Guatemalan Firsts

Always some new happenings wherever you go, so here are the new ones for me:

• First little earthquake. Rita and I were eating breakfast at the kitchen table this morning when the building started to tremble. "Wow, it's windy," Rita commented. I looked out the window at the blue sky and the calm tree. "No, I don't think so..." I said.
• First ride on a chicken bus. Why are they called chicken buses? I don't know. David showed me how to catch it. We had to get some last-minute things for David and Katie's goodbye dinner they cooked for the kids. After running across the PanAmerican highway, we flagged down a multi-colored old school bus and crammed ourselves through the aisles to find seats. We were only going to San Lucas, a five- or ten-minute trip. On the way back, finding seats was not so easy. David and I decided the Guatemalan lady who I ended up shoulder to shoulder with was not too fond of us considering he had elbowed her in the head trying to sit down and I had squeezed into the almost nonexistent space next to her.
• First walk into Sumpango. The La Senda kids got their allowance last night, so eight of them, a nanny, and Rachel, Rita, and I walked into Sumpango so the kids could buy chocolate. Though we were walking along the PanAmerican Highway, it wasn't quite as intimidating to walk alongside it as it was to cross it. Seeing huge charter buses leaning heavily to one side isn't overly comforting, though. It was good to see Sumpango--when I was here 7.5 years ago (I feel old every time I say that!), we stayed in a a little building on the main street there.
• First time overhearing pigs being butchered. They sound like a group of wailing people, and hearing their cries in the early morning is unnerving. The first time I noticed it, I was afraid something had happened on the highway, but cars continued to race by (it sometimes sounds like the Indy 500) and no one seemed concerned. Dorcas was the first to tell me the horrible noise was the pigs. I guess that and the stench that comes wafting on the breeze every now and again are the downsides of living next to a pig farmer. I may not eat bacon for a while.