last week in central america, ohhh seven

so i'm home. it's part awesome and part strange. as would be expected i guess, but this was just such an amazing experience and i'm trying to figure out how to get back down there sometime in the next year or two. now i'm staying at kate and jason's in oakland where we are making crazy good dinners, watching warriors games and drinking beer in the sun. just found out i get to stay at my friend reyhan's studio in the mission for four weeks while she's away too. very exciting.

well, so the last week in xela was incredible. aside from my host mom totally insulting me and then wanting to process about it all week, i celebrated damien's 30th birthday, finished up an interesting volunteer project, snuck in another week of spanish school, went to a killer guatemalan society wedding and somehow made it on the chicken bus to guatemala city the next morning.

here are some strange pictures of these women at a meeting i was at for my volunteer project. i was working with this human rights organization, tedimaya, that works with indigineous communities in the highlands. i was making materials for them about human rights for women in guatemala.


here's britta and damien starting to party for damien's dirty 30



they put candy AND dinosaurs in this pinata!




luis took me to the xela cemetary, which is one of the most gorgeous places in town. out of respect for the dead, it is also prohibited for cops to enter. therefore there are tons of sketchy people lurking around and it's allegedly a pretty dangerous place for tourists.


apparently the cemetary is starting to flood during the rainy season. see the water line?


oh, and all the heads of the statues have totally been stolen throughout the cemetary




so this! well, this is my friend juan pablo, who is friends with my other friend juan pablo who lives in xela. this jp lives in chile and was just in town for his sister's wedding that weekend. he asked me to be his date to his sister's wedding which was the day before i left. so i went! it was absolutely insane. they picked me up in an entourage of bmw suvs at my house, we snapped a picture and headed to a swanky country club outside of xela. the president might as well have been there. it was so crazy, i had no idea this level of wealth existed in guatemala. there were probably 500 people at this wedding, with a live band, people on stilts, a bottle of johnnie walker on every table with tons of other booze, waiters walking around with tequila shots, etc. nuts! needless to say, we got wasted, i danced with his aunts and uncles and then the most embarrassing part happened -- we somehow got picked to do this "flip" in front of everyone. all these jumps we had to do seemed to work out okay, but then the final one where i was flipped over in front of everyone, my dress got caught in my underwear and all 500 people saw my ass for a good few seconds. it was pretty classic. anyways, here's the pictures.


conga line, yo!







his mom totally has fake boobs and a nose job.

so then i got up at 4 in the morning, got on a chicken bus, the chicken bus broke down on the highway, another one came by, hopped on that, made it to the airport in time, took a plane to houston and then another one to san francisco. of course the freeway had blown up the night before so kate and kim picked me up and we took bart back to oakland. i'm a super grease bomb at this point, but it was soo good to see them.


and this is pretty much what the last week has been like. so great!

bike rides, lasagna, more piñatas

this is my favorite house in xela

last week, me and the doctors went to the guardería (the daycare our school supports for low income kids in a rural community near xela) for the monthly birthday party




the chicken little piñata



total mayhem as three kids emerge crying and trying to grasp onto their lollipops

this is brita and damien, my two pals who had the dinner party a few weeks back. they often come over to play board games with my family. brita is the coordinator of the greenhouse project at the guardería.




some more shots of my little sandwich shop hangout


sometimes the dudes start making a racket with all the instruments lying around




back to my house.. someone hung up some briefs the other day that screamed for a photo op


last friday, our school had an all day bike ride benefit for the greenhouse project. we rode to three indigenous communities in the mountains on these crappy bikes with awful brakes, but it was such an amazing day. my wrists and hands are still hurting two days later from trying to force the brakes to work downhill, but definitely so worth it. this is the first place we got to (can't remember the name!):


the last stop was san andrés xecul, this gorgeous town on a steep slope with a famous yellow church that is on the cover of my lonely planet central america (rana! i found it!). the story goes that during the civil war, the people in this town thought that god was mad at them and so they decided to paint this church and other churches in the town bright colors as some kind of offering. they also have this tradition here where all the young guy virgins whose parents are planning to marry them off during the year have to go live on top of the mountain with the town elders for 40 days where they're instructed on how to be a man, etc, and then during the annual town festival in june, they have to climb this incredibly tall tree in front of this church and then make it across a rope that is connected to the church. this challenge is supposed to represent the challenges of married life, and if you don't make it across, you're not up for the challenge. according to luis, my amazing teacher, no one has ever fallen off the rope.

here is me eating an ice cream sandwich outside this sacred place



yesterday my friend tamar (from brooklyn!) and i took the bus and got a pickup to the hotsprings at fuentes georginas near xela. this is tamar in the back of the pickup


i'm so happy that i finally got a photo of this place. so amazing, full of sulfur and on the edge of this gorgeous mountain.

i don't have any photos of the lasagna i made for my family today, but it was quite the deal! i offered to make them dinner, but then when lunch seemed more appropriate as it is the more elegant meal of the day, decided to do lunch. it was quite a trip washing everything in bleach first but so awesome to get to mess up a kitchen and make something so amazing. we ate outside in their front yard and they totally clapped!

this week we had an excellent conference at school about the civil war here. man. i've watched a lot of movies and read things here and there and obviously heard so many people's experiences, but everything really came together in this lecture. once again, the role of the u.s. disgusts me beyond belief. people here have to live with so much violence and poverty that has been so directly caused by the war and now is further exacerbated by these terrible "free trade" agreements that they have no choice but to sign. i could go on, obviously..

i can't belive i'm coming home in a week.