Looks Like Rain...

The answer is not if, but when. Rainy season surrounded by mountains and volcanos? It's gonna rain! And when it does, boy does it rain... Yesterday the grass hut that I have classes under flooded. The roof remained intact, but our feet got very very wet... The lake is slowly encrouching on the town, being significantly higher than when I first got here and threatening the school (held in a shack) where I volunteer teaching English in the mornings. That said there is very little time in the day for me to notice the rain, especially as it normally rains during my afternoon lessons - 4 hours of one-to-one Spanish instruction, followed by "conversation club" led by a teacher (and yesterday held in a bar) and then evening activities at the school. Followed by evening activities outside of the school - involving many (very cheap, very strong) cuba libres, the occasional "orgasm brownie" (so called because upon first tasting it someone was heard to exclaim "it's like an orgasm in my mouth!") and definitely conducted in English.

At the weekend we kayaked to another town a couple of kilometers across the lake from San Pedro, San Marco. On the journey we encountered many floating stones (well it is a volcanic region...) and many cuba libre breaks. Before 9am. As a flotilla of kayaks in the middle of a lake. When we merrily arrived at San Marco we 'parked' our kayaks and explored the town, which only has paths, not roads (apart from one road that goes through linking all the lake towns). We followed this by jumping off cliffs into the clear blue water (at least it was where we jumped - other places it was full of floating shoes and pumice stones). We returned to the kayaks to find that the glassy clear water that we had encountered on the way over was no more and there were huge waves, and miscellaneous kayaks and paddles floating in the reeds or just not floating anymore... It took 5 of us to refloat one kayak, and once we were finally ready (and the 'fraidy cats of the group had finally been convinced that the waves really were only big by the shore) we set off back to San Pedro in the rain. It wasn't cold, it wasn't too rough, but boy did our arms hurt without the welcome relief of cuba libre breaks!

Another week at school and I'm learning two of the Spanish past tenses now that my teacher is satisfied that my present is grammatically correct... I have also learnt various Mayan folklore about the area around Lago de Atitlan from the father of my family, and origami from the son. Apparently my next challenge is to learn how to make tortillas round from my 'mother' (possibly impossible), as well as how to cook pepian, the Mayan curry. So more than just a Spanish school!