Since I wrote the last post...

The bus companies have paid the appropriate parties and begun to run again, two courts have rejected the president's ex-wife's candidacy for president, and i have realized that I can hear everything going on in the apartment next to mine, which at the moment is a lot of baby talk and the occasional baby crying. All this to say that everything is normal. The woman who I buy bananas from in Kachiquel still insists on trying to have full conversations with me when its obvious that in the year she has been speaking to me in Kachiquel I have not gained any new vocabulary beyond "how much are the bananas," and either - "I am going to the market" or "I am going home," depending on the direction of my trajectory. Today she tried to add a new word to my repertoire by asking me if I was going far. Judging by how quickly I forgot the word for far, I am not a very receptive student. Never-the-less, her patience and persistence remind me that maybe I should have the same patience with schools that just don't seem to learn to wash their hands. Or maybe she just gets a kick out of the gringa trying to speak Kaqchikel. I have a feeling that that will never change. On the other hand, maybe I am finally starting to blend in. I gave a 4th grader quite a start the other day when he found out that I was from the US and not in fact, from Patzún. The idea blew his mind, and when I asked him if he had ever seen a Patzunera as tall and white as me he said yes, there is one other. It was probably Maggie.