Saying goodbye and bailando!

It was my first week without classes last week and spent my time trying to start volunteering (as I mentioned the orpahange before). Unfortunately, middle of the week the public school teachers went on strike (and are still on strike) so I haven´t been able to investigate the school I was maybe going to work out. And, the orphanage is very disorganized, making me feel a little bit like my time is not being taken full advantage of there! Oh well, that´s Guatemala time/life for you.

Also, for whatever reason last week more than half of the students at the school left, making it a week of goodbye´s (last night here, please come out and dance/party...nearly every night). It was sad to say goodbye to so many people who have been here basically since I have, but also maybe time for a change. Plus, I finally made it out dancing and I love that! I also started taking salsa classes (private) and, while a bit pricy (in terms of Quetzals) still fun. I feel so uncoordinated and clumsy! My teacher has been a proffesional dancer for years, lived in Europe for awhile performing etc...anyhow, having so many people take off has made the school feel practically empty this week because hardly any new students arrived. I´m glad that there are a couple of people though who I get along with well who will be here for another month or so. Also, I think I may head out somewhere for Semana Santa with a friend from here (he´s from the bay area, an ultimate frisbee playing, taking a year off school, almost went to Whitman but ended up at Vasser who understood me perfectly when I said, ¨I don´t do school...¨) and hopefully maybe do some other traveling later with him, although right now our ¨schedules¨don´t match up perfectly. It does make me laugh though how much he reminds me of all those fabulous Whitties out there...I guess small liberal arts colleges do just attract a certain brand of people often..

Wow, I feel like this entry has been quite scatter brained and illogical in it´s flow. Hope it makes sense to everyone! I am thinking about taking a few more hours of classes here from a different school for only 5-10 hours a week because as much as I don´t like the class thing, I think it does probably make a difference in the quality of Spanish I speak. One thing that is kind of neat though is that lately I´ve been feeling more confident in at least being able to communicate in Spanish, even if I am murdering the language! I guess that´s progress of some sort though...

Last Saturday we went to the movies for the first and watched Blood Diamond. It was in English with Spanish subtitles. I guess we English speakers are a bit spoiled hardly ever having to watch movies with subtitles! The funniest thing was that there was an intermission in the movie. In mid sentance the movie stopped and the lights went on and at first we were all wondering what happened but then others in the theatre got up to use the bathroom and stuff and we figured it was intentional! Ok, I´m going to go for now!