mish mosh

I've been at school for only three days, and already I have a routine. I feel as if I've lived in Antigua for many years, studying and running my errands in the morning and attending classes in the afternoon. I wonder if my American life existed. I will be sad for ending my growth in Spanish when I have my last classes tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to moving on.

**

I finally figured out how to get hot water from the shower yesterday. Three days of ice cold showers are three days too many - though I suppose it is preparing me for more remote areas. I would just hope that when I put myself at risk with a contraption like this, with all these wires, that I would be rewarded with blistering hot water:


Don't go splashing that water!

**

I finished 'Cat's Cradle'. Not to sound like every damn person who waited until he died to pick up one of his books, but I'm in mad mad love with Kurt Vonnegut.

I am now out of fiction books, so today is a trip to the bookstore.

**

I was sitting in the park reading/people watching yesterday when I saw this traditionally dressed woman(I'm not sure what's the proper thing to call these women - Guatemalan, Mayan...) come by with two children - one 7-or-so-year-old boy and one 1-year-old daughter who was just barely toddling along. As they walked through the park, I never once saw the woman look back behind her...she just kept walking forward, keeping up the same pace, the boy at her side, and the baby girl trailing behind and occasionally even stopping to play with a flower or something. It wasn't until she reached the edge of the park that she turned to her boy and said something, at which point the boy went back and grabbed his sisters hand.

In the days of leashing children and using cell phones as location devices, it was odd to see such a young child left to do her own thing - but then, I wonder if it was even a possibility to snatch such a kid or if a protective swarm of other mothers would have emerged from the sidelines.

**

Last night I taught Kanako, a native Japanese girl who has a second language of rough English and is now trying to learn Spanish, how to play chess. I tried, with the help of a dictionary, to only use Spanish words to teach her. It was probably the most fun I've ever had playing the game - a completely new experience.