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Published: November 7th 2006
We´ve come a long way yet. After studying spanish for a week, it is much stronger and I speak more confidently. I know all kinds of words like actualemente and other crazy stuff...with my spanish teacher I talked about life, death, government, art, philosophy, ways of living, and other advanced subjects all in spanish!
Yesterday we came from Chichicastenango, which has this huge market on Sunday. All the local indigenous people come from all around, carrying huge bundles of clothes, masks, or whatever. The way they carry it is crazy--women carry baskets on their heads, balancing them perfectly, sometimes using a ring of cloth for extra stability. But another popular way to carry really huge loads is to use your head, and have this strap on your forehead that carries the bulk of the load. It´s pretty crazy! That has to strain your neck a good bit.
Tess and I walked around the market, looking at all the amazing colors of clothes, blankets, and other cloth, for the handcraft is amazing! There was this one quilt made of all the different womens shirts of the area, it was so neat. It was all hand embroidered, and I liked it a lot. I asked the guy how much it cost, and he said a little over 100 dollars. But it was negotiable. Everything there was negotiable, and it started as a good deal. I got some crazy shorts, a crazy shirt, and then we had only to search for some crazy pants. My other pair of pants is this ugly green, so I was looking to replace them. Tess first found a pair of pants with these neat stripes, and got them. Then I encountered a pair just like I was hoping for--crazy enough for sure! it is a patchwork of all these different patterns, since I couldn´t make my mind up on any one in particular. It´s cool because they keep me amused to look at. But it´s really pretty funny how many colors I have now.
Then we had a funny incedent where tess found some pants she really liked, but they were a bit heavy and we thought they would be too hot, once we got to the tropics. So we had to decline. plus they were bulky and we´re travelling really light. But the guy kept bidding down and down. OK, he said, 70. No, we said, it´s not the price, we just can´t carry them. OK, fine, 60, he said. No, no, we´d like to, but we just can´t. OK, 50. Tess, I said, we won´t go any below 60, we´re going to have to bid him up. Anyway, we walked away, because Tess didn´t want to carry them. We had gotten to the corner and he tapped tess on the shoulder. OK, 45, he said. I whispered to tess, she shouldn´t go below 50. So tess had to bid him up to 50, because he was going too low...50 is just about 7 dollars, and these pants are way too cool. So she got them! It was a successful day at the market and we had lots of fun.
Where else have we been¨Ñ_: and where is the question mark! we´ll never know.
Well, I spent a week in Xela, studying spanish. We were there 10 days. In my last blog I was saying how the hike up to Laguna Chicabal almost killed Tess. It turned out to be no metaphor! That afternoon, we had to go to our new families. We wanted to stay alone so we could practice more spanish. I went to my family at 4, but tess had to wait until 6. My family was so nice, the food great, and they were just traditional people. It was so nice to stay with them. They would eat meals together, and with me, and we´d all talk in spanish. Little did I know tess was having the worst day of her life--as she waited her family, she fell asleep on the floor of the spanish school, because no one was there. Thus she got a horrible back pain, she was already sick, and exhausted. A few days later, she was moving in with me. She couldn´t talk, for she had lost her voice, and she was really sick, and she had terrible back pain. I swear...so, we nursed her back to health. The family was great and really helped a lot. First, the mom, Antoniette, cooked up some garlic and put it on tess´s neck. She smelled after that! Then Antoniette cooked lots of good food for us...meanwhile I studied spanish like an animal. I studied day and night.
Finally we are out of the cold--it´s a bit more agreable here in Panajachel--aka Gringotown. It´s a nice place though. It has american comforts in guatamala. Last night we arrived to Lago Atitlan, and watched the sun set over the volcanoes across the lake. It was spectacular. then we went out to dinner to celebrate our 9 month anniversary, and we could see the lake and volcanoes lit up by the lightning every minute or so. Otherwise, it was just dark out there.
A few nights ago when we stayed in Chichicastenango, it was the full moon. there in the night we heard dogs barking, there were werewolves howling too. They were either werewolves or chickens...at any rate, they went gobble gobble gobble.
So, we´ve been having some fun times. I didn´t want to use the internet exactly, but it was about time I did, it had been a while. But it´s hard to go because we just got to this lake, and it´s really neat here, but gotta update the blog a little...
So, that´s about it. Oh yeah, we were on the bus, and it got really crowded. Fortunately we had seats, but this guy from todos santos pretty much sat on my lap. And my legs are so long, they didn´t really fit. But later, we ended up gettin on a bus with all our stuff, and having to be the ones standing up. That was an adventure. There is always room for one more, they say. They will pick anyone up, no matter how full the bus. If you have to swim on top, that´s what you do.
Another thought I had was that, compared to Guatemala, mexico is pretty luxurious. I thought mexico was poor, but here seems they look up to Mexico a little. A lot of mexican music is played, and I realized that mexico is a big country in fact, with a lot of power, and relatively, they´ve got some money. So, it´s funny to think, mexico has it pretty well off.
We´ve been seeing a lot of kids working again, but in surprising places--
we walked into a hotel in Chichi to see how much it was. And who went behind the desk but this little kid. really little! And you always see kids helping their parents at the markets and such. they´ll be pushing a big old load. Also, we went to buy some fruit, at night, and there running it was this little boy. He said he was giving us a good price on everything--and to us it seemed so. but later, tess got her shoes shined by a little boy and he said 10 quetzals is expensive, it´s usually 3, or maybe 5. But I´ve been bad at bargaining, because I know stuff might be able to get really cheap, but the prices are already so low, it´s hard to even argue with or believe they could be lower. For a nice painting, it was about 10 bucks...a pretty good sized one too. That was about the first offer they gave us...then they ask what we want to pay. I wasn´t going to buy it, so didn´t want to haggle. But man, there just isn´t much money going around, I feel like.
Well, those are the thoughts. Other adventures, in the cemetary, we met some kids and they played my guitar a little, We had fun with that! Then as I walked back, all the kids tried to play it, all these groups of kids. i think it´s because of my crazy pants, you should see them!
Anyway, that´s all for now.
Colin
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sam
non-member comment
hola
como estas? estoy trabajando mucho, pero toco la musica y jugar al golf y ir al snowboarding si possible. el otro dia yo juge al golf y va al snowboarding en uno dia. siempre quiere hacer esto. hmmm, i wonder if that made any sense. do you have an ipod with you? im about to get a website up for posting music. sounds like the trip is pretty interesting. let me know if you make it to brazil. my friend has family there. sam