near the end of our stay at the escuela de las montanas

We are approaching the end of our studies at Escuela de las Montañas, and Cat and I are waiting a few more minutes before going over to the stadium where the Telethon for disabled kids is taking place and where we are going to be playing another legendary game of Futbol with the Jefe, Abileno, and some other folks from town, as well as our teachers Abbi, Eunice and Tito.

The people we have met at the school have been overwhelmingly decent and cool, although the crowd this week is significantly younger than last week and has a different vibe, which I will not attempt to categorize at the risk of being unfair to people from California. At any rate, we are learning a good deal, Cat has approached and surpassed survival spanish, and I am slowly learning to use the preterito and so on. . . At any rate, we are planning on leaving the mountain school on Friday night for Xela (pronounced shayla) and are going to be heading up to Mexico to stay a few days in San Cristobal de las Casas, despues de que vamos a Mazunte, a beach town that is also the farthest west you can go in Mexico, after which we will be going to Oaxaca, where Cat is working out homestays, so to speak, with local people. We have a lot of travel ahead of us but what a great time to see this country.

As I write we are coming to the end of three days of almost rainless weather in Guatemala, a rarity for this part of the world at this particular time of year. Cat went this morning to the abandoned finca known as the Finca de los guerillas, where she was able to get some amazing photos of the old house of the Dueño, something that seems right out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, and then saw the volcano Santa Anita erupting. I stayed and studied, and my only experience of the volcano was the ash falling on me in my little thatch roofed hut.

At any rate, we are about to go over and play soccer, and wish you all the best back home!

Love from Brian and Catherine