como se dice "brain dead?"

5 hours of espanol this a.m. is a lot.
the amount of coffee that is consumed here is incredible. so my teacher tells me this story about the people in Guat who are quite poor... when the young children can no longer breastfeed, the families often put coffee into their bottles... at age 3 or 4! because coffee is so much more accessible than water. so by the time they are adults the caffeine is nothing. therefore everyone here drinks coffee at dinner... i may not sleep for the next 2 weeks.
my teacher has been teaching espanol at this school for cinco anos. she is great.... she tells me a lot about Guat society, class, politics, etc. her husband is in kansas or missouri... lost in translation... so she knows some english and knows quite a bit about los estados unidos.

mi nueva familia has one young boy, age 7, who is way cute. he watches scooby doo with me at dinner! today he was watching "happy feet" and taught me how to say "penguinos bailar" when the penguins looked like they were dancing. they live only a block from the school, which is especially helpful for the 8am class. tonight my homework is to conjugato mucho verbos.

yesterday was muy importante eleccion por presidente, so today was a holiday. and saturday is dia de la independencia, another holiday with festivals, parades, etc. so it's a big week in xela. huge city but very spread out, very crowded, no bldgs above 3 stories probably. odd mix of colonial influence, mayan history, and u.s. commercialism.

Quote of the day: I passed by a blind man playing a guitar and singing "...f**k the devil in Christ's name..."

Seriously.

tomorrow afternoon is salsa dancing!