Chicken Bus

Amigos y familia!

We are leaving Magdalena already on Sunday!  Que triste!

This week has been wonderful, being able to relax for the most part, without Spanish class!  What a wake up call it will be next week in Antigua!  Surprisingly, I didn't spend much time at Hermano Pedro at all this week.  Instead, Brita, Laura, Nineth, and I made posters to put on the walls in the girls' rooms!  We printed out coloring pages of Disney princesses, and enlarged them.  We then went through a long process of tracing and putting colored paper over the copies.  Even though it was tiring, and took us three whole days to finish all of them, they turned out great!

This week also brought my first experience in the "chicken bus"!  No, there aren't actually chickens on the bus...it's called the chicken bus because everyone squeezes so close together that they look like chickens!  On our first ride to Antigua, one man was nice enough to give up his spot so Brita and I could sit together...I love the people here!  It certainly was an experience!  The bus rarely stops completely for people, and there are "helpers" on the bus who stand at the door and yell out where the bus is going ("Guate! Guate!").  One of the helpers collects money from passengers en route to their destination, squeezing between the multitudes of people in the aisles...it definitely must take some courage to be an "ayudante"!

And now...some vocabulario I've learned in the past week:

Brillantina: Glitter
Tuk-tuk: Guatemalan Taxis
Chuchos: Stray dogs in the street
Barrcones: Grates on the windows

There are definitely more, but those are the ones that I can think of right now!

Vayan con Dios!

Con mucho amor,

Rosita