email numero 2

i find myself in an island. not quite sure if it is man made or not. feel like i´ve been here before...with the modern, concrete, cobble-stone streets, like the ones they replaced the center of guanajuato with, disrupting traffic for more than months. i walked the circle that is this island, eating lunch half way around, then climbed up to its peak, its center, which is merely a hill with a church and a school and a theatre and a plaza they call a park without grass. a concrete plaza park i would call it. what i like most are the hidden callejones and the streets that criss-cross in a non-determinant pattern. it is the randomness that attracts me, the possibility of getting lost and the challenge of having to find my way back to the los amigos hostel. it is a charming, international respite with plants and wooden furniture and a bar and hammocks and brightly painted signs that are also witty and do not detract from the rustic look. the signs are all in english of course. it is another bubble for travelers. i have left one bubble (casa guatemala) to come to another in form of hostel and island and then ancient mayan ruins., even the bus that brought me here was another bubble traveling in time and space. i am beginning to confirm the bubble theory. call it particle theory if you like, but i like the image of a bubble. some with oval walls of straw, others of wood, others of brick. some more capable of being blown down than others. at 8:04 this morning i started across the bridge and felt the fuente del norte bus roar pass me. that is my 8:30 bus, i thought. how strange for it to be early...this is guatemala. as i walked down the other side of the bridge and into the town, i saw the last señor jump into the bus and wave for take off. it was 8:14 and i began to run. fortunately he saw me and whistled for the conductor to stop and i was on the moving bus at 8:16. schedules are relative around here. i sat with the curtain blowing and hitting me in the back of my head, my ear and that space right above my right eye. we stopped for an old man waiting on the side of the rode. he donned a sombrero and a bag of henequin, thread made from a cactus. his skin: bronzed from generations of workers under the guatemalan sun. he smiled and showed two bottom teeth, front and center, sandwiched between the two top cuspids. he sat on a seat cushion on the floor on that hump that old buses, right when you board. you don´t see those humps any more since they began to be viewed as an inefficient use of space, phased it out, and replaced it with another seat, another potential profit. i watched as the people from the side of the rode piled in and sleeping children were handed off to strangers to hold and infants were breast fed on the floor where the old, four-toothed man once sat. i thought of my first day at casa guatemala when rebecca, the english teacher from australia was explaining her affair with a married guatemalan. she explained, in the real world i would never do this, but well, ya know, this isn´t the real world. but this is the real world. one could even make a reality show of this, even this. and knowing that rebecca isn´t the only volunteer having relations with married guatemalans it isn´t surprising that the volunteers at casa guatemala have mala fama (bad fame) around town. and when the manager of the hotel that supports casa guatemala eats cookies that have been sent to two of the workers despite a note stating who they are for, it is not surprising people question: where is the money? let me explain. seño raquel is the manager and she saw the note and yet she just wanted to taste a little bit, but they were so good that she couldn´t stop. she never said anything to anyone. this is an anecdote that explains what happens to donations. there is always a mordida (bite), or possibly a gobbling up of it all. For example (further explanation), the other day a sailor heard about our toilet paper shortage (the volunteers have been buying tp for the kids) and kindly dropped off packets of tp at the hotel to be delivered to the children. well, it never arrived. apparently they decided to use it at the hotel. people are learning to take their boat and drop off their donations them self, if they are not too disillusioned. so it isn´t just the volunteers who have mala fama. the place is absurd. i am observing and learning a lot. tonight i will sleep well; i hope. it is 7:00 and i am ready to sleep. early tomorrow i will go to tikal and then in the afternoon, decide if i will go on another five to six day hike in the jungle. i am divided. part of me wants to walk, walk, walk. and another part of me wants to write, sit, draw...cross off some of the things on my to do list. i will sleep on it. good night,caraps: don´t get too used to these daily emails...