Tuesday, after eating store-bought refried beans, I started feeling sick. At first, I just felt dehydrated, and drank a bunch of water. By Tuesday evening, I realized that my stomach and bowels were not happy, and I retired to my bed. This sucks extra large because I’ve been feeling super homesick and lonely ALL week. I really miss David.
I was sitting up in bed reading when I noticed something crawling next to me. IT WAS A BABY SCORPION. Luckily, Josie-Ann came down and killed it for me, but for Christ’s sake! This experience cemented my desire to flee San Marcos; I was already sick of its hippie trappings, and my second scorpion in two days was enough to make me want to leave for good.
I had a horrible night of vomiting, loose bowels and crazy twitching. Wednesday morning, I packed up all my shit in preparation for the boat ride to San Pedro. I figured spending my last couple of days at the lake in San Pedro was better because I can take a shuttle from San Pedro to Flores on Friday, where I’ll be meeting up with George and Caroline to explore Tikal, the famous Mayan ruins in northern Guatemala. Eva wanted me to stay in San Marcos so that she could check up on me every couple of hours, but I wanted to go to San Pedro anyway.
I found a private hotel room near the dock in San Pedro. It@s really stinky around here, but I was in no shape to travel around much with my pack. I spent the whole day in my hotel room, sleeping, laying around, and going to the bathroom.
I slept 10 hours last night, and today I feel a bit better. Still a bit weak, but no more stomach problems. I haven’t eaten in over 24 hours, and am having some juice in order to see how my stomach handles that.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Lago Atitlan
Bitchy preamble: I’ve gotten way behind on my blog, and some of you -- well, ONE of you -- has been asking me to update it every day and tell everyone what I’m doing. Unfortunately, this is impossible, as internet connections are sketchy in some places, and it costs me money to get online, and I’m on a budget.
Last Friday, some of us at the student house in Antigua went out for drinks. This was exciting, as I had not had a proper night out since arriving in Guatemala. Before heading out to the bars, we started taking group photos. Conrad, a German doctor who specializes in tropical diseases, was among us; since arriving in Antigua, I’d gotten a creepy, older man vibe from him... like he was staring at me sometimes. While we were taking pictures Friday night, he tickled me, and then rubbed my belly, and then put his hand over my breast. Fucking creep! I told George later that night that he stunned the feminism right out of me. I was so shocked that all I did was yell and move his hand away. And then glare at him for the rest of the night.
Saturday morning, Paul, Eva, George and I caught the morning shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, the busiest of the lakeside villages in beautiful Lago Atitlan. We were headed to San Marcos, reputedly the “most” beautiful of the villages, which also include San Pedro (stoner central), the aforementioned Pana (a tourist dump, as Paula, the snotty English expat who works as an administrator at Sevilla, told me last week), Santa Cruz, and several others. The four of us arrived in Pana around 10 a.m, and then took a boat to San Marcos. The view of the lake from the boat was stunning. Lago Atitlan is by far the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen. It’s surrounded by volcanoes and hills and settlements, and is believed by its inhabitants to possess a special spiritual magic.
I didn’t quite know what to expect from San Marcos. I’d read that it’s packed full of hippies, but not in the “let’s get baked by day and tanked by night” way that defines San Pedro’s hippiness. Firstly, there’s hardly anyone there. At least it seems that way. Unlike San Pedro, where the tourists and Guatemalans seem to intermix quite a bit, San Marcos seems more divided. The place is full of new age centres -- yoga, meditation, massage and reiki schools -- and these, along with some hotels, hostels, and restaurants, make up the lakefront area of the village. Further up, past all the airy fairy bits, is the main village.
The four of us checked into Hotel La Paz, which is much like every other hotel in San Marcos; sort of built into the trees, almost coming out of them if you will. It was quite beautiful and serene, and there was a great veggie restaurant, sauna, and yoga space just steps from our room.
After checking in, we explored San Marcos, and then ran into Louis and Josie-Ann, a Quebecois couple we’d met at our school in Antigua. It turned out that they were staying in the upstairs portion (sort of like an attic space) of our dorm room!
Sunday, George and Paul headed back to Antigua for more Spanish lessons. I joined the meditation class, and at the end of it, I received an angel card with the word “expectancy” written on it. We were instructed to meditate on our angel card and to think about its significance in our lives. I thought it was pretty fitting that I received expectancy, as I am the queen of expectations. I expect a lot of myself, of others, and I’m constanty planning planning planning. I suppose this card was a hint that I need to relax and that I can’t control the future.
That night, while getting ready for bed, I saw a scorpion about 5 inches long on the bathroom wall. I stared at it in amazement; I’ve only ever seen scorpions in zoos, and I hadn’t even known that they run wild in Central America. Then panic set in. My bed was on the other side of that wall, and I started to wonder if other scorpions were living in or nearby hotel La Paz, in my bed, in my shoes, etc. Not a good night. I slept in socks, pants, my hoodie (with hoodie protecting my head), and cowered under the covers between fitful awakenings.
Despite my fear of scorpions inhabiting my bed, I decided to skip the morning yoga class and sleep in for the first time since before I even left Toronto. Sleeping in meant getting up at 8:15, showering, taking my anti-malarial pills for the first time (I’ll be in mosquito-infested Honduras in one week), and washing some clothes by hand in the bathroom sink (no scorpions).
There’s a super hippie “meditation” centre in San Marcos called Las Piramides (it’s hippie to the point of new age ridiculousness), and Eva wanted to check out their morning “metaphysics” class (I’m gratuitously using scare quotes here because the centre’s approach to meditation and metaphysics is, I imagine, quite different from, say, a Buddhist’s or a Heideggerian’s). Monday morning’s topic had something to do with the Initiative process, which I understood to be an introduction to several new age philosophies and practices (which have been handed down from Atlantis, supposedly, and which include Tarot, astrology, numerology, lucid dreaming, astral projection -- COME ON, I was interested in astral projecting myself out of my overly-developed body in the early 90s, but quickly realized it was probably a lot of hooey -- Kabala, and the list goes on. Eva decided to stay for the class and sign up for the duration of the week’s yoga, meditation and esoteric instruction. I decided to leave the centre, go swimming, and find an internet cafe where I could upload my photos of the lake.
I didn’t have much luck getting on a computer that day. There were only 2 internet cafes in San Marcos; the first one I visited was down, and the second was full. When some spots finally opened up at the second one, the internet went down. This was really frustrating, and I had to go back to the other one, where I waited for over an hour and a half for a computer to free up. While waiting, I read some more of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and acquiesced to the reality of yet another day of not swimming in Lago Atitlan.
A few words on Midnight’s Children, which I’ve been wanting to read since I was 19. It’s taken me 7 years to get to it, and I’m finding it REALLY difficult to get into. I’ve had it with me since I left Toronto, and I’m only on page 80. It’s full of the sort of self-reflexive, revisionist, postmodern tricks I went gaga over as a wee undergrad.
While I waited and read Rushdie, I overheard the owner of the cafe tell multiple people about a woman who’d bitten him earlier in the day. According to him, she’d become upset because she couldn’t use skype and, when he asked her to leave, she became irate. He’d then grabbed her and tried to push her out of the cafe and she pulled a Mike Tyson on him and bit his arm. Because I was at this internet cafe for so long -- waiting for an internet connection, waiting for a free computer, eating lunch -- I heard him tell this same story at least four times. Each time he told it, he sounded increasingly sexist. Suddenly she was a “chick,” and had lifted up her shirt at the end of the incident in order to flash everyone. The last time he recounted the story, someone asked him how old she was. His answer: “She was young, she had nice tits.”
Last Friday, some of us at the student house in Antigua went out for drinks. This was exciting, as I had not had a proper night out since arriving in Guatemala. Before heading out to the bars, we started taking group photos. Conrad, a German doctor who specializes in tropical diseases, was among us; since arriving in Antigua, I’d gotten a creepy, older man vibe from him... like he was staring at me sometimes. While we were taking pictures Friday night, he tickled me, and then rubbed my belly, and then put his hand over my breast. Fucking creep! I told George later that night that he stunned the feminism right out of me. I was so shocked that all I did was yell and move his hand away. And then glare at him for the rest of the night.
Saturday morning, Paul, Eva, George and I caught the morning shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, the busiest of the lakeside villages in beautiful Lago Atitlan. We were headed to San Marcos, reputedly the “most” beautiful of the villages, which also include San Pedro (stoner central), the aforementioned Pana (a tourist dump, as Paula, the snotty English expat who works as an administrator at Sevilla, told me last week), Santa Cruz, and several others. The four of us arrived in Pana around 10 a.m, and then took a boat to San Marcos. The view of the lake from the boat was stunning. Lago Atitlan is by far the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen. It’s surrounded by volcanoes and hills and settlements, and is believed by its inhabitants to possess a special spiritual magic.
I didn’t quite know what to expect from San Marcos. I’d read that it’s packed full of hippies, but not in the “let’s get baked by day and tanked by night” way that defines San Pedro’s hippiness. Firstly, there’s hardly anyone there. At least it seems that way. Unlike San Pedro, where the tourists and Guatemalans seem to intermix quite a bit, San Marcos seems more divided. The place is full of new age centres -- yoga, meditation, massage and reiki schools -- and these, along with some hotels, hostels, and restaurants, make up the lakefront area of the village. Further up, past all the airy fairy bits, is the main village.
The four of us checked into Hotel La Paz, which is much like every other hotel in San Marcos; sort of built into the trees, almost coming out of them if you will. It was quite beautiful and serene, and there was a great veggie restaurant, sauna, and yoga space just steps from our room.
After checking in, we explored San Marcos, and then ran into Louis and Josie-Ann, a Quebecois couple we’d met at our school in Antigua. It turned out that they were staying in the upstairs portion (sort of like an attic space) of our dorm room!
Sunday, George and Paul headed back to Antigua for more Spanish lessons. I joined the meditation class, and at the end of it, I received an angel card with the word “expectancy” written on it. We were instructed to meditate on our angel card and to think about its significance in our lives. I thought it was pretty fitting that I received expectancy, as I am the queen of expectations. I expect a lot of myself, of others, and I’m constanty planning planning planning. I suppose this card was a hint that I need to relax and that I can’t control the future.
That night, while getting ready for bed, I saw a scorpion about 5 inches long on the bathroom wall. I stared at it in amazement; I’ve only ever seen scorpions in zoos, and I hadn’t even known that they run wild in Central America. Then panic set in. My bed was on the other side of that wall, and I started to wonder if other scorpions were living in or nearby hotel La Paz, in my bed, in my shoes, etc. Not a good night. I slept in socks, pants, my hoodie (with hoodie protecting my head), and cowered under the covers between fitful awakenings.
Despite my fear of scorpions inhabiting my bed, I decided to skip the morning yoga class and sleep in for the first time since before I even left Toronto. Sleeping in meant getting up at 8:15, showering, taking my anti-malarial pills for the first time (I’ll be in mosquito-infested Honduras in one week), and washing some clothes by hand in the bathroom sink (no scorpions).
There’s a super hippie “meditation” centre in San Marcos called Las Piramides (it’s hippie to the point of new age ridiculousness), and Eva wanted to check out their morning “metaphysics” class (I’m gratuitously using scare quotes here because the centre’s approach to meditation and metaphysics is, I imagine, quite different from, say, a Buddhist’s or a Heideggerian’s). Monday morning’s topic had something to do with the Initiative process, which I understood to be an introduction to several new age philosophies and practices (which have been handed down from Atlantis, supposedly, and which include Tarot, astrology, numerology, lucid dreaming, astral projection -- COME ON, I was interested in astral projecting myself out of my overly-developed body in the early 90s, but quickly realized it was probably a lot of hooey -- Kabala, and the list goes on. Eva decided to stay for the class and sign up for the duration of the week’s yoga, meditation and esoteric instruction. I decided to leave the centre, go swimming, and find an internet cafe where I could upload my photos of the lake.
I didn’t have much luck getting on a computer that day. There were only 2 internet cafes in San Marcos; the first one I visited was down, and the second was full. When some spots finally opened up at the second one, the internet went down. This was really frustrating, and I had to go back to the other one, where I waited for over an hour and a half for a computer to free up. While waiting, I read some more of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and acquiesced to the reality of yet another day of not swimming in Lago Atitlan.
A few words on Midnight’s Children, which I’ve been wanting to read since I was 19. It’s taken me 7 years to get to it, and I’m finding it REALLY difficult to get into. I’ve had it with me since I left Toronto, and I’m only on page 80. It’s full of the sort of self-reflexive, revisionist, postmodern tricks I went gaga over as a wee undergrad.
While I waited and read Rushdie, I overheard the owner of the cafe tell multiple people about a woman who’d bitten him earlier in the day. According to him, she’d become upset because she couldn’t use skype and, when he asked her to leave, she became irate. He’d then grabbed her and tried to push her out of the cafe and she pulled a Mike Tyson on him and bit his arm. Because I was at this internet cafe for so long -- waiting for an internet connection, waiting for a free computer, eating lunch -- I heard him tell this same story at least four times. Each time he told it, he sounded increasingly sexist. Suddenly she was a “chick,” and had lifted up her shirt at the end of the incident in order to flash everyone. The last time he recounted the story, someone asked him how old she was. His answer: “She was young, she had nice tits.”
Monday, January 26, 2009
Leaving Antigua
I´ve had the worst of days and the best of days. Thursday found me hungover - from insomnia rather than drink; anyone who suffers from sleep problems knows that a post-insomniatic night is as bad as a bender - miserably forgetful and self-conscious in my Spanish class. Doing immersion classes in Antigua, Guatemala is incredibly popular and there are usually a thousand plus students in this city, taking one-on-one, and sometimes group, classes with Guatemalan teachers. My teacher, Gloria, is fantastic. She´s incredibly sweet and organized and patient, and we´ve talked about everything from Spanish verb tenses (I´ve finally gotten comfortable with Ser and Estar, the two forms of ¨being¨ in Spanish) to the uselessness of the British monarchy, the effects of stress on the human body (Gloria also suffers from insomnia), to political corruption in Canada and Guatemala.
After climbing Volcan Pacaya on Wednesday, my cortisol (a stress hormone that also gets raised after intense exercise) levels must have been really high, because I had the worst sleep that night. Twitchy, itchy, waking every half hour. I didn´t do any studying either, so I was useless in class. I´m pretty sure I´m also premenstrual; after class, I just kind of moped around the student house, listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane and worrying about my cortisol levels and the excess adrenaline coursing through my body.
In the early evening, I wandered out to find a cheap bottle of wine. I´d found a store just down the street from my student house the other day that sold a big ol bottle of Santa Carolina for 75Q ($10 USD), but I couldn´t find it again on Thursday.
While walking back to the student house, I crossed a street and was almost hit by a car. Dude driving said car was mezmerized by something in his passenger seat and didn´t even notice me as he turned the corner and nearly ran into me. If I hadn´t skipped outta the way, I might have been turned into Guatemalan street meat.
After dinner, I went to Cafe 2000, a really cool bar in Antigua that shows bootleg films for free (rightly so, obviously). I finally got to see The Last King of Scotland and discovered a great Guatemalan dark beer called Moza.
Friday, meanwhile, was fantastic. I had my last Spanish class in Antigua with Gloria, and it was one of my best classes by far. I feel that, after one week of Spanish lessons, I´ve learned some useful vocab and have gotten quite good at conjugating verbs - the problem is, I´m not good at conversation. Because Gloria spoke so slowly in class, I was able to follow nearly everything she said. While interacting with Guatemalans, however, things are much different. When I´m by myself and I need to ask for directions or inquire about the price of something, I get by, but when hanging out with other folks who´ve studied longer than I have, they usually take over the conversation. I´m very grateful to have studied with Gloria, though; I was really sorry to say goodbye.
After class on Friday, I called David Marriott, a professor at UC Santa Cruz that I´d like to work with should I decide to do a PhD. He emailed me last week to tell me that he was really excited about my application and that he wants to work with me! He also asked what would make it possible for me to attend Santa Cruz, and told me that he would tell the program director to look into offering me a fellowship! This is all very exciting because the History of Consciousness program at Santa Cruz is really competitive (they only accept 8-10 students every year). David wanted to talk to me on the phone, so I gave him a call Friday, and we talked about the school and the program.
After this phone call, I decided to explore Antigua a little bit more. I considered checking out a gallery or museum (I still know very little about Guatemalan history), but I decided to hike up Cerro de La Cruz with Eva (from Germany) and Paul (from Montana). Cerro de La Cruz is up a hill facing Volcan Agua, and provides a great view of the entire city (and can be picked out while on the ground in Antigua by the big cross that sits atop the hill).
After hiking to the cross, Paul and I walked to the market to buy some cheap oranges. The market felt and looked exactly how I imagined Guatemala to be. It was cool because there were hardly any other tourists around and I finally got a sense of what Guatemala is like for its inhabitants when they´re not catering to gringos.
After climbing Volcan Pacaya on Wednesday, my cortisol (a stress hormone that also gets raised after intense exercise) levels must have been really high, because I had the worst sleep that night. Twitchy, itchy, waking every half hour. I didn´t do any studying either, so I was useless in class. I´m pretty sure I´m also premenstrual; after class, I just kind of moped around the student house, listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane and worrying about my cortisol levels and the excess adrenaline coursing through my body.
In the early evening, I wandered out to find a cheap bottle of wine. I´d found a store just down the street from my student house the other day that sold a big ol bottle of Santa Carolina for 75Q ($10 USD), but I couldn´t find it again on Thursday.
While walking back to the student house, I crossed a street and was almost hit by a car. Dude driving said car was mezmerized by something in his passenger seat and didn´t even notice me as he turned the corner and nearly ran into me. If I hadn´t skipped outta the way, I might have been turned into Guatemalan street meat.
After dinner, I went to Cafe 2000, a really cool bar in Antigua that shows bootleg films for free (rightly so, obviously). I finally got to see The Last King of Scotland and discovered a great Guatemalan dark beer called Moza.
Friday, meanwhile, was fantastic. I had my last Spanish class in Antigua with Gloria, and it was one of my best classes by far. I feel that, after one week of Spanish lessons, I´ve learned some useful vocab and have gotten quite good at conjugating verbs - the problem is, I´m not good at conversation. Because Gloria spoke so slowly in class, I was able to follow nearly everything she said. While interacting with Guatemalans, however, things are much different. When I´m by myself and I need to ask for directions or inquire about the price of something, I get by, but when hanging out with other folks who´ve studied longer than I have, they usually take over the conversation. I´m very grateful to have studied with Gloria, though; I was really sorry to say goodbye.
After class on Friday, I called David Marriott, a professor at UC Santa Cruz that I´d like to work with should I decide to do a PhD. He emailed me last week to tell me that he was really excited about my application and that he wants to work with me! He also asked what would make it possible for me to attend Santa Cruz, and told me that he would tell the program director to look into offering me a fellowship! This is all very exciting because the History of Consciousness program at Santa Cruz is really competitive (they only accept 8-10 students every year). David wanted to talk to me on the phone, so I gave him a call Friday, and we talked about the school and the program.
After this phone call, I decided to explore Antigua a little bit more. I considered checking out a gallery or museum (I still know very little about Guatemalan history), but I decided to hike up Cerro de La Cruz with Eva (from Germany) and Paul (from Montana). Cerro de La Cruz is up a hill facing Volcan Agua, and provides a great view of the entire city (and can be picked out while on the ground in Antigua by the big cross that sits atop the hill).
After hiking to the cross, Paul and I walked to the market to buy some cheap oranges. The market felt and looked exactly how I imagined Guatemala to be. It was cool because there were hardly any other tourists around and I finally got a sense of what Guatemala is like for its inhabitants when they´re not catering to gringos.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Volcan Pacaya
Yesterday, I climbed Volcan Pacaya with some of the other students at Sevilla Spanish Academy. The volcano is active, and we were all under the impression that we would witness, and walk on, real, live lava. We took a 2 hour shuttle to the base of the volcano, where children eagerly and very persistenly tried to sell us sticks (es necessito! por the lava!). Then we walked. And walked some more. It wasn´t grueling, but I´m not used to hiking up hills (the treadmill doesn´t exactly approximate a volcano). My friend, Caroline, has a heart condition, so we took it slow and stopped often for pictures and resting. Unfortunately, we arrived later than expected, and the sun started to set before we reached the top.
By the time we arrived at the lava floor, it was pretty dark, and I felt sketchy about crossing over such jagged rocks to reach the hottest point (I´m a clutz on the most level of planes). Caroline and I, and a few other people, remained behind, and thus I got some amazing photos of the rest of the group hanging out on the lava floor against a backdrop of the setting sun. Watching the sun set from such a great height was AMAZING.
Monday, January 19, 2009
La Antigua y Monterricco - Guatemala
Entonces.
I arrived unscathed in Guatemala City Thursday afternoon. I made my connection in El Salvador really smoothly (San Salvador is a tiny airport, and both flights were half an hour behind schedule; de-icing in Toronto, Central American time - muy relajandar - in El Salvador). La Escuela Español Sevilla, where I´m learning Spanish for the next week, arranged for a shuttle to pick me up at the airport. When I arrived at my casa in Antigua, it seemed really, really quiet and empty. I asked Ana, the young woman who runs the house, if there were other students staying here at the moment, and I guess she didn´t understand my crappy attempt at Spanish because she said no. So then I got REALLY lonely and envisioned a week of solitary Spanish study and no one to hang out with. After I got settled in my room, I started to panic a bit about the fact that I´m travelling alone. Anyone who knows me knows I have absolutely no sense of direction; I actually think that I have problems with proprioception in general, as I´m always walking into walls, spilling liquids, walking into oncoming traffic. And, despite my Spanish class last summer in Toronto, I´m a complete beginner. How the hell am I to travel around Central and South America with such limited Español?
An hour later, some of the other students returned to the student house in time for dinner; they´d been partying at the school all evening, and some of them were quite tipsy. I met Georgina and Caroline, two smart English women who have been at the school for one and two weeks, respectively. They´re really cool! Anna and Christina (the other woman who runs the house) were not informed of my veganism, so my first dinner consisted of watermelon and cantoloupe. And bread. I felt timid during dinner, didn´t really want to talk to people that much, and then I got paranoid that I would feel like this for my entire trip and never meet anyone at all. Then I realized I was really tired and decided to go to bed.
Guatemalans LOVE fireworks. Fireworks seem to fulfill a need for excitement and escape that Canadians seek in beer and Americans in giant food portions. My first night in Antigua, I mistook a firecracker for a gunshot, and envisioned myself getting attacked in the night. The following morning, a German girl named Sandra informed me that the noises were, in fact, firecrackers. I`ve heard them every night since.
Before class on Friday, I decided to walk around Antigua. Since all the streets are numbered on my map, I thought I´d be fine. Unfortunately, the calles and avenidas are not marked very clearly in reality, so I ended up getting lost. I kept returning to the same yellow church, and realized by the third or fourth time that I was not, in fact, walking south. I eventually returned back at the student house in time for lunch, and then headed off to Sevilla for my first Guatemalan Spanish lesson.
I think I must have one of the best Spanish teachers in Antigua. Her name is Gloria, and she´s absolutely lovely. She began speaking in Spanish to me as soon as we met, and I was able to understand her, if not respond in very clear Spanish. Each lesson lasts four hours, and, though my Friday class was at 2:00, all of this week´s classes are at 8:00. That´s right, folks, 8 in the a.m. Anyway, Gloria is really nice and patient, and does speak a bit of English, so we communicate quite well.
Georgina, Caroline and I decided to spend the weekend in Monterricco, a cute little beach town about 2 hours from Antigua. Antigua´s high up in the mountains, and has been quite chilly since I arrived, getting down to 13 degrees or so in the evenings (I KNOW, I KNOW, but I came on this trip in part to experience some intense heat), and Monterricco was HOT. The three of us lazed around the beach (the sand was black and got really hot in the sun) and played in the intense waves in the ocean. Being in the ocean was heaven for me; I could only think about staying above water (the rip tide is crazy at that beach), so it cleared my head and I finally started to relax.
Sunday morning, Georgina, Caroline and I got up at 5 a.m. to take a boat trip with around 2 dozen other tourists through a Monterricco nature reserve. Back in my undergrad days, I used to go to bed at 5 a.m. Anyway, the tour was led by a really great guide who made a point to speak really slowly and articulately in Spanish so that we could get a sense of the plants and wildlife in the area. We watched the sunrise, saw a school of flying fish that seemed to be performing a choreographed dance for us, and heard many beautiful birds I could not identify. I took loads of pictures, which I hope to share with ya´ll very soon!
The girls and I had the best daiquiris we´ve EVER had in Monterricco. They were made with real strawberries rather than that sweet filler that most daiquiris are made of. DELICOUS.
Sunday night, I stopped into a restaurant and internet café to call home, and ordered a ¨burrito rez.¨ I assumed the burrito rez was vegan, and I ordered it without cheese and cream. Since I was so hungry after my exhausting day lying around the beach, I took a big bite and swallowed two mouthfuls before I realized that, mixed in with the black beans was BEEF. I haven´t eaten cow – beautiful, cryptic cows! – in 13 freakin´ years! That´s half my damn life! Fortunately, the kitchen and wait staff were really nice and brought me a vegan burrito.
Monday, after class, I finally got a chance to take some photos of this beautiful city. La Antigua is full of cobblestone streets, big old dilapidated colonial buildings which have aged very gracefully, and, like every Latin American city I´ve been to, lots of colour! I´m finally starting to feel like I know the city a bit better, and am making a conscious effort, while walking around by myself, to notice landmarks and remind myself every 20 seconds which direction I´m headed.
La Antigua is surrounded by three volcanoes, and I´m going to hike up the active one, Pacaya, tomorrow afternoon with some other students from my school. I can´t wait to see lava for the first time in my life!
I arrived unscathed in Guatemala City Thursday afternoon. I made my connection in El Salvador really smoothly (San Salvador is a tiny airport, and both flights were half an hour behind schedule; de-icing in Toronto, Central American time - muy relajandar - in El Salvador). La Escuela Español Sevilla, where I´m learning Spanish for the next week, arranged for a shuttle to pick me up at the airport. When I arrived at my casa in Antigua, it seemed really, really quiet and empty. I asked Ana, the young woman who runs the house, if there were other students staying here at the moment, and I guess she didn´t understand my crappy attempt at Spanish because she said no. So then I got REALLY lonely and envisioned a week of solitary Spanish study and no one to hang out with. After I got settled in my room, I started to panic a bit about the fact that I´m travelling alone. Anyone who knows me knows I have absolutely no sense of direction; I actually think that I have problems with proprioception in general, as I´m always walking into walls, spilling liquids, walking into oncoming traffic. And, despite my Spanish class last summer in Toronto, I´m a complete beginner. How the hell am I to travel around Central and South America with such limited Español?
An hour later, some of the other students returned to the student house in time for dinner; they´d been partying at the school all evening, and some of them were quite tipsy. I met Georgina and Caroline, two smart English women who have been at the school for one and two weeks, respectively. They´re really cool! Anna and Christina (the other woman who runs the house) were not informed of my veganism, so my first dinner consisted of watermelon and cantoloupe. And bread. I felt timid during dinner, didn´t really want to talk to people that much, and then I got paranoid that I would feel like this for my entire trip and never meet anyone at all. Then I realized I was really tired and decided to go to bed.
Guatemalans LOVE fireworks. Fireworks seem to fulfill a need for excitement and escape that Canadians seek in beer and Americans in giant food portions. My first night in Antigua, I mistook a firecracker for a gunshot, and envisioned myself getting attacked in the night. The following morning, a German girl named Sandra informed me that the noises were, in fact, firecrackers. I`ve heard them every night since.
Before class on Friday, I decided to walk around Antigua. Since all the streets are numbered on my map, I thought I´d be fine. Unfortunately, the calles and avenidas are not marked very clearly in reality, so I ended up getting lost. I kept returning to the same yellow church, and realized by the third or fourth time that I was not, in fact, walking south. I eventually returned back at the student house in time for lunch, and then headed off to Sevilla for my first Guatemalan Spanish lesson.
I think I must have one of the best Spanish teachers in Antigua. Her name is Gloria, and she´s absolutely lovely. She began speaking in Spanish to me as soon as we met, and I was able to understand her, if not respond in very clear Spanish. Each lesson lasts four hours, and, though my Friday class was at 2:00, all of this week´s classes are at 8:00. That´s right, folks, 8 in the a.m. Anyway, Gloria is really nice and patient, and does speak a bit of English, so we communicate quite well.
Georgina, Caroline and I decided to spend the weekend in Monterricco, a cute little beach town about 2 hours from Antigua. Antigua´s high up in the mountains, and has been quite chilly since I arrived, getting down to 13 degrees or so in the evenings (I KNOW, I KNOW, but I came on this trip in part to experience some intense heat), and Monterricco was HOT. The three of us lazed around the beach (the sand was black and got really hot in the sun) and played in the intense waves in the ocean. Being in the ocean was heaven for me; I could only think about staying above water (the rip tide is crazy at that beach), so it cleared my head and I finally started to relax.
Sunday morning, Georgina, Caroline and I got up at 5 a.m. to take a boat trip with around 2 dozen other tourists through a Monterricco nature reserve. Back in my undergrad days, I used to go to bed at 5 a.m. Anyway, the tour was led by a really great guide who made a point to speak really slowly and articulately in Spanish so that we could get a sense of the plants and wildlife in the area. We watched the sunrise, saw a school of flying fish that seemed to be performing a choreographed dance for us, and heard many beautiful birds I could not identify. I took loads of pictures, which I hope to share with ya´ll very soon!
The girls and I had the best daiquiris we´ve EVER had in Monterricco. They were made with real strawberries rather than that sweet filler that most daiquiris are made of. DELICOUS.
Sunday night, I stopped into a restaurant and internet café to call home, and ordered a ¨burrito rez.¨ I assumed the burrito rez was vegan, and I ordered it without cheese and cream. Since I was so hungry after my exhausting day lying around the beach, I took a big bite and swallowed two mouthfuls before I realized that, mixed in with the black beans was BEEF. I haven´t eaten cow – beautiful, cryptic cows! – in 13 freakin´ years! That´s half my damn life! Fortunately, the kitchen and wait staff were really nice and brought me a vegan burrito.
Monday, after class, I finally got a chance to take some photos of this beautiful city. La Antigua is full of cobblestone streets, big old dilapidated colonial buildings which have aged very gracefully, and, like every Latin American city I´ve been to, lots of colour! I´m finally starting to feel like I know the city a bit better, and am making a conscious effort, while walking around by myself, to notice landmarks and remind myself every 20 seconds which direction I´m headed.
La Antigua is surrounded by three volcanoes, and I´m going to hike up the active one, Pacaya, tomorrow afternoon with some other students from my school. I can´t wait to see lava for the first time in my life!
Monday, January 12, 2009
whammy
I'm convinced that ruin usually presents itself in the guise of the negative trifecta.
Last week, after nearly three months of medicated sleep, my insomnia decided to rear its ugly little head again. I'm not sure if my brain decided to switch back onto hyper-vigilant mode because I was jetlagged after my trip to BC (I used to think that jetlag was a mental construct, but now I understand that being thousands of feet in the air does, indeed, throw the body off), because I'm nervous about my trip (I'll get nervous about anything, and traveling solo through 6 Spanish-speaking countries and one Portuguese-speaking country without a good grasp of either language IS worrisome), or because I'm cursed (the last five years of my life plus a rumoured family malediction going back to the Louisiana days), or WHAT. Now I'm popping anti-histamines and the occasional benzo alongside my Remeron.
Friday, I had a doctor's appointment to discuss this very problem (the sleep, not the curse) with my family GP. On my way into the clinic, I tripped going upstairs (that's right, UP stairs), and vaulted, left side down, onto concrete. And kinda skidded across the concrete. So embarrassing, especially since part of the reason I fell was due to my sort of checking out a cute girl getting out of a car just before I bounded up those stairs. Other than bruising my knee and scraping some skin off my wrist and nearly passing out while waiting for my appointment, all was okay.
I later told David that, since shit always comes in threes, something else was likely to go wrong. Insomnia, a fall and... a missed connection in El Salvador? LACA loses my bag? I decided that I would probably get sick before I leave for Guatemala.
And now my body is fighting some sort of cold virus. I had a going away party Saturday night and, before going to bed, felt a little somethin'-somethin' in my throat. I've been ingesting echinacea, vitamin c and oil of oregano ever since, and today I feel really tired, foggy brained, and my nose is a bit stuffed up. I hardly EVER get sick and I'm leaving in three days for my adventure and I'm SICK.
Last week, after nearly three months of medicated sleep, my insomnia decided to rear its ugly little head again. I'm not sure if my brain decided to switch back onto hyper-vigilant mode because I was jetlagged after my trip to BC (I used to think that jetlag was a mental construct, but now I understand that being thousands of feet in the air does, indeed, throw the body off), because I'm nervous about my trip (I'll get nervous about anything, and traveling solo through 6 Spanish-speaking countries and one Portuguese-speaking country without a good grasp of either language IS worrisome), or because I'm cursed (the last five years of my life plus a rumoured family malediction going back to the Louisiana days), or WHAT. Now I'm popping anti-histamines and the occasional benzo alongside my Remeron.
Friday, I had a doctor's appointment to discuss this very problem (the sleep, not the curse) with my family GP. On my way into the clinic, I tripped going upstairs (that's right, UP stairs), and vaulted, left side down, onto concrete. And kinda skidded across the concrete. So embarrassing, especially since part of the reason I fell was due to my sort of checking out a cute girl getting out of a car just before I bounded up those stairs. Other than bruising my knee and scraping some skin off my wrist and nearly passing out while waiting for my appointment, all was okay.
I later told David that, since shit always comes in threes, something else was likely to go wrong. Insomnia, a fall and... a missed connection in El Salvador? LACA loses my bag? I decided that I would probably get sick before I leave for Guatemala.
And now my body is fighting some sort of cold virus. I had a going away party Saturday night and, before going to bed, felt a little somethin'-somethin' in my throat. I've been ingesting echinacea, vitamin c and oil of oregano ever since, and today I feel really tired, foggy brained, and my nose is a bit stuffed up. I hardly EVER get sick and I'm leaving in three days for my adventure and I'm SICK.
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