Arrival

I´m now in Xela, my first computer use since leaving the states, and with a weird keyboard with letters and accents in new places and most of the keys rubbed off anyways, so pardon the typos. I also cannot figure out how to get the ´at´ symbol to work to write email, so i keep copying it from my address book. how silly. perhaps i should just ask. what a novel idea. i completely remember having this same issue four years ago in mexico. you´d think i would have learned and remembered. apparently not.
Anyway, I arrived in Guatemala city on Friday at around 8:30 and was met by Lisa´s cousins, Aaron and Corinne. Aaron works at an American school in the city and Corinne volunteers at this really amazing organization where she teaches women´s literacy classes to women from the city. The majoprity of whom make their living by selling things that they find in the city dump. They work with such opposite sides of the population, it must be a bit weird for them. They live in a pretty swanky apartment in a very nice part of town. We dropped off my things and then went to eat tacos nearby in this area with all the nightclubs. we passed some bizarre photoshoot of scantily clad women posing on a motorcylce. aaron thinks we saw the guatemalan Paris Hilton.
Saturday Aaron took my to Antigua-a very pretty colonial town crawling with foreigners. This old many asked if we wanted a guide and aaron agreed. He was very nice and clearly knowledgeable about many things. And also well know, as old people all around the city kept waving to him. But he kept saying that old steps were the remains of mayan temples... Alas, as with everywhere, I suppose you have to choose what to believe.
When we returned to the city, we relaxed in the apartment. When Corinne returned from a hike with friends from her work, we were invited to her friend Monica´s family´s home for dinner and some sort of procession. It turned out that it was a sort of pre-procession for el dia de concepcion del virgin maria or something. the real day is the 8th, but since that is a weekday, the procession is on the weekend before. Saturday was the day when the youth get to process through the neighborhood carrying this altar with a statue of the virgin. And the event is repeated on a much larger scale the next day with adults. The kids must have walked for two hours in circles all in and out of the winding, dark streets, followed by a waxing and waning crowd of familymembers and two memn pushing a car battery that powered a small stereo ant lit up the skirt of the virgin.
Guatemalans are obsessed with marcuetas (firecrackers) and really all things firey. Four year olds were setting off firecrackers in the street, chasing each other with flaming sticks. They sell the firecrackers in bands, like amunition, and you can separate them or do huge amounts all at once. the sounds are deafening, reverberating off the stucco houses. We helped decorate Monica´s house with balloons (interestingly they use the same word for bladder and balloon) and streamers. As the procession wound past her house, the kids grabbed the balloons and streamers, holding piles of colorful globes in front of their faces and chasing each other until they fell in big, bright piles of popping balloons, burried beneath their treasure. It was quite a site. If only i could have seen the adult procession, which apparently involves a live band and much larger crowds and a much larger statue of the virgin. Corinne took many pictures, which i hope to link to soon.