Settled

Semana Santa was a lively holiday here at Lake Atitlan. Apparently that holiday and Christmas is the time when this area is the busiest. Most of the visitors are middle class Guatemaltecas that come up from Guatemala City. This was great for business for my buddy Sune's bar and nightclub, however it made it difficult for me to move comfortably from San Marcos to San Pedro because everything decent was all booked up for the week. Finally, on Sunday, I got a nice room with a lake view to call my home while I take some Spanish lessons.

In my few solo nights here in San Pedro, I have managed to connect with a few of the expats in town who own and run businesses here. Great sources of information and company. One of them, Dee who designs clothing that local women make and sell at her store, gave me a recommendation for a private Spanish teacher named Maria and a bit of info on how to find her. After searching around without luck for most of a day, I finally found her at a new 'Cafecito' she is helping to open in town. She is from Spain and roughly in my age group and Dee was right in that she is a very pleasant teacher which makes the daily classes more bearable. I am interested to see how much I can improve in a few weeks. For the first time in, well awhile, I have homework assignments. Seeing that I don't have much else to do during the day, this is welcome for the moment.

Life here is different from normal travelling because I am not seeing anything new each week. I am getting into a routine and settling for a bit which makes it less of an adventure and more of an experiment living in a very different place and culture.

The lake is a major presence in one's life here in that it can decide where and when you move about. On most days, mornings are sunny and mild - great for swimming if you have a good place from which to hop in. In the afternoon, winds tend to pick up a bit. Not enough to bother those on land, but enough to make the water choppy and somewhat treacherous for folks on the lanchas (boat taxis) that take you from town to town on the lake. If the water is choppy, you are quite likely to get bounced around and get quite wet. This past Wednesday, winds blew hard all day long. My friend Kristen, who is in town on Spring Break from her teaching job in San Francisco, could not make it three towns over as she had planned and had to settle for one town. That was the most punishment she could take for a single journey.

And it is not just the weather that can change your plans. Businesses, those you might plan to patronize on a given day, are subject to closing without notice or a time when they plan to re-open. This creates an air of opportunism for me each day, where I survey the current conditions and figure out day to day what I will be able to accomplish. The control belongs to the town and the lake.

I am looking forward to a boat load of friends from San Fransisco and other cities who are scheduled to arrive some time in the next week or so. That should be a great time. These are friends who mostly know both Sune and I from the Burning Man camp we all were a part of in the past two years.

Let the invasion begin!