Las Ruinas del Antigua

I'm super tired (muy consado) so I'm not going to write a long entry, I just wanted to share some pictures from today. This afternoon our class took a walking tour of Antigua and went into some of the ruins of the old churches. Antigua is a very old town, most of these buildings were from the 1500s.
The first place we passed (which obviously is not in ruins) is a place called La Hospital del Hermano Pedro. It's one of the public hospitals here in Antigua (their health care system is broken into private and public hospitals. The public hospitals offer services at a very reduced rate and receive donations to help off-set their costs. No one is turned away for inability to pay. This hospital specializes in developmental and physical disabilities, and a large number of their staff are foreign volunteers. I might try to do some volunteer shifts on the weekend once I get a better command of Spanish.

Here's some random ruins. I forget the name of them. There are seriously ruins every other block here.

The next place was La Inglesia de San Francisco. It was a beautiful church that was mostly in ruins, though they did have a repaired section where they hold services. This church holds the remains of Saint Pedro (the man who that hospital was named after). Saint Pedro was famous for being a champion of the sick, especially children. It's traditional here that when someone is sick, the family will pray to Saint Pedro and light a white candle. The active part of the church had a large book where people could come in and write down their prayers for Saint Pedro. It was really sad to read, lots of people praying for their sick children.

I'm a little shady on this next part, so don't use this as a source for your next school report. So there's this type of tree that grows in Guatemala whose leaves are used for tea. The tea can help with all sorts of ailments including pain, nausea and diarrhea. This kind of tree is somehow associated with Saint Pedro since he helped sick people too. Maybe it was named after him or something? Yeah, lets go with that. El arbol del San Pedro.

Our last church was La Inglesia Le Merced. It's been destroyed and rebuilt several times, but parts of it are over 500 years old. It was really gorgeous.

We also passed this place on the way home. It's the public laundry facilities for the town. Many folks clean their clothes in their homes either by hand or washing machine, but some need to use this area. Its basically a large fountain/small pool (there was no running water, nor could I see a source for adding water to the pool, so its possible that its rainwater? I have to check it out a little more closely next time.) There are cement sinks built around the edges where folks put their clothes and soap, then they use buckets to dump the water from the pool into the sinks. I'm kind of guessing at some of this because there wasnt anyone doing laundry at the time and I only caught pieces of what my teacher was saying. But anyway, here's a pic:

For dinner tonight I had this dish (I dont know what the name of it is but we eat it in the US too). Its basically polenta or some kind of grain mixed with chicken, wrapped in corn husks and then cooked. Empenadas? They were super good, whatever they were. And we had dessert for the first time. Okay, before I tell you about this dessert, let me tell you that they like things REALLY sweet here. The national drink of Guatemala is fruit punch, and I'm not exaggerating. Everyone drinks it all of the time, they even make wine out of it. Anyway, tonights dessert was a bowl full of jello with lucky-charms-esque marshmallows on top. Then the whole thing is drenched in condensed milk, so you're eating it like a cereal. My stomach turned as soon as I saw it (it doesnt help that I'm not a big jello fan) but I ate it with a big smile on my face and it actually wasn't that bad. Somehow the super sweetness of all those ingredients merged to form a black hole and after the first bite it didnt taste that sweet at all. I'm not exactly looking forward to my next bowl either, though ;)

After dinner I got to Skype with Jamie and Mom! It was great, Skype has definitely been keeping my home sickness at bay.

Okay, today in school I learned all the parts of the body and I was supposed to memorize it. That did not happen, so I need to get up early (earlier) and get my study on. Hasta manana!