Una gringa en Guatemala

On January 16th I began my Guatemalan adventure, waking up at 4:30 in the morning and saying goodbye to a tired mother and dog. My backpack and duffel bag were stuffed, and to imagine that this is the lightest that I’ve ever packed for a trip of this duration. I guess this is the closest I get to achieving backpacker or “mochilera” status. I guess I can deal with that. My father sweetly took me to the airport before he went off to work.

After a short delay, which frankly made me nervous,--my flight took off for Charlotte where I was reunited with Ryan after our month-long separation. We landed in Guatemala City with little troubles, after trying to avert eyes from the in-flight movie Flicka, which I’m sure is even funnier with sound. The Guatemalan airport was tinier than I expected for some reason, even though now I recall it being not too unlike the airport in Leon, Mexico I landed in several years ago. We walked about confused, looking for an ATM, but finding none. I was surprised to see that ATMs were so difficult to find in a city of 3 million people. Anyway, more on that later. We were hustled toward a taxi which would take us toward the Hotel Colonial where we were staying that night. Our taxi driver, Oscar, gave us his card and welcomed us to his country.
Guatemala City, or at least the part of it that I saw (zona 1), left me feeling intimidated and defensive. It was pretty much as everything I read had described it, and I’m glad that we did not spend more time than we did there. Before dinner, we trekked out in search of an ATM. We finally found one in this weird mall-like place but lo and behold it wasn’t working. So there was another one on the fifth floor. We walked past strange arcades with teenagers playing games, idle bumper cars, and pizza stands to receive our first quetzales. In our small hotel with thin walls, women congregated in the halls several times throughout the night laughing and clapping their hands loudly. I’m not sure what was so funny, but I surely wasn’t in the mood to laugh along with them at 4’oclock in the morning.

Onto Xela.. (the cute little nickname of the city where we shall be living, pronounced Shay-la, and much easier to remember than Quetzaltenango )…

I was quite eager to get out of Guatemala City. We took a 4-hour bus to Xela which actually was a little longer than 4 hours because of some road construction. The bus plopped us down in the zona 3 of the city, and studying my map, I knew the direction to walk in to get to our hostel. We ambitiously dragged our bags half-way across the city, past children in school uniforms and Mayan women wearing their traditional dresses.
Since we’ve arrived we’ve mostly been trying to acclimate ourselves to our surroundings, find a place to live, eat some good cheap food, and find jobs. Most of these have been accomplished. We will most likely move into a new guest house of sorts this coming Wednesday which is apparently somehow connected to the Lutheran church and that is why it is so darn cheap. (Imagine paying $50/month in the nice central part of the 2nd largest city in the country, cause it looks like that’s what we’re getting’.) Ryan and I were both offered jobs teaching English in the mornings by the school that calls itself the “Best English School.” I could start as early as Tuesday. It sounds like I will have no more than 4-5 students per class and that they should be at least 14 or 15 years old. I think I can deal with that. I’ll just pretend like I know what I’m doing and hope that people believe me. It doesn’t pay much money, but we don’t spend much money here either, and it will be a way to at least balance expenses a bit, while keeping busy all the while.
I’m going to try to look for some kind of volunteer position here as well since NGOs abound in this city, and I think it would be a good experience. Apparently there is a volunteer fair here this coming Thursday, so I should be able to get some ideas from that.

Yesterday Ryan and I took a “chicken bus” as they’re endearingly called, to the nearby town of Almolonga, because we read that it was their market day. While this was quite a sight, I must say that I have never felt so much like an outsider in all of my life. It was a little overwhelming to the say the least. Once we found the center of town, we were treated to the display of crowds of Mayans, most in traditional dress, bargaining and exchanging their vegetables.

A little girl came up to us and in Spanish asked us if we’d like to take her picture, (for money I’m assuming). We said no. I mean, she wasn’t even dressed up. Silly girl. The chicken bus experience on the way back to Xela was interesting as well. I should also mention that these chicken buses are old American school buses that are painted and decorated brightly. So on the way back, I was sitting three to a seat, sandwiched between to Mayan women. Something started moving under the blanket draped on the back of the girl on my right and I quickly realized it was a crying baby. I’m constantly surprised here.

Other outings included a trip on a “microbus” which is basically a van where someone shouts out “Parque parque parque!” or whatever the destination is out the window. In our case the shouter was a very young child who was really quite the businessman. They pack more people than they can fit into these vehicles, and you really get to know your neighbor. We took this microbus out to the mall which was new and nice, if you like malls. I normally don’t like malls, AT ALL, but this is where ATMs that supposedly work were located, so it was my friend. It also contained a Wal-Mart-like store called Hiper-Paiz which lets one use a credit card—also nice. Well, it’s a wal-mart whose aisle signs are written in both Spanish and K’iche. A little bit different, I suppose.
We wandered down to the Minerva zoo since it was nearby. It’s a tiny little free zoo within the city and it is quite unlike any other zoo I’ve ever been to. For one thing they featured such animals as doves!, rabbits! (I guess they were pretty big, but still), raccoons!, and deer!

There were also a few more typical zoo animals like monkeys. It was cute to watch the little children point at the animals shouting “Mira, mira! Un mono!” My guidebook mentioned that the zoo was supposed to have one solitary miserable-looking lion, but we sadly did not see him.
We caught an equally insane microbus back to our side of town after walking past the Minerva temple, and snapping some photos of that.

Since I’m quite the thrifty spender, I have been most satisfied thus far with the cheapness of this country. There are little comedores located throughout town that offer lunches, often with an entrée, some sides, a drink, maybe a dessert, (although the dessert at the place yesterday was yellow jello with a bug leg sticking out of it…) for around $2-3. Amazing. We have also taken to eating food from little carts around the main Parque CentroAmerica. Men and women there sell such delicacies as pupusas, tacos, paches (tamales with potato), buñuelos, and fried plantains for under a dollar, usually. This means I’m probably going to be even cheaper when I get back to the states, than I was before... if such a thing is possible. There are lots of good restaurants around, including even Thai, Indian, Taiwanese, French, Mexican, Italian, and of course Guatemalan.. I trust we’ll try them all in time. Things seem to shut down pretty early around here at night, which is quite the contrast to Madrid nightlife. I’m okay with that though. Each morning when I wake up, I am also treated to a rooster crowin’ at the break of dawn. (as Dylan would say.) Since I’ve been here, memories of my time in San Luis and Guanajuato, Mexico have really been returning, more vivid than ever. The sounds, the smell of tortillas in the air, the constant honking of the car horns, the small broken sidewalks and bright colors. It’s curious, the way the senses behave.
I already miss people, but that’s to be expected. I shan’t be gone long and hopefully I’ll meet some interesting folk being down here. In the hostel there is an interesting mix of foreigners, mostly English-speaking. It seems that most of the foreigners staying in Xela are usually backpacking, hippie, free-spirit types, trying to learn Spanish, which is a little bit different than the typical traveler you’d find somewhere else. I’m not sure I exactly fall into that category, but I guess it’s not so bad.. unless you’re like that pretentious girl we met the other day in the kitchen who uninterestedly snapped, “so where you from, where you going?” like she asks that questions 50 million times a day. She is the type of person who asks you about yourself merely to tell you all about herself, because she taught in English in San Cristóbal, Mexico and has traveled down here to (pay people to) work on a coffee plantation. Well good for you, missy. Do you want a prize? Ok, end bitter diatribe. It’s all about tone. I’ll be nice.

Anyway, I’m thinking things will get more settled everyday. This week should bring routine, a new place to live, and hopefully a phone. I’ll be posting pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71068596@N00/
Please, please send me e-mails cause I like keeping in touch: ileneb@gmail.com and if you haven’t already, give me your address if you’d like a postcard. And if you read all this, I’ll send you a super special secret prize, maybe. I am also the proud recipient of a cell phone now, so if you want the number, let me know. Hopefully, more coming soon. Stay tuned.