Guatemala City, Las Pueblas and Spanish School
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
1
4
163
Trip End
Dec 04, 2006
Antigua,
Guatemala
Friday, September 9, 2005
Antigua is definitely a gringo (foreigner) town. It is so comfortable and set up here that itīs almost too easy. But whose complaining. The spanish classes were so intense that I had to drop the hours down to 4 a day instead of 6.
Apart from that weīve made trips to las pueblas (towns?) including Santa Maria Jesus and San Pedro by mountain bike. The communtiy congregate mainly in the central shops of the towns an the cobbled streets are lined with small shops/houses. They all do their washing together in a communal wash pool in the centre of the towns. Churches are everywhere and most are crumbling if not crumbled due to earthquakes. Some of them have been there since the 15th century. Children were everywhere, their eyes lit up when you should them the photo that you took of them and everyone is friendly and smiles
American staple
. There was this one boy who wanted to be famous. Over and over he wanted his picture taken! It was a tough ride up into the mountains, 3 hrs to be excact but well worth it. Unfortunately Iīve seemed to have deleted my photos of that trip by accident, but hopefully Iīll be able to copy some of the others guys photos. Thats one mistake I wont do again!The house we are staying at is at full capacity now with another 2 girls moving in, making it a total of 7 people (3 british, 2 americans and a dutch girl).
Itīs an intersting mix of people and everyone is here to have a good time. One american girl insists on wearing her cowboy boots in this weather (25) everywhere, even on the bike ride! no comment%$!
Had a chance to visit Guatemala City and go to the stadium to watch the FIFA World Cup qualifying match against USA. USA are already in but Guatemala canīt afford to lose. The atmosphere was abit crazy going into the stadium though as we had to buy tickets from scalpers and walk 500m on a dimly lit road with thousands of people scrambling into the stadium. There were 3 security checkpoints on the way wich metal detectors and pat downs at each checkpoint! Batteries were not allowed but I managed to smuggled them in, hiding them....you know
Antigua park near school
. Everyone was chanting and raving before the kickoff (for guatemala of course, there was one american flag waved early, but that had mysteriously disappeared); then the rain came just as the whistle was blown which made everyone scream louder! The rain lasted for 10 mins but was enough to get everyone wet. The teams battled it out but was struggling to control the ball. With 5 minutes to go till full time, one shot from the Guatemalan centre forward beat the keeper and ...... hit the post! ARGH! Unfortunately it wasnīt meant to be. The bars here all close by 1am and last night I found out about the after parties which are held in illegal bars. Needless to say I ventured down to the bar with some other travellers, and locals who I had met that night. It was small and cramped and is a small house where they seem to serve everything including burgers and tortillas. Stumbled home at 3am somehow, but I had to go and cancel my class this morning. Anyhow met a local called ota and had an interesting conversation with him with the minimal spanish I had learnt. So anyway when he said his name I heard him say jota(hoor-ta)! and I repeated it back to him and he told it was ota not jota! Jota means gay.
Went to some markets and bought some bananas and camerized figs. The figs seemed like they were grown in sugar! So sweet!
Tomorrow we will be heading out for the weekend to lake Atitlian and on sunday to Pananchel for some crazy markets that they have there weekly. But I was told to keep my guard up as one of the students had her bag cut open without her knowing and it happened within seconds. Another girl saw it and she said it was..........no not a young kid....but a old granny! Watch out!
Asta luego!
Comments
great fotos more fotos more more
more foto more foto - love them...love antigua.