So E. B. White takes his kid to this nifty little vacation spot he remembers from many childhood trips that he took with his family. Much at the lake seems to have remained impervious to time as he watches his son repeat the same rituals that he himself performed as a boy: sneaking out early to fish, splashing in the lake, scooting across the water in a small boat. Yet as the adult E.B. observes more closely, he sees evidence of change in small things, such as the face of the waitress, the tracks in the dirt road made by cars, the sounds of motors. White ends his essay ruminating about death, a moment almost as shocking to the reader as the cold water is that closes around the groin of his son, causing White's somewhat morose contemplations. "Once More to the Lake" sometimes feels like White's last time to the lake, but when I read his bittersweet essay, I find myself hoping he and his son went back many times more.

In the streets of Antigua, I see many of the exact same things as I did the year before and the year before that. Of course the Mayan women, arrayed in their magnificent colorful splendor, goods piled high on their heads and their arms weighed down with more stuff, continue to offer un buen precio for whatever little thing catches my eye; countless people like me from richer countries crowd the streets and I hear German, French, what I think is Dutch, as well as Chinese, and of course a lot of Engish in its various accents; the awful tuktuks (the WORST form of mechanized transforation ever devised) are still scooting around looking for passengers. This year, my third, brought a sense of familiarity that I hadn't quite anticipated--who ever thought that this place, so foreign to every other place in which I have ever passed more than a few weeks, would include a sense of homeliness? Certainly not me.

There is of course, change, though. Some of the beggars on the street are new; others are no longer around (this is the only contemplation of death, I promise!). And out at Nuestro Futuro in Ciudad Vieja, the school now sports a second floor that contains three new classrooms, a meeting room for the teachers, and an honesttogod library with lots of shelves, and very few books. But it is a huge start. Wednesday afternoon was my first trip out there. The nineteen kids I worked with last year are down to 18, as Fransisco, the ADHD kid covered in warts, was removed from the school. He fought all the time with other kids and his family decided that, at 9, he was old enough to start working. Sigh. But there are many new, younger kids: this year's first grade includes about 15 new kids, as does the kindergarden class. I cannot even contemplate how to explain what it was like walking into that school, seeing the kids at recess and having bunches of them rush up and absolutely smother me. My goddaughter Susana attached herself to me like a mosquito bite, except there was nothing annoying about it at all.

In the past year, more has changed besides the physical plant. The most incredible change is in the actual structure of the Ninos de Guatemala, the ngo that started the school. Last year, I was the only volunteer working in the classroom during the morning, and one of only three or four who worked tutoring in the afternoon. Now there are volunteers in all of the five classrooms and at the moment there are eight of us doing afternoon tutoring Monday through Wednesday, and "Expresiones Artisitas" on Thursday & Friday afternoons. I, along with two other volunteers, are teaching rudimentary English to the first and second graders. Haylo. May nay ees Jali. Wat ees yo nay? :). Lots of fun!!!

Juan Antonio, the boy that Richard and I "adopted" as our godson, has not been at the school this past week. He is sick with a mysterious disease that the doctors had tentatively diagnosed as polio. I am choking just a bit as I write this part. Juan Antonio is, as everyone agrees, the absolutely smartest kid at the school. School is his life, he says. It gives him purpose and a way to discover who he really is, who he was designed to be in a more perfect world. I saw him Thursday as I was climbing the volcano with some of the other volunteers for the afternoon's activities. There he was, with his mother and new baby sister. What can I say? I don't know. The good news is that polio has been ruled out and he will be allowed to return once he has muscle strength in his legs to make it there and back, as well as survive a day's worth of class.

Antigua is a fantasy. It has a quality that, while not quite dreamlike, makes it seem a bit unreal. Ciudad Vieja, on the other hand, is place where kids don't get vaccines, and school libraries have empty shelves. But for us, Ciudad Vieja also seems unreal, as we don't worry about things like polio and can't imagine life without countless books. Walking the streets of Antigua, seeing all the cool stuff, and climbing the side of Volcan Agua, dodging piles of dogpoop and inhaling the constant smoke of fire wood, I am not at the lake, but I am hoping that I will be back next year. And the next.