MIni-vacation!

All of the volunteers are going on a mini-three day vacation to a place called Earth Lodge right outside of Antigua. It's an avocado farm and eco-resort that rents out cabins in the woods for some loungy-downtime (exactly what I excel at!) This place sounds amazing! Dinner is part of the package, they serve homemade vegetarian meals and pastries. MMMMMM LOOK AT THESE PASTRIES

There are a bunch of hammocks there, a 24-hour bar and a Mayan sauna!

And the best part, check out these cabins. They're TREEHOUSES!!!

Lucky for me, the trip needed to be paid for well in advance, so me losing my wallet didn't screw me over! We'll be coming back Sunday, so hopefully I'll have lots of stories and pictures to share with you then!

Easter

Gotta say, Easter was a bit of a disappointment for me. Of course if I was more religious I might describe the Easter celebration here as being very beautiful (or at least devout) but I think the level of commercialism that I'm used to made it hard to appreciate the festivities here without feeling that a part of it was missing. Namely the part shaped liked a giant bunny. I mean, I KNOW that Easter is for Jesus but the magical pact that exists between Him and the Easter Bunny seems to only be valid in the United States. There was no candy to be found, no pastel colored clothes and ham dinners. There was absolutely no mistaking that this was all about the resurrection of Jesus, and we celebrated with a 4-hour long mass, a viewing of Passion of Christ, and a final presentation of the Stations of the Cross in nearby Paramos. As riveting as all that sounds, all I wanted was a Cadbury creme egg and an Easter egg hunt.

I did end up getting part of my wish. They have a quasi-egg hunt here for the kids. I call it quasi- because it's only quasi-fun. Actually, I shouldn't say that. It was fun for the kids, they liked it. I'm just used to different things so I found it disappointing. They use REAL eggs here which is pretty cool. Someone has to blow the yolk out of all of them the night before (that's a lot of work for 200 eggs!) Once the hollowed eggs are dried, the kids paint the outsides and put glitter on them, normal fun Easter stuff. Then 50 of the eggs get money put into them (ranging from Q1 to Q250- .15c to $40). The eggs are hidden throughout the grounds and the kids go find them. Here's the part that sucks though. There aren't enough eggs for all the kids. There are 200 eggs for 400 kids and 150 of those eggs have NOTHING IN THEM. They're just empty eggs. There's no limit on how many eggs a person can get either, so all the fast kids ran out there and scooped up a bunch of eggs, meanwhile me and my kid in a wheelchair tried to get through the grass at a frustratingly slow pace. It sucked that he didn't stand a chance at finding any eggs. He didn't seem to care too much, but I was definitely sad about it.

I'm complaining far too much than I should be, guess I'm still a little bitter about it. Let me focus on happy things instead. We took some really great pictures while we were waiting for the Easter egg hunt. Check these out:

Here's Hannah with two little girls from the Baby's House

Me with Jocelyn, a little girl who I've taken on a few med runs.

And Rosita! She's adorable (love her curly hair!) but she's also challenging. (By the way, that lollipop is an independent acquisition. Don't want you to think I was lying before about them not having candy)

Stephanie hanging out with Emerson

And finally, me and my little terror Juan Carlos (not to be confused with the Juan Carlos who I teach Spanish to). As much as this little kid tries my patience, he's really adorable sometimes. He's one of the few special needs kids at NPH who's physically aggressive, but even then it's rarely done out of anger, it's almost like a compulsion. He likes looking at my tattoo and for some reason always points to it and says "Guatemala." That's immediately followed by trying to pinch my arm. If that's deflected, he'll either try to pinch my arm again or try to pull my hair. When the second attack is thwarted, he goes in for the bite. Thankfully he's totally predictable so I've never ACTUALLY been bitten. It's always the same moves in the same order. I used to get stressed when he'd go after me but now it's more amusing than anything. It makes me think of Mortal Kombat. PINCH! PINCH! (Finish him!!) BITE!!! It's Juan Carlos' special move.

After the Easter egg hunt I spent the rest of the day vegging out which was absolutely delightful. I'm glad that I'm having the chance to experience these holidays in another country but I'll be glad to get back to the normal rhythm of things when I get back (normal rhythm being gorging on chocolate all day and then eating dye-stained hard-boiled eggs for a week).

...

...and as he paid his bill, left the cafe and headed to the bus stop to return to the orphanage, he was pick pocketed. Bye bye wallet. There was another procession going by and probably three times as many people crowded together. While I was herded through the crowd, my hands firmly in my pockets gripping my iPhone and money, someone pulled my wallet out of my side pocket and took off.

High five to myself for having the foresight to separate my money. All he got was Q100 (equal to $15).

Slap upside the head to myself for leaving my license, credit card and debit card in there. Now I have no way to pay for anything, save for the other Q100 that I had in my pocket.

I spent the bus ride home in a very foul mood. While I can't claim to be happy right now, I'm better than I was. I have so much to be grateful for. Losing my iPhone or computer would have been a much bigger blow, and I'm in a place where I can function quite well with no money. If I were on vacation this would be much harder to deal with, but I have a free home, free food and a recently charged-up cell phone. The credit cards can be cancelled and really all I'm out in the end is $15. I said I came here for experiences and to grow, and that means for good or bad.

Crazy awesome parade

The Guatemalans put us to shame when it comes to their religious observances. I grew up Catholic in a not-too religious family. We took our commandments seriously and telling a lie or talking back to our parents would definitely earn us a swift kick, but church was reserved for Christmas and Easter and nighttime prayers were gradually phased out as we got older. All of the kids had to go to CCD on Saturdays (a few hours of religious education) but I think that my parents were probably more motivated by the thought of having a few hours of kid-free time rather than seriously wanting us to be good little Catholics. By the time I was 12 I was protesting enough for my parents to let me "drop out" of CCD. The other kids continued and eventually received their confirmations while I was destined for a life of eternal damnation. At the very least I can't get married in a Catholic church until I go back and finish CCD, though the likelihood of that happening are slim to nil (see my previous post on marriage).

I think my family is pretty reflective of what most Catholic American families are like. Religion is for little kids (the look so cute in their communion dresses!) and old people. People are too busy during the middle of their life to have time for church. They still consider themselves Catholic, but non-practicing. They still pray (whenever someone's sick or the lottery is really high) but like a distant cousin, contact is usually limited to awkward holiday get-togethers.

Now let's talk about Guatemalan Catholics. Guatemalans are every church's fantasy. They revolve their lives around Jesus. Homes are adorned with His picture, women grasp crosses in their hands as they walk down the street, churches are overflowing on Sundays (and Saturdays). If God ordered a sacrifice in Guatemala, hundreds of Abrahams would flood the streets, willing sons in tow. That being said, it's no surprise that Guatemala is world-renowned for it's Easter celebrations. And not just it's Easter celebrations, because unlike in the States, they make it very clear that Lent is 40 days long and you FEEL those 40 days here. There are shrines to Jesus in front of people's homes (literal shines, with candles and flowers and photos like you'd find at a shooting scene back in the US). Every Friday they have a parade through the streets where people take turns doing their penance: helping to carry a 7,000lb statue of Jesus through the streets. And then comes Holy Week. This is like the World Cup of religious events; people come from all over the world to watch the religious celebrations. The population of Antigua jumps from about 36,000 to over 150,000. Along with the normal American and German tourists, tons of folks from neighboring countries flood in, too.

All these people visiting lead to three big things happening: first of all, it's a HUGE flood of money for Guatemala. Rooms are booked solid in Antigua and tourists usually book up all the rooms in neighboring towns as well, small towns that usually don't get the benefit of much tourism. Obviously, a great thing. The second big occurrence is a huge wave of extra jobs during this time of year. Hundreds of vendors were in Antigua today selling everything from iced tea to yo-yos. Families take full advantage of the influx of tourists; it's common to see kids as young as nine or ten walking around trying to sell their families merchandise (even younger kids work as shoe shiners). Another great way that money is reaching people here. And then the third change. This week isn't just a good week for families, it's also a spectacular week for thieves. The crime rate in Antigua sky rockets during Holy Week. A common trick here is to watch someone put away their cellphone/camera/wallet in their backpacks, then walk behind them and slice right through their backpack, grabbing the item without them ever knowing anything happened. Another trick (which happened to my friend last week) is to distract someone with pleas of buying merchandise. It's not uncommon here for folks with jewelry/fabric/candy to walk right into a restaurant and ask you to buy from them. They rarely take no for an answer, so you have to eventually start ignoring them until they give up and walk away. Well apparently thieves took advantage of this little ploy, walked into a cafe and tried to get my friends to buy their goods. While my friends buried their noses in their books and started ignoring them, one of the people grabbed her wallet out of her purse. It wasn't discovered until it was time to pay the bill much later. So that being said, while this is a great time of the year to visit, you need to be on guard at all times.

Vendors galore!

It felt like a theme park when I got to Antigua today. Vendors walked up and down the streets with cotton candy and peanuts, people snapped photos every few feet and I heard about as much English as I did Spanish (though in Antigua that's not really note worthy). I immediately sought refuge from the crowds and ran to a cafe. On my way there I passed the beginnings of some alfombras (carpets). One of the most beautiful parts of the parades are carpets that the townspeople make. The carpets serve two purposes: the first is to level out the cobblestone roads (it's hard enough to walk on them, once you have a 7,000 lb statue on your shoulders, it's downright deadly). Sawdust is placed on the cobblestones to even it out. Once it's completely even, dyed sawdust is placed on top in a decorative design as a tribute to Jesus. I was surprised that they were just beginning to build these with the parade only a few hours away, but then I found out that they PURPOSELY wait for the last minute, that way the alfombra looks it's very best for when the parade starts. It's kind of sad that these awesome pieces of art are going to get destroyed in a few hours, but it serves as a reminder that beauty is temporary.

The parade started with Roman guards reading out the charges against Jesus

Some men dressed up like Romans

The Roman guards walk through with other men to be crucified.

(Side note, men of all ages were taking part in this. I saw everyone from babies to about 85 years old. It was really cool)

Next, men come with those little incense pots (which are SUPER popular here) and smoke up the whole street. It was really cool seeing the huge smoke clouds and hearing the drums in the background, gave it a really powerful feel.

There are two main statues for this parade. I call them statues, but really they're platforms with figures on top. The first one is of Jesus carrying the cross. After Good Friday, this will be replaced by a statue of Jesus on the cross, and again replaced at night with a statue of Jesus' body after it had been lowered off the cross. This platform is carried by men. Each church has it's own day to do the parade, and their church members are the ones in charge of carrying the enormous platform. Because of the enormous weight, people have to switch in and out during the parade to keep anyone from getting too exhausted. Deciding where/when people switch in is very precise; all people carrying the platform at any given time must have the same shoulder height or else some people will be forced to carry the brunt of the weight. The men wear purple robes up until Good Friday, after which they'll switch to black. Right now the entire city is purple; purple flags fly from houses and purple flowers are everywhere. It's truly gorgeous to see. Anyway, here are the dudes.

Following the Jesus statue are two small statues (carried by just four people each) of St. John and Mary Magdalene. Don't ask me who's who; they both look completely gender neutral to me.

And then Mother Mary get's a float. This one is smaller than Jesus' but still considerably large. The women carry this float and are usually dressed in black with black veils. The ones holding the platform here seem to not be adhering to that norm, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Check out the crowd!

And here's what happens when the parade passes through. These dudes walk behind with shovels and make big piles of all the beautiful sawdust. The street sweeper takes care of the rest, and three minutes after the parade passes through, you would never know anything happened.

The parade was an amazing, amazing experience. The same as when I was involved in La Posada and La Viacrucis, you get caught up in the emotion of everything and you can really feel the immense amount of religious dedication and love that these folks have. Today was a great experience and definitely one of those great times when I felt absolutely 100% right in choosing to spend this year here.

Adorable kids being adorable

I have to give NPH credit for keeping the kids pretty busy here; they do hours upon hours of chores before and after school, then during the evenings and weekends there's almost always some kind of activity going on. Usually I tend to avoid the activities; I feel like I get more than enough time with the kids and an afternoon in the hammock with a book is hard to give up. Today's activity sounded to cute to miss though, so I hauled my ass up the stairs to watch the kids perform traditional Guatemalan dances.

Here's everyone waiting to pile into the cafeteria

First the older kids went. Here's Alexander leading the Salsa (salsa is huge here, Antigua has Salsa schools all over the place for tourists.)

Emerson was excited by my camera. He was really funny, every time a new act came out he pointed at my camera until I took a picture. I told him he should be a talent agent when he gets older because he made it seem like every group was the greatest thing ever.

Alvaro was more curious than excited, there are about thirty pictures exactly like this on my camera now.

Finally I made him pose

Here's our youngest kid ready for his number! His role is a farmer so he has a little moustache, so cute!!

I want to eat Jordy's face!! He's so damn cute!

And here's my little man Brayan in the middle

And here are the girls dressed up in traditional Mayan garb. I see girls dressed like this every day but its still adorable

Here's a video of their performance. It's a bit boring in the beginning (sorry kids) but it gets slightly more interesting as it goes on. Basically it's about the men going out into the fields during the day to help provide for their families.



It was a fun little performance and the kids seemed to be really proud of themselves. And lucky for me, I still had time to get some relaxing done afterwards :D

La boda de Tia Rosa

Over the last couple of years I've been lucky to celebrate quite a few of my friends weddings including most recently my little sister's wedding. Jamie and Rob got married in St Thomas with only a small group of family there, so it was a little different than the weddings I'd been to in the past (which have ranged from elaborate events in huge cathedrals to small gatherings in the middle of the woods).

I have mixed feelings on weddings, and like most of my opinions on other matters, I'm constantly changing my mind. When I was little I just took it as matter-of-fact that I would grow up, meet someone awesome and get married. Once I actually got into the dating world I started realizing that the "meeting someone awesome" part was a bit more challenging then my 7-year old self had realized. Actually, in all fairness, meeting awesome people isn't hard, it's meeting awesome people that I'm compatible with long-term that's challenging. Anyways, when my parents got divorced and then later as I started having more long-term relationships, it made me really think about the sustainability of marriage. Sure, people can get married for ever and ever and be happy, I know folks like that. I'm not sure if that's what I want though. For me, I feel like the beauty of life is the fact that we're always evolving, always having new experiences that change the way we see the world and what we hope to get from our time here. I can remember how passionate I was about becoming a forensic pathologist when I first started college. That was my biggest dream, I would read everything I could find on the subject and I knew that I could devote the rest of my life to that and be completely happy. Over the next two or three years though, I slowly changed the type of person I was. The thought of working in that field was still interesting to me, but somewhere along the way I lost my passion for it. It's not that I didn't REALLY want to be a forensic pathologist to begin with, I did. I just changed. It's normal. Now I'm in a job that offers a lot of flexibility. I can travel, I can work in an office or hospital or school, whatever appeals to me at the moment. It's a much better fit for me. I feel the same way about relationships. It sounds a bit pessimistic, but I can't imagine myself with one person for the rest of my life. For me, I think relationships are about sharing a PART of my life. The type of person who I need in my life right now may be very different than the type of person I need ten years from now. As me and my partner change, what we need/want in someone else changes too. I think this is normal, and I wouldn't want to try to force longevity from a relationship when it makes more sense for us to find new partners. That doesn't mean I don't want a long-term relationship. I still want someone I can share myself with and raise a family with, it just might mean that while we start out as a couple, we may end as friends/co-parents.

Anyway, that's an awfully long way of saying that I don't really want to get married. I think it sets people up for an expensive and potentially ugly divorce, and if my partner and I are splitting up I don't want any legal mumbo jumbo making it harder than it already is. I'd rather that we were forced to keep civil with one another since we didn't have a legal system to do the dirty work of communicating and negotiating for us. Getting off track again. I don't want to get married. That being said, I find other people's weddings FASCINATING. You really want to spend 10-20k for one day? You're really willing to sign a contract promising to stay with this person no matter what? Even if they cheat on you? Even if you're miserable and want to leave? I don't think all people take marriage seriously, divorce is a safety net and they know it. This isn't the unbreakable contract that it used to be, you're basically just agreeing to give it a go and if it doesn't work, you'll move on to divorce. That seems kind of ridiculous to me. I know at least three people in the last five years who before their weddings said something to the effect of "Well, they're not what I wanted in an ideal partner, but it's they're okay." o_0

ANYWAY, I keep rambling on about my own crap, obviously I have heavy opinions on this subject. This is actually supposed to be a happy post :) I love other people's weddings. I love the crazy elaborateness of them, I love the ridiculous stress for something completely unnecessary, I love the drama. What I truly, truly love though is the simple, cheap wedding that centers a little more around the core of marriage. You don't need photographers and tuxes and live bands. You need to sign a contract and have dinner with your friends to celebrate the huge commitment you just agreed to. And that brings me to my Guatemalan wedding.

I have to say that I've been nothing but lucky since I've been here. Awesome opportunities keep getting thrown in my lap and this week was no different. You may recall that last month I was giving English lessons to my boss Tia Rosa and her "friend" Ezekial. Well, turns out that Ezekial is actually her boyfriend and surprise, now fiancee. Tia Rosa and I were walking around the grounds the other day when she casually mentioned that they were going to get married this month and I was invited to come. Amazing!!! What an great opportunity not only to show support for Tia Rosa, but also to see a true Guatemalan wedding!

She asked if I would mind bringing a few of our frequent-fliers from the clinic; naturally I didn't. Having the kids there actually added to the experience because this was the first wedding for all of them. It was cool that they were as excited as I was to see what it was going to be like.

All the pretty girls together!

One of the kids waiting for the wedding to start

Hannah, Martin and me waiting for the wedding

Tia Rosa arrives!

The wedding was held at the municipal building. I've never seen a municipal-wedding in the states, so I don't know how similar it was to what we do, but I'm guessing it was pretty similar. We all piled into a small room with lots of folding chairs/benches. Tia Rosa and Ezekial sat in two chairs in the front, facing a large desk where a secretary and some government dude was (justice of the peace?). He started off by giving a speech about the promise of marriage, how they were agreeing to be faithful to one another for the rest of their lives, even if they were living far apart. (It's possible that he added that because I don't think they'll be living together right away). After a while he said that they needed to say their vows. They both put their hands on this walking stick (sheathed sword?), stated their names and agreed to stay faithful. They then had to sign a big ledger.

After that they called up witnesses. I think this part was different than in the states because usually we have two people witness. Here, a whole line of people formed and signed the ledger. I didn't know if it was rude not to sign, but since I had no idea what we were signing for I stayed put.

After that they were announced man and wife, but there was no kissing involved. This was interesting to me because Guatemala is like PDA capital of the world (actually I think Central America in general is pretty PDA-friendly). You see people doing some HEAVY making out all over the place, kids and adults alike, so the fact that they didn't even peck each other after the wedding struck me as interesting.

After the wedding we followed them through the streets to a large hall that they had rented out. It was decorated really beautifully, I was totally impressed.

When we got settled in, we were served a plate of OMG delicious pulled pork and rice with home made tortillas. I took an amazing picture but one of the kids accidentally erased it while they were playing with my phone (I need to teach them the meaning of the word "delete" in English). We also had some horchata (one of my favorite drinks here, it's a type of sweetened rice milk). The dude in charge of AV at NPH came and acted as a DJ for the wedding, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the grown-ups wanted a beer or two to celebrate and since half of them were employees of NPH, they couldn't do that in front of the kids, so immediately after eating we were asked to leave, lol. I wish I could have stayed for the adult part of the party (I had shined my dancing shoes just for this occasion) but seeing as how I was lucky to have been invited in the first place, I figured it made most sense for me to take the kids home and let the other staff stay for the party.

So, conclusions from the day: the wedding was remarkably similar to weddings in the US, I'll have to assume that their wedding music is as ridiculous as wedding music in the states since I didn't witness it. I had a conversation on the way with a volunteer from Germany (Nicole, the doctor) and a volunteer from Austria (Hannah, the physical therapist). We were talking about traditional wedding music in their countries and they both started talking about different types of waltzes. I showed them the chicken dance. Sometimes I'm embarrassed of the states ;)

You know you're not in the states when...

..you walk into the clinic to find this on the table.

Today was butchering day for the pigs so the kids in charge of the farm generously gave us the head for our medical experiments (MWHA HA HA!!) Actually it's so we can practice doing stitches. Hopefully this means that a generous person in the clinic will soon be giving me my first stitching lesson!!