esta semana

Okay, it's been forever since I wrote. I've been really busy.

On Tuesday, I went to my first salsa lesson with two of the Canadian girls. We ended up going ahead and buying 5 lessons (it's cheaper that way . . . about $3 per lesson). After our lesson, I ended up hanging out with our teacher for awhile and talking. He doesn't speak that much English, so it's a good incentive to speak in Spanish. (He teaches salsa and teaches at the school. Several of the teachers at the school don't speak much English – or any). I guess I spent the rest of the night studying on Tuesday because my teacher made me learn something like 100 irregular verbs on Monday and Tuesday and write almost 200 sentences!

On Wednesday, it was the birthday of three students and one of the teachers, so we had a big party. I was out really late – like 1:30 or something. It was so much fun, though. Let's see...the weirdest thing that happened during that night was that this older dude (Guatemalan) came up to me and told me 'I am leaving, but you are so beautiful.' (In English). That in and of itself isn't that weird, but later in the evening this girl walks up to me and starts speaking to me in Spanish. I asked her to slow down, and she slowed down to the point of, I think, making fun of me, and then took me over to meet the same guy – who, as it turned out, was her brother. Maybe it's just me, but attempting to pick up girls for your brother seems somewhat strange to me.

Yesterday, in the afternoon, we made chocolate. In the morning, we toasted the peeled the cacao (?) beans (?). Who knew you had to peel chocolate? Then, in the afternoon, we went to this place to grind the beans and mix it with azucar and then powder it. I don't have any pictures from that because they didn't allow pictures. Except, a cat started meowing, and I asked the girl, 'gato?' (This place is attached to these people's house, as many businesses are in Xela). Anyway, the girl (I say girl, but she's older than me) says 'si,' and hands me a gato! I was like, uh, okay. I mean, I like cats, so it was fine, and it was a sweet cat. But then she's like, 'stay there' and she wants to take a picture of me and the cat. Go figure. Then she asked me to put down the cat and pretend like I was grinding chocolate so that she could take a picture of that. Of course, none of this was for my camera. I think maybe it was for their advertising or something? Who knows—the whole interaction was bizarre.

Anyway, all I can say about making chocolate (at least that part of it) is that is very, very far from sanitary. They don't clean the machines. Just put more and more chocolate in it. Not to mention she had me touching the machine after touching the cat. And they use their hands to actually mix the chocolate and sugar (although they do wash their hands before mixing it, thank goodness).

After that, we returned to school where we made chocolate bars (some people made shapes, like hearts or letters) and also made a chocolate drink, to which we added ice cream and kahlua. (You'd be thrilled, Mom). I don't love the chocolate—I think maybe we burned some of it in the morning, which is very easy to do, apparently. It's okay. Martin (the kid in mi casa) likes it, though.

I also had my second salsa lesson yesterday, which was even more difficult. Plus, Luis had me dancing with a guy who was literally about 4 feet tall and about 12 years old. He was a good dancer, but it's really hard when I'm doing spins and stuff. Guys in Guatemala are so short. Till (the German guy) is like 5'10” or so, and I was teasing him that in Guatemala, he's ridiculously tall. My teacher is about my height, and she is really, really tall for a woman in Guatemala. I'd say most women don't clear 5 feet. Sarah, the German girl, is probably 5'9” or 5'10” with long, long blond hair and blue eyes—so of course the Guatemalan men are just completely fascinated with her.

Anyway, tonight's the graduation party, and SEVEN students are leaving. I think that leaves 9 students next week, plus we're getting two new ones. I'm really sad about all the students that are leaving, though. They're my faves. At least Sarah will still be in Xela – just not at school anymore.