Mucho tiempo!

It has been quite a while, I apologize.

I have been extremely busy in the past few days. To summarize: Friday we left Xela (and permanent internet access) to go to the lake, where we stayed in San Marcos again. Friday night we went to the performance of Dr. Sativo y La Voz Popular, a famous Guatemalan reggae-cumbia musician. There's this popular song of his that I've heard on all my Dragons trips called Guatemaya (check it out it's quite catchy), and it was nice to see it performed. Saturday we took a boat to Pana...to go paragliding! It was amazing to be flying above the most beautiful lake, with the volcano vista. The paraglider I was flying with was really into acrobatic tricks so we did a couple loopings and spiraling. He also let me direct the wing. He spends most of his time in the himalayas and uses his wing to travel, flying from mountain to mountain rather than going through the long winding bus rides. He lives off paragliding and is able to travel with the money he makes. Isn't that an amazing way of life? Pretty cool. We shopped a little in Pana, my travel companions got hair wraps from a lady that was breast feeding in the craziest way I've ever seen, and we returned worn out to San Marcos. We met some crazy androgynous Canadians at our hostel, the friendliest place where everyone staying there without exception owns cool pants. Sunday we went to see Keith again, the chocolate guru, for a second chocolate ceremony. This time it wasn't private so it was quite different. It was really interesting to do it a second time, and I definitely felt more of those energies that I had been so skeptical about and unable to experience the first time. Keith reiterated the same discourse though, which made it seem like he follows a model in all his ceremonies and gave it a phony feel at first, which is to get rid of all the junk that society and our parents impose upon us that prevent us from being who we are truly. The chocolate is supposed to facilitate our access to who we really are to help us live more fulfilled genuine lives. People cried and an older lady got rid of this pain in her back that was caused by repressed grief over her dog that died recently by opening up to the love energies we were all sending her and understanding what was bothering her and preventing her from being happy. It was all rather fascinating, it was very real for the people that felt it but I still was a bit removed from it all, just trying to meditate a little and let the cacao work its magic. That night we left for San Pedro to take an early morning bus Monday, and we met this dutch man that said he could recognize any european - they're easier to distinguish than american people from different states - and then we had him guess where I was from. He had a hard time but finally guessed Switzerland. It was really funny, such a random and safe guess at the same time, for the three nationalities that converge in Switzerland.
That night, we watched the documentary Flow, about water. It was amazing, very informative, and quite scary and depressing about all the harm we're doing to our dwindling fresh water supplies and the unjust and limited access of poorer populations to potable water.
Monday we returned to Xela in spite of the teacher's strike (apparently teachers strike every year here, for the increase in salary by 8% they are supposed to receive but don't without pressure, and it can last from a week to 2 months - the kids end up losing) where I discovered I was sick, not too great on the GI spectrum, and I have a cold. I was supposed to have salsa class but my teacher flaked on me, again. So I did some distribution work for EntreMundos. Last week I put the translated annual report into publisher and took a hundred copies of the magazine to pass around town, I was supposed to be done by now, but I've been too busy.
This week, I have to translate 5 articles into english, write 2 more articles, edit the one I already wrote, work on the photo bank, distribute magazines, plan our itinerary and budget for our expedition to Chiapas, and go to the communities with the office. So much to do, so little time! There is only 2 weeks of internship left, oh how time flies...