i was told there would be no math

Sorry i haven´t written in awhile. It´s a long one.

so as far as i can tell there about 3 crazy people in town. The first one is a woman who walks around barefoot. I´ve seen her all over town. The nice thing is she´s always wearing different clothes and lots of times she´s recieving food from friendly homes. I saw her today and it looks like someone cut her hair. Then there´s an older man of about 70 or so. He´s always wearing a hat, jacket with no shirt, and slacks. He usually has a cigar with him, but i´ve only seen him smoking it once or twice. He likes to tell me that we´re novios. And then sometimes he asks me for Q5. as much as i like him, i don´t give him any money. Then there´s this street kid. I´ve only seen him twice; both times he just walked into the office. Appearently he´s known for coming into houses and offices and stealing things. I guess if you´re going to be crazy, it´s better to do it in a small town where people give you cigars and cut your hair for you.

we have bats in the office. Well just at nite so i haven´t actually seen them. But in the morning there is a fresh pile of poop on the floor or table. The word for bat is murciélago.

Last Friday the muni sent a bunch of guys to my house to see about my water problem. So i spent most the day hanging out with the guys while they dug up the street. It was a pleasent enough way to pass the day, and i think maybe having a gringa to talk to was extra motivation. They connected a new tube and and then my landlady came by and bought a round of sodas for everyone. Except she bought the boss-man, José, and me beers. Then one of the workers bought a second round and since i had been sitting out in the hot sun all day, not drinking water and i hadn´t had lunch, i accidently got a little tipsy, which i´m sure all the guys loved to see. Anyway for one glorious day this week i had water for the first time in two months. it was a steady stream that filled up my depóstito quite a bit. Yesterday was water day, but for some reason this time the water didn´t come. so i have enough to tide me over for awhile, shower on a regular basis and all that. And it´s been raining a lot so i have water for dishes and stuff. I really hope the situation gets resolved sometime soon. Like before i leave the country.

Somehow i have no free space on my c drive. Wha happened? I think it´s from my digital pictures but i didn´t think i had that many. I wish lee was here.

Sometimes i really hate it when people come up to talk to me because i can tell they are going to ask me for something. and it´s not like i don´t like helping people – i mean i am a peace corps volunteer and everything – but usually i don´t want to do whatever it is the person is asking. Like a couple of days ago when this guy i know came by the house. He had asked me a few weeks ago when i was usually around because he wanted to talk to me about something. a couple weeks passed and i thought i was in the clear. Unfortunately not. He came by Monday morning and told me a story. Seems he used to be a courrier, traveling to the states once a week for 3 years or something. everything totally legal and he always was shown the goods ahead of time. Anyway, he decided to take a break and his son filled in for a few months. Well, it seems that one time the woman who hired them stuffed a bunch of money inside of dolls and the son didn´t know and got caught. He was thrown in jail, proclaimed his innocence, and finally the women confessed and the son was set free. Upon being set free, he was picked up again because while wrongly incarcerated, his visa expired. This time he signed some sort of waiver saying that he would not like to contest the charges in order to be deported immediately and with this he could apply for another visa 10 years down the road. So now he´s back. And the father wants me to try to see what i can do about getting his visa priviledges back. He gave me a stack of papers written in english and spanish to look over and mentioned that former volunteers in ipala had helped them out a lot in the past and that god will bless me and all that stuff, your typical guatemalan guilt trip. I really don´t feel like putting a lot of energy into this. It´s really shitty what happened and i agree that the us immigration-visa situation is overly insane now do to 911. but i don´t know anyone in the embassy. And i really don´t know this family all that well to be a good character witness. Anyway. i havent looked over the papers yet. I´ll try to do it this weekend.

I´ve started ¨exercising¨ in the mornings. This week lesly and i have been meeting at 6 to walk for an hour. Down the highway. Because there´s really no other place to go. I thought we were going to be running, but today i met her wearing jeans and yesterday she had sandles on, so i think it´s going to be mostly a walking affair. Nidia has been sick, but i´m hoping when she starts feeling better she´ll join us and we´ll actually run. There´s a gym in town called ¨la roca¨ which appearently has aerobic classes in the evenings (unfortunately i don´t think it´s step) and lesly says they are hard. But honestly i don´t know if i can trust her opinion when it comes to things of an athletic nature. Plus it´s like Q80 a month. When i get back from the states i´m going to look into it. But for right now, i´m so out of shape, walking for an hour is fine by me.

July 2^nd is the big pc independence day party at the embassador´s house. It should be off the hizzie and i´m not just saying that because i´m party of the comittee that planned it. Pool, sauna, bbq, talent show, lip synch contest, dancing, and about 150 pc volunteers plus guatemalan and american personell, and off course the embassador himself. All i´m saying is i´m having a really hard time picking out costumes. I have about 5 possible choices but there are several stages of the party to take into consideration. i´ll be sure to take lots of fotos.

i´ve been trying to do some gradschool research. i think i´m going to apply to some program somewhere but it`s all up in the air. i don`t really like ¨math¨ and all these ngo management public administration environmental policy programs have a lot of economics and statistics. i mean i did learn a lot from toby´s class. like that time when he requested that i come by his office hours and then asked me if maybe i ¨just wasn`t trying hard enough???¨ for those of you who had toby´s class, you know i didn`t have to dignify that question with an answer. anyway, i´d like to analyze things without using a lot of math. there`s got to be a program out there somewhere, right? speaking of math and studying for the gre`s . . . today´s review topic: percentages.

just a reminder, i´ll be in ny july 13 - 26 and we should hang out. email me if you are going to be around. or refer to adam and christine for a copy of my schedule.