First Tour

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Today (Wednesday May 10) I gave my first tour for the school. I was a bit late arriving to meet the students at the school because today is Mother´s Day here, a VERY big deal, and lunch ran a little long.

However, we went and caught a bus to Zunil, which is about 15 minutes from Quetzaltenango (or Xela, which means 'under 10' in Quiché because of the 10 mountains and volcanoes surrounding the city). Zunil is a beautiful, picturesque town except for the river of trash that you must pass over to get from the buses to the town. Zunil hosts a local saint named Maximon (ma-shee-mon), also known as San Simon and can be found in the house of a local family. Each year he changes houses/families so that various families have the chance to earn money from having him in their home, as well as the responibility of 24 hour maintinence of the saint. Because it was Mother´s Day there were huge processions of people in costumes (from ones like Einstein, Spiderman, and Michael Jackson to more traditional "colonial-esq" costumes). There was also a live marimba band to which the masked characters danced. Myself and the 5 students were the only foreigners there, and the rest were indigenous.

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