's been so long since I've written that I can't remember anything that's happened to me in the last week! I can probably recount it by the days I've been sick.

Well let's see. The week after the ride in the back of the truck I didn't do much of anything. After Ben walked all over my little ego his first day here, I went into a little nosedive of self doubting and fruitless redesigning and constant questioning. If he doesn't like this, then would he like this? Is it this that he doesn't like? If it's that, then I can try to change it with this... But then this looks just like that... and that's not possible... and dammit, I liked my idea. If he doesn't, he can figure it out for himself. So through the entire week I sat at the table and cut and glued and sewed and worked every day but didn't end up changing a single thing. I couldn't. I tried and tried. Changed and changed. Thought and thought. and I just couldn't do it. Nothing I made looked better, nothing looked even different. I just kept doing the same thing over and over again, my hands couldn't stop themselves. So I just gave it up and came to the conclusion that if Ben doesn't like what I made, well he doesn't have any other choices from me so he either has to take it or find someone else to design what he wants. I can't do it. I tried and I can't. It was a nasty and painful defeat that I don't want to admit. I should be able to do it, I can't think of anyone more qualified. I guess it's experience and view that I'm lacking. I need more practice.

Friday I finally came down with the nasty cold that had me shut up in my room most the day. I saw it coming from that horrible 3 hours in the back of the truck, and fought it and fought it and by friday it won. Saturday it started to let up, which made me happy, what a quick cold, but the cough lingered. We really didn't do hardly anything this weekend. It was really boring. I wanted to take a bike trip somewhere, but the cold kept me inside.

The first group of tourists/volunteers came in on Saturday and went to Panajachel at Lake Atitlan for the weekend. I was told to go to Xeavaj on Monday with Hilda because they were bringing the group through for a tour of the town and they wanted to sell crap to them so it looked good if my class put on a little show so the group knew where the products came from. First though they had a ceremony to kind of bless the efforts of the volunteers in the courtyard of the school where we met. It was basically the same thing as what we saw that time by the lake with the other students from the school, only in a less picturesque place but with actual Mayans participating and so more valid and interesting to me. Once again he lit a fire that was solely incense and candle wax. It's supposed to be a holy, cleansing smoke, but boy did we get cleansed in it. Also it was an exceptionally cold day in Xeavaj that was accompanied by the necessary amount of damp fog and wind to really get through to you. I spent as much time as I could walking around while the tourists got different demonstrations of weaving and atol-making, but I had to start my class after not too long. Then i sat in the freezing cement box that had standing water in one corner and worked with the girls for a couple hours. We showed the tourists what we were doing, there were 10 of them from a methodist church near DC, but it didn't seem to make too much of an impact. They did buy something like 3 pairs though in the end. I also bought a bag that Marta's mother in law made, which I was very excited about but tried to keep secret. Marta asks me a million very accusing questions every time she has a reason to suspect money has passed or will pass hands. She has consistently pestered me about these pictures that I somehow in my unknowing nodding to her unintelligible Spanish agreed to print for her. She finally had to get Hugh to translate to me what exactly it was I agreed to do because I didn't know and she STILL insisted on holding me to it. So after 4 weeks of not being able to because my computer doesn't print here and they're digital pictures, etc, she finally was like "I'm not stupid, take your memory card to the quickfoto in parque central and print them already! I promised my boyfriend those pictures 3 weeks ago for god's sake!" (more or less) so we freaking did it, and it actually cost a good bit of money, and we FINALLY bring them to her. First she complains that she looks black in them (don't know what she was expecting there.) and then said that I didn't print the right one (I printed 6 for her) and I needed to bring it next week. It was the one she promised her boyfriend. And then while we're sitting waiting for class to start she says, nonchalantly, "Hey, Maria wants a picture too." at which point I put my face in my hands and said "I can't!" which she took to mean "I have no film in my camara!" so she pestered me about the camera Hugh was using, which I explained belonged to Tony, the guy who's filming, not Hugh, which she kind of asked if Tony could develop some for her, but didn't pursue it much farther. Augh. That woman is really freaking annoying sometimes. Always trying to get something out of me. Anyway, I gave Hugh my money and made him buy it, since I knew it would result in a million questions about how much it cost etc. Later I hear Marta ask Hugh how much his girlfriend spent on that bag. I don't know how but she has like ex-ray money vision. I thoroughly understand the fact that money is extremely important and she and her community don't have much of it.. But the whole reason I'm there is so they can make it, not so Marta can get it out of my pockets. I can tell that Marta likes making jewelry out of a learning-a-new-trade kind of interest, but I don't think she takes it seriously that she can actually try to earn a living with it. The other girls in my class seem well aware and basically leave me alone about that crap, I don't know what it is about Marta. Anyway. The tourists and everyone else piled in their van to go home, and the truck had left to take the priest back to Xela right after the ceremony, so me, Hugh, and Tony had to wait at the school for another hour or more waiting for the truck to come back. We made it. Different driver- Javier from Chichi- and God is he rough.

That night I was organizing my new materials and started to feel really off and out of it around 9. Just out of nowhere. Then when I changed into my PJs I got so cold I started shivering, got under all the covers and didn't stop shaking for hours. I had a nasty fever that set my teeth chattering most the night. In the morning my muscles ached from it. I slept all morning while Hugh was out helping to translate for the volunteers, and when I got up decided I had a respiratory infection. I can only imagine that the day in Xeavaj was too much for my cold-weakened body. After that night though I haven't had any more problems with fevers, and most my symptoms went away except that today my cough got pretty bad after inhaling some car fumes and fire-pit smoke in a village. It's driving me crazy. Cough syrup doesn't help.

Well my computer's battery is about to go out and I'd rather turn it off than bring in the power cord. So if there's any more to write, I'll do it later. Buenas noches!