Thursday night, Steve, one of the other students, invited everyone out to dinner at his hotel, Casa Santo Domingo, one of the best hotels in Antigua. He bought everyone a round of Gallo, the local beer and some wine. He then bought everyone and entrée and a dessert. I had a chicken dinner and some brownies with ice cream. It wasn´t very “Guatemalan” but it was still really good. We had met at 6:30 and didn´t finish until after 10. We had a great time just getting to know everyone better before about half of us left in a few days.

Friday night, we all went out again. This time, we went to a bar called Sky Café and ordered drinks and a huge plate of tortilla chips with guacamole, chicken, cheese; it had everything and was delicious. This bar had a great view of Antigua, although the highest level didn´t have service that night. Then we went back to Mono Loco. A lot more people (mainly tourists) were there that night. This bar, by the way, has a ton of Red Sox paraphernalia and the first night I had gone, they were showing the Yankee vs Red Sox game. It was pretty cool to see something like that in a place so different than the states.

Right now I´m in Santiago Atitlan. It´s just on the edge of Lago Atitlan and between Volcanoes San Pedro, Atitlan and Tolimán. It has absolutely beautiful scenery. Here, I´m staying with Doña Mercedes and Don Salvador and two of their daughters, Chonita and Lolita. Everyone is so nice and extremely friendly. I only understand them about half the time because they speak a lot in Tzutuhil.

Yesterday, Lolita took me to San Antonio Chacaya, where I´ll be helping out at the school. We took a pick up from Santiago to Chacaya and met up with the director of the school, Armando. He and the other maestros are all really young (maybe 20) and two out of the four are volunteering their time because the school simply can´t pay them. Anyway, I found out that the kids are taking tests this week so I actually will probably start next Monday. I´ll find out for sure on Thursday when Armando calls me.

Besides me, Mercedes is playing host to Katy, a Peace Corp Volunteer from Colorado and Angelica, an Anthropology Grad. Student from Illinois. Angelica is in a class and is researching the traditional clothing down here. She conducts interviews and writes field notes to find out why some people wear traditional clothing and others don´t. At this point she´s basically discovered that traditional clothing is often just too expensive to wear. They´re so intricate and beautiful though. I´ve watched Chonita embroider flowers on a new shirt and I´m very impressed. Other shirts have birds or butterflyies or vines on them. Each one is unique.

On Sunday, the family took me and Angelica to an Evangelical baptism. There were probably about 7 families there celebrating the baptisms of 5 new members of the church-4 niños and 1 hombre. We took a “lancha” to a beach about 15 minutes from Santiago. They did some readings, said some prayers and sang a lot of songs. They all have beautiful voices. I think Salvador must be some sort of pastor because he lead a lot of prayers and he was the one to lead each person into the lake where two others dunked their heads into the water for the actual baptism.

After the ceremony, most of the women swam in the lake and most of the men played soccer on the beach. Diana (another daughter of Mercedes and Salvador) and I were the only ones in two piece swimsuits but since many didn´t even own swimsuits, a lot of the little girls simply went swimming in just their underwear. One wouldn´t see that very often in the states, at least not in the quantity that I saw here. I guess that´s probably because for us, swimsuits are relatively cheap as long as you´re not picky. Here I think many simply can´t afford it. Then we had a picnic lunch of rice and chicken in a tomato sauce, tortillas and pineapple and bananas in honey for dessert. Then everyone headed home.

Speaking of tortilla, I learned how to make them this morning. Mercedes had a huge hunk of dough in front of her this morning. I watched her put some water on her hands, grab a small amount of dough and start slapping it between her hands. Then she placed them on a metal plate over a fire in their kitchen. I asked if I could help and I tried to mimic her but it took me forever to get one just decent. The dough kept sticking to my hands or ripping or I´d drop some on the floor. Hers were all the same size and circular but mine were uneven or oval or ripped. Eventually I started to get the hang of it. I want to try again tomorrow.

Okay, I´ll sign off until next time. Take care,
Theresa

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