Los Viajeros

After a week of immersion language class here in Guatemala, vocabulary words are flying around in my head like bats at twilight. They swoop through my dreams. I find myself muttering them as I scurry through the rain but, for the most part, they escape meaning. So, I wrote a poem with some of the peskier ones. I broke one of my cardinal rules against using words that have been drained and destroyed by overuse (moon) plus my Spanish lacks rhythm, but what the hell? This is an emergency situation.

Los Viajeros

La ruta es larga.
El dia es corto.
La noche es
ruidosa y calor.
Estoy afuera
con la luna.
La ruta es angosta.
El cielo es ancho.

asha


Translation:

The Travelers

The road is long.
The day is short.
The night is
noisy and hot.
I am outside
with the moon.
The road is narrow.
The sky is wide.

Also posted on my poetry blog.

Cat school

Antigua, Guatemala. This morning before dawn, through the rain, we were greatly relieved to hear little Pepe crowing. We missed hearing him for a couple of days and feared that he might have ended up as Sunday dinner. We have bonded with him over the roof tops even though it is a bit of a drag that sometimes he crows at midnight. But, he´s not an ambitious rooster. One round or two at the most, and he´s done.

Otherwise, we started school yesterday and my brain is already looking for an escape. Immersion is just that... tossed in the deep end. Sink or swim. I have pages of notes. This morning I practiced counting to twenty. Also, I am supposed to study lists of opposites, hot/cold etc. We are doing the afternoon session and school starts in one hour. I´m console myself that we are signed up for one week only.

It is good to be away from the incessant election news. I haven´t read a Huffpo headline for over a day. It is all very far away which is an immense relief. I am thinking about it now but mostly I have been focusing on the endless rain, on how incredibly terrible our shower is and where to get another cup of coffee. I bought my first cup on my own this morning and managed to communicate with the barrister without embarrassing myself too much. Cranking up my brain to study is another thing altogether. M. Lee, of course, can simply sit down and study... silently. A+ student, doncha know. I, on the other hand, have to walk and repeat things out loud and constantly call my mind back to the point. It is, at best, like herding the proverbial herd of cats, but in my case they are very bad, very tough street cats.

Camera woes

Antigua, Guatemala. No photos today. I still haven´t figured out how to upload them to the web. My old reliable camera died two days before we left for this trip and I haven´t figured out how to upload photos off of the new one from the road. Plus cafe computers here suck. SUCK. Anyway, gotta go. I spent all my internet time this afternoon getting nowhere once again. I hope your day is going better.

Puppies to market, jiggity jog

Antigua, Guatemala. Today we moved to a new place and paid for the next week, then got a load of clothes to the laundry and enrolled in a language school for the coming week as well, so guess we´re set for now.

We also got to the market this morning. I managed to take a lot of stealth photos, some which looked like they may have turned out pretty good, but we shall see. The romance and glamor of it all was very short lived however. We came upon two very sad young puppies tied together and to a post via some twine. Just as we walked by, a very picturesque Mayan woman bent down, yanked them up off the ground and held them dangling by their necks as they twisted and cried in the air while a customer examined them. Then she dropped them in a black plastic bag. It seemed to me they were being sold for slaughter although M. Lee disagrees. Harsh world out here.

Rainy day in Antigua

Antigua, Guatemala. A little rooster woke us up this morning. I call him Pepé. I think he starts about 4 am. It's raining in Antigua but then it is the rainy season. Oddly, we ran into someone from Eugene at the lunch place. She's been here 8 months working on adopting a adorable little Mayan boy. She and M. Lee had mutual friends. We borrowed one of her umbrella's to run home and get ours. So, we're looking for a language school this afternoon. Gotta go. School starts on Monday.

Tonapah good-bye

We just got back from another lovely weekend convention in Tonopah. I didn't visit the man disappearing from the photo stuck in the wall of the stone miner's shack.




I didn't poke around the Mizpah this time or check to see if the lights are still on at Bobbie's abandoned Buckaroo Bar out on Hwy. 6

"Back Funa and Two Babies"

but here are a few photos from my favorite graveyard down by the Clown. I took them last spring. Don't worry. Nothing has changed. Looks like this will by my last trip to Tonopah for a while.




I'll miss the place, the people, its ghosts but all good things must pass. Luckily, all bad things pass too. Even naked Sarah Palin will eventually blow away.




Anyway, it's late. We're leaving for Guatemala on Wednesday and I'm not ready but then I won't be ready until a week after I walked out the door.

Lipstick on a pit bull

"The only difference between a pit bull and a soccer mom is lipstick."
~ Sarah Palin

By Republican logic then, Sarah Palin must think that soccer moms are dogs.