Welcome to Guatemala

Michelle: On Thursday our great Guatemala Adventure began in Guatemala City. We stayed downtown overnight because we had missed all the buses to Xela for the day.

Ryan: Hold on – let me show a map to those who missed their Guatemalan geography class. There you see the capital, Guatemala City, in the middle of the country and up in the mountains that run right through Guatemala from Mexico in the west to Honduras in the east. You can also see Quetzaltenango up In the mountains, west of Guatemala City. The Mayan name for Quetzaltenango is Xela (Shay-la), and that’s what everybody calls it here. We heard that Antigua has a richer history and more Spanish schools than Xela, but we decided to come here because we also head Xela is not yet completely overrun by visiting college students.

Michelle: To keep ourselves warm that night in Guatemala City we went to The Bee Movie. On Friday we left bright and early for Xela on the first class bus, which would be a little bit lower than the Greyhound. The main drawback being no bathroom in the back and no stops for bathroom breaks. They were all business and we made it up the mountains in 5 hours. The scenery was magnificent. I think that we had a view of at least one volcano at all times, which reminds me, on Friday night we felt a tremor. I thought that it was just Ryan shaking the bed, but when he admitted that he wasn’t doing anything, we ran for the doorframe just like in the movies. Luckily it wasn’t very big and we are alive and well.

Ryan: We felt another shorter tremor during Sunday School, no sleeping during that class! If someone wants to do a cool little project for me, you could go into your Google Earth program and find out what those tremors registered on the Richter Scale. I never tried it myself, but I think Google Earth has “Seismic Activity” as one of the fun options you can choose and play with. If it helps, the coordinates for Xela (Quetzaltenango) are Latitude: 14° 49' 60 N, Longitude: 91° 31' 0 W. We felt the tremors at about 8pm Central US time on Jan 4, and about 11am on Jan 6. The two volcanoes just to the south of Xela are called Santa Maria and Santiaguito. Thanks.

Michelle: Xela is a cute little town, even though it is the second largest in Guatemala. After we checked into the hotel we went Spanish School shopping. We walked around the city to our favorite schools to check them out. We decided on I.C.A. which has a website if you want to check it out. We did some wheeling and dealing so that I could only take two hours of lessons, but still have access to a desk to write my dissertation while Ryan is in class for five hours. Yesterday we had a class trip to San Andres Xecul which sports the most psychedelic Catholic Church that I have ever seen. We got to see a Mayan couple just married come out and enjoy the very loud firecrackers they set off. We also got to see some Mayan ceremonial grounds that are still in use right next to a small Catholic church. This makes it very convenient for people to hit both gods at one time when they are in need. Then we learned how they dye the string for their weaving. It was a really great time and Ryan was talking Spanish like no one’s business to our fellow classmates who are from Holland, Russia, France and the US. In the afternoon we went to the “old, dirty market” by the bus stop. What a treasure! It was kind of like the market in Masaya, Nicaragua, but not as big. There was a part that the US Health Department would close down in a heartbeat, something about every other table of cooked food for eating and then butchers with their raw goods out for sale. That has gastrointestinal problems written all over it.