Love from Peten!

Hey all! I'm back from Peten and had a blast. Friday we visited Aguateca, a terminal classic site to the South of Tikal (near Dos Pilas, for my Mayaphile friends). Saturday we explored Tikal. There was a lot of time spent on the road and in the water (by boat), and a lot of time sweating in the humitidy. It was like being back home in Virginia! I'll give you some more details in a later post. Here's some photos.

The boat ride to Aguateca. Left to right: Our program director Claudia, my housmate Tamara, me, our guide Juan Pablo

In front of the palacio at Aguateca after hiking through the defensive crack and through the jungle!

Sending love from Templo I. Anna and Kelsey, this is especially for you. Jasaw Chan Kawil loves you!

Our group from Templo II (Jasaw's wife's pyramid), with Templo I in the background. Left to right: Taylor, Jenny (from CIRMA), Jordan, Sarah, Aaron, Tamara. Second row: Juan Pablo (guide), Claudia (program director), Stephanie, me!

From the top of Templo IV, with Templos I and III in the background. For Star Wars buffs: does this not remind you of a certain scene when they are landing on a special forest moon with those cute/ridiculous furry creatures? It is! They used this view to film the rebel base on Endor!! That made my day.

Cuaresma

Happy Monday, everyone. It's another sunny morning here in Antigua and though I'm tired, Lipton Yellow Label Tea and I are good friends. The weekend was really relaxing. I got a little work done, but mostly read, slept, ate, and wandered around Antigua. Like I've said before, Sundays during Lent are huge celebrations in Antigua. Processions, vendors, and a whole lot of people. I took some pictures yesterday and thought you all might enjoy them.




The procession moved all the way from Santa Ana, just outside Antigua (this is where I work with the after-school program), by Escuela de Cristo (the church near my park - see the photo March 10), then down to the cathedral in the Parque Central. If you were wondering, they are cleaning the church in preparation for Easter.

We head to Peten this Friday - I'm pretty excited. We're visiting Tikal, Aguateca, and Quirigua. I'll try and update you early next week once we're back.

Sweet Water

Actually a decent picture

Pirate Face

Wench Pose

Hm...

No swimming...really?

Hello All! I know it’s been incredibly long since I’ve posted. Things have been going well and now I am officially halfway through the semester. After a project as well as written and oral exam in Spanish class, I think we’re going to get “midterm” grades. We only have six or seven weeks of classes left, come to think of it.

Through all my travels on weekends, I have remembered that what I love best is just to be at home. Whether that’s home in Clifton or Williamsburg, or home-away-from-home here in Antigua, that’s where I am happiest and most comfortable. So while there are a lot of places I’d like to visit, I’m going to keep the weekend trips to a minimum from now on. (It might also help to mention that I generally get sick when I travel…) That said, next weekend we are making the much anticipated trip to Petén. Yes, that means Tikal, and a few other sites as well. I’m pretty darn excited. Kelsey and Anna, I’ll say hello to the spirits of Spearthrower Owl and Yax Nuun Aiin (or however you spell it) for you.

Last weekend Tamara and I ventured to Rio Dulce and Livingston. A quick note on the name ‘Rio Dulce’: the noun ‘dulce’ can mean a sweet, cake, or pastry. The adjective can mean sweet, fresh, or tender. It probably translates to ‘Fresh River’ as this is where the river meets the sea (ten points if you’re thinking of the John Denver and the Muppets song). And unlike the popularized term of the same spelling, ‘Dulce de Leche,’ it is pronounced [d-oo-l-se] – not [d-oo-l-che]. Dang Argentineans (just kidding).

We spent Friday traveling: a van to Guatemala City, where we caught a bus to Rio Dulce. I sat next to a French guy and realized how badly I speak French now that Spanish has taken over. It was 5:30pm by the time we got there, so we got a luxurious hotel room – private shower in the room and everything! However, I feel obligated to add that there was no door separating the shower from the room… We got dinner at a place by the water and watched the evening light fade on all the boats harbored there, enjoying the smell of not-quite-the-ocean-yet.

Saturday after breakfast we headed out to the Castillo de San Felipe, a fort built in the sixteenth century to keep the dastardly pirates away. At one point I tried to make a pirate face, but realized how miserably I fail at it. After way too many bad pirate jokes and silly pictures, we headed back to Rio Dulce (the town). We got lunch at a hippy joint and took a scenic boat ride up the Rio Dulce (the river) to Livingston. It was beautiful –and there is nothing like that feel of the wind on your face as you speed through the water. I wasn’t feeling too well by the time we got to Livingston, so we got a couple beds at a hostel and I passed out. I wasn’t too up to dinner that night, but enjoyed watching Tamara eat her tapado: seafood stew that contained (literally) a whole fish and a couple cut up crabs and shrimp with plantains. She kept saying that the fish was staring at her. I would be inclined to agree.

We wanted to check out the music scene, but as ten o’clock rolled around and places still weren’t open, we dug in for the night. I’m a little sad I didn’t get to see more of the Garifuna culture in Livingston, but hey – I don’t have dengue or malaria, so I’m not complaining. We spent Sunday traveling home: boat to Puerto Barrios, taxi, double-decker bus to Guatemala City, taxi, and chicken bus back to Antigua. Somehow, that turned out to be a pretty efficient trip: 6:30am-2:30pm.

It was a pretty fun trip, although I’m sad I didn’t get the chance to drink rum in Livingston. ¡Que lastima! (what a shame!) I made up for it by going drinking and dancing, Guatemalan style, on St. Patrick’s Day. Don’t worry, I didn’t drink that much. I have to have my wits about me to beat off the men with sticks. Just kidding! Well, sort of ;)

There and back again...and again...

So begins another week here in Guate. I wrote this post for yesterday but didn’t get to post it. Exciting news: we had a 5.3 earthquake Sunday night (though technically this does not qualify as an earthquake since it didn’t hit 6.0). In reality, earthquakes can be pretty disastrous, but it was neat to experience one all the same.

My favorite park - it is very peaceful in the evening and a good place to think

This week should be good – hopefully I will (finally) get caught up on all my internship hours at CIRMA. So far the books have been interesting – a lot of history, ethnohistory, and archaeology of Mexico – that somehow found its way into French. It looks like this coming weekend a few of us are going to travel to Rio Dulce and Livingston, the former to the northeast, the latter on the Caribbean coast. The whole group is going to Tikal the last week in March as well – I must admit that my archaeology-loving heart is pretty excited.

La Iglesia de San Fancisco - the church I frequent most often (decked out for Lent)

Now that we’re going on two weeks into Lent (wow, time flies!) I figure I’ll tell you a little about religion here in Guatemala. One of the most fascinating things about being in Guatemala has been experiencing God and the Church through a different culture and language. I go to Mass on Sundays at 6:30pm with my host family at the Cathedral, right by the Parque Central. I also attend daily Mass a few times a week at La Iglesia (the church) de San Francisco, which is about a ten minute walk to the southeast. I have started to learn prayers in Spanish and can generally follow the Mass pretty well. I know I have told some of you how different it is to have spirituality in another language. Most of the time I still think in English, since this is the language I use to communicate with the other students and those of you at home. However, Spanish works its way in more often through prayer. As Javier said – we all find a different way to get into the culture. For some, it is through bars or girlfriends/boyfriends or volunteering. I guess it's church for me. Not that I don’t enjoy a couple drinks and dancing every now and again…

The facade of San Francisco

One of the first things I noticed upon coming here is just how many people you see at daily Mass, which is especially remarkable when you remember that each church has several daily Masses. Antigua is 95% Catholic and is especially well known as a religious center, which is particularly evident during Cuaresma (Lent) and Semana Santa (Holy Week). There are also a lot of statues of saints – called imágenes – that are used during processions on Sundays during Lent and during Semana Santa. They are, I admit, a little creepy. Walking into a church is a bit like bring in a waxworks at first, but I have gotten used to it. There is also a strong emphasis on offerings: little carts sell candles by churches, and they are lit in front of imágenes or the Blessed Sacrament. There are always beautiful arrangements of flowers as well. At San Francisco, since Ash Wednesday, there has been an offering of fruits and vegetables (everything from watermelons to carrots) in front of a statue of Jesus carrying the cross. I have also started to see the alfombras – carpets of pine needles and flower petals – in several places.

They take Lent seriously here. A lot of the shops and houses have purple banners. On Fridays there is a Vía de la Cruz (I’m not sure whether this is Stations of the Cross or something different, it translates literally to “Way of the Cross”). Sundays are days of celebration: processions of some of the most respected imágenes through the streets, popcorn, cotton candy, balloons, toys, little dolls dressed in purple robes, candles, you name it. Last week there were even fireworks – which continued to go off during Mass. One of the biggest differences between American Catholicism and Guatemalan Catholicism is that the latter is interwoven with the culture. Celebrations and rites of passage like the 15th birthday, weddings, birthdays, and funerals are all usually celebrated with a Mass and festivities to follow. I must say I really love this – life, Wedding at Cana style.

My classes continue to go well. They are nothing like W&M, since the real lessons are to be learned though experiencing life here. Yet I am learning a lot of Spanish and we have some really interesting discussions during history and anthropology classes. I am even starting to understand the gist of 20th Century Central America (i.e. not pretty). My volunteer work/internship at El Semillero Mi Ángel Guardián is great as well. While the kids love Tamara best (for good reason, she’s wonderful with them), I help in my own quiet way. Usually I tutor seven- to ten-year-old boys in basic math, and they make me smile and laugh a lot. Last week one of the boys (I think it was José) gave me a big kiss on the cheek as a greeting. I have never spent much time with little boys (more with toddlers), so it’s good learning experience.

Graffiti at the former home of the President in the City. As far as I can translate it says "While the blood of the people flows there will be struggle and revolution"

I went to the City (aka Guatemala City, about 45 minutes away by Chicken Bus or camioneta) twice this past week. On Wednesday, four of us from Spanish class took a trip to Landivar University and different zones in the city to get different perspectives on living conditions. You can find everything ranging from extreme poverty – living in shacks without electricity or plumbing – to incredible luxury in malls that at least as ridiculous as Tysons and other such places in the states. The university was interesting as well. We sat in on a TV/audiovisual class, where they practiced by filming a scene about (no joke) a woman telling her lesbian lover she was leaving her for a man. Yeah. It was strange to be back on a college campus, where people pay attention to fashion trends and all the girls straighten their hair and dress up for class. To be honest, I am not looking forward to going back to that. I much prefer my curly hair, Dockers, Gap or Bean shirts, and grey sketchers or flip-flops from Kohl’s.

KJ! If you look closely, Mesoamerican archaeology aficionados, you can see the talud-tablero architecture behind the main stairway. So cool!

Saturday I ventured to the city again, to visit Kaminaljuyu, a Preclassic and classic period Maya archaeological site. It was really neat to walk around and visualize how magnificent the site must have been – covering zones 7, 11, and 13 in the city (i.e. big). I’ll save you most of the details, but it was interesting to see Maya burning offerings at various areas of the park. The security guard also let me into the excavated area to look around. I got to take a look at some of the stratigraphy and admire the talud-tablero architecture. It makes me all the more excited to visit more sites soon. [End nerdy moment]

Just next to the excavated area of the acropolis - this is the general area of the Jugo de Pelota - ball court!

That’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to write early next week about the trip up to the Caribbean coast. I should probably get back to my homework…

Adventures

Well, it’s Friday again. I have now been here for seven weeks (wow!) and am continuing to have fun and learn from so many experiences. While I have plenty more to tell you about this week, I’ll stick to covering last weekend’s adventures in this entry.

After taking a weekend off to rest, I was ready to get out of town again. After all – when else in my life will I have three day weekends and no responsibilities to hold me back? “A brief interlude of sensational experience,” indeed. My housemate Tamara and I both wanted to head north to Cobán and a couple places nearby, so we booked a 4am van for Friday. The driver took us to the city (meaning Guatemala City) to catch a 6am bus to Cobán. It was refreshing not to be surrounded by tourists for once, since we used more typical Guatemalan transport (buses, vans, and pickups). The bus ride was about five hours through the mountains and countryside. Tamara is from Colorado, and we both remarked how much it felt like being out west – winding roads along mountains, pine trees, little farms and fields on hillsides, and open space.

We arrived in Cobán a little before eleven and after getting pretty turned around (don’t trust the Lonely Planet guide’s map of Cobán) we found a travel agency, and made friends Victor, who walked us to the bus stop for Lanquín, a town to the northeast. We knew it would be an exciting ride when someone handed a (live) chicken in a plastic bag to the woman seated next to Tamara. It got even more exciting as we squeezed a whole lot of chavos (guys) into the van on the last leg of the journey. Upon arriving in Lanquín, we took a pickup to Semuc Champey, which is made up of a couple rustic hostels, houses and farms (corn, bananas, etc), and a national monument –

beautiful natural pools and waterfalls that enter underground caves. After getting a room at one of the hostels, we dumped our bags, put on bathing suits and hiking gear, and walked a bit to the park entrance. We took a pretty intense half-hour (I think it was supposed to be an hour) hike up to the Mirador (viewpoint) and saw the pools. We then proceeded to hike down, and since it was a hot day, we decided to take a dip in the pools. Amazing. How often do you get to relax in natural turquoise-colored water while enjoying the late afternoon sun? After a while we decided to head back and shower before dinner. Neither of us lasted much past nine that night.

On Saturday we again got up early for a 5:15am shuttle back to Cobán. The shuttle came at five and the electricity wasn’t on yet so we scramble to gather up our belongings and head out. About fifteen minutes into the trek back up the mountain (the roads to Lanquín and Semuc Champey were even more mountainous than the road from Guate to Cobán), our van broke down. We got to enjoy a few hours by the side of the road as a new van came. After an exhausting ride (they really pack people into those vans!!) we got back to Cobán by late morning, grabbed some tacos for lunch, and caught a van for Chisec – another town farther north. From Chisec, we took another van to the Cuevas de Candelaria. Tamara and I, already pretty exhausted from traveling, donned our bathing suits to go tubing through the underground caves with our guide Sebastian. The area is incredibly beautiful – it was easy to imagine this as the setting for an adventure movie, especially as we arrived at the mouth of the cave. Perhaps my favorite moment was floating by a rock outcropping in the caves, where light from outdoors shone in to penetrate the darkness. I almost expected to see some treasure displayed where the beam of sunlight hit the rock (think Isla de Muerta in Pirates of the Caribbean). After tubing, we toured the Cúpula de Murcielago (Dome of Bats) with Sebastian. By various means of transport (that either involved sharing space with a mountain of coconuts or of guatemaltecos) we made it back to Cobán by early evening, got a room at a hostel, grabbed some dinner (I opted for some wonderful tex-mex fajitas), and passed out early again.

Sunday we slept in until 6:45am (I know!) and headed out to see the Templo El Calvario and a couple other churches. The temple was fascinating: according to legend, an indigenous man saw two jaguars at the spot one day, but did not kill them. He went back again and saw a vision of Jesus in their place, so they built a church on the spot. It is at the top of a long staircase (120 steps or so). Since it was Sunday, the church was full of people. It struck me just how different the atmosphere was. Maya women in their cortas (skirts) and güipiles (shirts), lighting candles as offerings. One of the statues of Mary was on a carpet of pine needles and flowers (you will read more about such carpets during Semana Santa). The whole place smelled of wax and the dark, shadowy building had an air of, perhaps, holy mystery.

On the way back to the center of town, we got caught in a rainstorm (this is typical for Cobán) and ducked into another church. Tamara had a poncho but I waited out the rain a bit before enjoying a traditional breakfast (scrambled eggs, black beans, a little tomato sauce, served with corn tortillas and coffee). Probably sounds gross to many of you, but huevos y frijoles is one of my new favorite foods. Before heading out, I picked up a few “souvenirs”. Don’t worry, Smiths and Buchanans, I made sure to bargain. I’m getting better at it. It was a long ride back, mostly in the rain, before arriving back to sunny Antigua around 5pm. The whole city was crazy, because there are celebrations every Sunday during Cuaresma (Lent). Think: Fourth of July plus Homecoming parade (floats and all), only the floats are of the Holy Family and other saints and angels. I never thought Jesus and cotton candy would go together. Life is full of surprises.

Tomorrow I am headed to the ciudad (again) to my first Guatemalan archaeological site, Kaminaljuyu (fondly known as ‘KJ’ to the alumnos of Dr. Liebmann’s Mesoamerican Arch. class). It’s a Preclassic Maya site, but also flourished for a period that shows the influence of Teotihuacán (talud-tablero architecture!). I might head over to the anthropology museum as well. In a few days I’ll write about the beginning of Lenten celebrations, our trip to the city and Landivar University on Wednesday, as well as my adventures this weekend.