Trip 1 Day 0: Off the plane, and discovering Antigua

It is hard to type here b-c the keyboard is different. We got here around noon, our time. The time is two hours before you. We landed in Guatemala City where we were surveyed to see if we had swine flu...if we had said yes to having the symptoms, we probably would have been quarantined. We were picked up in a really large van and were taken on a very curvy, high velocity, roller coaster like, mountainous road out of the city to Antigua, 45 minutes outside. Antigua has a 80 to 20 ratio of locals to foreigners, or at least it seems. There is a Spanish immersion school here which seems to attract a lot of Europeans, Americans, et al. Casa Sito, the place where we stay, is down this street of all concrete buildings, all one story, all painted, end to end, on a cobble stone street. There are two huge wooden doors, and you open this little door within one of the doors to get in. The middle of the house is not covered, open to rainfall and sun. There are bedrooms and a kitchen and bathroom. We went today to an upscale ish restaurant where I had some delicious grouper over ratatouille (vegetables). Then for dinner we just got appetizers (fries, buffalo wings) at an Irish pub (yea). We all tried the Guatemalan beer, Gallo. The market was an experience. The grocery store was huge, packed with people, totally unorganized though. The open air market was like a tunnel of vendors selling shoes, bookbags, jewelry, vegetables, baskets, you name it. The Mayan women were the main ones selling the produce; they are really short and dark. There are a lot of church ruins...large concrete structures which are crumbling. You can make out old statues of saints on the front and side facades and see the remains of what was probably a lot of detail. Actually, they just had an earthquake yesterday, which is why those ruined churches were abandoned I think. But the earthquakes they have aren´t usually bad, just tremors. You can see really big mountains all around the town. At least one I know is an active volcano, spewing lava day and night. All the horizons are hazy, so you can´t see too much. There are some really nice cars here. There were more in Guatemala city than here, but still. At the same time though, there are many people that certainly have no cars; buses - really colorfully decorated buses I might add- seem to be very popular. Finally, something must be said for my most significant realization today, poverty. While so many well off people inhabit Antigua and while there are so many restaurants and other upscale ways to spend money here, there is a significant crowd of poor people. While the people, like Mayan women, selling things in the open air market are definitely quite poor, there exists even a poorer crowd. For example, those vegetables that are defective at the market were being piled with raw garbage and wheelbarrowed to a small dump area. There were actually several dozen people picking through it, foraging for food. There are plenty of beggars sitting around some streets and they are also allowed to come into restaurants to ask for money from customers sitting at the tables. It happened to us twice at both restaurants today. Additionally, some poor folks with resources have things to sell, and will harrass anybody waiting to get money at a bank, as we found out today, sadly. Tomorrow we start working at 9. Everybody is in bed so I better go too. Our work will be in a much poorer, more rural village, unlike Antigua where we´re staying. By the way, the electricity went out briefly today, but the water´s still out. They say this never happens. hmmm. The water´s a story in itself.

-James Ellison