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Anyway, It is my goal to post an update on the blog every two weeks or so. I want to say that I really appreciate all of your letters and notes. I feel really touched by all of your care. So… I am alive and I am well. Guatemala is not as scary as you might think so you can exhale.

It is easy to be happy here. That’s really what its all about. I mean despite it all people keep a smile on their face and keep it on the positive. They find things to really rejoice in and when the opportunity to enjoy an afternoon rolls in they don’t hesitate to do so. I love all of the color. I am a color addict in the states and so I am amongst fellow lovers of eye candy here. I can walk along the street lost in thought until a particularly beautiful weaving catches my eye and I have to figure out a way to inconspicuously delight in it.

I went out for a 15 minute walk today and ran into about 6 people that I knew and another who knew my boss. It is very easy to get to know people and it is not at all weird to tap on neighbors’ doors to say hi or ask a stranger on the road if they wouldn’t mind walking together for a spell. In fact I probably know a lot of you reading this blog by the same methods so as you know it comes quite naturally to me

I really like it when the most serious order of business for the day is something totally ridiculous. The other day I had to figure out a way to transport a gigantic papermache puppet head to the other city I work in for the March 8 International Women’s Day March. Well I caught a chicken bus into the other town and the driver threw it on the roof. 5 minutes later I look out the back of the bus and see a gigantic head rolling down the street in a cloud of dust and exhaust. The head was recuperated and kindly shoved in between two seats.. I hop off the bus hefting the head on to my shoulders and head into Zacualpa. I don’t know where I am going: neither does anyone I ask on the street though they don’t tell me that. “They just say over there!” and point in the exact opposite direction of where I need to go. At this point the head is looking like it has a bad case of leprosy shedding little chunks of paper mache in my wake to be ground into the sunny dust of the city.

Today there was the pressing issue of dyeing 15 pounds of rice shades of red, green, orange, and yellow and figuring out how to build a gigantic puzzle that would effectively catch the eye of the mayor: we are going to have the kids fill in the puzzle design with glue and the tinted rice in the plaza Thursday.

Very serious business my line of work! ;)

In other news, I like to collect little random quirky/ironic/poetic moments to fill my memory bank.

-We, Do~na Carmen and I, danced for hours at the Virgen de Candelaria party: In one room women pray and kneel in front of the image of the virgin. 50 different candles flickering from the floor onto her orange satin robes. The smell of a thick blanket of especially laid pine needles kicked back and forth between dancing drunken feet in the courtyard. Music overrides conversation and rosaries: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I dance with a little Mayan grandma. She owns the floor. My cheeks and thighs hurt from smiling and dancing for days.

Walking home in front of the cathedral at midnight. Mayan priests throw corn into a crackling square white oven colored black by soot and generations of men and women who have come to do the same. Their shadows spill backwards from the cement cross above the fire.

-My sheets billowing in the wind… The branch-stump tree on the patio transformed into a Dr. Suessian rain tree, dripping with all my wet clothes.