Happy birthday, Guatemala!

Guatemala Day!

So I’m about a week late in blogging about this but last Wednesday, September 16^th was Guatemalan Independence Day. Though I still know very little about the significance of Guate becoming free from Spain, I did get to learn a whole lot about the country and the pride that people have here. My students unfortunately did not know as much about the day as I had hoped but after some serious prompting I was able to get some information out of them. People in Guatemala are very tuned in to the national symbols and songs; the Ceiba tree, the monjablanca flower, the quetzal bird, the Himno Nacional, the colors and their importance to the flag, etc. The school had an hour long assembly on Monday to celebrate and we didn’t have school on the actually holiday. It was pretty fun to have focus on important national pride issues for a week rather than drilling and killing standards made up by who knows who.  Guatemala also has the second longest national anthem in the world coming in at a little over five minutes long. Its really beautiful but so hard to learn. Aubrey and I have been practicing it at home but haven’t made it past the first two verses. Maybe by the end of the year?

Since we had Wednesday off of school we decided to take a mini-weekend trip to Antigua. We went with a huge group of teachers and stayed at a nice hotel for the night and though it was nice and relaxing, Tom, Aubrey, Blake and I agreed that we would have been just as happy staying at a cheap hostel.  We met some interesting people that night and got to witness more than our fair share of “torch races.” On Independence Day, huge mobs of people run through the streets blowing whistles and following a leader who carries a hand-made torch. It was pretty cool to see but it made traffic quite obnoxious (it took 3 hours to make the 45 minute drive to Antigua).

Antigua fun

For dinner that night we went to a restaurant owned by some Americans and we kind of learned more about the realities of North Americans exploiting the economy in Guatemala. Many people come here as “real estate agents” or “restaurant/bar managers” and live in this weird little bubble of their Guatemalan success. They live much more comfortably here than they would in their hometowns, never learn Spanish, and hang out with other gringos all day. Its super weird! I wonder what these people were like back in the states and what brought them here in the first place. Anyway, the owner of this place was totally wasted at 10pm and trying to run a bar and restaurant on a holiday, which basically meant chaos. It took over an hour for us to get our quesadillas and we never got any checks for anything we ordered the rest of the night. When we decided to leave, the guy was nowhere to be found. Sooooo, (and I’m not proud of this) we just left without paying.  Some people left some bills on the table as we walked out the door but essentially we stole from the place. I am laughing as I am typing this because I really don’t feel that bad about it anymore (I know, that’s terrible!) but this guy was a total jerk and clearly didn’t know how to manage his place after living there for 5 years. Hopefully he learned his lesson from us cheapskates!

The school week continued as planned after the holiday and we had quite a bit of fun in third grade. I went to my first birthday party for one of my students (almost every kid invites their teacher to their birthday party here, its great) at the bowling alley on Thursday and boy was it hilarious. Picture 40 kids running around trying to earn as many tickets as they could from the arcade, an R2D2 piñata, pizza, French fries, cake, and pop for everyone in attendance, and myself talking to a bunch of mothers throughout the evening. My student was SO happy I came and that made the whole thing even more awesome. In Guatemala, when the kids sing happy birthday instead of saying “happy birthday to you…” they say “ya queremos pastel, ya queremos pastel, aunque sea un pedacito, pero queremos pastel!” which means, “we want cake, we want cake, even if its just a little piece, but we want some cake!” Hahaha! THEN the best part is when the kiddos all start chanting to the birthday boy “face in cake! Face in cake!” aaaaaaand then of course he did it. And yes, it was also a Star Wars cake. Overall it was a pretty great birthday and I’m very glad I went.

Star Wars Cake Face Kid

This weekend Aubrey, Tom and I went to Paredon again to play at the beach. It was way more fun this time because we were the only ones there. Kristoff, the owner of the place and Tom’s surfing buddy came with us and we just surfed, slept, ate, played guitar and cards all weekend; pretty amazing. I’m getting better at surfing and was able to go out be myself the whole weekend. I learned some new tricks that will make it a lot easier but until I master the moves its pretty frustrating. This weekend the three of us are going to El Salvador (!) to a sweet beach and Tom says its a good place for new surfers to practice. I bought a rash guard the other day with a monkey wearing sunglasses, sitting on a surf board, flashing the shaka signs. How perfect is that? I mean, what kind of a monkey wears sunglasses, geesh?!

Well, that’s all the update you’re going to get for now :) I’ll try to write again before the weekend because we won’t have any computer access for a few days. Hope all is well!