The plan for today was to do nothing and relax. If you are with Don ¨relax¨doesn´t come into play very well. We got up at our usual time so we would be on schedule for our meals. Doña Hortensia will prepare our meals as we sit at the table and wait for them. By Guatemala standards our host family is ´middle class´. We have had trouble getting the fathers name and he new Don´s name but had no clue what to call me so he didn´t address me personally. (That has been fixed). We are beginning to bond with the family and they with us. We are essentially ´camping´in our room and looked at that way it is not so bad. The bathroom situation is the worst. There is no place to put anything to keep it dry. They have no concept of the use of a shower curtain. In fact the floor has a drain in it!!! We share this bathroom with the kids upstairs and poor Stephanie was the worst for getting water all the way to the door a good 4 or 5 feet from the shower. Everyone in the family is patient with us and our poor Spanish and all are willing to help even Marianna who is studying English in school and while she won´t speak it she understands a good bit.
We left the house around 8 am for someplace with a table and light and a cup of tea to study. Of course nothing is open that early except -------- you guessed it ------ McDonald´s! We nursed a luke warm cup of tea for over an hour and worked on our Spanish. Since we needed cash we left McDee´s and went to the ATM machine across Parque Central.
Drum roll please................... no luck! no money the card was not accepted. The Visa card (or what Don thought was the Visa card was refused! We had several bad hours figuring out the problem until Don discovered he was trying to use the wrong card. With the correct card we were soon on our way and happy campers again.
Lunch at home turned into a big affair when the grandfather arrived. Don and I had been playing with the girls taking their pictures and laughing at what Michelle thought was a good face for a picture (a scrunched up munchkin look) so the camera once again broke the ice and we took pictures of grandfather and son (our host) and a social event began. They took pictures of us also. Marianna turned out to be pretty good with a camera. Lunch was chicken with a spiced white sauce with rice and vegetables, more of the native style tortilla-tamale which is made of corn and cooked on the wood stove in the kitchen.
When lunch was over we again left to go start this nifty Blog. Linda´s Excellent Adventure in Guatemala blog was started. We are kept so busy with classes and schedule daily activities followed by homework that getting here is proving to be a bit difficult. You will have noticed that Don´s blog is full of minute details and mine is a bit more fluffy. I hope you are enjoying the blogs.
Dinner was a California style burrito that the owner of this Internet cafe-Xelapages taught the owners to make. It is not quite a Freebirds or a Chipotile but it is not bad at all. One is big enough for us to split for lunch. The young couple who operate and I assume owns the Cubatenango lived and worked in the food industry in Chicago and food there is safe to eat.
The day will finish with a Classical Guitar concert. In case I forget ---- this concert started 50 minutes late! The guitarist was very talented and we don´t know the reason for the long delay.
