Google Blog & La Merced Church, Antigua GUA

Dear Sr. Elizabeth,

Send the Google Blog info to the Bishop and have him set up a blog and he can still use the newspaper one as well.

So happy you liked the music... I picked out ones I thought you would like. Here's a larger photo of La Merced, a beautiful church in Antigua (that I also attached to your other email). See more photos here:

http://www.twip.org/image-central-america-guatemala-antigua-church-la-merced-gl-5369-1717.html

Yours, K.

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Sr. Elizabeth wrote:

Dear Katie,
I almost forgot to tell you that several evenings ago, I forget what day it was, our Sr. Patricia Vereb very kindly agreed to show me how to get that Papal Blog of our wonderful Bishop Kicanas into my "Elizabeth" Word File. From there we sent it to her E-mail server, just to see if it was working. It was. It really mounts up in your server. I think it was 1.5 whatever the word for the measurement is. I think I am too old to learn how to do this myself. I kept falling asleep as she was doing it for me.
Again, let me thank you for your wonderful piano music. I also loved the pieces by Mick McAuley and Olivia Newton-John. As I listened to your own music I timed the first Sound Track 1 was 4 minutes and a half, approximately, and the second one, Song Track 3, was 14:31. They are so beautiful. I can tell you love it so very much. Truly, a great and wonderful gift to enjoy yourself and to share with many, many others.
Lots of love and prayers,
Sr. M. Elizabeth

Back "Home" to Panajachel, to Sr. Elizabeth

Guatemala pics 563
Originally uploaded by grupodeduke

Dear Sr. Elizabeth,

I am so happy that you have enjoyed everything in the little "treasure box" I sent you... I was hoping that this would be true! The blank cassettes are for you to record more music on, and I can change them to mp3's when I get back to the states. I haven't sent out the piano CD recordings to many people yet, so am very happy that you have enjoyed them. I played on a real grand piano at the (formerly) called Windham Hill recording studio near Brattleboro VT. It was wonderful. What took me so long?

I am writing to you from Guatemala, where I am back "home" in Panajachel, Lake Atitlan, having arrived two days ago. It's wonderful and I am so glad to be back. We are just starting into the rainy season so it's "indoors" for me after 3:00 pm (just like Hawaii), otherwise it's 75 degrees year round, as always, and ALL the flowers and roses and bougainvilleas are blooming like I've never seen before! Unlike me, they never seem to get tired!

I brought a whole load of Mac laptop computers for LIFE School here in Panajachel; it is 70% indigenous, 30% gringo+ and is the only school that teaches the local language Kichea (sp?) and English, and does wonderful work in other areas as well. See their website at Life School in Panajachel Guatemala:

* "L.I.F.E. School: An international school educating children preK-12. Includes school handbook, class pages, and photos of school activities." www.lifeschoolweb.com


I'm collecting things for them as this country is very, very poor. Perhaps you might have some ideas on this?

As far as setting up a new blog, send the Bishop the info and he can do it himself, and also use the same info for the newspaper. That's probably the easiest way to do it!

Will write more later, and hope you do too.

Love, Katie

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:11 PM, Sr. Elizabeth wrote:

Dear Katie,
There are simply no words adequate to thank you for the precious gifts that came yesterday by media mail. I opened them and put your super-beautiful piano CD on. At the time I only had 5 minutes or so, but I came back again this afternoon (next day) and played it from start to finish. I marvel at the beauty your fingers produce from the keyboard. What kind of piano are you playing? I think I could listen to your music for hours on end and never tire of it. I'll bet you thank God night and day, 7/24 for this precious GIFT God has given to you. I want to read the book that you also sent, MAKE PEACE WITH ANYONE" by David J. Lieberman, Ph.D. It looks tremendously good. And another huge debt of gratitude to you are the tapes you sent: "Christmas Favorites," over 30 minutes on each side! And Three Other Tapes, two have not even been opened, one 90-minute one, and the other 120 Minutes!
And two additional tapes, both 90 minutes. My endless gratitude for all, dear Katie. As I said, there are no words adequately to tell you of my deep gratitude.
Lots and lots of love and prayers, always!
Sr. M. Elizabeth

Guatemala pics 563

Guatemala pics 563
Originally uploaded by grupodeduke

One of the most beautiful churches in Antigua, Guatemala, right near Dona Clara's, where I used to stay. Great shot.

Joyce Maynard's Writing Workshop July 2008

JOYCE MAYNARD'S LAKE ATITLAN WRITING WORKSHOP, San Marcos, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
July 5-13, 2008 (July 6 -13 without Antigua stopover) — With Ann Hood & Dorianne Laux
http://www.joycemaynard.com/writing-workshops/lake-atitlan.shtml

News from Guatemala

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Re: snail mail address? & News from Guatemala
1 message

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Catherine Todd	Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 5:04 PM
To: sandi sylver
Hi, Sandi! Been thinking about you... so good to get an email! My address is at the bottom of all my emails, here it is again. You can also get photos put on a CD and send them out by email, even if the camera isn't digital (I think). I don't know when I'm coming back... seems like no reason to right now, especially since I had planned to for Feb 15th - cold, cold - but I can ask Les to scan them and send them I hope. Sometimes he does fulfill a request or two for me. How have you been? I'm quitting the pain pills for my back so that I can come back to life and also won't need to go back every three months for a refill; the muscle relaxers were a really good change - lifted depression quite a bit - but the big one is harder. Was fine for two days - the first full two days without them being the last two days - but I felt so good I walked all along the shore of Lake Atitlan to a very nice restaurant yesterday. Lots of the standard back strain pain today, so broke down and took a half a pill and went to bed and am up and a bit better now. Have a massage appt. tomorrow which I hope will help. Andrea, the masseuse, is German and studied physical therapy and it's practically - it IS - a "spiritual experience" going there, in her massage room high up in the trees, overlooking the mountain and a waterfall, and Lake Atitlan when you go up further on the roof. She is married to Nunio, a Brazilian architect who has designed lots of gorgeous houses here in Panajachel, and she has two wonderful children and she is always laughing and smiling and has a "real life" here, not just my alone-life that I have, in the "latter years" having retired from what? so it's very good to be there, to remind me that some people have happiness and a real life, after all. And that maybe one day I could achieve it, too. So all in all the depression is starting to lift, in part because the pills are leaving my system (I tell myself anyway) and I am forcing myself to get up and out a bit more each day. I was two weeks ill with intestinal flu and la grippe, so being outside now in the sun and the light is magical beyond belief. "I AM ALIVE" and I can hardly believe it's so. I've been reading every spiritual book I have, which is (too) many that I ended up bringing over here each time, and a whole bunch of trashy beach novels that I just love - have never read these kind before, not in ages and ages - that I can trade in for at the local English bookstore. They certainly raise my spirits as well. But it's very lonely at times; incredibly different now that I am planning on staying here more "permanently" and will be on a much stricter financial budget at some point in time. It's amazing how everything has changed in just a few weeks, thinking about how I could be staying here for a long, long time - and for the first time the lonelies have really gotten to me. I can't imagine another relationship after the disaster of the last thirty years; Les and I still get along well by telephone and email, and as long as we don't have any financial doings together we can share the same house just fine, but it's practically my whole adult life down the tubes as far as I can see, and I did it to myself. Always waiting and wondering "why" he would do the crazy things he would do, never knowing about Asperger's or believing the behavior that I saw each and every day. Always living in the future, "it will be better then..." and I can see that this is exactly how I have lived my entire life, ever since I was a child waiting and waiting to be able to leave that horrible house that I grew up in and was finally legally released at the too-young but absolutely necessary age of the tender sixteens. Then, not a little more than two or three years later, there I was found myself in NYC and the Gaslight. I can hardly believe it. So much water under the bridge, but it's so good to be able to write TO YOU after all these years. I still love what you said about "you can't go back and re-live your life no matter how hard you try," and I read that email all the time to remind myself of this. I know that this stage is the - I hope - final stage of "regret" for the lost years of my life, going back so many years I can hardly count. I know that time brings all kinds of surprises, so I am waiting for (another) one to come this way. After all, who would have thought that I would end up here right now? Now, that's a surprise! Went to the open-air market with Georgina today and as usual, had a great time. She really is getting old now and her memory is failing a lot more in the last year than I had seen before. So I hope I can start helping out at the hotel on a regular basis starting next week. Just to give her a break and go with her to the market and carry and check the list... we had to get another tuc-tuc (open sided three wheeled golf-cart type taxi) and go back for dog food and a whole bunch of other things. I always enjoy going with her anywhere. I prayed for years for my grandmother to come back to me and she did, in the form of Georgina. I always smile when I say her name. So with that I will close; let me know what is on your always-full plate! Your friend, Katie NC address below: -- Catherine Todd 3007 Bent Tree Dr. Oxford NC 27565 H 919.693.0853 U.S. cell 919.605.0727, GUA cell (dial 011 from the U.S.) 502.5013.6300 For 2008: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." — R. Buckminster Fuller, *Critical Path* Words to live by: "Best of all is to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song." ~ Konrad von Gesner On Jan 17, 2008 11:11 AM, sandi sylver <sandisylver@yahoo.com> wrote: I HAVE BEFORE & AFTER PIX TO SEND YOU...I NEED YOUR SNAIL MAIL ADDRESS! (more later) xoxoxoxox Sandi Sylver (and "the Girls") Storyteller-Ventriloquist-Songstress ILLINOIS ARTS COUNCIL ARTSTOUR ROSTER ARTIST (Find out if your school/library/preschool qualifies for a grant to hire me!) www.storytelling.org/sylver Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

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start the new year right!

Started this page a little bit early, would be my Christmas gift and New Year's resolution all at once!

Catherine & Jessalyn

Photo from a visit last year to Noe Vasquez' daughter Enclish, in Coatepeque, Gautemala, 4 hours from Panajachel at Lake Atitlan. Jessalyn is one of Enclish's daughters, and is as sweet as can be, as are all of Enclish's children. They LOVE crayons and coloring books and come dancing up the street in the rain when they see I've arrived, singing "crayones et livros! crayones et livros!" It's such a pleasure visiting there. Have to go back SOON.

P.S. My hair really isn't white, it's just the way the sunlight reflected in the photo for some reason. I'm partly gray and brown. So many people have asked, I thought I'd answer that question in advance. LOL. (What year / date was this photo taken?)

GUA News Apr 18, 2006

I am supposed to come back from Guatemala May 11, but I might be able
to figure out how to stay longer. I have an opportunity, perhaps, to
set up computer / English classes and run a florist shop / restaurant
at the wonderful small B&B Hotel Playa Linda, right across from Lake
Atitlan, I am staying at. Scared to death to try, but who knows? It
might just work out...

Love, Katie
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[robb] So good to hear from you when I am finally able to check my email...
"Semana Santa" kept me out of the streets all last week (along with
the first flu I've had here). I missed all the processions, but did
get to see and photograph in front of a church where the children were
making a beautiful traditional "carpet" out of colored sawdust and
fruits, vegetables and flowers from the entrance to the street. It's
really incredible.
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"To enter heaven, one must take it with them."

"Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process." ~ John O'Donohue, "Anam Cara"

Letter from Guatemala 2006

Catherine Todd Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 8:55 PM

Dear Sara,

Can't wait to navigate my way to finding a box and the post office to send your fabric and photos; bought some more silk embroidered fabrics and pillows and large bag etc. today that were more expensive (for me, and my house, wherever that may end up being), but will send photos. The fabrics here are blindingly beautiful; each one more beautiful than the last. It's as if I'm holding Alladin's lamps as the shopkeepers keep unfurling one beautiful jewel-toned gem of fabric after another. If I were rich, surely my house would be one of the most beautiful in the world.

--
"To enter heaven, one must take it with them."

"Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process." ~ John O'Donohue, "Anam Cara"