Mexico Pics.

Murals on the walls.


Getting ready for Day of the Dead!
At the Cemetary.

This is the drunk who fell asleep on Antonette- we named him Captain Morgan.
Day of the dead ceremonies- above and below.

The sign outside of the Zapatista camp we lived in
The road collapse- it was awesome!

Mexico and the Zapatistas- like camp, but more militant.

As it turns out, there is one and only one way to travel to Mexico from Xela – chicken bus. After quite a long night of Halloween and 45 minutes of sleep, we headed for the bus station at 5am. We lucked out by finding a cab for 6 of us kids on my side of town…it just happened to be the smallest car you could imagine. Regardless, we finally made it to the bus and I slept for what seemed like days- only to wake up and find that we were still in Huehuetenango, with hours and hours left to go. I also woke because I heard some man yelling. It happened to be some man, drunk at 9:30 in the morning, yelling at us for being Americans. He started by telling Antonette that “she started racism in California” and then rambling on in somewhat broken English through the back door of the bus Ben ended up closing door to shut him out, but he ended up getting on and yelling at us in our faces. His hate for Americans was very evident for the rest of his rampage, and the conversation including the following comments: I’ve been following you….following you around the world, you shut the door on me like you shut the door on the world, I know you and you don’t even know yourselves, You why you are trash….because you’re a piece of shhh…trash. We finally got the driver to kick him off the bus, and he finally agreed because he was out of beer (expressed by smashing the can under his shoe outside the bus and then taking a leak for all of us to see). As our bus started out after 2 hours in Huehue, we met our second drunk man of the day- this time only a 20 year old kid reeeeeeeking of alcohol and sitting next to Antonette and Lauren. He immediately passed out on Ant’s shoulder…and along the whole bumpy ride slid down almost fully to the aisle and kept banging his cheek on the corner of the metal seat across the aisle. He eventually woke up and realized he missed his stop and got off. After 12 hours, we arrived in San Cristobal in Chiapis, Mexico- somewhat angry and starving since our ETA was 11:00am, not 5pm. We met our guides for the week at a restaurant in town (Peter Brown and Susan. NOTE: Peter Brown decided to translate his whole name into Spanish- so he called himself Pedro Café…on his own will). After a quick meal that was our breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we headed to camp about an hour away with our gross driver for the week, whom we named Jabba the Hood.

We arrived at our home for the week dead tired- in a place that I can only describe as the Twilight Zone. The group stayed with the Zapatistas, a guerilla movement completely against the Mexican government. In case you don’t know, the Zapatistas all wear full black ski masks to cover their entire head only with a hole for their eyes…”We cover our faces so we can be seen, and we cover our mouths so we can be heard.” Arriving in the pitch black and seeing these masked people carrying huge rifles was terrifying, but I was too tired to be more concerned. After checking in and having a short meeting, we were shown our conditions for the following week. First, we saw the LODGE- a gigantic wood building with a dirt floor to sleep on. The kitchen was next, and Peter and Susan had bought food for us to cook the whole week. The food selection included a crate of avocados, a crate of tomatoes, a bag of onions and garlic, rice, pasta, and eggs. We also had three bags of “chips”…which actually were so stale they were soft and had the worst taste ever. The bathrooms were a mile away, so we usually just went outside. The weather was awful- misty and rainy every day, muddy and freezing cold. We failed to see people around the “caracol” or camp, so it actually felt like we were in the twilight zone. The only people we ever saw were the two guards at the gate as we left and returned. Other than that, the whole camp was full of murals on every building- and let me tell you, those Zapatistas are some great artists.

The first day, Nov. 2nd, we spent in the cemetery for day of the dead. It was a pretty interesting ceremony, but we stuck out like sore thumbs, so we couldn’t stay without getting stared out. We lit candles in the cemetery and had day of the dead bread, and learned a little more about the ceremony. Each day we visited different Zapatista camps to see their health clinics and talk to people who ran them. For 5 days straight we did this: although the first one or two visits were interesting, the following 3 days were repetitive and somewhat boring. The coolest day was passing a sinkhole in the road- which was actually just a road that had almost fully collapsed due to the landslides. We had to carefully walk across the path and get back into the car on the other side. We passed the nights in the kitchen- cooking feasts of guacamole and any combination of foods listed above. We also played a lot of euchre and eventually got really sick of our weird guides. Every day they became more annoying…and usually didn’t listen to our suggestions of what we wanted to do. Luckily, after 5 days without showers and wearing the same muddy/wet clothing, we headed back to San Cristobal for some civilized life for a day. We spent the day going to a Natural Medicine Museum and then we had the rest of the day to ourselves. Six of us went to get sushi for lunch- which was delicious and super cheap. HOWEVER, the delicious lunch was followed almost instantaneously by an MSG high (thanks to Amy who knew the feeling- she was in China for 6 weeks before)- which was one of the weirdest feelings I’ve ever had. We felt so loopy that we had to walk around the market before buying anything for about an hour. We finally came to our senses and enjoyed the rest of the day. Either way- we finally got rid of Pedro Café and Susan…and headed back to the homeland… for a whole 24 hours!

PICTURES!

Me & Quailman- reliving childhood cartoons
IPOD, Night at the Roxbury, Redsocks fan
Me as Rainbow Bright!
Mario & Ben- night at the Roxbury.
Halloween- me & lauren the devil.

Lauren, Amy, Molly, Erin, Me.
Mario's BDAY at Parranda. with Mojdeh & Erin
The wall of blocks we built.
Sittin on the Bloques...takin a break
The School we built.

HALLLOWEEN- guatemala style.

Halloween week is spent a bit differently down in Central America, and it’s quite the celebration.
Technically, they celebrate ALL SAINTS DAY – a 10 day celebration beginning October 21st and ending November 2nd. Here is an excerpt explaining the final day from Xela Who, a local magazine for extranjeros: “What a better way to honor the dead then to drink nothing but grain alcohol for 24 hours and then race horses? That’s right friends, the All Saints Day celebration in Todos Santos is capped by a spectacular drunken horse race. The goal? To stay on your horse as long as possible without passing out. And pass out they do. According to local legend, the death of a jinete, or drunken horseman, during the race is considered a sign that is will be a good year.”

There was a pretty big religious festival/market going on in Central Park starting in Xela on the 21st. The coolest part I witnessed was on Sunday the 28th, which was the Day of the Virgin Mary. I went with my Guatemalan friend Mario to the park to check out the “rugs,” which were basically giant paintings made of colored saw dust covering the whole loop of streets around the park. The rugs were all religious in content, and the day concluded by a big parade around the park carrying the statue of the Virgin Mary. The rest of the week was crazy, since we were leaving for our Mexico journey on November 1st to get there in time for Day of the Dead on the 2nd.

As you all know, Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, and I CLEARLY was going to celebrate. American style Halloween is becoming more popular around Xela since there are so many foreigners in the town. Making a costume here is pretty cheap, although some resources were limited and we had to be creative. The group kicked off the night at Cuartito – our favorite café in town, mainly because they were giving out free drinks to those in costume. From there we went to Katy & Mojdeh’s house for a little fun before heading out for the night. We spent the rest of the night around the town at various discotecas dancing the night away. We were by far the best dressed so we got lots of looks. By the end of the night I managed to pull off a COSTUME PARTY WIN at the discoteca. I won 50 Quetzales (roughly only 7 dollars, but it goes a long way here), 2 pepsi’s, and a bottle of rum. Not too shabby of a follow up to my amazing Beetle Juice costume last year. The night was long and I was out til about 4am, and the bus for Mexico left at 5am. At least I was able to sleep all 12 hours to Mexico on the worst buses ever.

Got (bloques) BLOCKS?

PEILE, the organization I volunteer through, builds schools and health clinics around the country in some of the poorest areas. I went to a first rock laying ceremony for a school in Los Pinales back in early September, and this weekend we got to actually go as a group and help build the school. The day started off pretty fun, as we broke up into different teams and had different jobs to do. Iain, Ben, and I were upstairs helping them build the second level. Jobs included: mixing cement, mixing “mixta” which is not cement, but close to it, carrying cement blocks up to the second level, handing blocks and mortar to the workers, and giving marked blocks to a man to cut them at an angle for the roof. After we finished, we had a nice little lunch and returned for more. What we didn’t know is that we were about to do some serious work. We spent the last 5 hours of the day moving cement blocks from the bottom of the hill up to the side of the school. We stacked these blocks in a wall like formation, and in total we moved about 1000 cement blocks. It was ridiculous- and our fingers were sore from the cement. We eventually started an assembly line and just started laughing, because it was clearly the worst job ever. We decided to return on Sunday, only to find out our new job was to spend the day moving the largest pile of sand to the second floor of the school via 10 old, rusty buckets and one makeshift ladder. Again, we formed an assembly line and laughed the whole day despite it being the worst job ever. The men were very appreciative of our work at the end of the weekend- and by work I think they were just overly happy to have 10 white girls there to look at…end of story.

Baby Shower & Birthdays, OH MY!

One fine October weekend, we stayed settled down in Xela for a baby shower and a couple of birthdays. Luckily, the baby shower was NOT thrown for anyone in our group. Instead, it was for Helga, the daughter of Gladis, who owns the school. Don’t get me wrong, Helga is an amazing girl, but we definitely spent the majority of our day full of baby themed contests such as: making the best baby out of a clay ball, racing to hang up the most clothes on the laundry line, pin the dress on the girl, and chugging Coke out of a baby bottle. We did pass a platano between our knees and an orange by the neck which was definitely entertaining, but not enough the say we actually had fun.

The night and rest of the weekend were followed by craziness, as we celebrated Mario & Katy’s birthdays. We kicked off Saturday night with a power hour… they ARE in fact the same in Guatemala and we had a fabulous time and followed by dancing all night, of course. The next morning we threw together a breakfast for a little over a dollar per person that was out of this world.