Moving Time!

In an internet café in Flores that is waaaay faster than in Santa Elena. And I can write onto my CD so tonight I´ll finally get to read everyone else´s blogs! Woot. Sorry to the people who tried to call me --ran out of credit last night.

Day 19 – June 3

Moving time! I'm going to be moving on Saturday into Annie's house. She's going to move into her extra room (they're adding a door) and I'm going to take over the “master bedroom” that was hers. The cooperative has so many tourists coming that they need my room ASAP and since I'll be moving into that house at the end of the month, we figured I might as well ease myself into it. They have quite the system for keeping things really clean and neat so I'll have time to get used to that. The house is so wonderful and the outhouse is actually not bad as far as outhouses go. Annie, Jean Claude and Annie's fiancé (whose name I forgot the moment he told me and repeated it) are all super nice and sweet so it should be nice to live with them.

When I was walking to an ATM yesterday in Santa Elena in between my two buses, I bumped into Annie's fiancé who I hadn't formally met yet. I didn't recognize him immediately but he called out my name a couple of times and I went over to talk to him. He's a 6'3” guy and most of the Guatemalan men are around my height so I figured out who is was pretty quickly. He walked me to the ATM which I appreciated since I took out the equivalent of the average monthly wage here to last me a few weeks. I haven't been to Flores, the nice town nearby, so he suggested I go with him to get a tour. I'm sure I won't remember where anything is but I tagged along for the 20 minute walk there, ate some good chicken tacos and scoped out “Cool Beans”, the gringo hot spot for coffee and book exchanges! I'm going to go back tomorrow to hang out there; we only peeked in the door.

He was picking up laundry that they brought to the laundromat since it was so wet that nothing would dry here. 30Q for one load (washing and drying)! His hiking bag full of clothes took 3 machines (although I think we both suspect that it was probably 2). So it costs the same as doing laundry at UTSC. Doing it by hand and having clothes that smell like dampness (and are a bit damp sometimes...) is worth it to not pay UTSC prices for freaking laundry. I'm sure I'll cave and get it done soon, especially when I'm wearing jeans and sweaters which take forever to wash and dry, but that price is unbelievable.

But they can do it in Flores because it's the “land of gringos”. Few Guatemalans could afford to spend 90Q on a week's worth of laundry! In a month, that's nearly half of their total incomes. I saw more white people than I've seen in 3 weeks! Literally almost every single customer everywhere was white. So yeah, it is a lot nicer and cleaner than Santa Elena but it's all tourists! A lot of shop signs were only in English. Very weird. It's nice because it also has postcards (yeah, yeah, I'll get on sending those -send me your addresses so I can mail them to you!), local crafts/jewellery (beautiful beautiful beautiful and most of it isn't flashy –I would look more local, actually) and apparently fast internet (We'll see when I try to post this.) but it creeps me out at the same time. It's like this fake little town for white people. The thought that some people will only really stay there and think they've been to Guatemala is sad to me. It's like thinking Disney World is what the States is like. Strange.

The rain finally stopped today. 11 families were evacuated from Santa Ana on the weekend and the papers on Monday said that 50 more were getting ready to go if the rains continued. It was ridiculous! People who have dirt floors really got it bad. At least an inch of water in their houses. In the hotel and in Joanie and Annie's houses there are cement floors that were poured probably two inches thick and the water never got that high, thank goodness.

Doing my best to update more frequently at the request of mi madre! Text me! No clue how but Tiana, Jessica and Jeffrey have managed it, so bug them for how. I have like no one's phone numbers because they're all saved in my phone that's at Jeffrey's, so send me your numbers or text me first! As Jessica said the other day, “It doesn't feel like you are that far away, just a text message!” Technology rocks.

Except for my computer which no longer has sound and was being really crazy last night, telling me that I had nothing to boot up. I think the humidity is really screwing with it. It was so humid on the weekend that the pages of my journal, which was on my desk in my room, were soggy. Poor computer. Everyone cross your fingers that she makes it through the year. Cross your toes that she makes it through my fifth year, too!

I'll try to update again soon, Mom!

(P.S. From now on I'm going to post my pictures on Facebook because that seems to go a lot faster than Blogger. I'll toss the odd one up here, but try my Facebook first! I put some up of the waterfalls yesterday. I keep forgetting to take pictures –the only reason I remembered to take some of the waterfalls is because I was talking to Lynn Hodgins on the phone and she told me I should! Jeffrey keeps nagging me, though, so I should get better...)