A Very Full Weekend
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
So, I woke up on the morning of my birthday to cake, a birthday song on repeat from the stereo, and many hugs from my host family. They even set off some fireworks in my honor right outside the house before I set off for school. They are so fab.
Then Megan sent me on the aforementioned scavenger hunt, Zil made me a cake, and finally the three of us ate ENORMOUS amounts of Indian food before retiring to a cafe for Mango Mojitos. It doesn´t get much better than that.
Except that on Saturday, it did. In the preceding weeks, all of the students at our school had bought hundreds of toys to give to children in a small pueblo about forty five minutes outside of Xela. Saturday was our day to play Santa. Our school´s director explained to us that these kids had probably never had toys before nor had they probably received presents for Christmas. And so, our little Santa Parade into the Pueblo would be much appreciated. And it was. When we arrived, literally hundreds of kids descended on our vans. We proceeded to break a few pinatas, play a few games of something similar to Simon Says, and pass out a seemingly endless stream of presents. Oh, and get sun burnt.
Although it was hard to top a morning like that, we managed to do it by attending a Guatemalan Futbol game. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. We had to get there two and a half hours before the game began in order to get seats. Sparklers were passed around the stands, as were giant Pepsi balloons, confetti, and intense amounts of team spirit. In the moments before the game, so many fireworks were going off that the entire stadium was filled with smoke, paper mache mocks up of the other teams players were burnt in effigy while fireworks flew out of their heads. Everyone chanted “Vamos Equipo” until their voices were completely gone.
We were smart, however, to leave a little bit early before Xela supporters started throwing rocks at the supporters of the other team and the riot police who had been standing watch throughout the game began to tear gas everyone. As I always say, it´s all fun and games until somebody gets tear gassed.
Anyway. All´s well these days. We´re finishing up our last few days of Spanish School before heading out on our travels again. I´ll definitely be sad to leave Xela. It has been very good to me. Oh, tear.
-Sarah
(To see a lot more pictures, click on the photo at the top of this post)
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