Updates

It has been quite a week. I am house-sitting a MANSION this week and next, while its owner (the founder of my agency) is away. Pictures to follow...

On Sunday, I traveled to a city about 2 hours away called Chichicastenango. It´s in the western highlands, near Lake Atitlan, and has a large Mayan population. A woman from my work lives there and showed us around. She took us to an enormous market, a couple churches, and a hillside where people were performing Mayan rituals. It was amazing. Pictures to follow...

On Tuesday, I traveled by myself to Guatemala City for a meeting with USAID...in Spanish. Gulp! The city is huge--about 1/4 of Guatemala´s population lives there. Everything went very smoothly, and I got to see a couple museums to boot. The highlight was a textile museum which displayed traditional woven clothing, told you which city it was from, and what language is spoken there. There are about 23 languages spoken in this country (which is the size of Tennessee)! I didn´t bring my camera to that one. Just my emergency contact numbers and my sense of adventure.

The price of petroleum is hitting the country hard. Today our educator couldn´t come to the office. He lives in Guatemala City, and said a lot of people are striking and transportation isn´t running. A bus driver was killed last night. People are trying to get the government to subsidize transportation costs. There was one day our pure water truck didn´t come by, because he couldn´t afford the gasoline. Food prices have risen sharply. It seems to me the rising cost of petroleum is the only thing that will motivate us to develop alternative sources of energy. In the meantime, though, poorer countries like this will be hit hardest.

On the bright side, I found this wonderful tuk-tuk driver I use whenever I need to get around town. His name is Dario. He´s this sweet middle-aged man, who charges me less than the going rate, and makes sure I get in the door safely. Sometimes he wears a suit and tie. One night it was pouring down rain, and he opened the little flap for me. ¨Buenas noches!¨ he said, ¨Lots of rain today, no?¨ It´s people like that, you know?