This is the Place I Live

This weekend we went into a Mayan Village on the mountainside just out of Antigua.  We have been living here for almost a month now and starting to see Antiguan life as normal. However, the Mayan village really was a harsh reminder that we are in a third world country.  This country still suffers from poverty and still feels the effects of the civil war.  Antigua is referred to as a “bubble” in Guatemala because it is so different from the rest of the country.  This was very obvious on our trip to the village. Typically the Mayans come down into Antigua to sell their handiwork.  However, in this village we visited a co-operative store that sold the handiworks of 5 Mayan families.  They showed us how they intricately weave their traditional dress which can take between 3 to 12 months to create just one.  These weavings are not only for themselves to wear but also they also make a large part of their livelihood off selling them.  We were told that the men no longer wear their traditional dress because it had made them easy targets during the genocide and they are still discriminated against.  They also showed us how a typical Mayan marriage ceremony would be conducted.  There were quite a few interesting rituals that go along with a Mayan wedding including 12 hours of dancing.  We also got to make tortillas and grind coffee beans, which is much harder than it looks.  I must admit I was a little sore after grinding my tiny pile of coffee beans.  It is a crazy thought to me that people still do this to make a living. 

           

     The strong reminder of where we are continued on the way home from the village when I was talking to Paul (the director of the SAU Guatemala semester).   We were talking about a man named Erbin that works at La Union (the Spanish language school) and Paul told me that his brother was actually killed during the civil war.  Erbin, his brother and Juan Carlos, who is the director of La Union, were all standing and talking in central park in Antigua when the army opened fire on them simply because three men talking looked suspicious.  Erbin’s brother was killed in the incident.  The culture here tends to not talk about current or past problems so I had no idea until now that Juan Carlos and Erbin were so directly affected by the war.

              

      Aside from learning all this history, I have been doing a lot of other things as well.  I will be starting my fourth week of Spanish lessons on Monday.  I am learning so much Spanish that it hardly all fits in my brain.  The other day I tried to explain to my teacher that I would be adding a fifth week of lessons because I learn so much more here in one week that I could back home.  However, I could not remember the Spanish word for learn so she laughed at me and said that I must not be learning enough here.  I also learned a little bit of German from a student that I met at La Union.  Whenever I think that I am doing good because I know one and a half languages I meet people like him who are bi or tri-lingual and I realize that I still have a long way to go.  Entonces, Adios! Yo necesito estudio mucho Español ahora!