Sunday Funday

After breakfast this morning, I went to the Sunday market and walked around for a bit. Vendors set up their goods along the streets that run along the town's center. Most are selling fruits, vegetables, meat, burned CDs, or random household items. I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb - the only tall blond person among hundreds of tiny brown men and women dressed in brightly colored, woven clothing.

At 12, the group met and picked up a truck around the lake into a town about 30 minutes away called Santiago. Bigger than San Lucas, they have more shops and a restaurant Dr. Chaperone feels comfortable eating at (she will only go places she has been before... her life is a mystery-thriller), where we got lunch. We all walked around and got spend-happy at the tourist shops, buying beautiful leather and embroidered bags, quilts, scarves, etc. I'm trying to bring gifts back to people they will actually like and use, but sometimes your judgment gets clouded in foreign countries and you start thinking your friends absolutely WANT and in fact NEED forty thread bracelets and a wooden sculpture of a pig.

This could all be yours for the low low price of ten quetzales.

For the ride back, we picked up a taxi-van, which ended up packed with 23 people, one of them drunk and trying to softly caress Tessa's thighs until the driver finally pulled over and the 10 year old van-enforcer shoved him out. When we got back, we spent some time sorting through the remainder of the baby clothes we had donated. We are making little "burrito" gift packages for every woman we see - a baby blanket with a sleeper and two onesies wrapped inside.

We work the next five days, then have the weekend off. Nobody knows what we will be doing or where we are going until we are actually in the truck taking us there, a fact I am completely okay with.