Second Day of Classes at Casa Xelaju

We will be taking classes from 2 to 7 p.m. every weekday. In the mornings, we go on excursions or to cultural events. Monday afternoon we met our tutors. Cole, Hunter and I each have our own while Landon is in class with three other Spanish II students from his high school. We spent the afternoon in separate little classrooms with them and did some walking around the school speaking spanish and learning vocabulary. At 4:30 there is a break for coffee or tea and bread and cookies. Then back at it until 7 p.m.

Tuesday morning we met at the school and walked to a women's weaving cooperative where Mayan women are paid a fair wage for their intricate weavings. We heard about the fair trade cooperative and watched a demonstration of weaving. Cole volunteered to try the yarn machine and he enjoyed it so much he wants to go back for a five hour lesson to learn to weave himself. I think this is a good idea as we don't have class until 2:00 each day and this might be a nice break (for him!). After the weaving, we walked to the city centro for ice cream and to a large market to look at the goods, then home to our house for lunch at 1:00 the back to school at 2:00. This afternoon, Hunter and Cole's teachers suggested that we take a city bus to the zoo, so my teacher and I joined them. The bus is a small eight passenger van that held about fifteen passengers for the twenty minute ride. The zoo was small but there were monkeys there that thrilled Cole and electric bumper cars with no seatbelts and much faster speeds than in the U.S. They gave each other whiplash for about twenty minutes for 70 cents each and then went on the tallest and longest slides I have ever seen except at a water park for an hour. Everyone at the zoo were Mayans in their traditional brightly woven clothes with babies in slings. We are back at the school now for the last two hours of lessons. We arrived back at break time when all the high schoolers are in the sunny, courtyard playing ping pong, checkers, hacky sack and soccer. Beautiful flowers are planted in the courtyard garden. Tonight we may venture out to some of the many nightspots such as the Blue Angel for desserts, and drinks and movies. Sound exciting? The views of the ten mountains surrounding this city are beautiful from almost every place you walk on the cobblestone streets marred only by the many telephone and electrical lines that run above the streets everywhere. The entire population seems to be out on the streets all day, every day. Adios!