Introduction to Guatemala

You couldn´t imagine my relief to see Victor standing outside holding up the professional 'dos lunas' sign. I say professional because it was an actual print out on a nice white piece of plastic and a handle so he could hold it up above the crowd of taxi drivers and other hotel pickup services. I don't know why I was expecting him to be standing there wearing all black with a ripped out piece of notebook paper with '2 lunas' written on it with black marker. I approached him, weary to give him any information first, and he immediately said 'Amy(I can't find the question mark key), i am beector'. perfecto.

I was a little nervous on the plane, i can't lie. I decided that it'd be a good idea to reread the consular information about Guatemala that I found and printed from the government website a few weeks ago. I skimmed through it before, thinking 'oh, I'm sure this is all very rare, no problems'. Yet on the plane, at night, flying into Guatemala city and not completely trusting the pick·up service, I felt a little differently about the information. i was reading sentences like 'the number of violent crimes reported by foreigners has increased in recent years... incidents include, but are not limited to, assault, theft, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, rape and murder' Not limited to, what else is there? (shift and dash makes a question mark) I kept reading 'Criminals generally operate in groups of 4 or more and are considerably confrontational and violent. There are five to six murders a day in Guatemala city and surrounding areas' It was at this point where I really started to question what I had gotten myself into. And it goes on 'The police force is young, inexperienced, and under·funded, and the judicial system is weak, overcrowded and inefficient. Criminals, armed with an impressive array of weapons, know that there is little chance they will be caught and punished for their crimes.' I was a little scared, to say the least. Yet, I held back the tears saying to myself, 'Amy, you're going to be a doctor, you can't cry in public.'
So I went to the bathroom.

But all was well. Victor was there and the hotel had free deep rock water, high speed internet and hot showers. What more could you ask for? The following day I took a first class bus to Quetzaltenango. It's supposed to be a four hour ride, although with some minor traffic and construction projects, the trip took just over six hours. But the scenery was great and the road side culture was quite impressive.

A woman, from the school I'll be going to, picked me up from the bus station and drove me to my homestay, located just across the street from the school. I have my own room located outside of the actual house. It's big enough to do yoga in (as soon as I can find a yoga mat, for the carpet doesn't look like it's been vacuumed in quite some time). The bed is big, which I was really excited about until I knocked the wind out of myself when I laid down on it. It's hard as a rock, and the pillows are armchair cushions in pillow cases. But really I can't complain because the supermercado sells soft pillows for about two dollars. The room has two decorations: a poster of the rocky mountains (a little ironic) and a three paneled mirror. The mirror is actually quite humorous. The middle panel is the mirror and the side two panels are illustrations of young blond girls. The one on the left is wearing a straw hat and holding two baby pigs; one dressed in a picnic table pattern dress and the other wearing overalls and a cowboy hat. The other girl, in the right panel, is washing a cockerspaniel in an old fashioned bathtub. I would love to find one of these for my room at home.

My homestay mother has two children; a sixteen year old girl and a 28 year old boy (Gabriel). About half an hour after I arrived, in the midst of unpacking, Gabriel knocks on my door and asks if I want to go with him and some other students to the xela futbol game. I speak too soon and jump all over the opportunity. I've never seen a professional futbol game. So not only did I watch the game, I sat in the rain for three hours before the game started in order to 'get good seats'. I brought my snow coat, figuring that it was water proof. But quite to my surprise, no it's not. By the start of the game, water was coming through my hood and dripping (as in water droplets) down the side of my face. I had on these great new pants that I bought from REI, which apparently have great capillary action because not only was the rear of the pants wet, but the entire backside was drenched, from tailbone to ankles. How exhilaratinging. Speaking of exhilarating, the fans were quite a spectacle. There were about fifteen boys with large drums who played the entire game. Before the game there were people throwing around bags full of newspaper scraps which were thrown as confetti as the team came out onto the field. Imagine pieces wet newspaper stuck to umbrellas, coats and dark black, greasy hair. Everytime the team scored firecrackers were thrown onto the field from the stands. Oh and I almost forgot the cheer. The drummers would drum and the fans would sing. I asked Gabriel what they were saying and it was something along the lines of 'we didn't come to see the keeper, because he's not really a keeper he's a bitch from the whorehouse'. He follows with 'it's a rhyme'. Xela (quetzaltenango´s nickname) won, 2 to 0.

Well I'm off to buy that pillow and some scotch tape so I can tape some of my pictures from home to the walls. School starts tomorrow at 8.