This is the school very near my hostel that I passed every day.  I learned that ¨senor¨also means lord.  Hence the translation of Lord of the Rings is El Senor del Anillo, which took a while for me to understand which movie my teacher was trying to talk about.  The Man of the What?

Ahhh the chicken buses.  Actually converted US school buses from the seventies or earlier that spew out black smoke all over town and are the favorite haunts of pickpockets.  It was on one much like this that my passport was stolen. They are all decorated by the drivers with various religious images.  The one I took from San Pedro to Xela had the most fantastic Head of Christ decals in the back window.  Fully detailed with bleeding head and eyes rolling heavenward.  I tried not to think about how much the picture was like what would happen to all of us if our bus when over a cliff.  So far I have survived and Dios es con mi.  You would think all the psalms painted into the front of the bus, where in elementry school were the rules of the bus, would provide some protection.

And here is the central square of Xela.  Much prettier than I had actually imagined for the second largest city in Guate.  It is cool to be in such a cosmopolitan city after being in the Mayan hills for three weeks.  The women here actually wear pants and heels instead of the traditional dress and everyone has the required cell phone, much like Africa.