Last week in site

Just finished a delicious lunch of pasta with tomatoes, carrots and husquil mixed with tomato sauce and cheese. And now it's raining. We had a few nice days in there, but the rain is back.

I had a pretty great weekend. Saturday morning we ate out with the wife of the pastor of the church we go to in Xela. She's from the States so we've gotten to know each other. This was our despedida (good-bye). She treated us to a really good breakfast at a Mexican restaurant (Los Cebollines), where we also briefly met the new mayor of Xela who was eating with a group of people. Martha, a Guatemalan friend we've worked with for various different activities, invited us over for a despedida. She didn't mention that it was her birthday, but we ended up celebrating with two of her friends and they were really fun people. Martha made a really good lunch of fish (b-something? not sure the name), a salad and rice. We hung out and talked and also had the opportunity to visit the first greenhouse in the Xela area growing roses. Martha's cousins are in charge and one of them showed us around, showing us the different varieties they grow and answering our questions. I bought a dozen red roses for only a little over $3-good deal! Then we went back to the house and ate some delicious coconut cake and headed back home. Sunday we went to church and then headed in to Cemaco to meet some friends from town to look at toaster ovens. The family really likes to bake and want to get a mini oven so that they can actually make something. Then we all headed over for some delicious Indian food at Sabor de la India, where we stuffed ourselves with naan rellena, pollo tandoori, rice with yogurt and cashews and fried tortillas, topped off with a mango yogurt smoothie.

We've been running around like crazy to visit all of our 21 schools before next Monday, which is when I leave site for good. Most mornings we schedule 2 schools and things have worked out well so far-only one cancellation. We saved our worst schools for this week and these are also schools that take a bit longer to get to, so today was just one school visit. The government apparently decided to buy school supplies for the kids (again) so today was a crazy day to visit the school. Most of the teachers were out and about trying to figure out the school supply situation, which meant that kids were also out and about because there was no discipline going on. We managed to visit all 19 classroom in less than 2 hours, but it was a little frustrating getting all of the kids together and trying to find the teacher. Then we finished everything up just as a parent and teacher meeting got underway. We got a few different stories about when the bus would pass and ended up waiting an hour and a half to get on the bus back into town. And then my delicious lunch followed by some dark chocolates I splurged on in Cemaco. I think I'm feeding my emotions with junk food. Just another 11 days (!) of stress eating and then I'll be filling up on all of the good foods I miss from the States.