Dia lost count

I finally started getting to work on my primary project today of promoting the tour in Santiago Zamora. I'll just be generating interest by going and talking too Spanish schools and Hotels and forming relationships which eventually, maybe not while I'm here, will help send more tourists on the tour. I also decided to start doing field research for a business idea that some friends of mine from school have been developing. I won't bore you with trying to describe this idea, but it is simply put, sustainable banking. So that's second priority. Third priority project is working at the after school program at Los Patojos. I don't know anything about it other than that it is a very wild, loud, and excited atmosphere of children learning. I hear it is less disciplined, and thus more popular with the kids, than Profe Chris's in Santiago Zamora. So I will find out next week I think.

I accidentally made a sandwich for lunch with sweet bread and it was terrible. So I still felt hungry and went to the super market looking for ingredients to make vegetable curry with. But I looked for lemongrass until the ladies were staring at me pacing back and forth with my brow furrowed and looking insane. I couldn't find it! So I figured that a Thai restaurant must have it and that they would sell me some, so I walked until I found a Thai restaurant and I spent a half hour trying to explain to a poor Guatemalan waitress what I wanted, and that no, it was not a manzana (apple). How do you describe lemongrass with a vocabulary of a two-year-old!? Finally she told me that the owner spoke English and would be back tomorrow. So I told her I would come then. I asked everybody I know here how to say or explain lemongrass, but nobody knows.
Anyways... I was invited by the founder of Casasito, Alice, to her house with some other volunteers for a traditional 7 course Chinese meal (cooked by her sister, they are both from China). Who would have thought I would have to come to Guatemala to experience a traditional Chinese feast? It was incredible. One of the best meals of my life. And I got to do a lot of listening to conversations and was able to understand some of them, but I got lost when one story was telling about a little girl who can tell when women are pregnant telepathically... I just laughed when everybody else did during that one. And it sounds like there is a rock climbing wall near here... I will find that. But at the end of dinner I realized I had tasted lemongrass in one of the dishes. So I asked Alice my question of how to say lemongrass or describe it in Spanish, but she didn't answer. But she pointed to her courtyard and said that she grows it and I can have some! Halleluiah! The day was a success. Tomorrow I will have curry. If I can ever find my way back to her house...

Oh and Alice was apparently taking pictures the whole week. She sent some to me so I guess you guys get pictures after all!