You didn’t think I could cover a whole 6 weeks in one post, did you? (Read Living in Guatemala – the first visit first, if you haven’t already.)
This was our second encounter with ping pong, having first tried it with no instructions whatsoever at Timeberline Lodge, which pretty much meant two uncoordinated kids bumped a ball around for a bit. It was different at PLFM because most of the students (and all of the teachers, of course) were adults, and some actually knew how to play ping pong. I can’t say we were great at it, but we did get the basics and learned how to occasionally score points.
An early discovery was that we had never been taught to read a map. On that first day of class, at lunch time, we were all driven to Candelaria and dropped off at our respective houses. We walked back to school with our parents after lunch. At the end of the day, map in hand, my sister announced that she knew the way, and my parents let us go on ahead, presumably intending to keep us in sight. Not surprisingly, we took a wrong turn… several blocks before we were supposed to turn the opposite direction. We didn’t get too far before realizing our mistake, but it took just long enough that our parents arrived in Candelaria before we did.
After our first week at the school, being rather rambunctious children, we were assigned to one of the other buildings. (There were three; two were several blocks from the main building, but across the street from each other.) We’d start every week at the main building, because students were assigned a new teacher every week, then walk with our teachers to our allocated classroom. This meant we had to plan ahead and walk back to the main building just in time for break if we wanted to play ping pong.
There were other advantages to being near the main building… the store across the street sold gummy bears. You could buy a few ositos for ten centavos. (By the time I reached middle school, there were places selling gummy worms too.)