Home Sweet (New) Home

My host family seems kind and sweet and greeted me with warm hugs and Spanish. There will be no speaking English here! Here, I am a giant, I tower over the local folks. People are short and I am not used to looking down to greet so many folks. My new home is a squatty cement and plaster building very typical of this sweet colonial town. My room is small, maybe six by nine feet. I have a very small closet with exactly 7 hangers and a couple of plastic bins. A bookshelf, night table, another small table, a plastic chair, a single fluorescent light bulb hanging bare from the ceiling. I have a twin bed with a Winnie the Pooh bed spread just like those I see at the border in TJ. And Jesus is there, a portrait gazing down from the wall....looking suspiciously Anglo....but kind nonetheless. The house is open, rooms off of a central courtyard. There is a shower with hot water (haven't tested that yet), and two large cement basins that serve as the kitchen and bathroom sink. There is a spiket, a catch-basin, and then a slanted basin where one scoops from the catch-basin and pours over the slanted basin which drains through a rock covered hole. Jesus and Mary and the pontiff are everywhere in the main room. Jesus is a statue carrying the cross over the stereo, he hangs on the walls in several places. The pontiff stars on every month of the family calendar and is in statue form in several places. Mary is a statue on three walls and on my house key chain. She is also a clock in the main room.....time ticks across the virgin mother. Interestingly enough Guatemala is the least Catholic Country in Latin America. But that is not too hard to achieve. I read that the country is about 66% Catholic, the rest being mostly evangelical/ protestant, with a small percentage practicing an indigenous religion and/or a hybrid Christianity. My flight was fine, I am exhausted. I ate eggs and ham and OJ and passed out for a few hours. I have not slept to completion in days and days. School starts tomorrow at 8am. I will wander the streets tonight....hang in the plaza. It seems everyone is taking to the streets at about this time...just like the small towns in Mexico that I love so. More soon. Adios.