When it rains, it pours

Only a few outstanding events this week. Both of my amigas aqui have left for other ciudades , so theres been a lot of me time.

This afternoon I went with my teachers to express condoences for a woman whose mother died last week. Back up- one of the women who boards students for la esquela, it fue her madre who passed. It was a rather traumatic experiance for mi amiga, who experienced perhaps the most distressing of communication barriers with her family over the issue. In this cuture it was more appropriate for her to stay living with the family for the last 4 days rather than move. Death in the mayan culture is also like most other non-western places- people actually express their grief. They wail for days on end, no attempting to -hold it together- as we do. Here, people bring uncooked food- eggs and beans, primarily, so that the greater extended familia tiene enough food to feed an endless stream of visitors. Mi amiga dijo que the family and many, many visitors played music and wailed all night long for two days, and then the funeral happened. I didn´t go, but she described a really beautiful processional where as the casket was carried from the iglesia to the cemetary draped in lace, everyone in the street stopped what they were doing, removed their ubiquitus backwards baseball caps and either bowed their heads or joined the processional.

As it were, I did visit the cemetery this week with mi maestro. We walked around for casi un hora as he pointed out prominant community members tombs. Yes, tombs. Of course people used to bury their dead in the ground, but as modernity progresses, people want to do right by their loved ones, so now their are large multi person tombs with very fancy headstones. First it was bible quotes, then pictures of the Virgin or the Son, then dipictions of the persons work, and finially actual photos of the deceased behind glass. Recently, some tombs include metal bars in front of the headstones, kind of like security bars for windows. We visited his father, and the parents and grandparents of my host father. Muy intresante.

Anyway, today went to this woman´s house to represent the condolences of the school. The family brought us coffee and bread and we just sat with her . We brought money and eggs, and sat in a circle around the crying woman. My teachers took turns expressing their condolences in an interesting mix of Espanol and Tuztuil that I only understood as -i am sorry, and its very important for us to express condolences, and we´re certan she is in a better place ahora. It is extremely difficult to sit in a room with a crying woman and not cry yourself, even when youve never met them before. I cant imagine what it would have been like to stay in that house for 4 days like that, wishing you wernt being cooked for and not knowing what to say.

In other news, I walked to the next town over, San Juan with a teacher yesterday. We watched women weave scarves, explored the small library , and watched a girls championship basketball game. Normal life in a small pueblo. With the excessive rain the lake is swallowing up fields and docks more and more by the day.

My spanish is of course progressing, and I find myself shocked and sad that I have only 2.5 weeks left here to study and enjoy my new family at the school. It is going to be extremely frustrating to make progress and then go back home to Tacoma.

Well, thats about it. Off to salsa.