The Beauty of Small Town Living

Never in my life have I lived away from a city; growing up outside Philly, spending a semester abroad in Seville, Spain, and then the last six years in Washington DC, there are some things that you just take for granted with the convenience and access of a city. P-town is one of the smaller training communities (Peace Corps has the 32 of us separated into 8 towns) – there are no restaurants here, no markets, no hair salons, no banks. But there are two internet cafes – the “blue” one and the “up the hill” one. Although the blue one has much slower internet and often sticky keyboards, I patronize it because it is closer to my house and there’s a nice guy that works there who always gives me candy before I pay and leave. This past week, I was in a rush and forgot to take my flash drive with me. I returned the next day to see if it was still there, and explained to Carlos, the internet guy, what I was looking for. He said he would try to remember who had used this computer after me to see if he could get it back. Given that the loss was obviously my fault, I thanked him and made a mental note to add “flash drive” to the list of things that I need Mom to send me. But believe it or not, I show up two days and Carlos had it in hand. He had called each person who sat at that same computer until he found the guilty party and convinced them to return it. To think that the internet guy would bother to pay attention to or know who was sitting where, let alone their names and phone numbers, and then call each one individually to lecture about the wrongness of taking a personal belonging of someone else…I was pretty awed – this type of thing would never happen in a city!

The past few days have been pretty exciting here, mostly because of el Dia de la Independencia, which was on Tuesday. During the days leading up to Guatemala’s 188^th anniversary of independence, many schools have their “entorchas” which are pretty fun and crazy traditions. The kids run through the streets with a lit torch, the national flag, and blow whistles the whole time. We had the opportunity to participate in the entorcha of the elementary school where one of my cousins teaches. My cousin had told me that the kids that attend this school come from really low-income families; the school doesn’t have running water and the local government has to give money to the school to make sure the kids get a snack every day. This fact was pretty evident when we met the kids, many of who wore the only pair of shoes that they own to run the 6 kilometers up a REALLY steep hill to complete the entorcha route from Antigua to their school in El Jato. My three sitemates and I were hardcore struggling to get up this hill, but these 50 kids were so enthused and proud to represent their school; some of them were even running in plastic sandals but with their energy and excitement, they busted through those 6 kilometers in no time! It was a really fun event to experience…and despite the fact that I go running pretty regularly here, I was feeling rather sore the next day!

On the eve of Independence Day, there was a mini parade with a marching band and many more entorchas throughout the early evening. I enjoyed sitting out on the street with my host family clapping for each group running by. On the holiday itself, there is a parade in the morning with each area school presenting its marching band. We have been hearing these marching bands practice since the day we arrived in the country, so it was really cool to see them in action; all these kids marching and dancing and playing instruments. I especially liked watching the younger kids whose instruments were sometimes half their size...they were so cute! The parade went on for a few hours, and there was a shorter parade in the early evening. And of course, one of the best parts of “feriados” is the street food! We concluded the day at my aunt’s house, roasting corn on the BBQ. A recommendation for you all in the US still enjoying your outdoor grills before the season changes – roasted corn with lime and salt is absolutely delicious!

Speaking of food…the dinner that I cooked for my family turned out a big success. My sitemate Alex came over to help me prepare the food, which was super helpful in calming my nerves. (Living alone for two years didn’t necessarily prepare me well to cook for groups of 12 people). I prepared linguini with my sister-in-law’s sauce recipe, a really yummy salad, and garlic bread. They all loved the food! A huge relief, except now they’re asking when I am going to make the next dinner. On Sunday, we leave for our weeklong Field-Based Training trip to Huehuetenango – so I am at least off the hook until we return!

Another cool thing that my trainee group got to experience over the weekend was a traditional Mayan ceremony at a ruins site called Iximchil. Peace Corps arranged for a Kakchiquel (one of the local Mayan groups) priestess to show us what a ceremony is like and to pray for our well-being and protection in the country. It was really cool to see how the ceremony involved a lot of natural materials, like flowers, sugar, leaves, etc. to satisfy the fire, which embodied spirits communicating to us. Something really important to the Maya and Guatemala in general is corn, which has an important spiritual significance, as well as prevalence in the diet. We ended the morning ceremony with a really yummy corn-filled meal – Atol, which is a hot corn drink, blue corn tortillas, and tamalitos (smaller tamales, also made from corn meal); accompanied by some grilled chicken that made a lot of us sick the next day. But, hey, it was a free lunch!

More random comments:

- The larger grocery store in Antigua sells both peanut butter and Nutella, so I am pretty set with the basic necessities for the next two years!

- Many times when clothing is donated in the US, it is sent down to Central America and sold for really inexpensive prices in second-hand stores here. So you see people wearing really random stuff, like a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt (baseball is not at all popular in this country) or a Alabama Ironman T-Shirt (I am doubtful that many Guatemalans have a clue where Alabama is - US states are pretty much known by their location in relation to California, Florida, or New York. My host family knows Philadelphia as the city that is “dos horas de Nueva York”) Last night, my 50-something year old aunt came over wearing a hot pink shirt that said “My boyfriend is out of town”. I told her that I liked the shirt, she asked me what it meant in Spanish, and upon telling her, she was so mortified that her face turned the same color as her shirt!

In front of the Municipal Building, waiting for the afternoon parade to begin

Lots of people in the main plaza
Singing the National Anthem, which is rather long - 5 minutes total!
The parade


An evening entorcha
The internet cafe where I´m currently posting this blog!
My family about to eat the meal that I prepared for them
At the Mayan ceremony in Iximchil
The kids with who we ran the entorcha
Taking off the entorcha through the streets of Antigua