Un Día en la Vida

This week I feel like I've settled into a groove here. I have a routine and it is interesting because it has taken this long to fall into one and to be honest I din't think I would ever really find one. Basically when I was thinking about what to write it occured to me that I didn't really have anything more to talk about other than my everyday life here at the Mountain School so bear with me through an everyday play-by-play is.
Even though we are in a rural area there seems to be very little time to sit around and do nothing. Every minute there is something to do.
The morning starts at four with the honking trucks that go down and up the street to take the men off to work in some other town. Luckily I have earplugs so I don't wake up until six thirty to get ready for breakfast at seven thirty. It takes a while to make coffee and sometimes there's a line for the bathroom so I like to get up that earliy though probably I don't have to. With coffee in hand, in a mug I bought at a nearby finca, I walk down to the community of Nuevo San Jose which is about the equivalent to about two city blocks away to eat breakfast with a family. This week I am eating with the family of one of the guys who works at the school, Jorge. Technically it is the mother of the family who is responsible for feeding the students, María is Jorge's wife and mother of seven children. I go into her kitchen which is not part of the original structure of the house but is a crude room built of corrugated metal lamiante at the center of which is a wood burning stove. I sit at a little table in the corner and there is only one other chair where someone sits with me while I eat. Usually it's just me eating because I assume it's like the home of any other busy family where everyone just kind of eats when they get a chance. For breakfast I usually get frijoles and beans and of course fresh tortillas. I chat with María about whetever; Canada, Guatemala, goings ons at the school, past students, ect. Then I head back to school.
This week my class is in the afternoon so I have the morning to do whatever I need to. Usually it's homework, I actually have a lot and I've been really ambitious with learning Spanish. If it's not homework then we are probably making our way to the twon of Columba, the internet... It is here that I get my fruit fix, I buy my usually staples of one pineapple, one papya, bananos, cucumber, zapote and limes. All for about 25Q(uetzales), the equivelent of about three dollars.
We have to make it back to the school in time to go back to our families for lunch. Similar process to breakfast but it probably includes more vegetables. Yesterday I had cucumber salad with egg-dipped-fried cauliflower and of course more tortillas. After lunch I start my Spanish class. Every week we are paired with a different teacher and this week my teacher is Eunice (with four syllables in spanish). She is exactly my age we were born in the same month in the same year. She is amazing, tons of energy and we get along like good friends, letting our hair down and talking about buys. Despite all of our similarities our lives have been very different; she was married at 17 and has two small children, ages 4 and 2. She bagan studying last year on the weekends for social work and I think she is having trouble paying the 1000Q annual cost. A major problem here is that school is officially free but things like books, transit and other costs are not covered and this excludes the vast majority from ever going to school, even primary school. Ay. Our class is four hours long with a twenty mintue break for fruit. After class we have half an hour before we have to head down to dinner with our families. In all of the small breaks during the day I don't even have a chance to sit still. For example throughout the day I did my laundry. Soaking, scrubbing, rinsing and finally hanging to dry.
Dinner is like lunch with veggies of some sort and tortillas and conversation. I am vegetarian but generally people don't eat meat here because it is quite expensive but there is a lot of soy surprisingly, textured vegetable protein. Eggs are relatively cheap too but it is definitely the masa that keeps the country alive.

There was a lot of unsual excitement earlier this week when one of our guard dogs was poisoned. Compa, the dog that has been around since the founding of the school, ate a piece of bread that was left at the entrance that had been poisoned with, what was later discovered to be by the vet, insecticde. We all thought that he was going to die right there because of his age but luckily there is a vet studying at the school right now and she was able to stay on top of the situation. Abelino, one of the directors of the school has a pickup and they left to Coatepeque, the nearest town with a animal clinic, quickly. It was uncertain weather he was going to make it through the night but pretty miraculously he did. He was back the next day and laying in the sun when I left the school this morning.
It was very clear that the poisoning was intentional and the working hypothesis is that our dogs were targetted because they are constantly chasing the motorcycles that go down the road in front of the school. Motorcycles are the ONLY they go after (which might be a little worrying considering that they are supposed to go after suspiscious people). It is like a game for them because they all come from wherever they are on the school grounds to run after every single motorcycle that passes. And they do go after them with determination, I've seen some people have to kick them off as they go by slowly on the bumpy road. Jorge built a gate yesterday to keep them from going out into the road. I was pretty freaked by the attack and I had nightmares the other night about it because it was such a violent way for the community to communicate their frustration with the dogs. That's life in Guatemala, vestiges of war are everywhere...