This week was one of the busiest for me since we have been here. We returned from Panjachel on Monday morning and had just enough time to grab lunch and head off to class. That night we celebrated Halloween at La Union with a costume contest and a buffet of traditional Guatemalan food. Tuesday was All Saints Day which is a very big deal here in Guatemala. Here people make detailed, beautiful and sometimes enormous (some were over 6 meters tall!) kites for the occasion. We went to a kite festival that displayed some of the largest kites on a soccer field surrounded by rolling hills on which people of all ages set their little kites to the skies. The place was so crowded that the road leading to it was blocked for miles with parked cars. I also talked with a sweet older gentleman that lives in this city and he said that this year the festival was a lot smaller than it usually is and I could not imagine how it could possibly be any larger.
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| Our Halloween Costumes (Jenna and Kyle got 1st place!) |
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| Me and my sweet old man friend Francisco |
That evening the sun that had scorched us all day long was setting and casting really cool shadows on Antigua. Kyle and I decided it would be a great photo opp. at the ruins of Iglesia San Francisco (the church by my house).
After several weeks of trying to find a place to do my practicum I finally found one! On Tuesday me and Kyle started our practicum at Hotel Camino Real in Antigua. After becoming so familiar with the dusty streets and cracked walls of Antigua, I don’t think that either of us where quite prepared for what we saw. This hotel is by far the most beautiful hotel I have ever encountered. I feel like the only way I should be allowed in such a prestigious place is if I become President of the United States. We were given the grand tour and from room after room of luxurious accommodations, spas, remote controlled window shades, pre-filled wine coolers and refrigerators, saunas and the largest hot tub in Central America we were both quite star struck. There is a strict dress code required which unfortunately meant that both of us had to buy formal dress suites. Besides not being quite prepared for the grandeur of this place I was also unprepared for the amount of Spanish I would need to know. Fortunately Dorys, the Human Resources director, is incredibly patient with me and draws pictures to help me understand things. It is very frustrating for me that I want so badly to learn about how this business is run but I there is so much that I can’t understand. Camino Real is an immaculately run hotel. I have never seen such spectacular organization and attention to detail. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn there and I really hope that I am able to absorb information even though I don’t catch all of what is said.
The second round of elections were this Sunday and Otto Perez won. He will assume the position in the middle of January. In my opinion (which I obtained by piecing together the opinions of Guatemalans I have asked about it) I believe that neither candidate is a good option for Guatemala. Otto Perez was once a general in the Guatemalan military and during this time he took part in the massacres of Mayan villages. Ironically, one of his campaign posters is him smiling with two Mayan girls. The consensus for the other candidate, Baldizon, seems to be that he is an “egotistical son of a bitch” as one pastor put it. He had a sculpture of himself erected in Guatemala City and I have no doubt that his plans for the economy would have plunged Guatemala even deeper into poverty.
We topped off this exciting week with our long-awaited trip to Tikal. Tikal is an extensive ancient Mayan epicenter of religious ceremony. The city was abandon in 900 AD and was not discovered until recent centuries. Even now only about 10% of Tikal’s ruins have been uncovered; many ancient pyramids still exist buried in the jungle. In fact much of Guatemala is built on buried ancient ruins including the capital, Guatemala City. In Tikal we saw a lot of large hills covered by the jungle that were actually Mayan ruins that have not yet been uncovered. There is somewhat of a debate going on between the archeological and environmental communities about whether to continue to uncover this beautiful city full of history at the expense of the rain forest. We were also able to see large parts of the city that had been uncovered and partially restored. The views from the top of these pyramids were incredible and, in my opinion, definitely worth the extremely steep climb up set of stairs that were questionable at best. The Mayan people and culture have such deep roots in Guatemala and are still a huge part of Guatemala today. It was really incredible to get to see this city and gain a fuller sense of what Guatemala might have been like long before any Europeans stepped foot on the continent.
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| No big deal...that is just me on a Mayan temple |
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