the party's over

I write to you from the night before my post-grad unemployed streak ends. I'm really excited to get back in the classroom again, but I will be a little sad to see the lazy days go. The past couple days have been a whirlwind. Friday morning I got up and wandered around the city a little bit just to get the lay of the land on my own. Much to my pleasure, the whole city is laid out on a grid so unlike Paris, Amsterdam, various parts of Atlanta, it's really hard to get lost here. Which, as we all know, my sense of direction is my greatest asset as a person...not. So needless to say, I'm liking the city already. I wandered toward the town center, stopping in a couple old churches to admire the architecture - the churches here are gorgeous and are filled with very intense icons and statues. As I wandered I could see a set of ruins on the other side of town and so I ambled over that way to find el Museo del Santa Hermano Pedro which for a mere 5Q featured a museum dedicated to Brother Pedro, who was very influential in Antigua for his work with the sick and poor, and the ruins of an old church next to it. After long and hard consideration, I thought it was probably worth spending the seventy five cents-ish to go in. And indeed it was well worth it. The ruins gave me a gorgeous view of Antigua's surroundings and a pretty solid way to kill my morning.
Once I had seen all that I could see I wandered back toward my side of town. With a growling stomach and rain clouds looming in the horizon I opted to grab myself a quick lunch and head back to the house. That's the thing with Antigua is the weather changes an absurd number of times during the day. Wake up, it's pants and a sweater cold, middle of the afternoon, shorts weather, right around mid afternoon, raincoat weather, and then we go right back to pants and sweaters. It's a little ridiculous. But, I do love a good rain so I really can't complain. I've found that there's nothing better than sitting in the hammock strung out across our porch and reading a book as the rain pours down next to you. And that is exactly how I spent the remainder of my afternoon - which I know sounds a little lame, but with so many classes to teach this semester I've been trying to get ahead of the game with all of the novels that I'm teaching.
That evening the roomies took me for a night on the town.Tom in his ridiculous leather boots and JP and I in scarves - I honestly don't know why that turned into a thing but somehow it did. Since they're the only people I know in the country thus far, we've spent a lot of time together the past few days and developed a really quality baby sister and mother dynamic. They tease me like a little sister and look at me to hold their wallets so that they don't lose them after a few too many beers. Turns out, with a little bit of booze in them, their yoga poses get even more ridiculous and they can't keep up with any of their possessions. I can't even tell you how many times I uttered the phrase, "desculpa me, mis amigos son idiotos". Bless.
On Saturday morning we all woke up late and made very little effort to do anything productive except, of course, finding a way to stream the Auburn v. Arkansas game. I honestly thought that I wouldn't care about keeping up with SEC football after I left the country, but have since discovered that ignoring football season isn't really an option for me any more. I guess I did drink enough of the SEC Kool-Aid while I was down there. By the time Auburn was put on a weather delay (really, you guys can't play in a little bit of lightning?) Tom, our non-football fan, was getting antsy, so we wandered into the mercado to grab a little bit of dinner and then find a bar with ESPN so that we could watch the LSU game. By some stroke of luck that I still don't understand, while we were walking to the bar a carload of JP and Tom's friends who were coming to meet us happened to pass us on the street. I thought the boys were going to wet themselves with excitement as they made plans to meet at Reds, one of the few places in Antigua that will broadcast SEC football. For the next few hours we sat and I met the roomies' friends until they got bored of American football and insisted that we leave. From there the night is a blur of location after location after location. We must have covered most of the city bouncing around. Finding other friends in one bar, meeting a University of Tennessee grad and University of South Carolina grad at the next bar - both of whom were very excited to meet and argue football with a couple of other SEC fans (but really, what is there to contest when you compare them to Auburn?), then finding the same guys at the next bar, and finally (with a little push from my tired and wet - did I mention that it was raining too? - self) back to our place with JP and Tom, and I suppose mine now, friends in tow. So far everyone I've met has been really sweet and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that crowd. Now, for the rest of the weekend, i.e. Sunday, I'll leave that up to your imagination because aside from a quick brunch and some reading, I really accomplished nothing all day. And because my alarm is going off at 5:40 am tomorrow morning, I'm signing off for now to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of my neighbor's snorting (I'm talking about the pigs, not Tom's snoring)  First day of school tomorrow, I sure hope the other kids like me!
Buenos noches!
C.

greetings from guatemala

I lied about keeping you guys updated on the Great American Roadtrip. It was fun, we survived, Ester left Americanized...ish. There's the long and short of it.
The following seven days after her departure flew. I gathered my necessities, saw the people I needed to see, and before I knew it, I was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to pack for ten months. Luckily I had shifts of friends to help me whittle down what I could actually live without but didn't actually manage to actually get everything jammed into bags until about 1:30am.

Getting up the next morning at 6:10 was surreal. My parents threw my bags in the car, I checked into my flight, said a tearful goodbye to the 'rents, and was suddenly sitting at E17 trying not to think about this being the first time that I've been more than two hours from home for such a long time. But the Big Man looks out for me. A girl about my age sat down near me not long after my arrival, we gave each other the "up down" and exchanged polite smiles as girls are wont to do. We sat in silence until two uniformed security guards went coasting down the terminal on their bicycles. Without thinking I blurted out "well that's just ridiculous" because, well, seeing grown men bike through an airport is ridiculous. But that gave rise to a conversation that culminated into an exchange of contact information - my new friend having spent a semester in Guatemala already and was returning for another. Much to my luck, she had the seat across the aisle from me when we boarded the plane (which we discovered later was not actually her seat, but there were probably thirty people on the flight so no harm, no foul) and thus was able to help me figure out my customs form, then brave the customs and baggage claim together. We went our separate ways at baggage claim but we left with a promise to get in touch. Outside the airport I met Raul, the Christian American School shuttle driver and my ride to Antigua. We loaded my absurd amount of luggage into the car and took off. I quickly learned that he understood a little bit of English and spoke a lot of Spanish. Now, I took about five years of Spanish in high school and one semester of college. Needless to say, I'm rusty. I can understand a decent amount of what people tell me, or at least the gist of things but when it comes down to spitting out grammatically correct sentences a five year old could talk me under the table. But Raul persevered through my broken Spanish to tell me about the city and ask me questions about myself and my family. As we drove on the steepest mountain descent I have ever encountered he even introduced me to his wife, who turned out to be a billboard of a Guatemalan model. After about an hour in the car we arrived at the little town of Antigua. We bounced down cobblestones past colorful buildings, tuk tuks (sardine can on wheels, their version of taxis), and women balancing huge baskets on their heads. Arriving at the guest house that will be my home for the next ten months, we found the owner, Jose, and one of my new roomies, Tom. I got a brief tour, carted my things upstairs to my room, and then was whisked into the back of Jose's car to have lunch. "This will be authentic" he bragged. And authentic it was. About thirty minutes later a woman in colorful, traditional Guatemalan garb set before me a bean soup with a hulking chunk of chicken placed in the center, complete with neck and attached wing. Yum.... At first I just stuck to the soup, which was very good and when I was left with no other option, attempted to saw off some of the chicken meat. Seeing my struggle to politely carve off pieces of meat, Jose's girlfriend jumped in to help, showing me how to break it off along where the rib cage would be. Now, I'm not a picky eater, but watching that chicken crack open made my stomach do a somersault or two.
Now, at this point I've been in Guatemala for a full 72 hours and if I gave you the full blow by blow, we'd be here all day. But rest assured that I'm settling in and well taken care of. Jose, the owner of this guest house is the nicest man I've ever met and has made me feel very comfortable in my new digs. Speaking of which, have exceeded all expectation. The house itself has four bedrooms, two kitchens, and a living room laid out in a square with an open courtyard in the middle. I live on the second floor with my two roomies, Thomas and JP, fellow teachers who have adopted me into their "wolf pack". This is my first go round with having boy roommates - luckily we all have our own bathrooms so it's more like we're neighbors than roomies - but so far so good. We cook together and enjoy meals on the building's roof which overlooks the three volcanoes that surround Antigua. I've taken to drinking my morning coffee up there and the view is so unreal that sometimes I have to pinch myself. The only drawback is that we live right next door to a little carnicerita that specializes in fresh pork, like, real fresh. So yesterday we were treated to the dying squeals of today's chichurrones (pork rinds). Horrifying. But, luckily, brief.

My roomies have been great so far, seems like it's going to be an easy year living with them. We took a little adventure yesterday to the mercado, a covered maze of women and children selling corn, dried beans, rice, fruit, vegetables, meat, hair products, clothing, jewelry, chicken heads (not a joke), anything you could ever need. And today we got on one of the re-purposed school buses that run all over the country for another excursion. Without a real destination in mind, we climbed aboard figuring that we would get off whenever we saw something interesting. Right before the bus departed the "station" - I use station lightly because it was pretty much just a dirt lot right behind the mercado - two white girls about my age jumped on board. It didn't take long to spot their black name tags, marking them as representatives from the Mormon church. I watched them make their way through the bus, stopping to speak to all the riders. They reached the back of the bus where we sat and before long struck up a conversation with us. The girls were really sweet, asking us about what we were doing and where we from, offering advice on places to visit. In turn we asked them about themselves and their mission. Apparently Mormons can get sent anywhere in the world for their mission, no preference list or anything. Sounded a little intense for me, but had to admire their devotion. They hopped off the bus a little while longer, leaving us to decide where we were going to disembark. We landed in a town whose name I couldn't tell you. All I know is that when we arrived in a place that was crowded with storefronts, we evacuated out of the back of the bus. Upon exiting, Tom said to me, "don't look left". So naturally, I looked left and saw some dude peeing on the side of another bus. That's Central America for you. Famished from our super strenuous bus ride (sarcasm, just to be clear) we found a little restaurant advertising fried chicken and sat down to have some of the most delicious, cheapest, and neck-less chicken I've had in a while. With full bellies, we set off for the market which was far larger than the one in Antigua. We explored the aisles for a while, pausing to sort through piles of boots or examine some dehydrated seafood. With a pound of dried fish for Tom and a pound of dried hibiscus flowers for me (I'm going to make hibiscus tea with them - mmmmm) and a storm brewing in the horizon, we headed back to the bus. As some of you may know, college football started today. And between me, the Auburn grad, and JP, the LSU grad, there were certain priorities to be taken care of because of it. So, upon arriving back in Antigua, JP worked some of his techy magic and managed to stream the Texas A&M v. South Carolina game which took up the rest of our rainy afternoon.
I think we're all caught up now. Pre-planning starts next week for school so until then I'll be getting to know Antigua. It's safe to say I'm in for an adventure!

roomies take a bus selfie!

Oh, before I sign off for this evening. One part of our daily routine has become "Tom, JP, and Caitlin do Yoga" - I'm not sure where this came from, the roomies were doing it before I got there, but the guys like to make fun of people who take yoga and the yoga culture really seriously. So, every day we take pictures of poorly done yoga poses in various places and post them on instagram with all sorts of absurd and nonsensical hashtags. Check us out on instagram if you want a laugh at: tomjpandcaitlindoyoga
That's all for now. Buenos noches amigos!
C.