Here's what I'll miss about San Pedro:

• The view of the lake, seeing the sunrise and the whistling fishermen, ferry boats, and weird birds that go 'SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!' whenever they think it's too quiet.
• Cafe La Puerta. Yes, a restaurant. On Saturdays we can get breakfast in the 'lakeside palapas' that look like they're in the middle of a jungle... it's fun to eat breakfast under thatched roof, though the best part is the chocolate banana peanut butter mono loco (crazy monkey) smoothies... besides the other great food... I feel like I'm writing a guidebook.
• Our teachers Vilma and Magdalena, who patiently taught us Spanish for two weeks. Sweet, funny, smart- only good things to say about them. They even found our stupid jokes funny.
• All the dogs. We've given names to the ones we know best: Black Dog, because he's black, Foxy Dog, because he looks like a fox, and Pink Dog, because he's pink. No kidding- it took us a while to figure out that he rolled in brick-colored dust everyday (he lives in a construction shop) and turned his white fur pink.
• Weaving. In Guatemala you can find scarves for a lot less expensive than at home. However, after spending two days setting up and eight hours over four days weaving, you realize that a plainly striped scarf isn't easy. Well it probably gets easier, but when I finally finished my scarf yesterday, I admit I was pretty proud of myself. :)
• Swimming. Fine, fine, we only swam once, off the neighboring town of San Marcos, but it was FUN, swimming over a once-explosive-giant-volcanic-crater.
• Tuktuk jams. Where else does it happen that when a truck unloading pavers is parked in the center of a narrow street, three tuktuks, four men with wheelbarrows, two bicyclists, several boys carrying cement bags, and two innocent (me and my mom) pedestrians all trying to get by going different directions?
• The beach in front of the school. Have you ever seen freshwater snails? I hadn't, but this beach is covered, almost littered with amazingly colored shells... it's also a beach where local families wash their clothes.
• Corazon Maya- the school. Besides weaving and besides taking SPanish, last week there was a traditional Mayan ceremony there. The ceremony was in the local Mayan dialect, Tz'utujil, and we were interested to find that were able to understand the gist of the ceremony (it helped that he explained it beforehand in Spanish) even in another language. The most impressive part was the thunder in the background.

          And then yesterday was a tamale dinner for teachers and students. I can't brag about helping prepare it (it was really good, but here's a hint: don't think that because a chile pepper is small it's not spicy) because I was off finishing my weaving... guilty. This is my rave review for Corazon Maya- if you come to Guatemala, we all recommend it there.

Next stop Xela: the second largest city in Guatemala.

-Anda

Swimming in Lake Atitlan

The lake's come up so high that here's a flooded dock

Coffee processing

This church in Santiago Atitlan was built in the 1500's

The chickens... have to ride the boat too

Weaving

Sunrise

Mountains in the sunrise

Moonrise

Looking back off the beach in front of the school. Onions in the foreground!

View from our cabana, where we studied

Cafe La Puerta- is that a cool table or what?

Making tamales. Yes, you will just have to turn sideways.