Ocupadísimos

Guatemalan culture is very laid back. At least here in San Juan, the norm is to work from about eight in the morning until about noon and then maybe again after lunch until about two. Very similar to what I saw when I was in Mexico, a teacher is considered full time if they work just in the morning or just in the afternoon. So in our effort to fit in to this very relaxed way of life, Kim and I got ourselves involved in so many projects that we have little to no free time. You know how we were supposed to be travelling through Guatemala and then maybe on to the rest of Central America. Forgettaboutit. Since we arrived in San Juan on the seventeenth of September, we´ve only left once to go two hours away for the weekend. And it doesn´t look like that is going to change much until Kim´s parents come in December. Luckily for us, it´s so beautiful here that it makes it hard to leave. When we first got here we wanted to take lots of day trips to other towns around the lake. Now, we´re too lazy and also too busy to walk the fifteen minutes to the next closest town. Granted, there´s not much reason to go there since it´s overrun by drunk and drugged out gringos.

We´re keeping ourselves very busy here in San Juan working at the Centro five days a week. Kim also started up Spanish classes again this week. When we´re not at the Centro or taking classes, we´re working on the video that we are making for the Centro and on our new project, teaching English to all the kids in the family we are staying with. Without any resources, we´ve had a good time teaching ourselves how to teach English and making lesson plans and we´ve come to two conclusions: there are a lot of really ugly sounds in English and we are really glad we learned English as a first language because it seems much harder to learn as a second language than Spanish.