Chapine-time... and Life in Xela

Everything here seems to take longer... there´s even an expression,¨Chapine Tiempo¨ - meaning a little late for something. (Chapines are native Guatemaltecos, people who were born here.) Editing and posting, esp. photos, to my blog take a long time.

UPDATE --- 20 June @ 7:00 p.m.
... consider the early shortness of entry as a kind of test to see who, if anyone was reading this thing.
I´m actually hovering between homesick and braindead, and didn´t want to put too much of that kind of crap on the blog.
And I started a short story, too, so I forgive myself for the brevity.
Another great excuse would be anything vaguely romantic, but nothing there... sigh.
Took a trip to ¨El Zoológico¨ today with my teacher... it was all that I expected, and less, but I´m so not-enchanted with Xela´s big-dirty-city feel that I was hoping against hope that it might fool me, and my teacher remembered it as a ¨tranquilo¨ place... he was disappointed too, as it seems the lovely gardens at the back of the zoo were destroyed some time ago and never rebuilt. So our two hours spent in the micro-bus, packed like the proverbial sardines in a can, was for nothing.
Life is still good... my ¨house-mom¨ agreed to wash my ¨ropa de cama¨ today, so I should have clean sheets to sleep on.

Here are a few more pictures:

On the road from Panajachel to Xela #1


On the road from Panajachel to Xela #2


On the road from Panajachel to Xela #3


Un Cemetario Near Xela


Sunset over Xela, from the Terrace atop Proyecto Linguistico de Quetzaltenango