My night with the Buena Vista social club

I really think I could retire here someday. I met an older American couple today that did just that. They brought their dog and live down here cheaply. They get together with other ex pats for Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas, the lifestyle is so enviable. And this couple didn´t even speak spanish! Acutally, that bothers me a little bit - at least learn how to order in a restaurant - that´s how I met them. You are never too old to learn. Here´s a side story. Even my dad tries to speak spanish sometimes. When I arrived to visit him in New Mexico and got off the plane, he said proudly, ENTRADA!! ¨how did you learn that word?¨ I said. ¨From Wal Mart!¨ A few days later when I was dropped off he said ¨SALIDA!¨ I bought him a translation book and he looks words up sometimes. So I don´t know why this couple would move here and not even TRY, but still - they were the two most content people. Perhaps I´ll follow their lead one day.

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I had another morning of lessons and funny stories from Rosie. I really lucked out with her. I won´t write down the things she told me, because that´s her personal business and all, but her family is funny! My homework assignment tonight is to write a children´s story. She had me make up another story today in class that stems from a series of pictures of Juan, an architect. Juan woke up. Juan had breakfast of huevos aY frijoles. Juan went to work. Juan watches Latin American Idol in his easy chair with a beer. Then I made Juan a bad barracho and had him pass out in his bed at 2AM. Rosie thought it was really funny what I did to poor Juan with my story. Sometimes I can be so immature..

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I met Antonella out with some other girls from her school. They picked a place that had live music that night, I had never heard of it. Yoras from the other night was there, and everyone was excited because one of the guys from the Buena Vista social club was playing. I was amazed, I thought most of them were dead. BVSC are from cuba, and they have a CD (which I have, and I love) and there was a documentary about them made into a movie. This guy was amazing!!! I recognized some of the songs and people were dancing. I am always amazed at how people dance here. They dance like they have been doing it since childhood, because they have. Guys a head shorter than you will give you little lessons - and it´s really fun. I am terrible and teva flip flops aren´t the best for salsa dancing anyway. When Kathy and I were in Costa Rica we danced with the locals and enjoyed it so much that we took lessons at home. I am completely envious of the way those people move, look in their clothes and dance. I keep hearing girl tourists complain that ¨guys at home don´t dance like that!¨ It´s true. But then again, me dancing salsa compared to the Guatemalans is like a bull in a china shop, with a limp. And mild epilepsy. So who am I to judge. I also talked to some Guatmalan guy who had been to Chicago and ate at the Guatemala aroma restaurant, which is one block from my house. When I get home I´m going to talk to the guy who runs it and show him the photo of us. It was a great night out.

If you don´t have sound on your computer these will be worthless but give them a try-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlQpJyYShek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAi2ZtD06QI

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The other day I bought the funniest thing for my apartment. It´s a metal painting of two lecherous looking mariachi singers chasing two women in traditional clothes. And an angel up in the corner. The sign has a whole little story painted on it, and I can´t really translate (Trisha, your job when I come home) but I can get a few words out of it (molesters with bad intentions... something about learning a lesson) . It makes me laugh and seems like another completely inappropriate thing to hang in my house. They had a bunch of those signs, all of them had pictures of people getting in trouble and getting saved by some angel or the vigin of guadeloupe. Like a spanish Aesop´s fables.

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I keep hearing the same two songs. This always happens to me. I want to buy the CD and nobody knows what I am talking about.

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enjoy the photos now because in a few days I´m going up to Lake Atitlan and I get the feeling the internet will be less rapido and you will have to imagine the pictures.

above - chicken bus, me with Buena Vista guy, two dancers who I couldn´t stop watching