Arrival San Pedro la Laguna

We made the drive today from Guatemala City to San Pedro la Laguna. We spent last night at la casa de las Hermanas (aka a house run by nuns aka a convent)--it's this really nice house in Guatemala City. It has a huge backyard with lots of plants and a swimming pool. Thank goodness, the hermanas let me leave my huge suitcase with them so I didn't have to drag it all the way to San Pedro and up the hills (it's full of all my winter clothes for Chile). We had our own van (because there are enough of us to fill up a van) to take us to San Pedro. We even had a police escort! Partly because Mark's wife was nervous about traveling with their boys (who are really young) through Guatemala and partly because they were going to carry filters we were supposed to pick up in Antigua for us. However, the meeting in Antigua is another story. There's a factory in Antigua that makes ceramic filters--the kind we were going to bring to give to some families in some of the communities we were going to work in. Mark had spoken with the director had made a deal with them to get them for cheaper than usual--$25 each (they're usually $42). We were supposed to meet them at the factory today and pick them up. But, they called us at the last minute and told us they weren't going to be there today--and that they wouldn't sell us the filters for $25, they'd only sell them for $35. So, now we have to troubleshoot and figure out what we're going to do. After that little blip, we continued on our way. We stopped at none other the Pollo Campero (basically Guatemala's version of KFC) for lunch. Then we continued on to San Pedro; the rest of the drive was uneventful. We got to San Pedro around 3, went to the school and met with our host families. I really like my host family this year. Both my mom and dad are teachers--my mom is a teacher in San Pedro and my dad is a teacher in Santa Cruz which is across the lake. My little sister is 13 and she goes to school in San Pedro and my little brother is 5 and he also goes to school here. My brother is really funny, he's a little chatter box. We played connect four before dinner--except he has very interesting rules--so he won every time of course. My mom made what she called tortas which was basically kind of like a pancake with ham, sausage, tomatoes and onion. It was pretty good. Well, so far everything is going pretty well--minus the little mishap with the filters.