{"id":405,"date":"2010-09-20T20:54:11","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T02:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=405"},"modified":"2010-09-20T20:54:11","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T02:54:11","slug":"mi-pequena-habitacion-huele-un-poco-de-funky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/mi-pequena-habitacion-huele-un-poco-de-funky\/","title":{"rendered":"Mi peque\u00f1a habitaci\u00f3n huele un poco de funky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe it\u00b4s because I have three weeks of ropa <\/em>slightly\u00a0sucia<\/em> neatly piled in the corner.\u00a0 Or maybe it\u00b4s the cluster of incense sticks from a former tenant hidden in another corner combined with the lovely odor of thrice-worn socks.\u00a0 I have a rule when I\u00b4m traveling that I won\u00b4t officially do a load of laundry until I run out of clean underwear.\u00a0 And miraculously I haven\u00b4t yet (I pack A LOT of underwear).\u00a0 Who am I kidding…this is pretty much my modus operandi cuando estoy en mi propia casa tambi\u00e9n.<\/em> (Fancy, huh? Latin\u00a0AND Spanish!)\u00a0 I do lots of unofficial laundering which\u00a0consists of taking items of clothing in the shower with me and washing them.\u00a0 I often clean my bathtub this way.\u00a0 Multitasking at its very\u00a0best.<\/p>\n

Got some catching up to do, busy, busy weekend.\u00a0 And I think this week is going to be even crazier.\u00a0 Carol, Deborah & Chloe (the Do\u00f1a Mercedes chicas<\/em>), all left this weekend so there was some celebrating on Friday and Saturday nights.\u00a0 Friday we went to Royal Paris, Stef\u00b4s restaurant in Xela, for some French food and live\u00a0music.\u00a0 He uses part of the profits from\u00a0his private venture to fund the clowns and another initiative called Teatro del Oprimido<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0 I just finished designing a solicitation flyer for the TO\u00a0website…will try and upload this week.\u00a0 This computer is running IE7 or maybe even 6 and anytime I try to upload anything it crashes.\u00a0 Grrrrrr.\u00a0 And internet cafes aren\u00b4t much better, very inconsistent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lago Atitlan, 2006, from San Marcos. Volcan de San Pedro in the background. Glad I uploaded some of my pics from my last trip, who knew that I would have so much trouble uploading pictures.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was going to work on the flyer and calendar\u00a0all day Saturday, but Stef was driving to Panajachel (on stunning Lake Atitlan) and invited me to go along for the ride.\u00a0 I mean it\u00b4s got to be okay to goof off if the boss coerces you, right? Glad I did,\u00a0the lake\u00a0is as\u00a0amazing as I remember.\u00a0 Pana itself\u00a0isn\u00b4t that great, kind of touristy, but this is the off season so I did get to see it raw,\u00a0sans lotsa gringos.\u00a0 Of course, there was a torrential downpour during the few hours we were there and I was absolutely soaked and wandering\u00a0up and down the same 10 blocks that comprise Pana,\u00a0in my elegant\u00a0red plastic bag, looking for the wrong restaurant I was supposed to meet Stef at for lunch.\u00a0 Didn\u00b4t he hear that I get lost in lobbies of apartment buildings (wink wink Roe).\u00a0 Being lost wasn\u00b4t entirely my fault this time, he did describe one restaurant and gave me the name of another.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And I was able to find the wrong one, and\u00a0even found the right\u00a0one, but I didn\u00b4t know\u00a0it was the\u00a0right\u00a0one because the name was wrong.\u00a0 Okay, writing that sentence\u00a0just\u00a0made me\u00a0dizzy.\u00a0 \u00a0It was too bad the weather was so crappy because the drive from Xela to Pana can be incredible\u00a0when there is\u00a0good visibility.\u00a0 There\u00b4s a point on the road, at the highest elevation\u00a0in Guatemala,\u00a0where one can see a perfect line of volcanic peaks.\u00a0\u00a0 And this is the second time I didn\u00b4t see it.\u00a0 I did get to see a lot of the road damage from the recent mudslides.\u00a0 Terrifying.\u00a0 There was one area along the narrow road where it looked like\u00a0some gigante espantoso<\/em>\u00a0took a huge bite out of the mountainside road.\u00a0 I honestly can\u00b4t imagine being on one of those\u00a0archaic buses while it maneuvers through any\u00a0kind of tormenta fuerte<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u00b4s still damage along this stretch from Hurricane Stan,\u00a0and bridges named \u00a8Puente Stan I<\/em>\u00a8 and \u00a8Puente Stan II\u00a8. <\/em>Recovery of any kind is really slow in this country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Xela man caminando en la calle.<\/p><\/div>\n

We returned to Xela in the evening and was glad we got back pretty quickly because I had to meet Debbie and Michelle for\u00a0dinner.\u00a0 Michelle is la due\u00f1a de Casa Do\u00f1a Mercedes<\/em> and Deborah is one of the guests I met there during my stay who left for Mexico yesterday.\u00a0 <\/em>Michelle is trying to learn to speak English so we all speak Spanish to her and she answers us in English.\u00a0 It\u00b4s very efficient.\u00a0 And she doesn\u00b4t usually\u00a0get an attack of\u00a0what I call \u00a8la cara confundida<\/em>\u00a8 that most people who speak Spanish fluently get when I start speaking to them in my newbie Spanish.\u00a0 I thought Carlos was going to pass out from laughing when I explained\u00a0my \u00a8la cara confundida<\/em>\u00a8\u00a0theory to him today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More about that, the beginning of my second week with Carlos, my\u00a0surreal afternoon trip today\u00a0to Zunil y m\u00e1s<\/em>\u00a0ma\u00f1ana<\/em>…have to do un poco de trabajo ahora, y mi tarea!<\/em>\u00a0 I really hope I can upload some new pics tomorrow…I still have incredible market pictures and FANTASTIC photos\u00a0of\u00a0a Maximon shrine in Zunil.<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 Does anyone know if there is a\u00a0Spanish word for \u00a8funky\u00a8?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If were in a band, I would totally change its name to \u00a8Un Poco de Funky\u00a8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}