not so much mayan-cool but guatemalan wierd-boring

so the cake has been cut, the rings exchanged. the wedding was last sunday. it was supposed to start around 3 but it true chapin fashion it begun around 5 or 5:30 i don't really remember because i was already intoxicated. let's start at the beginning.
we showed up in cotzal saturday afternoon, an easy 40 minute trip from nebaj. everyone else trickled in and i was so glad that alexa and i had decided to do the trip a couple days earlier. everyone showed up destroyed from the long bus ride. we went to the salon municipal in the evening to help decorate. the building itself was way ugs. think industrial barn building. but with all the balloons and bows and stuff it didnt look half bad. alexa and i were in charge of the dance floor. we had crepe paper and saw horses at our disposal. this guy from cotzal came over to help. he asked me if this was something traditional from the states. maybe for a jr high dance in a gym, but for a wedding, i don't think so. anyway alexa and i did a hell of a job. then we got tired and decided to head back to the hotel. we had to shuffle beds around because bob was sick (he pooped twice on the walk back from the salon) and i was locked out of my room because alexa had the key and was eating beans at the in-laws' house. anyway, we all went to bed, anticipating the big show the next day.
a lot of us brought trajes tipicas from our towns, including me. i got one made and it'll be my halloween costume for the next ten years. the boys looked expecially cute in their trajes. and the girls look uncomfortable but beautful in their cortes and guipiles. anyway we started drinking and headed down to the salon around 3:30 to get tables. we hid our alcohol behind the dance floor and made it the unofficial bar. a lot of the non gringo wedding guests were evan(gelicos) so we tried to be discrete. beth decided that she wanted mojitos for the wedding toast so we had like 5 one-gallon bottles of rum, soda, and a shit ton of unwashed (and i mean dirty) mint leaves. dave, noel, zach, and i got to work. dave said he'd never made a mojito before. now he was going to make 500. it didn't turn out to be 500 exactly because evans don't drink. (or dance. that's why catholics are more fun. and they get to go to heaven too.) i remembered that i forgot my polaroid camera at the hotel. so dave and i went back (uphill) to the hotel. we passed beth and the husband and the whole procession. we hauled ass to the hotel and ran down the hill, catching them right before the reached the salon. i was sweating. and the photos turned out shitty anyway because the lighted inside the salon was so bad. the ceremony was pretty short, even for being in spanish and ixil. when tomas gave beth her ring, he spoke to her in ixil but with some spanish phrases mixed in. he said "cultural exchange" 3 times in spanish and who the hell knows what he said in ixil. beth went first and talked about how she loved her husband. then tomas went and talked about "the cultural exchange". i thought it was kind of sad. there was lots of aplauding. and lots of presents wrapped in the same paper. when we went to the store to buy toilet paper a woman was getting the guatemalan equivalent of safegaurd gift wrapped for the wedding. then the woman working behind the counter asked us if we were in town for the wedding. we said yes. she asked us if any members of beth's family came for the wedding. we said no. she said that when she first heard the news about the wedding "me puso triste" (she got sad) for beth. we asked why but the answer was pretty much what i expected. because lots of people just want to take advantage and get u.s. citizenship. it was interesting hearing her perspective because of course we all think the same thing, not specifically about beth and tomas but about any guatemalan who expresses interest in getting to know us. what do they want from me and how do i make it clear from the beginning that i do not equal dollar signs and a green card? but beth and tomas seem happy. tomas seems like a nice guy. he's studied in cuba so at least he's lived abroad before. the u.s. will be quite a shock though, especially since he doesn't speak ingles. anyway after the vows, we ate and drank and started the dance party. i had a lot of fun dancing. i realized i hadnt gotten my groove on for way too long. i had a lot of fun dancing with noel; we hadn't really danced since we broke up. i think someone's been giving him lessons or something because he's gotten a lot better and i didn't have to lead. when you spend a year and half dancing with someone you really get used to each others estilo y pasos and it was nice to feel comfortable while dancing. i don't really like dancing with people i don't know because i never feel comfortable (especially if he's guatemalan) and i can never get the chemistry right. anywas it was a lot of fun. we headed home around nine or ten i think. not too late but we were all exhausted. a big group of us caught the 4:30 am bus out of town. dave puked out the window. i tried to sleep but it was way too uncomfortable even using gabriel as a pillow. i got to antigua around noon and took it easy the rest of the afternoon. tomorrow i'm heading to guate with alexa because her mom flys in and i want to meet her. then friday it's back to ipala. i think i'm having dinner at mirna's on the 24th and gabriel is coming to the oriente. i'm really excited to have him in my house. he's such a special person and i am really excited to spend the holidays with him.

the tigers of the north

so saturday i came to the capital to see los tigres del norte. if you don`t know how they are, they are like the beatles of ranchera music. i love ranchera (and banda) and i was not going to pass up the opportunity to see "puerta negra" en vivo. i brought my boots. i brought my washington belt buckle. i brought my love of mexican ranchera. the concert was great. i knew some of the songs, but these guys must have 50 albums. no joke. we left around one thirty, and they were still going strong, taking requests and everything. the show was over three hours long and they played four nites in row at different venues around the country. these guys are truly tigres. mirna has a crush on the lead singer. alexa likes the sax-accordian player. i kinda dug the drummer, although i´ve always had a thing for good accordian playing.
now i´m in nebaj, quiche. our plan was to come up on wednesday, but monday nite i got food poisoning. just your standard pukes and poops. so we had to postpone the trip a bit. not a big deal. we came up yesterday. from antigua it took us 11 hours to get here. the trip included: a tourist shuttle to chi chi (we´re on vacation), crossing a protestors´ baracade at los encuentros, getting stuck for 3.5 hours in road construction, and a finale of the trip that closely resembled a thrill ride at 6 flags. i hate rollar coasters. what i hate more is being on a school bus at nite on a cliff edge highway with a camionetta driver who`s been stuck in traffic and anxious to get home. i honestly had to close my eyes for part of the trip. nebaj is part of the ixil triangle. i thought it was going to be a small rustic town. it´s huge. bigger than ipala by far. the colonial church is pretty nice. and there´s a plaza. and in the plaza, because it´s xmas time, is throbbing andean xmas music and an animatronic santa claus. deeply disturbing. but even more disturbing is that the santa is in fact not animatronic. but it´s an actual person in a suit with a plasic face mask moving jerkily to the music as if he were animatronic. alexa and i had to move in for a closer inspection. he gave us a wave. i really want to take a foto. but i don`t want to have to pay. maybe tomorrow i´ll change my mind.
tomorrow we head to cotzal for beth´s quiche wedding. updates to follow . . .

graduation day

So last Monday was a rough day. It wasn´t really one thing in particular, just a culmination of things really. Milo and i had been trying to get together a group of kids to do some activities like make recycled paper and stuff, but only one girl showed up. I wasn´t really surprised. i had left milo in charge of some things since i wasn´t going to be coming into the office because of thanksgiving. He didn´t get everything done, not that i neccessarily think it would have mattered all that much. Edwin and sindy had trainings all week, milo had an exam in the afternoon and carlos had to go to jutiapa. So i had to stay in the office by myself during the afternoon without much to do. I felt like it was a waste of my time especially given all the grad school app stuff i still have to do. I called noel to ask him what his holiday plans were. I´ll probaby end up going to mirna´s house in san luis about 20 minutes away for xmas dinner and I´d been thinking about going to lanquín with mirna and some other people to visit gabriel. It wasn´t exactly what i thought i´d be doing; i´d wanted to travel, but don´t have anyone to travel with. And traveling by myself at christmas and new years doesn´t sound all that great. But neither does sticking around ipala. Anyway i wanted to see if noel was going to lanquín because if he was, i was going to make other plans. He said that he hadn´t really thought much about it but that if i wanted to go to lanquín i should. Want he really wants to do is travel to mexico but he doesn´t have anyone to go with, so he might just stick around his site. Sounds familiar and it made me sad to see that we´re both in the same situation. I closed the office around 4 and did some errands. I stopped by my friend´s house to pick up my laundry. She was sad and crying. She´s still involved with her ex-boyfriend, but had been hanging out with this other guy. The two men got in a fight and her ex-boyfriend got a black eye. I tried to tell her that she can´t keep repeating this same cycle and needs to make a clean break. But she doesn´t want to hear it and it makes me sad and disappointed. Then a couple houses down this group of wasted guys showed up (6 o´clock on a Monday) and a woman started fighting with them. She was yelling and a young boy was hysterical, screaming and crying. They came into the street and a man pushed the woman, knocking her to the street. People were watching but nobody did anything to help her. The kid started crying harder. I asked my friends if the woman didn´t have anybody she could call for help. They just laughed at how upset i was. This has happened to me before with them, when i´ve told them stories of getting pick-pocketed or my peace corps friends getting robbed at gun or knife point, they just laugh. I know people and culures have different ways of dealing (or not dealing) with serious things like violence, but it´s really disconcerting that people would laugh at situations like these. I know i´m not an expert and of course my generalizations don´t apply to everyone, like my friends at adiso, but guatemalans have very little respect for themselves or for each other. There i said it. From laughing about domestic violence that happens in the street in front of everyone to the machismo and slutty clothes of the oriente. Hace falta el respeto. So i ran away to antigua on Tuesday to pick up my letters of rec from the country director and hang out with some pc friends. i came back on Thursday, happy to be home, but plagued by more disappointments. This is the cycle of my life. i look forward to coming back to ipala, enjoy my time here, but then something will happen and i can´t wait to travel to antigua or visit a pc friend. Then i´ll get tired of all the bs of traveling and being away from home and run back to ipala. I can´t wait to be someplace where i´m not just waiting for the bomb to drop that will make me want to escape it.

Today (Saturday) was a nice day. I slept in a bit. The metal workshop woke me up at 7 am as usual. Today they did a lot of painting and the paint fumes were really bombarding my house. I burned some incense and lit some candles to mask it but kept thinking about the lung damage i´ve had over the past 22 months of living in guatemala. I got dressed up and walked to the office around noon. Dra. Yulma was having an inaguational lunch at this sala she and her husband built just outside of ipala. Carlos called and was on his way. Only he and i were going to go so we hopped on his moto and zipped off. I was a little worried about my dress flying up over my face, but it was smooth sailing. We arrived at the sala. It´s really nice and i didn´t feel like i was in ipala. There were a ton of tables and chairs, all covered in white cloth. There was a dj and a live marimba band. Carols and i went and sat down by ourselves at a table. I felt like i was at prom or something, it was such a surreal setting. The sala began to fill up with the who´s who´s of ipala – the mayor, doctors, businessmen, etc. Adiso got invited because the dra. Used to be the presidenta de la junta directive (board of directors). Anyway, carlos and i had a nice chat. I hadn´t really hung out with him outside of the office. I really like him a lot. He´s done well in his first couple months as executive director. He´s 26 and i honestly don´t have very many friends my own age - they´re all children, significantely older, or 20 or 21. it makes a big difference. I think we get a long so well because we´re the same age and because we have a similar sense of humor, something that´s really hard for me to find here. Anyway more people came and sat at the table, including edwin; an hour or so later there was the pocas palabras and cutting of the ribbon. then lunch was served and a bottle of johnny walker red label was placed on every table. This is pretty common here. Whisky and mineral water. I don´t care for it, but i can drink it when i put my mind to it. Carlos offered me the bottle so i poured myself a drink. I usually don´t drink in my site in public because i don´t think it looks that great, but honestly i have 4 months to go, i have confianza with the people with i was drinking with, and i´m not going to not drink just because i´m female. Lunch was very nice and very meaty. Carlos continued to pour himself another drink, and another. Luckily we were only about 2 minutes outside of ipala and in no hurry to get home. Just as they had come in, people started to file out. I think about seven people told me ¨que linda, no te reconocí, te van a robar, que hermosa, te enamoré¨ or other such compliments. I mean honestly people, all i did was put on a dress and mascara, and comb my hair. No need to freak out. I continued to be embarassed everytime someone told me how pretty i looked because i don´t really know how to take sincere compliments anymore - i recieve them so rarely - and because carlos was sitting there hearing every one of them. He had told me that i look nice in pink. Since he has a girlfriend of 3 years, i think that´s the closest he can get to complimenting another woman who isn´t a relative. I mean i know i don´t usually try very hard here because i don´t want the attention - especially the whistling, cat-calling, chuching, and ass grabing. But do i really usually look that bad? Maybe i´ll start putting forth a little more effort. Nah. So carlos sobers up (he was blaming the wind for feeling a little tipsy) and we headed out. I was bummed that i didn´t get to dance, but the marimba music had taken over and i don´t know how to dance to marimba nor do i want to learn. He dropped me off at home. It was such a nice afternoon i didn´t want it to end; it just made me realize how infrequently i participate in social events where i actually enjoy myself. Maybe when i finish my apps i´ll start getting out a little more. I doubt it.

4.5 months to go. If you haven´t bought your guate ticket yet, better get on it!!

on the way here i got invited to a graduation ceremony that starts at 5. guess i´ll have to dust off the dress shoes one more time. and also somebody came by the house asking for help translating english class homework. for some reason this has happened to me a lot lately. but the thing is, they don`t want help. they want me to do it for them. they show up, having not even started, without a dictionary, saying they need help or don`t understand. i told him i was on my way out but he could stop by later in the afternoon and i asked him if he had a dictionary. he´s not going to be very happy when i make him look up all the words he doesn`t know (in my dictionary if he doesn`t bring his) instead of doing it for him. asì es.