Day 96: The Personal Day

Today I woke up feeling quite lethargic, just general low energy. For breakfast, María Elena served some little ham sandwiches. We had our now-customary morning chat, punctuated frequently by the María Elena most-used-phrase está muuuy bien, Dylan.

In the morning I was able to talk with my Mom for a while, which was nice. With only three full weeks left, I have begun to look ahead to the chaos and blatant reality that is my life back in the United States, and all of the plans that are going to be running full steam ahead from the moment my planes' wheels touch the tarmac in Austin.

Lunch was another soup, this one was with roast beef and potatoes along with a little salad and some tortillas. This soup was also quite salty, so that is possibly a Guatemalan taste preference. I know that a few Argentineans who I met had a similar fanaticism for salt, so possibly it is a Spanish-speaking side effect.

After lunch, I got to work on planning my volunteering activities. I heard back from both the Waldorf school and the other educational project, both of whom were interested in having me. The Waldorf school, though, said that they will be on vacations starting the 24th of May, so I asked if I could start as soon as Monday with them and spend this entire next week at their lakeside location. I was told that they were dealing with a 'sensitive and difficult' situation right now in their community, and therefore it would be better to come no earlier than Wednesday.

If everything works out just as I would ideally like it to, I would love to be able to go down to the lake and work at the Waldorf school Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and possibly stay another night before returning on Saturday, and then work with the close by other program for the remaining two weeks this month. There are details to fix, but that would be an excellent end to my gap year.

My adventure of the day was crossing town to the post office and buying stamps for some postcards that I have finally written for family and friends. I also bought some hand and also body soap since I have been running low here. A little anecdote from the grocery store where I bought the soap: there were two British girls in the register line and they had the most trouble counting out the correct change for their purchase. The little Guatemalan women in the line between the girls and me, and the people waiting behind me were all half amused and half frustrated as the girls fumbled through bills and coins. I almost reached into my own wallet when they gave the teller the money, but were told they were lacking 80 centavos, but they finally gathered everything up. Immediately after the girls had left the register, everyone in the line around me started to mutter and smile amongst themselves. "Foreigners."

Dinner was the most American meal I have had in quite a while. It was a chicken breast sandwich (which was actually really good) and some Doritos chips. I was planning on going to see a Guatemalan movie that was being shown this evening  in town, but I got to talking with María Elena's husband at the dinner table about U. S. college sports and tuition costs. Interesting conversation, that started off with the question "So, colleges in the United States are not free, are they?" "No...actually"

It is a gorgeous night outside, beautiful temperature, I opted for a fly-fest tonight and left the door open, I could not resist the fresh air.

Chao.