Guatemala 2

Weekly Roundup.

Almost everyday here I have 4 hours of individualized instruction with a local professor. We sit at a small desk in a somewhat noisy room and talk for four straight hours. Usually the day starts out with an hour of discussion, i.e. what´s going on in the world. The next hour, I have a daily topic, and I have to prepare a presentation on that theme, i.e. poverty, environment, politics. For the remaining two hours, we do grammar. Every other day, we have readings with our DC professor for 2 hours in the afternoon. Its quite intense.

When not in class, we have been having ALOT of fun. Last weekend, my group took an overnight trip to a city called Panahachel. When we arrived in the city, we discovered that the local taxi union was protesting and had blocked off the main street into the city. We waited in traffic for about an hour, then decided to abandon our van and driver and just walk to the city, about a mile away. En route, a member of our group tripped and fell, causing a minor moment of panic, but she survived. As we entered the city, we saw that the protesters had blocked off the streets with their motorcycles and had burned a pile of tires to stop any cars from entering the city. Fortunately, they didn´t hassle the pedestrians. We walked to the local dock and then took a boat ride around Lake Atitlan, a large lake surrounded by towering volcanoes. The lake itself was pretty contaminated, but the vistas were awe inspiring. We visited some local villages, talked with some natives, and returned to Panahachel later in the evening. That night, we went to a Spanish Steak house, and I for $15 I had a steak that would have probably cost over $100 in the US. Delicious!!! That night a group of us went to see a Mexican rock band perform at fundraiser for the environment.

The next day we traveled to Chichicastenango, a city full of indigenous people, who have a large arts and crafts market on the weekends. We spent a number of hours there, satisfying our souvenir shopping needs, returning to Antigua later that evening.

Over the past few nights, the group has had part two of our Salsa dancing lessons, sang Karaoke in Spanish at a local bar, watched the movie Mamma Mia in Spanish, and watched the devil burn.

More on that in my next post,

M