Atitlan Adventures

This weekend our group finally went to Lake Atitlan - the trip I was most excited about and the one that seemed the longest away was this weekend. That means our semester is getting closer and closer to being done. Bittersweet.

I've neglected to write about the organic macadamia nut farm we went to (and the corresponding desire to grow a few macadamia trees!)

Our trip to the US Embassy in Guatemala City (where I saw this funny bus - I hope you catch the irony - and considered trying to work in a US embassy somewhere, because every job with travel sounds like fun!)

Watched the sun dip behind the mountains and volcanoes of Antigua - when the earth isn't so flat it's harder to see sunsets. In fact I missed the moon-set last night while talking to a traveling musician from Cancun at Sunset Cafe -- because it disappears so rapidly with a mountain to hide behind!

I'm also getting frustrated with the power lines that intrude into every photogenic landscape - whether that's in the city or so far up in the highland mountains you'd think there wouldn't be any power lines.

Spending just a few days in Panajanchel (the tourist town on Lake Atitlan) and San Juan(a tiny little indigenous, rural town on the other side of the lake)made me want to change the "Antigua Semester" to the "Atitlan Semester". At Uxlabil, our eco-hotel in San Juan, I picked a lime and several juicy oranges, canoed to watch the sun set, and kayaked in the early morning light, found floating volcanic rocks along with a cluster of boulders where I lodged my kayak and jumped into the crystalline (supposedly polluted) water for a swim among the local fishermen and large bass in the water. Wouldn't you want to move here too?

Dark Chocolate

Mint!
Yes, finally an amazing chocolate bar in Central America. The chocolate pictured with me

is an Ixcacao Dark Chocolate Mint one! That's the brand of chocolates that Chocolate Bob makes (by hand! And seriously, it's an amazing operation!) Really I just wanted to brag on what a good use of 10 quetzales that chocolate was. Also, you can see some of the tropical bushes here at La Union - my Spanish school in Antigua. And, the hurricane-side-effect rains have finally stopped today; good thing too since it was causing mudslides in some of the little mountain towns and my Spanish teacher had to wait for an hour while men shoveled mud out of the drains so the bus could make it to work! Yup, life is crazy (the good kind) here.

Labor & Libertas in Guatemala

Labor & Libertas: Work & freedom. This stained glass window was in the Guatemala City Palace. I've been thinking about labor & libertas - a lot of the indigenous people here seemed to have freedom through their work - in the past - working the fields, weaving, making tortillas. But after 36 years of war and 200,000 dead or disappeared - mostly indigenous people - things have changed. The men have stopped wearing their traditional costume because of office discrimination. (Here is a picture of David wearing a traditional Mayan men's outfit - he's also getting "married")

We went from Guatemala City to a tiny little mountain town where indigenous culture still thrives - there were woman grinding coffee beans (the woman also collect the coffee beans because they have more delicate fingers and pay more attention to detail than men do!), making tortillas, girls as young as 5 weaving beautiful blouses or scarves, and all sorts of cool things.

In addition to Mayan traditions like tortillas, Guatemala seems to have a tradition of parades: a parade for everything!

And fireworks almost every day - not the colored kind you can see but the noisy kind that smell smoky and make you think Guatemala has entered another war and is taking the first shot outside your window!

Also, I like the weather here- mostly in the 70s which means you can grow any veggie any time of the year- seriously, how cool!?

This is a banana tree growing in my Spanish school - yes, there are other exotic trees like oranges and one I believe is an apricot (it's hard to tell because you normally buy them shriveled up in a plastic package from Wal-Mart in the states.) We felt the effects of Hurricane Whoever that is rushing towards Mexico - so SO much rain, but at least we are safe and not blowing away.