Guatemala mourns

My brief flirtation with football is over. Guatemala were stuffed (is this the correct footballing terminology) by Canada last night, and their brief chance of entering the world cup has fallen by the wayside, as has my interest in the sport.

This morning I felt homesick. It was fleeting, but very poignant. Ísn´t it strange the things you miss when you´re away. I had a burning desire to breathe in the clean air of Leeds (and no, I´m not being sarcastic!!!) have a bacon sandwich in cafe 41, and just generally loll around in my house.

Learning a language is a hideous undertaking. I think I undertook this lightly, thinking that it would be pretty straightforward to have a reasonable command of the language in six months. Ha ha. I´ll be lucky if I can even introduce myself! Still, I will soldier on. Studying for 6 hours a day must be doing me some good, surely...

What other news do I have. The first is that this keyboard doesn´t seem to have any question marks, so my questions will appear as statements. The other is that last night T and I went to a Quetzaltrekkers benefit dinner. This magnificent organisation was set up 9 years ago by an English social worker, who helped out at Escuela de la Calle (school for street children in a poor district of Quetzaltenango) and was horrified at how underfunded it was. He set up Quetzaltrekkers, an outfit that runs treks into the nearby mountains and volcanoes and uses the money to fund the school. It also runs things like this benefit dinner, which drew in about 150 people - pretty much all of us English speaking, language students and volunteers most of them American.

I must withdraw any previous comments I have made about Americans. EVery single one I have met since being here (and I´ve met quite a lot) are suitably horrified about the results of the recent election, and one even said that she doesn´t want to go back there whilst G is in power. She has taken a permanent job here in Xela! So there I am, lots of Americans are cool!

There´s not much else to report today, T and I are beginning to look for an apartment or similar that we can call home. It seems slightly daunting, particularly in view of my poor spanish. However, there´s a glimmer of hope inasfaras one of the language schools (complete with sympathetic, english speaking owner) seems to have lots of houses and apartments to rent out at reasonable rates. We are going to see what they have in a moment.

Another reason that I am keen to move out of my host family, lovely as it is, is that I can´t quite cope with the fact that there is a live-in maid there. She belongs is one of the indigenous people here who are generally treated badly. Although I can´t really say that she is treated badly at our home, I still feel uncomfortable about it. We have been there over a week now, and she has worked from 6 in the morning until after we have gone to bed every single day. She also has a small child. Although the maid thing seems to be a pretty normal part of life here, and I should be working at accepting the culture, there are some things that will always feel wrong to me.