My feet stink

I made a friend in San Juan del Obispo. It is a small street dog whom I have refused to name. She follows me around everywhere, but not for food. Really she just wants to be loved and around people. She came to school with me for a few days and became really protective of the school and would bark at the construction workers next door and any dog that would come in. She is so tiny that she would never win a fight anyway. Once one of the chickens pecked her and she started crying. I have not seen her in a couple of days, and both my teacher and madre told me they think she was adopted. She is very friendly, loving, and protective, so she would make a good house dog. I don't know if they are just trying to make me feel better and really something bad happened, but I am choosing to believe the happy ending story.

I have not showered in almost a week and my feet perpetually stink. The water in my house has been coming and going the last week and now that we have water, the facuet in the sink is broken. I really hope it is fixed sometime today so I can finally shower. I don't shower here as much as I did in the states, and even in the states I tried really hard to conserve water. Water is a really scare resource here, and highly expensive. I have been trying to only shower every few days unless I am sweaty or expetionally dirty. In most homes there is only one bathroom for many people, so showering every day not only uses resources, but inconviences everyone else. In my home the toilet and shower are outside, so I am only using the shower and the toilet is still free for other people to use, which is nice. My family only consists of my padres and hermano and one other volunteer living with the Gomez's.

Last night Olga's (mi madre) sobrino (nephew) was confirmed in the Catholic Church. We had a party at our house for him and his family. Often my house is very quiet because there are so few people living there, that it was nice to have a lot of talking, laughing and commotion happening. Emily (another YAV) and I like to laugh about how my hermano always has a mischevious look in his eye. Like he is always in some kind of trouble or about to get into trouble. In reality I think he is a really good kid, but he certainly has that look...

This week has been relatively quiet because Marcia was in Coban last week so we did not have many afternoon adventures. Tuesday morning we will be going to Guatemala City to visit CEDEPCA and then Wednesday we might be going into the city to visit the Francisco Coll School, and school on the outskirts of the city dump where most of the children's parents work. Thursday morning we leave Antigua for Xela. We will visit all the YAVs placements and families, and then we will spend one more week of language school in Xela. After that I will be moving to San Marcos where I will be for the rest of the year.

I can't believe I have been here for a month tomorrow...