Lo Siento

Hi, this is more of an apology than an entry. I´ve been away for a week but have been so swamped with emails and errands that I couldn´t actually write today. But I´m alive and happy and will write soon.

¡Fotos!

¡I´ve uploaded some photos to Flickr! They´re from around Xela, Panajachel/Atitlan, and Salcaja. I could only do 40, and some of them didn´t work, but at least its a start.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14872592@N00/sets/72157607286689290/

Mi Familia (Real)

Here´s a quick update on the cool things my real family is up to:

A film that Alex (my brother) produced is one of five films nominated for Best International Short at the Raindance Film Festival, a British festival of independent films. Its a French film called Troubles Sens. Here´s the film´s link on festival´s website: http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/index.php?id=284,2591,0,0,1,0

He´s also about to go on tour with Stark Fucking Hipsters, a NY ska/indie/punk band, as their drummer. http://www.myspace.com/starfuckinghipsters

Erica (my oldest sister)´s pregnancy is going well. The baby is now full term, so its not a problem if she gives birth, although he´s not due until the very end of September. Of course, I will let you all know when I have a new baby nephew.

And, Beth (my other sister) is leaving tomorrow for France for 3 months, where she´ll study French and probably do lots of other cools stuff.

My mom´s been volunteering a lot at a community radio station, WJFF, http://www.wjffradio.org/wjff/ and both my parents are enjoying semi-retirement.

La Iglesia en Almolonga y San Simon

Yesterday David, Karen, and I went to Almolonga and Zunil, two towns just outside of Xela. Almolonga is known for its fruit market, but the best thing we saw there was its Catholic Church. Apparently the town is now overwhelmingly Evangelical, but Almolonga is still home to a 400-year old Catholic church dedicated to San Pedro. We walked inside the church and the caretaker asked us if we wanted him to put the lights on in the front. We were thinking that it was just so we could take a picture of the alter and all, but he was a bit insistent so we were like okay, thanks. He goes to the back and all of a sudden in the front of the church above the alter (appologies if I am using my church terminology incorrectly) big neon letters reading ¨San Pedro 400 años¨light up. Then he hits another switch and around each of the saints a neon boarder appears. Every day is a suprise. I didn´t have my camera, but Karen took a photo, which I will post when she sends it to me.

After Almolonga, we took the bus to Zunil where we saw the Mayan (Mayan/Catholic syncratic) idol to San Simon (Maximon). There´s a few areas, one of them being Zunil, where this Saint has a strong following. From wikipedia, San Simon ¨is associated with the subterranean force of masculine fertility and prostitution. Always depicted in black, he wears a black hat and sits on a chair, often with a cigar placed in his mouth and a gun in his hand, with offerings of tobacco, alcohol, and Coca-cola at his feet. ¨ Outside of the little room with the idol, they have three fires going where they burn offerings. The location of the idol changes every year so you have to ask people for directions when you get to the town. It certainly wasn´t obvious, but we managed to find it without too much trouble.












I got this photo from http://latinamericanadventure.blogspot.com/2008/08/san-simon-zunil.htm

¿Quieres un acertijo?

This past week Libia was my teacher again. She is whom I ran into in the mall the first week. We worked together the week before too. The day after I went to the meeting on La Florida, we were talking for a while about whether or not it was just for the workers of the coffee plantation La Florida (that I learned about last night) to take over the plantation after struggling in legal ways unsuccesfully for 20 years. After we finished up with that and I was copying my new vocab words, she said to me ¨¿quieres un acertijo?¨I asked her what an acertijo was and she said, a bit unsure, ¨a muzzle.¨ Of course, I was like, a muzzle!? Like para un perro? I know I can talk a lot, but isn´t that what this whole spanish school thing is about? I started describing a what a muzzle is and then we both looked up in our respective Spanish-English dictionaries ¨acertijo¨and ¨muzzle.¨ When I gave her the translation of muzzle, we both broke down laughing. It was great. And after, we told each other some acertijos, or riddles.

La historia de la identidad masculnia en los estados unitos

This is primary for Madalyn, Amy, Suz, and others who either took Bruce Dorsey´s class History of Manhood in America or other studies of manhood, with Bruce. I just wanted to share that yesterday in my class, I spoke at length with my spanish teacher (all in spanish, of course) explaining what it meant to be an ¨hombre verdadero¨in 17th and 18th century New England. I even drew out the whole shift from aprentice-> journeyman -> master to not being able to become a master and how that messed with the definition of idea manhood. This was all followed up with a discussion of how race and class shaped the ideal manhood in the Antebellum South. So, if you want to know spanish vocab ranging from ¨cabeza de la casa¨(which they actually use for head of the household) to¨jerarqui¨(hierarchy), give me a ring. Getting to talk about changing ideals of manhood is one benefit to paying someone to talk with you for five hours a day.

Mis palabras favorites...

My favorite word that I have come across so far has been¨chispitas¨, most commonly used in the expression ¨chispitas de chocolate¨: chocolate chips. I like it because its in the diminuative form, so it sounds so cute. I´m pretty into all words in the diminuative form--like when another student, David, who is 18 moved into my house, my host parents, Danny, and I started to refer to him as mi hermonito (my little brother...hermano is brother, which you all may know already from Arrested Development). Another great example is when a taxi driver offered us a ride home for only 20 ¨quetzalitas¨: 20 little quetzales. Awww, how sweet. (a Quetzal is Guatemala´s currency. Currently, Q 7.7 = $1 US. Q20 is standard for a taxi ride home from the center of town).

Tonight I´m going to a meeting to learn about a coffee plantation (Finca la Florida) that was taken over by workers after the owner went bankrupt. The government gave the workers´collective a loan to buy the property and now they still live in poverty but are working to improve their revenue generating activities (like doing more processing n the finca rather than selling the beans at an earlier stage) and develop their ecotourism. Some other coffee collectives have been pretty successful bringing in ecotourism in the form of tours and paying volunteers. It should be pretty interesting.