Fireworks, Moutain Wanders and Mayan Churches
Greetings a todo,
Here in Guatemala you will find Amy happy and well. Not only is everything going well in general, but also I found an internet place with fast computers and flat screens. It’s truly revolutionary. All I had to do was seek out the place next to the university here. So I’m going to try to write all the interesting, juicy details of my life as briefly as possible. After all, if any of you wanted to read a novel you would probably read Charles Dickens blog instead =)
That being said I shall begin with fireworks, or the obsession thereof. In fact, it’s an understatement to say that this country is obsessed with fireworks. It’s probably even an understatement to say that this country is fanatical about fireworks. And not only are they fanatical about fireworks, it seems they are also fanatical about making the experience as dangerous as possible. The soccer game I went to on Sat. night could be classified as a near death experience… okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration…. but when full scale fireworks are going off on the ground, feet from the stands it’s not exactly safe either. One time fireworks even went off in the stands after failing to properly launch. On New Years Eve apparently over 20 people in Guatemala died from firework related incidents. Yet they continue to accompany every celebration. At 6 a.m. every morning you can hear fireworks going off around the city because its customary to celebrate birthdays with them. I think that the people here probably spend their money on fireworks, food and a place to live- in that order. Fireworks aside, the soccer game was really fun. The two other people I went with and I painted our faces, wore the home team’s colors and shouted all the bad words we know in Spanish (when we ran out of real bad words we started making up our own, much to the amusement of the boy sitting next to us).
Yesterday proved to be quite adventurous. My friends and I decided to walk to Los Vahos, a natural sauna on the side of a volcano. Somehow we managed to wander off course, turning a 45 minute walk into a two hour bushwack. What fun!! It was so great to be out exploring in the mountains. I was never really concerned about being able to get back if we needed to since we occasionally were able to glimpse the city below us. When we finally found Los Vahos we were standing on the mountain peak above them. Gringos locos if you ask me.
Sun. I went climbing with Queztaltrekkers, the same group I hiked the volcano with. Our guides were two crazy Guatemalans. Everything was safe but also a bit old school. All in all it was great to be out climbing, but the part of the day that warrants a few words was actually the hike up to the rocks where we climbed. Scattered throughout the mountainside different groups of Mayans had gathered together to pray. All around us there was an ambient reverberation from hymns being sung and the preachers’ voices. There must have been 20 to 30 different clans, or churches, cradled within the rocky terrain. It was really phenomenal to hike through that.
Well, I’m going to leave it at that. This isn’t quite a novel but I guess it did turn out to be a bit of a dissertation. Oops. I hope all is well with you guys. Thanks for all the comments everyone has left. I love reading them.
Sonrisas,
Amy
Here in Guatemala you will find Amy happy and well. Not only is everything going well in general, but also I found an internet place with fast computers and flat screens. It’s truly revolutionary. All I had to do was seek out the place next to the university here. So I’m going to try to write all the interesting, juicy details of my life as briefly as possible. After all, if any of you wanted to read a novel you would probably read Charles Dickens blog instead =)
That being said I shall begin with fireworks, or the obsession thereof. In fact, it’s an understatement to say that this country is obsessed with fireworks. It’s probably even an understatement to say that this country is fanatical about fireworks. And not only are they fanatical about fireworks, it seems they are also fanatical about making the experience as dangerous as possible. The soccer game I went to on Sat. night could be classified as a near death experience… okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration…. but when full scale fireworks are going off on the ground, feet from the stands it’s not exactly safe either. One time fireworks even went off in the stands after failing to properly launch. On New Years Eve apparently over 20 people in Guatemala died from firework related incidents. Yet they continue to accompany every celebration. At 6 a.m. every morning you can hear fireworks going off around the city because its customary to celebrate birthdays with them. I think that the people here probably spend their money on fireworks, food and a place to live- in that order. Fireworks aside, the soccer game was really fun. The two other people I went with and I painted our faces, wore the home team’s colors and shouted all the bad words we know in Spanish (when we ran out of real bad words we started making up our own, much to the amusement of the boy sitting next to us).
Yesterday proved to be quite adventurous. My friends and I decided to walk to Los Vahos, a natural sauna on the side of a volcano. Somehow we managed to wander off course, turning a 45 minute walk into a two hour bushwack. What fun!! It was so great to be out exploring in the mountains. I was never really concerned about being able to get back if we needed to since we occasionally were able to glimpse the city below us. When we finally found Los Vahos we were standing on the mountain peak above them. Gringos locos if you ask me.
Sun. I went climbing with Queztaltrekkers, the same group I hiked the volcano with. Our guides were two crazy Guatemalans. Everything was safe but also a bit old school. All in all it was great to be out climbing, but the part of the day that warrants a few words was actually the hike up to the rocks where we climbed. Scattered throughout the mountainside different groups of Mayans had gathered together to pray. All around us there was an ambient reverberation from hymns being sung and the preachers’ voices. There must have been 20 to 30 different clans, or churches, cradled within the rocky terrain. It was really phenomenal to hike through that.
Well, I’m going to leave it at that. This isn’t quite a novel but I guess it did turn out to be a bit of a dissertation. Oops. I hope all is well with you guys. Thanks for all the comments everyone has left. I love reading them.
Sonrisas,
Amy
posted by Amy | 12:24 PM
1 Comments:
Looks like you're having a great time! Would you assent to me seeing if we could put a link to your blog off our main .edu page?
Tim
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