Weekend update

Hola

It was a weekend of lots of ups and downs. I have learned the works for culture shock in Spanish and have had a full bout of it this weekend. Lots of tears and retreats to my room to sleep and read. My family in Canada ( thank goodness for the cell phone I bought) has been great encouraging me to get out of that headspace and for the most part I seem to have done that - at least for this round. I have also been encouraged to lighten up a bit and tell you about some of the interesting things I have been doing.

The big adventure last week was traveling by pickup partway up the mountain to San Gorge where I walked with a few other students and teachers along a ridge on a path that was way narrow for my liking. The reward for doing this was some absolutely breathtaking vistas of Lago Atitlan! When we climbed down from the rock and back on to the path I breathed a sigh of relief knowing we were on our way back. Wrong! We then proceded down what I can only call goat path to a cave where Mayan rituals are practiced. There was no rituals going on but lots of candles burning and evidence of fires where we are told chickens had been sacrificed. I have some photos and will try to post then in the coming days. Needless to say I was VERY happy to get back on the WIDE path and on to a bus to come back to Pana.

The other interesting happening was I taught a Study Skills class for a group of Grade 5 - 9 students at Life School ( you can google it). Yes the class was in English and I had a lot of fun talking with them about plagarisim ( likely spelled wrong as the computer always corrects me). That was for their teacher who was concerned about them copying and pasting from the internet. I spent about 45 minutes talking to them about how our memory works, the same seminar I usually give at NIC orientations. I had never shared the information with a group of kids this age - and they ate it up. Lots of fun and a great reminder about how much I love to teach. This opportunity came from a visit I had with the teacher at a local coffee shop!

I also uncovered some interesting voluteer and living opportunities for the month of April and left that meeting with a batch of thank you letters to translate from Spanish to English! Who knew I would be a translator.

Time for dinner - back in a few days.

Best, Colleen