ok, it´s already starting to grow on me here. Today I walked all around Antigua, got into the tourist thing, taking pictures and then hiked on out of town. I walked along the main road and was occasionally trapped by the buses spewing black smoke, but for the most part it was a lovely walk up to San Juan del Obispo. There isn´t really any thing at SJO, a run down town square and some kids, but it was still nice to walk somewhere and get closer to one of the volcanoes. I don´t know if it was the active one, yes, there are active volcanoes here! But it was impressivly covered in clouds the whole day. I can´t imagine what this valley would look like with out clouds and rather suspect the day will never be seen, but it is still thrilling to get glimpses of the peaks every now and then. Oh, BTW, I also have a wonderful view from the hostel. So, just to rub it in, I spent an hour or two this afternoon sitting on the balcony, listening to rain on the tin roof and looking out over the town rooftops, across the valley, to the base of one of the massive volcanic peaks. By the end of my sit (an official backpacker activity), the peak was revealed and I snapped a picture ( I also achieved enlightenment, but the picture will be easier to share). Mucho amor.
September 23, 2006
The easiest summary, is just re-read my South Africa posts (which no longer exist, so I guess I have to fill in some details). Similar third-world transportation, cell-phone dependence, friendly-poor people to Africa. I’m hoping for improvments in the situation with my conquest of Spanish plan. After planning on studiously avoiding all gringo contact, I gave in last night and practically fled to The Black Cat (no, not even the black gato) where English was practically spilling out the doors and onto the streets. It held the typical ex-pat, living off mommy and daddy crowd, but oh, they were so great to see. This was after a couple hour bus ride from Guate City on the chicken bus; I’ve heard there’s even a song about it. Wandering around town from language school to language school, with my overpacked bag getting heavier by the minute, I finally stopped at the one with Princessa. Yes, I chose where to spend my gringa cash based on a dog, a lovely Golden, retriever mix. The teacher seemed good too, but really it was the dog that kept coming back into my mind as I got more and more exhausted. I just wanted to curl up on the floor and pet Princessa, probably the only Spanish speaker who understood me at that point. After signing my week away to LatinAmericano, I left my stuff at Hotel la Casa de don Ishmael, name origin is unknown, and headed out into the city (oh, Antigua, that is). This was the most exhausting part, trying to feel touristy, but not feeling that interested in ‘discovering’ anything 20 other blondhaired people had just seen. I then sat in the Parc Central and comenced to feel very sorry for myself. Not to worry, it’s the same affliction I met with after my 24 hour flight to South Africa – total exhaustion, but not being sleepy and feeling this duty to explore this beautiful city that the guide book praises to high heavens. This is when I had the epiphany, damn Lonley Planet! They are exactally as the name implies, a guide to lonleyness. They try to take you all these cool places, but some how the descriptions never quite match, the places they describe rarely exist when you get there and then you feel guilty for not having the fabulous time the guide writers obviously had. Well, damn them. They made me feel guilty for wanting to be around gringos after 24 hours of not being understood beyond ‘gracias.’ And I promise you, gracias doesn’t get you too far.
Long story short, I gave it, met the gringos and felt much better for having done so. I slept the sleep of the sinful and have decided to re-locate nearer to the gringos today. I of course am not a gringa, I just like being around the cute, clueless people. It’s just like another foreign culture I’ll be studying.
September 19, 2006
I have a confession, when you guys send me mass emails, well, I rarely read them. They sit there, pilling up, looking intimidating with long stories of shopping for textiles in foreign markets or missed buses. Then, the worst part is that you come back and I’m caught! You have pictures and allusions to stories that were sent out and I somehow never read. Some of it could be jealousy – think Chile in the middle of Albany’s winter – others out of spite, well, not really. So long confession short, here is my blog for Guatemala. Much like South Africa, I have things to share when living abroad, but become insufferably boring when I return to the states (just like Cinderella, really). The point is that this is just going to be about the next three months in Guatemala. If life is amazingly interesting after that, maybe I’ll start a new blog.. but it won’t be called “Guate.”
