ahh globalization

so youd think that a village made up of 99% Mayan people, many who don´t even have running water, would lack many of the worlds products. but, alas, this is apparently not the case. it wasn´t as much of a surprise in the capitol, but here in San Pedro it was truly shocking. the Mayan family that im staying with cooks over a wood stove and washes all their clothes by hand but yet has a TV with cable and a cellphone. muy extraño. a couple of nights ago i was playing guitar and fooling around with my two new sisters and brother and they invited me to come inside to watch spongebob. hmmm...

youd be pretty surprised how many people have cell phones here. its kind of depressing. sure, i bet it helps them in some way, but i was really hoping to escape western civilization. unfortunately, im not sure if thats even really possible anymore.

the trash is also kind of depressing. after leaving the u.s. and thinking we were doing an awful job of being environmentally conscious, it was pretty surprising to see people throwing trash in this beautiful lake. i took a walk today to these small cliffs at the waters edge and was climbing the rocks and would find small deposits of trash every once and a while. when speaking with my teacher on the first day, i mentioned the trash in the lake. he said people like him were working hard to clean up the beaches in the streets when possible, but people just keep doing it. the main problem is that they just really dont know that its bad. i recommended an inconvenient truth. ha.

anyway, ive been hanging out with a couple young guatemaltecos - two brothers from another city that are here on vacation with their mom and sister for a year. theyre both pretty close to me in age and weve been playing basketball after my classes the last few days. yesterday we met up with another americano from michigan thats been living here for over 8 months and plays the banjo. we all went to the beach and played music for a few hours. it was pretty cool.

they asked me to join them in climbing the volcán today but i had class. afterwards i went exploring. there are some pretty amazing places here. as i said, i went to the rocks. i took some pictures on my way...

i tried to get a panoramic of the whole village, but not sure if itll work very well on here.

when i was climbing around on the rocks, i found a nice little spot to lie down on the left there. i read for a while but its such perfect siesta weather here that i didnt last very long.

not much more for now. i tried to upload more pictures but the internet is crapping out. ill try to get some more pictures of people but i feel weird popping my camera out and just snapping away. oh, i also finally got sick due to the water. i was wondering how long i would last and was actually surprised that i made it as long as i did. been feeling kind of shitty all day thanks to that. luckily madre y padre made me bring pepto bismol;) by the way guys, i saw it in a store last night. as i said, this world has become a little more western than you might imagine.

paz