two weeks gone by

This past week has definitely flown by, kinda making us wish we could stay in Xela longer before we move on! But in a few hours we leave for la escuela de la montana, which has a little farm and three dogs and some hammocks so it´s really going to be excellent. our Xela family hasn´t gotten much crazier, except that Tina (the grandmother) think there´s a cat in the house and makes us close the doors and windows to the kitchen at night. Edna has confirmed that the cat is all in Tina´s head. I will miss coming home and seeing little Tina sitting in the car out in the street because she´s cold, watching little Irena play with her food and make crazy faces at the table, and listening to Edna talk about all her bodily functions and how all the exotic food she buys is very expensive... "muy caro, muy caro".
We went on two little trips this week... to the beautiful agricultural community of Almolonga where we had hot baths in little concrete rooms, and to the insane market at San Francisco. The market was like an hour away and we took the bus with our teachers. (As it turns out, our maestros this week were best friends, and KJ and I studied in the same little side classroom with just the four of us. At one point we were all doing yoga on the floor, and as as our teachers are both about 5 feet tall, 50 years old, and were wearing heels, it was pretty hilarious. Rosario -KJ´s teacher- is also missing her front four teeth). Anyways the market was great, completely overwhelming and huge, and full of squealing pigs, chickens in baskets, turkeys in sacks, and cows sheep, goats, puppies, and bunnies for sale. The animal market looked like complete chaos but somehow sales were going on all the while, and the little balls of piglets huddled together and the large sheep attempting to mate with each other were all going home with nice families to be eaten.
We also had two awesome women speak at school this week. One was a midwife in a rural community and she just talked about the birthing methods they used and the natural plants and the problems with health care, etc. I volunteered to be the "demonstree" for the post-birth massage, and not only had my breasts rubbed in front of the whole room but was forced to sit on all fours while she slapped my rear with a handful of plants. Other than that awkwardness it was really interesting. The other woman talked about ¨La Voz Popular", the underground radio station that she worked for during the war and it was awesome to hear her story.
And yesterday we went to help with a reforestation project outside of Xela where we collected seeds for tree planting. KJ almost got caught with her pants down in the woods but other than that it was just a nice morning outside of the city with our little green seeds.
Anyhoo its off to the mountains for us, so we´re just hoping for no parasites and no amoebas and that the mosquitoes are small and the days are warmer!!
Adios--