Thur. Oct 21 is the day scheduled for Chichicastanego (ChiChi) for the world famous market. First though we had another job to do.
Lucia is a lovely little woman...and we are talking size here.... who is 23 and has a son almost three. She is on that street about 10 a day with Tomas in tow usually strapped to her back and selling scarves and stuffed animals made of traditional cloth which she has wrapped in a cloth balance on her head. I've added a picture of her with Ian from Shelter Box that I took the week before to give you a view of just how small she is.
She rents a room back a very long and winding alley. She was given a hope chest made by Mayan Families. Her land lord decided that constituted furniture and doubled her rent. Previouly MF gave her a bed...rather than sleeping on a concrete floor....and had to negotiate for them to not raise her rent then. The same people she has rented from for the last five yrs and they did not know Tomas' name.

So we proceeded to tote the trunk to our hired van and move it to her real home in ChiChi where she spends her weekends with the rest of her family. Again another small sq. block room which we reached by going through the cemetery in ChiChi. You can view how colorful the cemeteries are in Guatemala by viewing the Picasa site on the right of this page.
We then proceeded to the main church where incense are burned on the steps in hopes for a good market day. To inter the church you go in the side door...never the front door. This church is built on a sacred Mayan mound and so out of respect you don't go up the stairs. Often people here crawl down the aisles on there knees. We had lunch then proceeded to shop for all kinds of things we didn't need but just loved and had to have.
We arrived back at my place to Mathilda and her helper preparing for our dinner party that I throw for each group. Somehow I managed to not have any pictures of this for some reason. I thinks it's called tired!!!