Funny (but normal) sight

On our way home from church, we saw this cow outside a school.

In fact, we often see people herding goats or cows on roads near town.  We also see ladies carrying chickens or turkeys, walking toward town.  I once laughed, telling our daughters that farmers in the States don't do that with their animals.  They answered, "They don't?"

Recording K'iche'

Our K'iche' teacher, Carolina, has been helping us record some dialogs that we have been studying, so we can keep practicing our lessons while we are traveling this summer.

Looking at land with José

We mentioned to José, the guard of the local school where we are temporarily parking our car, that we are looking for land to purchase.  It turns out that his brother has a piece of property for sale!  So we went with José to look at it.

Adobe houses surrounded by corn fields
are normal for this area.

Unfortunately, due to the division of land among the Mayan heirs through the years, sometimes including 10 children, the available plots of land are often long, skinny strips.  Michael measured this plot by walking its width and length, and we estimated that it is 15 meters by 120 meters, part of which is separated by a road, and part of which is on a steep hill.  We'll keep looking.

And now we wait...

After packing down the dirt with a machine that bounced up and down (jiggling the poor man holding it, too), they finished laying paving bricks in front of our house!

The road is blocked off from traffic with some very interesting remains the workers left behind.  They spread sand over the road to fill in the cracks, so it still seems pretty dirty.

Now we wait... hopefully only a couple more weeks.   We aren't exactly sure what we are waiting for, probably for the bricks to settle and the concrete edges to dry.

Easter dances

For Easter, all of the kids' classes at our church presented dances which I choreographed and taught.

The younger two classes went first, followed by the older two classes.  Both groups danced to the songs "Shout to the Lord" and "Open the Eyes of My Heart."

I had a lot of fun teaching the groups, especially the extra practices with the older kids.

Paving our road

One morning we heard an unusual sound of machinery working outside our gate, so Michael opened the door to look.  They had begun digging up the road in order to "pave" it with paving stones.  Surprise!  We had to pull our car out, as well as our neighbor's car, before they trapped us in. 

They say this will be a two-month process, since it takes them a while to lay the stones then let the finished road sit and rest for at least a month or more before allowing traffic to drive on it.   So.... without warning, we were left without a safe parking space.  We parked down the road by a school for a couple of nights, but we soon heard that our neighbor's car was broken into the very first night on the street.  They broke a window and stole her stereo and battery.  Wow.

So now we are parking INSIDE the school grounds, thanks to the kind offer by the owner of the school.  Their guard opens and closes their gate when we want to come or go.

 Amazingly, the workers got right to work on the paving stones.

All of us like to watch as large trucks bring more paving stones.

Helping at Handicapped Center

We were invited back to help at ASELSI's school for students with both physical and mental handicaps. 

We will be going back once a week to help teach and play!