1/18/09
We survived the first week of school. My mind was swimming all week and felt very vacio (empty). We came home very tired every day and took a nap after supper. Supper is the main meal of the day for us which we eat at 1:30 pm. We like our teachers and the school.
On Friday afternoon we took a tour and walked to the chocolate factory. The walk crossed town was nice but the chocolate factory tour was sort of a dud. There was no tour of the factory just videos at the chocolate café and the videos were not that great. We did get to try some chocolate which was good. Bought a few blocks of chocolate which is going fast. Its sort of like Mexican chocolate but better.
Saturday we went to central park which was nice and walked around that area looking at the people and buildings. We were not planning to buy anything but ended up buying 2 carved flutes for about $15, now we are trying to play them. We really like the native weaving and will buy some before we leave Xela.
We also walked around the central market a little bit. I want to go back and explore the market more it is so neat to see all the people and the stalls. A lot of women still wear the traditional Mayan dress with all their colors. Apparently each town has its own collar on the shirts so the locals can tell where someone is from.
Today we attended the Ward closer to us, but Alicia and Shannon had to leave earlier as Shannon is fighting a cold. This Ward was not as friendly as the other which I think is due to its size I estimated there were at least 120 adults or teens about twice as big as the other Ward. But this Ward is the closest about 13 minutes away.
We are tiring to get mentally ready for the coming week. I keep telling the kids to think one day at a time, that’s how I will get through the Spanish school. Its not easy. I have enough problems with English especially grammar. They talk about verbs and nouns and after that I really don’t know what they are talking about..
John









1/22/09
It’s Jueves (Thursday) of our second week of school and last class day as we get to go on a field trip tomorrow during the class day. We are headed to San Francisco de Altos, which is the fabric capitol of Guatemala. Yesterday we took a trip to the hot springs Fuentes Georgians, about 30 minutes out of town with stops along the way to see the sights. Its amazing how they farm the mountain sides and valleys. Their gardens are on pretty steep grades on the mountain sides, these are not terraced. We were told that they do not use terracing as the steps would hold the cold air on the crops at night. With the slope the cold air moves on down to the valley floor. We saw the biggest carrots we have ever seen. I am surprised that they do not have erosion problems, but I did not notice any. It would seem that after all these years of their agriculture practice there would be no top soil left. There are also water lines running all over including stretching over valleys to reach the other side. We found out that a lot of villages have their own language, and there are 23 dialects of Mayan.
The hot springs was real nice. It was up in the mountains at the end of a winding road. The springs are surrounded by cliffs that are covered in vegetation They have 3 pools at different temperatures. The main pool is real hot on one end, I did not see anyone go to the end where the spring was. I got to about 15 feet of the end before turning back. They have some cabins there that would be fun to stay in. On the way back we stopped at a women’s weaving coop. The women from the area bring the cloth into the coop to sell I think mostly to locals but it may end up other places. The weavings hear are very beautiful and bright. It takes a weaver, by hand, about 30 hours to make a cloth that is 18 x 48 inches.
We also made our trip to the bake shop this week and will weekly or twice weekly till we leave here.
School is going better now. My mind is starting to clear some as I am understanding more. But they give us so much each day that it is imposable to keep up. Alicia and I get about 2 hours of studying in a night Alicia a little more as she gets up earlier to study more. Alicia is picking up Spanish pretty fast using rosette stone helped her a lot. Shannon does not do much homework but is getting down the pronunciations very fast and is helping me at night. Jared is slugging along like me. I was about ready packup and leave on Tuesday as I was really tired and the kids had a bad day, but everyone is doing better no.
We asked for more blankets today as we have been cold at night still. The temperatures have dropped a little more these week. The kids room is 5 degrees colder than ours as ours has a better sun exposure. There room is getting down to 47 F in the morning. I have been sleeping in my Under Armor and warm-ups and sweater. The kids and Alicia also dress well for bed. Jared dresses like me and Shannon also wears her winter coat that she forgot to leave in UT. To night I have a extra blanket so I will sleep well. I have been sleeping with 2 blankets. We had 5 on the bed but they are not very wide so they do not fully cover two people. The blankets would just cover us if we were sleeping side by side on our sides with our bodies together. If you moved around much the other person would be exposed. So we divided up the blankets I got two and Alicia 3. Alicia has been warm. The kids have been cold also but they should sleep better to night with their extra blankets they now have 5 each. I would recommend that anyone coming to Xela this time of year bring a sleeping bag if they can.
1/23/09
We had a warm night given extra blankets. Still had to wear all our other bed cloths though.
We had a great field trip to San Francisco today. It is a large market with all kinds of stuff including livestock. They do have a lot of fabric and colorful ladies wear. It is neat to see all the women in their native cloths. There were also a lot of people.
Shannon stated she would like to stay here longer in Xela now, how things change from day to day.