Happy Wednesday

So, things have been moving along. Still slow, still a bit confusing but it's already May 12. These past few days have involved lots of festivities due to mother's day. Yes Mother's day is celebrated here and is always May 11th. Since it fell on a Tuesday this year, there was celebrating from Friday until today. I bought my host mom some flowers and gave her a scarf. Something little but I felt it was a nice gesture. Dona Mercedes y Don Pedro really are like my Guatemalan parents. Although I treasure the bond that I have with my training community family, I spend a lot more time with the two of them
A) because I have more time and
B) there are only two of them instead of 11.
I am hoping to make a trip back to visit my training family soon enough. I'm excited!

Sadie is getting bigger by the day. The other night I tried to let her sleep in my bed. Bad idea. She was so confused and she just kept running around. She also has the loudest meow out of all the kittens and everyone loves to comment on it. Oh Lauren, your kitten cries so loud and so much. Thank you Captain Obvious, I can hear here too. Also I'm still going to take her so don't worry. Anyway I had to put her outside because she was driving me crazy, such a loving owner I'm turning out to be huh? Honestly, once I have my personal space it won't be as big of a deal but for right now... not looking good.

As for work, with the recent holiday school has been a bit difficult to navigate. Today there was a director (principals) meeting our town. Although our CTA did not advise us about this meeting nor invite us to attend we thought it would be a good idea to just stop by and present ourselves again to all the directors... Well we showed up this morning really nervous. I mean you really have to get over the American sense of making appointments and schedules because Guatemalans live in the here and now; not in the I'm busy how bout next Thursday at 4? After realizing that it is normal to fly by the seat of your pants; you have to get over being afraid of appearing rude. For example, showing up to a meeting uninvited is not really seen as rude. In the states you would never just barge into your bosses office demanding to speak to everyone about your job, but here it's a little different. Although, they might not love the fact that you barge in on their meeting and interrupt the schedule; in the end it really doesn't matter. Usually the meetings never start on time and adding you in is a lot easier than it seems but it definitely feels uncomfortable when you just go for it. Anywho, back to the meeting. So we show up and we are feeling nervous but I mean we feel like we are doing the right thing. As we are waiting around for the meeting to start, we run into a director from one of our schools. After marathon introductions we ask her:

"What exactly is this meeting for?" THANK GOODNESS WE ASKED THIS QUESTION.

The response was something along the lines of "Well when someone dies and they go to heaven, they leave all of their money for their kids. We are having this meeting to discuss the recent death of one of the maestros (teachers) in Tecpan." The look on mine and Betty's faces must have been ridiculous. We just tried to crash a will reading! Are you joking? Immediately we decided we better leave and we were so embarrassed we had to tell ourselves to walk slowly so that it wasn't obvious to all the directors that we were running away. It's kinda funny when you think about it, but definitely embarrassing.

In other news I've bought a bed. What an adventure. Monday I went around to observe the sales for Mother's day and found a bed for 1195Q (approx 150 US$) I hope it's nice. I can't sleep on it because there is no space in my room for it, or for them to move out their bed that I'm sleeping on now. It's kinda sad but it's going to make my first night in the new apt on that brand new bed so wonderful. Although knowing my luck by that time I will be so used to sleeping on the bed that has a mountain in the middle the new bed will seem really uncomfortable. I guess that's how life goes and if that's my biggest problem, I'm ok with it. I'm hoping that sooner rather than later that apt. is going to be finished. The work is at a standstill, hence the buying of things that I can't fit in my room, to motivate them to get down to business!

Today Betty and I also met the mayor and the head doctor of our local health center. Thanks to Don Pedro who literally knows anybody who is anybody in Tecpan! We were able to meet two important people relatively painlessly and start a "business relationship" because in the future we will most likely have to annoy them for money, advice, and other general help. In this day of presentations we also stopped by the post office. The man who works there is so nice and I had mail! I strongly suggest mailing to the Tecpan address I sent out in an email. I will most surely get the mail and it seems to be way faster then going through the other office. So with that being said, I'd love some mail and I'm going to try to send some tester letters out. I sent out 5 in January and nobody received one... I'm a little discouraged about the mail system here but today restored hope and maybe in the future you will receive a letter all the way from Guatemala.

I think these are the most exciting things to date. The baby shower was successful and I'm contemplating trying to make pizza or some type of food this weekend for the host fam. Need to start practicing cause in a month and a half I'll really have to grow up and start cooking for myself. love love love.