Ok, i guess the trick is you have to put the pictures in before you start typing or you'll go insane trying to put the pics where you want to. Great. maybe i'll do better in the future. So here I am at a Tourism Faire/Expo that was held in the Central Park in Xela, the 'big city' down the hill from me. I accompanied people from my community, who sold the artesan cheese our town is famous for, and distributed publicity about our park. It was a great weekend, they sold a bunch of cheese, and we got to do some great networking with tour operators and other locals groups with similar projects.

My friend Tara also came to represent her community, had a booth right across from us, so we got to hang out a little too. Oh, and notice my new earrings-There was a guy who had a table full of awesome jewelry and I am notoriously indecisive about buying jewelry for myself. But as fate would have it, he had one pair of genuine dark amber earrings-so i had to get them.

I am getting way better about being a decisive shopper down here, by the way, because what you see one day will not be there the next, so you have to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. I think this will be good for me.....

The park where I work is a humid oak forest, and right now (and since May) there are awesome mushrooms everywhere. I would love to learn more about the edible and non-edible types while i'm here. These tiny bright red ones are probably toxic.

And here I am with my new bundle of joy....her name's Bella and Im hoping she grows up to be my ferocious guard dog. But right now she's just good company going up the mountain. here she is taking a break.

This is the parade in sija, where I live, the day before Independence Day. All the schools have been practicing for this parade for months. They all get into the elaborate costumes and really go the whole nine yards. You can also see all the spectators-the whole town turned out for the event, which was kinda cool. It was also excitng to watch 'my school' go by-i got excited waves from most of the kids!

Little drummer boys..

More parade goers-you can see the traditional mayan dress (called traje) on the girls and boys-its pretty uncommon to see men dress in traje in my region. But its a common sight to see women and girls wearing their traje. It is very expensive and they generally only have one or two sets of traje, and wear the same one most of the time.