miercoles, 29 de marzo

well, I didn’t write last night, and I’m gonna let myself slide on it. the day flew past in a school’s out kindaway. had class, covered the future imperfect, which turns out to be much easier than the others. actually the past imperfect was pretty easy too__ it’s really just all the irregulars, especially with the present (preterate) that are a bit rough, and rougher having been kind of ignored by me lately with all the other info coming so quickly… it’s kind of surprising I remember them as well as I do.

anyway, after class I was filled with the elation of having the day to myself, with no tarea or awareness of class responsibilities for the manana. so, I headed up to the bagel barn to upload this blog one last time before stepping into the unknown connection realm of the lake (see above, of course for that entry). then headed off to café no sé and had two afternoon beers, which was unusually decadent of me, but I felt in a celebratory mood having successfully finished with four weeks class. had a bit of an interesting conversation with a very American-looking and sounding guy, who I overheard mention that he had grown up in Antigua. it turns out that his mother is a mayan archeologist, which I thought was sort of intriguing. he goes to college now in Montana, but is back in Antigua for spring break.

after no sé, I headed home and ate some dinner which amounted to finishing off my left over peanut butter and bread because I didn’t want to pack them or waste them. I had quite a lot of peanut butter because I haven’t been eating it much lately, and quite a lot of bread because that girl has such a great smile. so it was a pretty dense meal which had somewhat interesting digestive results later, but not too uncomfortable. I focused a bit on the salad today though, in order to balance things out.

while eating, I read a little downloaded news, catching up on the demonstrations in LA, the situation in france, the stupid things that bush and blair are saying, and the latest in the moussaoui trial… I should really try to stay away from current events, it’s an unnecessary inclusion to my day and an embarrassing addiction. so, after eating and reading, I decided I had time to write a quick email to liz before going out with my schoolmates for a fairwell fiesta. I typed away with a sort of rambling abandon, letting one thing lead to another and occasionally would glance at the clock to see how I was doing for time… forgetting that the cheap clock I bought for 5Q at the market on my first day in Antigua always stops at 8:10 twice a day. so when I finally finished the email and wondered what I should do with my next fifteen minutes, before I had to leave, I suddenly got a horrible feeling that I was late. which I was, but only by about fifteen minutes and the rest of them were late by twenty, so it all worked out. we had a lovely time and were out past one, and I didn’t get to sleep ‘til well past two, and had to be up by six. so I set the alarm on my reliably unreliable clock and it worked great.

got washed and teethbrushed and dressed, etc in time to get to the park to send the email off to liz. it turns out that 6:15am is a great time for connecting in the park, no glare and a good connection… maybe because of the angle of the sun(?) I dunno – no sé, you know? anyway got such a good connection that I actually got word from my dear but recently silent LA friends, so that was nice… I think maybe this blog is working a bit against me, because people feel kinda caught up with me, but forget that I’m not caught up with them… nevertheless, everything works out in the end, and for my distant (non LA) friends who are used to not being around, everything’s the same as it ever was… I s’pose. even denise says she’s discovering the joys of email… so that is something!

caught the bus uneventfully. foolishly had a cup of coffee before boarding, and three hours later upon arrival in panajachel, was pretty anxious to find a place to pee. got off the bus, walked five minutes more or less in the direction of the beach, found a nice little place for breakfast, ordered some comida and then asked for el baño.

read up on pana in the lonely planet while I waited for my food. after eating, went out in search of a room. turned one down for 50Q, was considering heading back to one I’d seen when I first got off the bus that had a sign saying 40Q, but found one for 35, which suits me fine… and has it’s own bathroom__ with shower (cold water, of course), which is very decadent and sorta unnecessarily wasteful to me after sharing both bathroom and shower for the past four weeks. I’m sure I could get used to it quickly though.

pana seems to be recklessly geared towards the tourist industry… almost to a discouraging degree. it seems to focus on shopping, eating and drinking. I spent the day doing quite a lot of browsing, a fair amount of eating and a little drinking (an orange crush, a bottle of water, and something called a cuba libre, which might’ve been rum and flat luke warm coke with a limeslice… all I’m sorta certain of is the limeslice, but I ordered it, so I drank it. mostly I took photos of the storefronts and shop signs which I love, with any luck they’ll appear along with this when I post this sometime soon, I hope.

I’m calling it an early night now, and going to try to catch up on last night’s missed sleep. finished the Nixon book finally and have begun Eleanor of aquitane, I think I’ll read myself to sleep with her.

domingo, 2 abril

well, I’ve got some more catching up to do. haven’t quite gotten into a post-antigua routing well enough to have kept up on this the past several days, but I think I’m turning the corner on that and will be back into the swing of things and maybe be even more of a regular writer now__ in the coming week anyway.

that last entry was wednesday. thursday morning I got up and went immediately to the pier to catch a boat to san pedro. I arrived and chose the first place to stay that I found for 15Q ($2) a night, so that I could get rid of my backpack and look for a better place in comfort. I had a lead on a place I’d heard about in Antigua, so I set off to look for it, but first looked for breakfast. I found a great place that has a wonderful desayuno especial (15Q before 9 and 20Q after) which I was so pleased with that I took a photo___ which with luck will appear here when I post this. the view from my table was lovely and the coffee was included. I read up a bit on san pedro and then headed off to explore. met a cute little girl who told me her name was lola and a fisherman friend of hers who’s name was renaldo (?). he started to introduce her as something else, but lola is what she wanted to be called and when I run into her on the street now she always greets me kindly with an, “hola jose!” and I reply “hola lola!” which rhymes appealingly, if a little awkwardly. I took photos of each of them and maybe they’ll get posted here also.

I explored the town for awhile, which rises steeply up the slope of the volcano. the touristy lower part of the town quickly gives way to a more expat midlevel and a thoroughly local upper area. the whole place has a wealth of spiritual graffiti covering the walls, some of which I photo’d.

stopped into a restaurant just for some water and spoke with a couple of guys; one from new hampshire, the other from nova scotia. the nova scotian (nova scot?) told me the directions to the place I was looking for and also told me of the place he was staying__ as it turned out, I never found either though.

had a good day of exploration and wound up back at my room after an early evening beer. the room really wasn’t great, with a screaming baby on one side and a congo player on the other and could easily have been enough to convince me to move on to a completely different lakeside town, but I felt I owed this place another chance, and it is beautiful.

the next morning I headed out immediately with a new place in mind and a willingness to try again to find the other places. the new place I’d chosen was full, and I tried another, but it was also filled. looked up the hill a bit, but really kinda had my heart set on the new place, which had some possibility of a vacancy at 11am checkout time, so I decided to have the shanty shanty breakfast special again (it was still before 9) and kill time ‘til 11. the vacancy never appeared, but I walked by a place with a sign out front declaring rooms for fifteen quetzals and I could see it had a shady courtyard with hammocks, so I decided on it (I forgot to mention that the other room had, in addition to all the noise, been oppressively hot). so that was friday morning and I’ve been staying here ever since.

for some unexplained reason, the entire town was without electricity all day friday until about 6pm, so exploring the internet situation was out. just as well, because I had lots more exploring to do. the hospedaja is called casa emmanuel, and I’ve gotten quite skilled at lounging in the hammock. I finished the eleanor of aquitane book and then found a place that for a 50Q deposit and 10Q a week (first week deferred because I donate the eleanor book) will lend books, so I began white teeth, by zadie smith, which it seems was getting a lot of attention a few years ago, but I hadn’t read. the current casa emmanuel guests aside from myself are three girls, two of whom just returned from a month of hitch hiking around Honduras (Rachel, from new Zealand and Rufus from England__ I assume that’s how she spells it, but I hadn’t really considered the feminine form of rufus before, although she wears it well). there’s also a girl from Colorado named samara. they’re all very nice.

this morning I went kayaking with Rachel and that was fun, and a great way to explore the lake. after that it was more laying around in hammocks reading. I’ve been studying a bit of Spanish, but probably not as much as I ought to. nevertheless the time seems to be passing pleasantly and thoughts for the future are continuing to come together.

yesterday, I found a place where I can plug my laptop in and receive email and upload the blog, which is great, because although I can email and blog from any internet place, it’s much nicer to be able to write from the comfort of my room and then just post when I’ve finished rather than having to type while I’m on the clock… performance pressure, you know. anyway, I worked out the system yesterday, which involves getting there right at 6pm to plug in, because there’s only room for one and it’s through a phoneline that’s in use until 6, and the whole place is closed on sunday, so if you’re reading this it must be after 6 on monday… that’s 4 in California, you know.

I’ve had some new thoughts about love and I know they seemed profound when I had them, but I don’t know if I can quite come up with the words right now… but perhaps it has something to do with a wider understanding of it’s nature. already thinking that after painting about violence and socio-ethics, it might be time to return to love… but I do probably need to explore other themes (in the paintings anyway) for the time being…

that’s it for now. I’ll try to write a bit tomorrow either when I post this or before.

lunes, 3 abril

I'm at the internet place and have had an easy day of relaxing and reading, I'm just gonna load a bunch of photos below for your visual entertainment... if all goes well, for the moment this seems like a good connection.

there are more, but they'll have to wait until next time. now, go write me an email. goodnight, it's time for una cerveza, here. oh, bytheway, figured out today that you people are on daylight savings time__ puts me only an hour ahead of LA, but two, behind the other side.