eKaqchikel 2008 - The Great Rain Hunt

Derek's Flickr Feed for today| Marie's eKaq Flickr photos | Valerie's eKaq Flickr photos

Sunday, July 20 – A slow morning turned into an afternoon quest for the perfect rain shot. But not before we took a camera around town and documented several locations, all vocabulary words for this module. We even made a new friend along way - but ultimately, it was all about the rain...

Our meanderings rewarded us with video and still shots of a bakery, a bank, the market and the main church. We tried to convince a trio of ladies making tortillas to pose for us on camera, but they were having none of it.

It had been drizzling throughout our walk-about, but it really started to come down when we broke for lunch. With equipment wrapped in plastic, we made our way through the muddy streets back to our hotel. The Hotel Posado de Don Rodrigo has a beautiful and expansive garden area - which we've featured in past productions - and we knew it would serve as the perfect backdrop to feature rain in Guatemala. Surprisingly, we had to wait for an even larger deluge before the drops showed up well on camera, but eventually, we got the shot.

So now we have "rain" and we picked up "cloudy" on Friday. Still looking for the perfect "hot weather" shot. It's still raining as I write this now at 11:30pm on Sunday night. Hopefully the sun will come out again!

Also of importance, Lee has reconnected with his favorite Panajachel mutt. Panajachel is filled with stray dogs, must of which are reasonably friendly, but the small black dog we first encountered in the summer of 2005 really stands out. We were delighted to reacquaint ourselves with 'Pana' when we returned in 2007 - that's when we learned that she is semi-cared for by the employees of our favorite breakfast spot. They named her 'negrita' (Spanish for 'little black one') but she's still 'Pana' to us. She's still here, still hanging out around her usual haunts. And Lee is once again plotting how to cart her back home with us.

Production begins again tomorrow in earnest. Some more planning and script translating in the morning, but we plan to finish the classrooms dialogues in the early afternoon and then move onto to the town and directions module. Of course, now that we've gotten it to rain, we'd really like it to stop now.

Please?