La feria (street fair!)

The other day while we were taking the chicken bus to San Andres, I finally saw what I had been searching for this entire trip: a churro stand. Turns out churros are far more popular in Mexico and the US than they are in Guatemala, I haven't found them anywhere in Antigua so I was super excited to see that little stand. Unfortunately, said stand was neither in Antigua or our destination town, so I had to watch it drift away into the distance while our bus flew by. I immediately informed my teacher Hugo of my discovery, and he somehow knew that I had been trying to find churros here (I only mentioned this to my morning teacher, so I dont know how that information got back to him, and I probably dont want to know the context of whatever conversation led her to share that with him.) He told me that that town usually didnt have a churro stand, it was only up because the town was getting ready for a feria (fair). I made a deal with Hugo that if he scheduled an activity to the fair, I'd buy him churros. Well the good man informed me today that we were taking a surprise activity there! SO HAPPY.

Hugo and I, and my friend Wesley and his teacher Monica went. (Sorry for the ugliness of that sentence but I have no idea how to correctly write it.) There were a ton of people there, lots of street vendors, kiddie rides and also mobile arcades. There was an ongoing parade that just kept driving around town in a circle. Most of it consisted of floats, but some people were walking/dancing too.

I don't know if costumes like this are popular at all fairs, but I got a kick out of the ThunderCats and Animaniacs.

And here's an interesting fun fact: apparently a totally hilarious thing to do here is for men to dress in drag and put on ugly masks. There were at least four floats like this.

But the one good thing about that is it prompted a discussion about transgendered people in Guatemala WHICH I SWEAR I DIDNT START, MOM! No surprise, my teachers aren't fans. Not a problem, moving right along...

The town was really pretty. Fountains are all over the place down here which is great since they're really beautiful. Actually, in general all these towns have really great public parks. They're really clean, too. Much cleaner than NY parks.

Here's a bad picture of me, but since its the only one I've taken so far I decided to post it.

Then, SUCCESS! Churros are delicious!! They're a bit different here, they're short and chubby as opposed to the long sugary rods that they sell in the subways. What they lacked in size, they definitely made up in taste. They were crunchy and sugary and drizzled in chocolate syrup.

Speaking of size issues, I wish I could show you how ridiculously small this hot dog is! I decided to tempt fate and buy meat from a street vendor. I had been hearing about the Guatemalan hot dogs, so I gave it a try. The hot dog he pulled out of the water was literally three inches long. He put it on the bun (where it comfortably sat a full inch from either end) then loaded it up with shredded lettuce, mayonaise, ketchup and mustard. I walked back to Hugo unsure if I had just gotten ripped off for being a tourist or if this was how their hot dogs were here. He told me thats how they usually are and then I told him about our comparatively enormous hot dogs back home. He then reminded me that they cant afford a lot of meat here. Oops :/

My hot dog!

I bought Hugo some of this as a thank you for bringing me to the fair. (side note: he ended up getting really sick after work this day, and I think it might have been from this. Note to self: don't eat pig carcasses off the street).

Wesley and I felt bad for these little dogs, especially since they were staring directly into our souls with their nasty infected puppy eyes. All these dogs are so sickly. They need some volunteer vets down here ASAP. We ended up giving them the rest of our food.

When we were leaving, Wesley decided he wanted some cotton candy. They were 2Q for a bag (around $0.25!) and Wesley handed him a 10Q bill. The kid who was selling them was around nine, and I dont think he understood that Wesley wanted change back, so he handed him five bags of cotton candy, haha. We ate it all, no worries.

Sadly, all magical things must come to an end, so we left town around 4:45. Unbeknownst to me, this is the craziest time to take a bus because a lot of people are heading home/shopping/etc. You'll never be able to picture the extent of crowdedness that this bus had. Picture a school bus. Now put two full grown adults in each seat. Now make them squish together so another full grown person can sit in each seat. Oops, only one of their butt cheeks can fit on the seat, so now they're taking up half the aisle, and since that's happening on the other side too, everyone is literally shoulder-to-shoulder from one window to the other. Now lets throw a bunch of babies and toddlers on the laps of all the adults, so there's no room between people and the seats at all. Awesome, you picturing this? Ok, so I walk up the bus stairs to this, from front to back. The bus is FULL. The bus driver looks at me and tells me to walk to the back of the bus. This is physically impossible. There is LITERALLY no aisle, not even one inch between people. My teacher looks at me and tells me to try, people will help me. Now let me remind you that I'm the size of like three Guatemalans, too. Everyone's looking at me and I can see the terror in the eyes of the children once they realize that I'll be forcing my way through. And that's just what I did. I had to turn sideways and simultaneously rub my ass and crotch into peoples faces on both sides of the bus while I tried to shimmy my way towards the back. I felt like a baby moving through a birth canal. I dont think I've ever said I'm sorry to so many people before. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Excuse me, I'm so sorry, Dear God, I'm so so sorry." This experience was a cumulation of all the horrible things that could happen to me, social anxiety wise.

The good news is once I got to the back, a seat opened up and I was able/ordered to squish in next to an old lady. Again, I had to apologize because I was half sitting on the chair/half sitting in her lap. I spend the whole trip trying not to squish her under my massive thighs. At one point she thought we were at her stop so I put my hand on the back of the seat behind her head to get enough leverage to stand up. She realized it wasn't her stop after all so she sat back down. My hand was still behind her seat and I was so anxious/jumpy about the seating arrangement that I yanked it away quickly before I was encroaching on her personal space. While pulling my hand away I managed to slap her full force on the back of the head, kind of the way Italian mothers do to their kids on TV. My immediate instinct was to pat her hair back down since I had pulled it out of her bun a little bit. Then I realized I was making things much worse, so I went back to my "I'm so sorry" speech. But she survived, I survived, and I learned to never take the bus at 5p again.