shopping in guatemala
this morning´s breakfast was sad, stale nesquick chocolate cereal and bananas, sin leche, as usual. we met tammy, a nurse from new zealand, at the escuela before heading out to xela´s first mall, mont blanc. mont blanc is a multi store mini-mall with an attached Paiz supermarket. we wandered all the little stores looking at zapatos, hiking gear, and random other things. i bought a cheap watch (as may be the tradition with all my travels from now on!) and tram bought gigantic sunglasses to shield her from the masses of dust clouds the trucks make as the speed down the street. i however, have my trusty target brand jack bauer sunglasses to keep me safe. thank god for giganto shades!
we fell in love with paiz, our connection to the civilized world. dove soap, hanes socks, and all the convieniences we could ask for. maybelline, anyone? a new blanket? fuji apples? me gusta!
i stopped at helados pops to try their famed ice cream. Q10 (1.30) bought be an obcenely chocolatey brownie sundae covered in hot fudge and whipped cream. next time, i´ll try the mora ice cream. looks tasty in all it´s purple goodness. we were on our way to the next shopping center, but we thought we were going the wrong way (not so!), so we headed back home to study and eat instead.
while we were studying in our room i heard a =slap, slap= coming from the kitchen. i went out to see what was going on — mi abuela was making tortillas! she let us help, and soon i was patting out my own (retarded looking) corn tortillas.
lunch was the misshapen tortillas, asparagus soup, and a traditional guatemalan chicken and pork dish in a red sauce served with white rice. yum.
we went back to school at 2, but around 4 it began to rain. by 530, the rain had still not let up, so we donned trash bags with a hole cut in the top for our heads and ran out into the night. we dodged cars and waded though ankle-deep rivers in the street all the way home. our shoes were soaked through, so we left them for dead with mi abuela and basked in the glow of a hot shower.
dinner was mashed frijoles, tortillas, and an egg patty filled with rice.