We spent our last evening in Guatamala @ a festival of poetry and music, in honor of two university students, René Leiva Cayax and Danilo Alvarado, who were kidnapped and killed in 1987—and whose deaths inspired the establishment of our school. It was an emotional night, with wonderful music, melodramatic recitations of poetry and very moving speeches by the students’ family members…

We arrived in Xelaju smack in the middle of the yearly celebration of the fiesta of Our Lady of the Rosary. At first we were confused—we knew about the fiesta of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in December, and this seemed to be the same…

Well, I hit a wall this week with my Spanish: started Friday’s class with all sorts of approbation for the good stories I write, and ended it by failing an exam on the irregular pretérito. I’m used to a quick student, and a good student, so all the difficulties I’m having acquiring a new language @ my age and station have me pretty flummoxed—I feel like such a failure!

This statue in the Parque Centro America, in the center of Xela, commemorates the work of a political activist, “the favorite daughter of Xelaju,” Elisa Molina de Stahl (Doña Elisa, as she is known here). According to my teacher, there was a great uproar in Xela when Rigoberto Minchú received the Nobel Peace prize; everyone in Xelu thought that it would have been more justly awarded to Doña Elisa (but had not been, because she was wealthy, and Minchú had suffered…)