feliz dìa de gracias

Happy thanksgiving! I am thankful for . . .

Online graduate school applications

Scarves

Intermural basketball games

Volcanoes with crater lakes

Cell phones

My house (with full water service)

(Holy) frijoles

Q6.50 stamps

My living allowence raise

The Chapelle Show (I´m Rick James #*@%!!)

Krispins (my new favorite cookie)

Hammocks

Quiché weddings

My new counterpart at ADISO

Visitors

Sweatpants

Fresh produce

Hot tea (and the cooler weather to drink it in)

Care packages/mail in general

Your friendship

So this is the 4th thanksgiving i´ve spent in a foreign country (botswana, thailand, and 2 in guatemala) but the first i´ve spent by myself, well without celebrating with other americans. Some friends are having a dinner on Friday up near coban, but i decided that i didn´t really feel like traveling and i should stay home and work on these grad school apps. So that´s what i did. And i´m happy with my decision.

A couple weekends ago a bunch of us went to the juanes concert in guate. tickets cost Q195 and it was at the estadio del ejército (army stadium). It actually reminded me of the soccer stadium near the seattle science center for those of you who have been there. Dave thought so too. The concert was supposed to start at 7, but from 7 until about 10 we were bombarded with pepsi, movistar, rum, and i don´t remember what all else promotions. oh and there were some reggaeton videos in there somewhere too. Somehow dave or bob or someone finagled vip bracelets and we got up into the first few rows. When juanes finally got on stage he put on a good show – camisa negra, fotográfia, a dios le pido, you know, all the hits. But honestly i had been working all weekend in the pc office doing application stuff and then he kept me waiting in the cold for 3 hours, plus the normal drama of going to an event like this in a huge group when drinking has been involved, so needless to say i was not as animated as i could have been. But all in all it was a good show.

I´ve started going to intermural b-ball games in the evenings. Well i´ve gone to 2 so far. My neighbor is on a team and so is my boss. Last nite the two teams played each other. I´m acutally pretty impressed with the quality of play. Think West Valley freshman boys´ team, or maybe JV depending on the team. Anyway it´s pretty fun. I sat with Ema(nuel), my neighbor, at the first game and tried to learn how to trash talk in spanish, you know the equivolant to ¨stuffed¨, ¨schooled¨, ¨coast to coast¨, etc. I don´t think it sounds nearly as good in spanish, at least the stuff he we was telling me just didn´t sound quite right. He´s got a game on Friday and i think i´m going to go.

It´s getting cold here in ipala. I mean relatively speaking. My thermometer says 72 and it´s 9 at nite. That´s cold. Last nite i froze, so i think i´m going to drag out the sleeping bag tonite. It´s like camping, but indoors, in my own bed. The best of both worlds.

Hope you had a great thanksgiving. And happy weekend.

I have spent the past two days attending workshops in Chiquimula with Milo. The topic: Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. Seems like it´s blowing up in Guatemala, and especially in the department of Chiquimula, in part because it borders both Honduras and El Salvador. People traffic children over the border usually in the evening hours. But locals prostitue themselves as well. Appearently there is a block in Chiqui where adolenscent girls stand around waiting to get picked up. There is also a catalogue of girls, some in their Chiquimula school uniforms, in circulation. This was all news to me. I knew there were protistutes in my town, Noel´s old town, hell, most towns. They usually work in bars and they are usually from El Salvador. According to some of Mirna´s friends who live her town, San Luis, all El Salvadorean women are whores. (Mirna was born in El Salvador and is now and American citizen. Her friends know this.) Lately sex tourism has become more popular here. I just assumed that sex tourism was limited to South East Asia, but appearantly recent cruscades to end the trade there have created a market in Central America. Most ¨tourists¨ come from Europe, but Americans come here as well. And pornography which was mostly imported now is made in Guatemala. The best was when he started explaining the laws and penalties. For example, if a man molests a female minor, it is not a crime if he declares his love for her and intent to marry her. We were told of a case of a 60 year old man impregnating an 11 year old girl. He told the parents he loved her and wanted to marry her. The parents did not accept his proposal, nor could they prosecute for a crime since none was committed. Another great law is when an older man, tricks or convinces a 12 to 14 year old to sleep with him. In order for it to be a crime, the girl has to be ¨honest¨. So basically if the perpatrator gets a couple other guys to testify that the 12 year old got around, it´s not a crime because she was already a slut. I mean i knew this country was machista, but listening to these laws made me sick to my stomach. When milo and I got on the bus to come home, there was a drunk man on the micro. He was so wasted he was drooling on himself and completely incoherent, except that would cry out ¨mamਠand ¨adios hijo de puta¨ as cars passed by. There was a 7-year old girl sitting on her dad`s lap next to this guy. I just kept thinking what a shame that young guatemalans, hell all of us, have to be exposed to this kind of thing. It was very ugly. And then when I got back to ipala, I passed by a lady`s house where I had left some things to be mended. As I was walking to her house, a man, wasted out of his mind, broke two full beer bottles on a table inside of a restaurant and then walked outside, obviously proud of what he had done. It was disgusting. It was about one in the afternoon on a Thursday. And then as I was leaving with my mended clothes, a saw man whip out his penis to pee in front of a semi truck. For the amount of public urination it´s surprising that I haven`t seen more penises. It`s something i´m very grateful for.

dia de los santos

so tuesday nov 1 was dia de los santos. since i was already hanging around the capital, i decided to visit santiago with some other volunteer friends to watch the famous kite festival. we got kind of a late start; not an uncommon ocurrance 'round these parts, and after breakfasting, noel, bob, and i took the public buses from antigua to santiago. the traffic was surprisingly not that bad. we arrived in santiago aroud noon, i think, and started walking toward the cemetary along with all the other tourists (mostly guatemalan) to see the kite displays. some of the kites were just amazing. huge, a few strories tall, colorful with glued tissue paper and mayan scenes and political commentary, not to mention tazmanian devils and dominoes delievery numbers. we spent a couple hours watching people run around and over graves, kites launch and plummet to the ground. at first i was unsure about walking on people's graves, but then i saw everyone else doing it and, honestly, the way the plots are set up, you don't have much of a choice, especially given the number of spectators on the grounds. it was such a nice few hours with noel and bob. i think noel took 3 roles of film, and i filled my digital card quickly as well. later in the afternoon, a few more friends arrived. they'd gotten even a later start and decided to take a private shuttle to the festival. they had just gotten to the graveyard. we told them we were down below, more in the middle of the action and they should come meet us. one friend's bag had been slashed. she lost her own makeup bag and the camera that one of the friend's had given her to hold on to. not fifteen minutes later, one of the kites started to come down. the "team" on the rope began shouting and running, trying to keep it in the air. i'm not really sure what happened next, but this is what we've pieced together: the guys decided to let the rope go because the force was too strong and they weren't going to be able to save the kite. the rope had been coiled around the ground instead of in a straight line (a cardinal mistake according to noel with all of his boating experience.) the rope started going crazy and kite started to come down. the rope half-wrapped itself around one friend's neck, giving her a massive rope burn from ear to ear and knocking her to the ground. then i think it was the tail of the kite that hit me in the head and i tumbled to the ground after her. finally the rope started flying after the kite, and another friend who had been entangled in it managed to get herself free and only suffer some rope burns on her hand. it was a really bizzare, scary experience and we are very lucky that nothing worse became of it. we made our way out of the cemetary and sat down. the three girls decided to start the walk back to their shuttle to head back to antigua. bob got some ice for them to use during the trip home. my head hurt a bit and i was disoriented, i think more from the emotional trauma than the acutal blow to the head. i, however, decided to stay, because sarah was on her way with her mom. it had been a whole ordeal for them to get to santiago (cancelled flight, taxi ride, etc), and i really wanted to meet her mom. so the three of us stayed, waiting for them under the gallo tent. meanwhile, all of the reinas de la feria came to our table and sat down next to us. they were all in traditional traje, with their sashes and crowns. we moved down to make room and all ten or so sat beside us. pretty soon people started taking fotos and i decided to snap a few myself. then, to my horror, i noticed that standing in the middle of all these young girls, dressed in traditional and conservative, mayan traje, was one of the gallo (national beer maker) girls, decked out in spandex pants and a sports bra. it was astonishing. of course i took a couple of pictures. a few minutes later, sarah and her mom arrived. we headed back into the graveyard (i was more than a little nervous) and sarah and her mom were thrilled with the display. i was relieved since it was such an ordeal for them to make it on time. we didn't stay very long and caught a ride in the taxi as far as san lucas and then bussed it back to 'tigs. we spent the evening drinking wine and processing what had happened that day. we're still in shock, but i think our emotional healing will happen along with the physical healing. it will just take a little time.