Hey everyone...sorry about the lack of updates in the last while but we have been busy busy busy here at Liberal Arts Boot Camp!
We are now well into class number two which is a nice change from philosophy as it is much more concrete, focused on real-world situations and involves a lot more discussion. I did take some benefit away from philosophy though; it kind of made me realize why I want to go into law and why I find law so interesting- it is such a beautifully basic expression of the human capability of reason. That being said, I am very glad I´m not a philosophy major. Although I do enjoy a good toga...hmmm.....
The last few weekends have been jam packed full of trips to different places around the country. Three weeks ago (oops, blog slacking..) we went to the Pacific Coast for the weekend and stayed at a private beach house that belonged to one of our Spanish teachers´families. It was beautiful and sunny and HOT HOT HOT. I was covered in a film of sweat and sunscreen and bugspray for the whole weekend. The house was located about 20 minutes outside of a ´town´ called Churirin which is another half hour outside of an actual town called Tulate. We were basically in the middle of nowhere but it was awesome. It was the kind of place where hammock-sitting and shooing the pig out of the restaurant is a lucrative occupation. Very slow paced (and with good reason...you would melt if you moved any faster)....and beautiful.
The weekend after that (one week ago) we went on a field trip to a city called Huehuetenango which is close to the Mexican border, and the following day to a tiny town called Todos Santos. Todos Santos means ¨All Saints¨...and November 1st was All Saints´Day. Therefore, Todos Santos= big Guatemalan party. The town explodes with visitors on Todos Santos Day and there are wild drunken horse races and a carnival and all sorts of crazy things...the entire town is dry for the whole year except for this day so there are Guatemalans passed out all over the place and it is generally just a madhouse. The men (who normally in Guatemala wear Western-style clothing) are all dressed in their bright stripy woven pants and shirts and there is just so much colour everywhere it was unbelievable. Unfortunately the weather was horrible so we had to leave early (in order to make it down the mountain road without sliding off a cliff...phew...) and missed most of the horse races...but all in all it was really great.
This past weekend was one of the highlights of the whole trip for me. A group of eleven of us spent the weekend at a coffee co-op about two hours out of Xela. The co op is called Santa Anita La Union ( http://www.santaanitafinca.com/index.html ) and is run by a group of ex-guerillas from the civil war, who moved down from the mountains after the war ended in 1996 and bought this massive piece of land to run as a coffee production co-op together. There are 35 families living on the co-op and they have a school, small businesses, and a shitload of coffee (and bananas). It´s kind of funny...in a country that is such a democratic mess, this tiny little enclave reminded me of that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where those peasant farmers have the commune and King Arthur and co. come by and are alll ¨Where is your king?¨ ¨King? I didn´t vote for a king...!¨¨etc...it was kind of refreshing to see people working together and not skimming money off the top of the pot. It was a really progressive environment...all the kids are required to be in school, the coffee is organic and sold at fair-trade prices, the women are treated equally and everyone was just REALLY HAPPY.
We picked coffee for about 4 hours on Saturday morning which was definitely an enlightening experience. The coffee we picked essentially grows on the side of a cliff, and you wear a basket around your waist and kind of monkey-swing between coffee plants and pick off the ripe coffee cherries. I will definitely never look at coffee the same way again...it was kind of weird picking coffee and then going back for lunch and drinking a cup of it. Saturday afternoon involved dumping all the coffee that was picked onto a big tarp and then sitting around it in a circle picking out the rotten cherries! Mmmm rotting fruit. The really cool part was then dumping it into a machine that takes off the outer cherry part and spits out the coffee beans into a big concrete thing where they are then dried and roasted and shipped to North America for your drinking pleasure! The co op was an awesome experience, the people were amazing and I am now going to hound you all to BUY FAIR TRADE COFFEE! (Interestingly enough, Starbucks is the single biggest buyer of fair-trade coffee all around the world so you can drink your grande caramel macchiatos guilt free!).
Alas...I need to go and work on one of my zillion essays but I will be posting more pictures as soon as I can get my hands on a functioning computer.
See you all in a month!
Love Caroline
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