Somehow Thanksgiving has come and gone already...although we didn´t exactly do ye olde Turkey dinner. I did accidentally eat tongue though...but I would rather not talk about that ever again.
We spent the weekend on a field trip to Lago de Atitlan, which is a lake surrounded by a ring of volcanoes about 2 and a half hours outside of Xela. We got to Panajachel (the biggest town on the lakeshore) midday on Friday and went straight to the nature reserve where we saw MONKEYS and went ziplining! The zipline was awesome...there were 8 different lines that went basically back and forth through different parts of a canyon that went down towards the lake, so we overlooked the whole lake from the middle of the canyon on the zipline. Unfortunately we had to use our hands to brake on the line so, no pictures!
Pana was a big change from spending the last couple weeks in Xela- it was much more touristy and gringos are definitely treated differently than we are in Xela. Pretty much everyone in Pana speaks basic English, or at least enough to say ´good price for you! business! business!´which was a little bit of a downer, as soon as we tried to start speaking in Spanish, for the most part they would switch to English. People in Xela are extremely patient with broken Spanish and really try to help you learn, which is something I definitely take for granted.
On Saturday we got up early and hopped on a boat to go to a couple different sites around the lake. In the morning we went to a town called Santiago, which was severely affected by both the civil war (which ended in 1996) and a big landslide during Hurricane Stan in 2005. We visited some of the sites where they have rebuilt and saw some serious consequences of bureaucratic inefficiency; there was an open field with about 75 uninhabited houses built out of concrete that simply lacked roofs, and about 100 feet away, about 75 cardboard shacks that people are living in that don´t even keep the rain out. The government began to build the concrete houses and then simply decided that their location was within a ´landslide hazard´zone and that anyone who lived in these houses would have their future rights to relocation in the case of a disaster taken away. Still, there are about 75 families living in shacks in the exact same spot who ARE covered for relocation in case of disaster. So there are essentially 75 perfectly good concrete houses just sitting there doing nothing, and people living in shacks right down the street, and there is no good reason why they are not being used. Ahh bureaucracy.
After a tasty lunch in Santiago, we hopped back on the boat and went across the lake to San Juan where we visited a women´s weaving co op. They do everything there from start to finish, and it is all with natural dyes. We saw the dying process which was really neat- there is one plant that gives off a brighter colour depending on where in the lunar cycle it is harvested! Pretty cool stuff. There are 18 women that work at the co op, and they run the whole business themselves...but they need a bigger market to sell their goods in (anyone interested in importing natural dyed Guatemalan weaving....?).
Sunday we came back to Xela via Chichicastenango which is an ENORMOUS textile and trinket market. It was pretty overwhelming, there was stuff and people everywhere for blocks and blocks and blocks. I did manage to find some cool stuff however...Dad, my bargaining skills have improved a lot since Mexico don´t worry!
Coming back to Xela was really nice and felt like coming home which was a great feeling to have after being in Guatemala for almost a month. Monday was back to the grind in class...we had our first essay due yesterday morning so the last couple days have been work work work! That´s pretty much the pattern from now on as our next essay is due Tuesday, and classes are pretty intensive after that.
Hope turkey weekend was good for everyone!
xo Caroline
