Goodbye Xela...hello 21

After a 4am bus ride through mountains, sara and I are back in Guatemala City.

What a week! I can´t believe how fast this vacation is going, but if i look back on everything that happened in the last 7 days since the last time i was in the City, its pretty unbelievable. I´ve gone into detail already alittle about how beautiful of a city Xela is, but I feel as though I could go on forever!

In the past week we were able to visit a weaving co-op formed by local indigenous women and their back strap weaving masterpieces, take some crazy pick up truck (standing int he back of pick up!) rides up the mountain to San Andres Xecul where we saw some of the most interesting churches in Guatemala as well as witnessed mayan religious ceremonies, soak ourselves in sulfur volcanic hot springs high up in the mountains surounded by high cliffs and dense lush vegetation, and push our way through Sanfransico El Alto- the largest animal market in central america. Each day we found our selves saying, today is the best day yet! And with 400plus pictures so far- i hope to never forget them.

An interesting thing i found out about Xela, is that the indigenous population there is one of a kind in Guatemala. When many people associate indigenous with poverty and lower class, in Xela, it is the indigenous who have the higher status and own large parts of the city.

Driving into the city with a fellow AIESECer from Xela, she pointed out all of the cultivation on the mountain sides and told us that many people pity the indigenous that cultivate the land in Xela, but little do they know, some of those families are millionares. Literally.

Later in the week, after hanging out with this aiesecer some more, she took us to meet her grandmother, who turns out to be the Indigenous Queen of Xela in 1952. She was one of the nicest women I´ve ever meet, and ofered us her driver to take us anywhere we´d like to go (we respectfully declined) as well as sent us off with 8 homemade typcial guatemalan chuchitos. mmm.

When I told my day and how i got the chuchitos to my host mom, and to my teachers at the spanish school, they couldn´t believe i was friends with that family, and it turns out they are one of the most well known families in Xela.

It was hard to leave Xela, and one week was not enough time to soak it all in. The school we were at, Sakribal, was an amazing place and we really felt at home there. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn spanish, and really learn a ton about Quetzaltenango, and about la cultura guatemalteca.

Well next stop, in a couple of hours, is Antigua Guatemala to ring in the big 21 at midnight...

casi latina

Laundry day when you´re backpacking for three weeks = sexy outfits for today.

brown Shorts, tennis shoes, black dressy sweater, and a going shirt.

We don´t look like gringa tourists at allll.....

Quetzaltenango- a world of its own

We´ve made our way from the capital, west down the pacific coast, and then headed north where we now are enjoying our time in the Guatemalan Highlands. Quetzaltenango is the second largest city in Guatemala, and for this reason i thought it would be similar to the bustling-crazy-don´t walk alone-and never at night- city of Guate, but boy was I wrong. Quetzaltenango, or Xela, is a world of its own, and unlike any city I´ve seen thus far in Guatemala. Its nestled in the middle of 7 mountains and 3 volcanoes and the air is crisp. The streets are small and many made of cobble stone, and so narrow that It blows my mind to see the brightly colored chicken buses navigating the city.

While pollution still seems to be a problem, it doesn´t put a damper on the beautiful colores of the city. With a colonial feel, every house and store is painted a different color and it seems the families put extra effort into making their doors beautiful. The doors and windows are covered with elaborate rod iron coverings, and its easy to stroll down the street at an extremely slow pace gazing at the details and character of the city.

There are many indegenous men and women in the capital city, but nothing compared to Xela. Hot pink, green, orange, blue, purple, and red tops and pants, embroidered with floweres, birds, and vines is more common than blue jeans and tee shirts. Babies are swoddled in the huge woven clothes and tied on the mothers back while she carries a bucket of steaming hot black corn tortillas on her head.

A typical guatemalan women´s top costs up to 3000Q (divide by 7 for usd!) and takes over two months to hand embroider all of the detail. What I´d do for one of those beautiful tops!

Today sara and I are back at our spanish 5 hours a day with a one on one teacher , and later today are off to a womens co-op that employs women and coordinates their handicraft work into a bussiness. I´m not sure about the details...but we shall see!

Remember, time means nothing here...

Wahoo!!City number four of the trip! We arrived in Quetzaltenango, or Xela for short, last night after one crazy weekend. I can´t believe we´re already a week into our trip, but we still have two more weeks left of our graduation/nomad/my21stbday fest...so we are extremely happy.

The first 4 days were great, and it was really nice to spend time in the City and hang out with all the teachers from the Academy, old and new. There were plenty of ridiculous things that happened to us in the first leg of our trip...you can read more about it from this Egyptian princess.

Thursday we got a phone call from Javier, LCP @ Landivar, and good friend from Mexico LDS 2007. He asked us if we wanted to go to Retalhuleu, a city on the Pacific Slope, to stay with Sivlia, another aiesecer for the weekend and visit Xocomil- a noahs ark-like waterpark, the best in central america. He let us know that its on the way to Xela, and that they´d be able to drop us off at the Spanish school we´d be studying at this week, so really there was no reason for us to say no.

Hang out for a weekend in our bikinis pool side, in the banana and coconut growing region of Guatemala speaking spanish with 15 Guatemalans?? Was there really any need to ask? Boomshakalaa.

The plan was to leave Guatemala City at 10am on Saturday, and be pool side sipping ice cold Gallos (national beer) by 1pm- prime sun bathing time.

Sara and I were ready for our Saturday plans, but Saturday was not ready for our plans.

730am the alarm goes off. One hour to pack our things for the next week, shower, and we´re out the door by 830am. Perfect- we´re right on track, enough time to head to an internet cafe, have some breakfast, while checking grades, blogging, and doing email. We stopped by the Academy, dropped off our bags and continued on our way, proud of being so on track and awake so early on a Saturday.

As we approached the mall where the cafe is located, we noticed a lot of dark windows and the plaza usually full of people was deserted. Los Proceres is closed? Its never closed...whats going on. Oh its 830 in the morning, its a mall, its Saturday, its most deff closed. Crap, plan number one of spending a good hour on the internet was foiled. No worries, my education policy grade can wait- but with an hour and a half till we leave, there wasn´t much else to do, other than go have a nice sit down breakfast.

After an hour of typical chapin tortillas, refried black beans, and fried plantains and eggs, we make it back to the Academy by 10am. Javier is on waiting for us- sweet! We´re doing good, on track to leave and be in the sun by 1pm.

Not quite. Javier lets us know that we have to wait for another car to meet us here becuase he can´t take us, becuase he´s going to take the other trainees at 1pm when they get off work. He wanted us to take advantage of the day and to leave by 10. (yay we thought!)

After 30 minutes of waiting in the parking lot, catching up with Javier, our car pulls up, we hop in and we´re off. 30 min? Minor set back, we´re fine. By 130 we´ll be getting our Tan on.

In the car was Steph in the back, super nice newbie and her twin sister in the front seat, and her boy friend was driving. We soon found out that her sister had a back muscle spasim the night before so she couldnt´move to look at us. After 2 hours, we pulled over because backpain girl was in some reall pain (don´t ask why she was with us when we were going to go to a water park) so her boy friend grabbed a perscription cream and rubbed it all over her back for the pain.

10 minutes, minor set back, not a probem.

We are back on the road and 10 minutes later we were pulling off the road in Chicacao, in the driver guy´s hometown to stop at his house to get a drink of water and use the bathroom. His house was beautiful, so sara and I were excited to get to see the house and walk through their garden for a minute or two.

After being attacked, literally, by misquitos for 10 minutes, i´m anxious to get back into the car and get on our way, by 2pm we´ll be in the sun. We then see the driver dude helping his back pain girl friend lay down on a bed, it took her 15 minutes to walk to the bedroom, and as soon as i saw her lay down on the bed, i thought there was no way she is getting back up. I go to ask the driver dude what´s going on and ask him if his eye is okay. He had a small bump on his eye lid, so he went to the bathroom and came back out with sunglasses on.

Turns out he´s allergic to the medicine, and within 10 minutes both of his eyes were completely swallen shut.

He lays down next to his immobile girlfriend.

Sara and I just look at eachother and share the mutual feeling of what the heck is happening.

So we take a seat and wait with Steph. The driver guys mom comes out and there is not much else for her to do other than feed us and offer us drinks.

First comes the water, then comes coca cola, then comes cookies, then comes cheese sadwiches, then comes second round of cheese sadwiches, next we actually move to a table, and get asparagous soup, then fried potatoes, rice, corn, and a huge pork roast.

4 hours later...

We are asked if we´d like to spend the night here. How nice of them to ask we thought, but ....we were supposed to be in the sun 3 hours ago, and we have a water park to be at early tomorrow morning! We kindly declined and asked if there was any possible way for us to continue on our way to Reu.

No problem they said, and the called their Family driver, and Sara, Steph, and I continue on- and leave the sick behind.

at 6pm we roll up to the house, shortly after the driver asked,

¨Is this the house? You should call your friend to make sure this is the house so you guys dont´get shot when you walk on their property¨

He did a machine gun motion with his hands to get his point accross.

When we walked back to the pool, everyone was chilling pool side laughing at our 3 hour made 8 hour adventure to Reu.

Another day for the books....the adventure continues...

twilight zone

THIS IS CRAZY. It seems like life just picked up where it did last august.... Its a really weird feeling and I feel like i should just be living here.

Today: relaxing, eating, enjoying the sun
Friday: Zone 1..dun dun dun...Presidents palace, central market
Sat: Reu with @ers....waterpark etc
Sunday...Xela

Day 2

I know I've been MIA for about a month... and as my sister has informed me, i haven't blogged about finals! about moving out! about roommates graduating! about getting excited for traveling! etc... I also never summed up my semester back, anything with AIESEC lately, and much more... Maybe i'll feel an urge later on to sum up all that stuff and get it down on paper (blog?), but otherwise, it might just be a month of thoughts that will only stay thoughts.

So moving on- School is done, and Sara and I are in GUATEMALA! What a whirlwind of a 48 hours. We left Tuesday at 2am from madison and arrived at 230pm in Guatemala City. Two of my best friends here were there with big open arms waiting for us. We spent the next 2 hours catching up and plotting how we were going to surprise everyone at the Academy where I worked last summer.

We decided to go get some food and then head over to the Academy at 5 when everyone was on their break. Of course, when we were eating we ran into two other great friends (who had no idea i was coming) and they flipped their shit. It was wonderful.

We all headed over to the Academia and it was big hugs and huge laughs. My boss instantly wanted to put me into a class to have me start teaching and old students said..TEACHER! HOW ARE YOU!? I felt instantly back at home and chatted away with the Sonia the cafeteria lady and watched new teachers wonder who in the heck is this crazy girl running around the Academia laughing and telling crazy stories with everyone!

It was a little overwhelming for both Sara and I, so after 3 hours of relaxing, a shower, and a change of clothes. We got picked up when everyone got off work and headed to Hooters (ahah) for Kareoke and hot wings and some classic Gallo in mine and sara's honor.

After plenty of dramatic latino songs, Sexual healing, like a virgin...amongst other ridiculous songs...we were all exhausted and decided to call it a night. A bunch of us crashed at one house and couldn't help chatting away with whats been going on for the past year.

We have a few more days in the city before Sara and I hop on a bus to Xela to continue the Latino Dream.

2:45 Examen Final

Its been hard for me to blog about all the random shit that's been in my head the past few weeks (semester??)...but I feel a (meaningful) post coming in near future.

In the mean time, I've been updating the Madison blog, as well having my faith restored in humanity and in AIESEC once again by amazing Meena and her Ivory Coast (soon to be) adventure.

to the old lady in all of us

Felicitaciones! Te quiero mucho chica!

In the red...

It may have cost me a significant dip into the red in my goal tracker...but boy was Mifflin fun. I think?