Elections & Independence Day!

Now that I have been here over a week I am beginning to feel settled in.  Many of the students in my group often remark at how it already feels like we have been here for much longer than we actually have been.  The walks seem much shorter now that we are familiar with Antigua and my home-stay is starting to feel more like home.  My Spanish is improving and I am able to understand people better and converse with Marta at dinner a little.  My Spanish tutor Glendy is really sweet and likes to tell me about her little boy.  Spanish classes a little overwhelming but extremely effective.  They consist of 4 hours each day of one-on-one learning.  It is an incredible learning environment and the teachers speak very little English which forces us to use what we have learned. 

                This week I have gotten to have so many incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  On Monday I started taking salsa lessons.  It is certainly a challenge to learn how to dance when you cannot understand the teacher, but it has certainly broadened my Spanish vocabulary.  I am about as “white” as they come which seems to reflect in my dancing abilities.  However, I absolutely love it and I am determined to get good before I leave in December.  This week has been an eventful one in Antigua since they held elections on Sunday and their independence day was Thursday.  There has been what seems like a constant string of random parades, fireworks, crowds and events.  On Wednesday during Spanish lessons we were given the opportunity to, as I understood it, run with a torch in an Independence Day parade.  So we all got on a bus with our teachers and drove to a town 45min away.  Then, after we watched the parade go by, they gave us a torch and told us to start running.  So me, my housemates Cassie and Kevin, my friend Kyle and a younger boy from La Union started running with the torch.  It was all good fun until I realized we were not about to stop anytime soon.  The buses carrying everyone else were following along behind us honking their horns in all sorts of festive rhythms.   To say the least we were more than slightly confused.  After running about 4 miles down a mountain road in jeans me and Cassie were breath taken by the running and the view so we took a break and got on the bus.  This is when we found out that the purpose of this little adventure was to run the torch all the way from Parramos (the town we started in) all the way back to Antigua (approximately 12 miles).  We all ran the rest of the way on and off until we reached Antigua where everyone got off the busses and ran to the school.  We joked about how this was just an elaborate practical joke to see what they could get the Gringos (white people) to do.  However, that night we went with the school to Guatemala City for a soccer game and the entire way there were thousands of people running along the side of the road with torches.  Guatemala City is usually about an hour drive from Antigua but because of the masses of people (mostly children) running there it took us almost 4 hours.  Apparently they actually gave us Gringos the “kiddie experience” only having to run 12 miles.  The soccer game was between Guatemala’s Cremus and Mexico’s Monterrey and I believe it was a world cup qualifier game.  Guatemala won by one goal which I was incredibly relieved by because security seemed to be prepared for the apocalypse.  I really enjoy Antigua but Guatemala City is a completely different story.  There were people everywhere, traffic was insane and there seem to be no air quality regulations so we were all somewhere between high and sick by the time we left.  Yet, it was still a good experience and I am glad I had the opportunity to go.

Every day I feel less like a tourist and more like I live here.  I am starting to understand and appreciate the culture, their traditions and the way of life here.  Antigua is somewhat like a miniature Ann Arbor in the middle of nowhere with all its coffee shops, stores, restaurants, entertainment and the wide array of cultures that live here.  I am really enjoying my time here and I am excited to see what the next 13 weeks will hold.