Fuuuun

Hey all,
Been a bit sick in the last couple of days. It's probably something that I ate, but I knew it was coming from the start. The doctor warned me it's a 30% chance per month to get sick, so for 5 months I had a 83.19% chance of getting it at least once. Last week was the first time :)
At least I have fun even when sick here. The cinema costs 6NIS in the morning and 12NIS at the afternoons and evenings, so it's really a shame not to catch up on every possible movie I can. (I still refuse to go to pirate screenings which aren't rare at all in Guatemala). I also have some great people sick with me in the dormitory, which quite resembles a room in a hospital now. We even have a volunteer nurse that is sick with us.
Traveling in the small vilages around lake Atitlan and Xela is simply breath taking. Every vilage has its oun quirk, and they are all warm, colorful, interesting and unique. A couple of days ago Yoni and I took a day trip around lake Atitlan. Everyone warns you about robbers that wait every day exactly in the same place. So you know between which vilages you can walk, and between which you need to catch a pick up. Riding the pickups we could actually see the robbers smile at us with their matchetas while farming the land. Quite reliable this whole robbery warning stuff. Which led me to the first auto-zevel-style-hitchhiking, when the back of the pickup was full. It's a unique hitchhiking style when you place one foot on the bumper of the pickup, and the other one is hanging free in the air, both hands are locked on a metal that was welded to the vehicle. Real fuuuun. Kids, women and goods come on and off on the way all the time, paying 0.60NIS per ride.
One of the vilages, San Pedro, is now known as 'kfar ha-yeladim' (kid's vilage). This is due to the absurd number of kids we found there. We arrived on the morning break from school (10:00-10:30), and saw just tons of kids pour to the streets from everywhere. Kids selling goods in stores, kids playing in rain pools on the roofs, kids making ropes and kids taking care of each other. The guy in the municipality (still using type writers in there...) explained us that each family has 5 to 12 kids, and all the adults have to go to farm around town - so in daytime at least, the vilage is just packed with children.

In another vilage Yoni got to show off his basketball skills during the intermision from a real professional girl basketbal game. You can notice how he looks like a giant in the pictures. A girl in a traditional dress is one of their stars actually (image soon to come).

And today, we went to see a really corny church. They say that they have audio-visual performances in there, though we arrived to a funeral concession, so it wasn't that happy. A couple of people got brooms and they swept the church's floors after getting all the benches on a vertical position. Of course, on the way there we got 'stuck' by yet another march with nut crackers and kids dressed in neat uniforms marching to the sounds of drums. Really cute. (Again, pics soon to come).

That's it for today,
With the 'flash floods' and 'tons of rain' that my weatherman forecasts me for the next days, I'll probably blog again soon. Tuesday and Saturday I plan to go hiking to some volcanoes here around Xela. And then start heading to El Salvador, which has 4 times more women than men due to their civil wars. Should be interesting to see that.

Signing out,
Eitan.