The other day Juana, my K'iche teacher arrived at my house and told me there was a group of American doctors in town. “Are you sure they're American?”, I asked her. “Yes, they're still here”, she replied, pointing to the bus parked in front of the elementary school, which is right across the street. I went to investigate and, sure enough, they were a group of mainly doctors and dentists on a missionary medical trip from the states. I was a bit shocked to see other gringos in “my” town and, after getting over my disbelief, introduced myself to the bus load of friendly white faces. I arranged to meet up with them the next day and help translate while they met patients at the school. It ended up being a very interesting and invaluable experience. As it turns out, most of the adult patients didn't speak much Spanish, so we ended up needing 2 translators—me to translate with the doctor between English and Spanish, and one of the school teachers to translate from Spanish to K'iche for the patient. Often times the patient was elderly and could barely speak at all, and so was accompanied by a daughter or son who would do most of the talking and communication, adding yet another link in our chain. The system was imperfect, and no doubt information was lost in the real-life game of telephone, but it worked well enough to communicate the basic information to the doctor. It was very sad to hear some of the stories—people that lived with chronic pain every day of their lives, or had health problems that would be fairly routine and treatable in the U.S., but for which little could be done in the context of rural Guatemala, where modern resources are often not available. We heard from abused mothers, who often started having children when they were still girls themselves and were now overburdened with kids to feed, who complained of perpetual stress and anxiety. While some of the people with serious treatable conditions were able to be referred to free or low cost surgery at a charitable hospital in Antigua, most of the time we were only able to offer band-aid solutions—things like tylenol or ibuprofen for pain, benadryl (an allergy medicine which causes drowsiness as a side effect) for any sort of sleep or anxiety problem, and vitamins to pretty much everyone.

The roller coaster ride continues on a daily basis. I'm still enjoying cooking for myself in my new room (I learned how to make bagels and vegetable curry—both are yummy and not too hard) and teaching health lessons at my schools. I'm feeling more of a 'routine', and often times the days seem to pass by and I don't know where the time has gone (for example I just spent 3 hours washing all my clothes by hand, taking up my entire morning). Unfortunately I found out last week that the Coban half marathon, which was supposed to be this Sunday, was postponed until late June due to the arrival of swine flu in Guatemala. I'm disappointed but suppose it's not so bad—I was a bit sick with a sore throat all last week so didn't get to go running, so I guess this way I'll have time to get in better shape (although I've started to have a bit harder time staying motivated than I had the first few months of training)

I got a second-hand mechanical orange juicer from Susy the other day, so yesterday I went with Roberto, a 25 year old teacher that works at one of my schools and also lives in town, to get some oranges from his family's farm just out of town. As we walked across the fields, which they are now digging up in preparation to plant corn, I noticed how the landscape is changing rapidly. A few weeks ago everything was dusty and dry, yet now the land is becoming wet and green. I've been told rainy season is supposed to be quite beautiful and am looking forward to it, even though I got caught riding home on my bike through the rain the other day and arrived cold and wet, an experience I'll probably have to get used to. Since starting almost 2 weeks ago it's rained every day in the afternoon. Mornings are still sunny and pleasant, but the clouds inevitably roll in at some point. It's still a novelty and I continue to enjoy the sound of hard rain on the roof (when I'm safely inside staying dry, that is). I took advantage of the morning off to wash my clothes while there was still sun, and I'm hoping that they'll be all dry before the rains come later this afternoon. I hear clothes drying can become a major problem during rainy season.