One couple we met this morning was John and Anna Maria, who moved here from Cedar Rapids four years ago. John is retired from Alliant and Anna Maria was head of the Spanish Department at Kirkwood Community College for 10 years. They gave us quite a few tips about living here, including how to get into Guatemala City to the Hiper Piaz (think WalMart Super Store). We've decided to go there, but haven't decided when, yet. They told us that the best days (least crowded) are Sunday and Tuesday – Thursday. We also met Rosa, Art's wife. We're renting their apartment for these six weeks in La Antigua. We also saw Carl, who told us that he had managed to get his church's computer repaired and wondered if I had time to take a look at it. By the way, I was wrong about the problem. It's wasn't a video problem, as I had suspected. It had actually been a bad power switch that had only cost Q100 ($12.00) to fix.
After breakfast, we walked over to where Carl had parked his car and drove to the church (actually a former restaurant/swimming pool/recreation area) in San Lorenzo El Cubo, a quiet and dusty little village outside La Antigua. Once there, I installed and ran Advanced SystemCare which would significantly speed up later scans. It ran well until it began defragging the hard drive. This proved to be a real yawn to watch, so Carl mentioned that he wanted to drive up to Chimaltenango to pick some things up at the grocery there. We were in Chimal at the mall where the grocery was located (the same one we had stopped at with John when returning from Las Canoas). Since it was lunch time, we headed over to the food court for lunch. On the way, we stopped by the restrooms, which had signs in both International graphics and the local Mayan dialect. Here's the general restroom sign.
Women need to look for this sign,
while men should look for this one.
After a typical fast food lunch, we headed over to the grocery. It reminded us of the grocery department at WalMart. We were impressed by the variety of products available, especially when compared with the haphazardly stocked and arranged Bodegona and the minimally stocked and cramped Dispensa Familiar in La Antigua. By the way, there have been attempts to bring a larger, modern grocery to La Antigua, but politics and influence have prevented it.
When we returned to the church, the computer had finished defragging and was working significantly better. I then ran Avast to clean off any viruses, which I knew would be resident. They were there as expected. Finally, I ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program and eliminated some more nasties. All this time, Carl was impatiently waiting. Unfortunately, that's what you have to do – wait and let the programs do their job. We finally finished and Carl dropped us off at our apartment.
Supper was homemade soup again. Afterwards, at about 4:30 p.m., I began to have severe chills, aches and a fever. I soon began the 10 yard dash, which continued until about 4:30 a.m. Finally, after 4:30 a.m. I fell asleep and, except for the extreme exhaustion and generally aprehensive stomach, I was fine. Now some may think that I had what they call “Montezuma's Revenge” up in Mexico, but I doubt it. I manged to Google “12 hour flu” later and found numerous examples that matched my symptoms. In most cases, it was attributed to a rotovirus infection, which makes sense since we had been at two schools (Melotto in Chimaltenango and Socorro in La Antigua) that week and rotovirus is very common in school settings, both in the U.S. and, evidently, in Guatemala.
