Family life

    This week we are staying at Alejandra and Pedro's house. They live further up the hill in town so unfortunately it is louder (like fireworks blasting from the church at 5 am and dogs barking endlessly at 1 am loud) but Alejandra is so kind, especially with my newbie Spanish and cooks the best meals! She is 46 years old and has a 26 and 20 year old who study in Xela. Her mother was 15 when she had her and had 7 kids, the last who was born at the same time as Alejandra's first. 

Making tortillas for every meal on the wood-fire stove in the kitchen

Fish (head and all) with Medori, our Japanese roommate

    Pedro is an enfermero (nurse) so has very interesting stories of working with the Cubans in the mountains, using nontraditional healing techniques (mostly because people can't afford what the doctors prescribe) and he is fond of the Cuban, Bolivian and Venezuelan political systems (socialist) because they strive to divide the country's wealth between all populations. He also discussed his distrust of the Guatemalan government which doesn't do enough to support the indigenous populations, in fact, they seem to support policies that repress them such as not encouraging them to learn Spanish so that they then can only speak their native rural villages language and not with the rest of Guatemala (and beyond). There are 20+ native languages and the people in San Pedro and 3 other towns along the lake speak Tz'utujil. That is why language schools are so popular here because Spanish is also their second language and thus they tend to speak slower and are more understanding of us newbies.

Pedro comes home for lunch but often works til late at night

     Pedro also discussed with us his thoughts on family planning efforts which he thinks are important for a woman's health. He says the Catholics want more and more babies but who will feed them?  Conversely, Mark's teacher talked about not agreeing with any efforts to reduce the size of Mayan families since they're probably a government conspiracy against the Mayans.  And people should be Mayan first and then whatever religion they are and then Guatemalan. He also thinks its paradox that people dislike the Spanish but they only teach their kids Spanish and not full Mayan. So basically, we have just as many diverse opinions in this relatively homogenous small town as you'd find in the US.