llegue en pana

yesterday i arrived in panajachel(pana) and spent some time with the hands of healing walking around and eating dinner. the city is really cool, the food is good, and the lake is amazing. my apartment is on pretty much the main tourist street in pana and is really close to the lake too. so far my ventures here in spanish have been fairly limited because i have been mostly with the hands of healing group, but they are not completely gone. for instance, today we went to santiago, a village across lago atitlan from pana. for the first hour we walked around and pretty much everyone but me bought stuff (i figured i would have plenty of time to shop). anyway, as we met up at a restaurant for lunch, a native girl was sitting in the corner of the porch. we could all tell that she had something wrong with her, but we figured she was just a local sitting at the restaurant. as it turns out, she was not a girl and she wasnt there by coincidence. she was really close to 25, but she wasnt sure, and she had heart problems that caused her to be short of breath. there wasnt a whole lot to do for her because she was already getting help from another project in santiago they wouldnt or couldnt tell her what she had, they could only treat her. so we gave her some lasics and went on our way. now, the part i failed to mention before is that because she was a native and her parents were dead, she only knew a local dialect of mayan, so to translate we had to go from the doctors to rafael(and a little bit of me) to one of the waiters, to her, and back down the chain. nonetheless, it was an interesting first look for me into what i will be having to deal with over the next few weeks.

this is only one of the many stories i have here, but i really cant tell much more because i just happened into an internet cafe without my laptop and so i have a really bad keyboard to type this all on. will come back soon and write more=] (and i dont have the password to the wifi that is close to my apartment)