March 24th, 2007

Yesterday I graduated from school! Verbs and tenses and cases are still exploding from my brain, and I may decide to speak in the same fashion as my brother Peter, who says he always uses the infinitive and never declines his verbs. I was something of an oddity at the school since most of the students are in their 20's, most of the students opt for the "total immersion program" (staying with a local host family and eating three meals a day with that family), and most students are here for at least four months. Obviously, they speak much better Spanish than I will ever speak but at 58, I'm going to do what is comfortable for me and my family (can you imagine Tommy living for two weeks in very basic accommodations, without TV and very little privacy?).

Last Sunday a group of us (students) went to Chichicastenango, the site of the largest indigenous market in Guatemala. We went there via chicken bus (one transfer) and the 100KM took four hours. The other kids said I had a true chicken bus experience, with a driver who was trying to win the chicken bus race, sometimes cornering on two wheels (well, not really, but it sure felt like it!). For the last hour, I shared my seat with two other people (this is a seat built for two elementary aged children). Anyway, I had my chicken bus experience! On the way back, we were all so tired, that we returned via mini-bus, which was somewhat faster and safer.

Chichicastenango is a market-lover's paradise. Stall after stall after stall selling local crafts, woven goods, beautiful clothes, shoes, belts, hammocks, travel bags....etc. etc. The colors! The variety! The richness of it all! Inadvertently, I discovered how to get the best price...just walk away. So, by walking away many times, I came home with lots of treasures! Just think of all the money I saved! We also visited the church at the top of the town. Our guide said that it was used primarily by the Mayans. It felt and looked very primitive and smelled overwhelmingly of incense, which was being burned at the entrances and in the church.

Have we told you about the great VISA scam? Cynthia will recall that we encountered this several years ago in Spain, and Bert ran into this in the Algarve when trying to buy port. It goes like this: the famous VISA emblem is on the gas/petrol pump, or front door, or even painted on the stall pillars, as we saw in Panachel. Often one chooses a specific restaurant or store or gas station, due to the VISA emblem. So, you eat or fill up or select stuff and go to pay, flipping out your VISA card. And the clerk looks at you and says, "machina no funcionada". Right. Machina no funcionada for years. We even have been tricked after asking if we could pay by VISA before we filled up with gas/petrol. Once the fill up was complete, the machina had stopped working. So, you always have to have enough cash to cover the fill up or dinner. Machina no funcionada.

We both came down with the flu this week. I missed a day of school while trying to recover. Even though I went to school, I didn't have much energy so decided to take a mini-bus half way to school each day. These are passenger vans (about the size of Tommy's Toyota and Chevy vans) with seats for 12 to 15. There are no published schedules or routes; the busses just drive around town, picking up passengers. The driver drives and his helper hangs out the side door, yelling for passengers. I flagged down my bus in front of the hotel each day. There are so many of these mini-busses that I never had the same one, and always just told them my desired destination before getting on. The fare is 1Q, no matter how far you go. This demand-based system really works! Donald says it has no chance in the USA due to unions, liability, the government and lawyers. Too bad!

It is easy to get your daily ration of fresh fruit: every other street corner has vendors of sliced fresh fruit (watermelon, papaya, cantalope, pineapple) and vendors squeezing fresh orange juice (which you drink from their glass glasses and return the glass, which they wash in a pail of water). I was game! Many of the vendors also have fresh eggs and I still haven't figured out how those are served (nor do I want to!).

We have the great fortune to be in a hotel which is centrally located for almost everything we want to do. Within a four block radius we have the Parque Central, banks, post office, lots of restaurants, internet, laundry, used book store (!), and TWO jazz clubs! We have been music pigs, attending almost every night. One of them is a little hole in the wall, with the "stage" being a platform over the smallest kitchen imaginable. This one specializes in a guitar style called "trova", and can handle about 30 people. The other club is a real restaurant (French) with great food, and seating for perhaps 60. We were there last night for Buena Vista style music, and we will go tonight to hear a trio playing more traditional jazz.

There is also a stained glass studio just around the corner. This guy's work is fabulous but he has a very small market because this is such a poor country. He did some of the windows for a church on Parque Central...absolutely beautiful work.

There are lots of foreign college-aged kids here, studying Spanish and doing volunteer work. The majority of students at my school were pre-med students, with one being a doctor who had just finished her residency in Seattle. What a fabulous experience for these kids! Most of them are either from North America or Scandinavia. Xela is a sister city to Tromso, Norway so that probably encourages Norwegians to come here.

We plan to leave Xela tomorrow. We love it here but it is time to move on. There are several things we won't miss: the incredibly dirty air, which we have noticed much more since we were ill. The tragedy of the homeless children (all ages) which is an enormous problem here. The "collectors", which are college boys, dressed in klu klux klan-like outfits except that the outfits are purple or yellow or black, rather than white. They go around the city, soliciting donations from businesses, mainly. If the business doesn't pay, their merchandise and walls are splashed with paint. My teacher said that the police don't do anything about this problem; I subsequently read a newspaper article which said that the police were trying to stop this practice. Meeting these collectors on the street is creepy.

So, talk to you soon!