Weinie bar

Dear casting for spiderman, superman, anyone needing a super strong and fearless man, a real man's man;

Perfect candidates found: Guatemalan bus driving team.

We woke up at 5:30 after going to bed around 2:00 to make the first chicken bus to xela for the ultimate fair: carnival rides that have been sold or trashed because they no longer meet american safety standards, and any other regulations have been completely disregarded because here "risk" has a totally different meaning. I officially don't think you can call yourself a real addrenalin junkie until you have bungie jumped from a platform made of corn stalks and completed with discontinued american materials, with no directions or rules of operation.

I however have abandoned all intentions of being an addrenalin junkie since hiking 8 miles off a mountain with a broken back so I have no room to talk but seeing such an extremely different culture of non-fear did jolt me. Even though fun places like the fair highlight our differences we were all the most shocked by places of non fun but necessity such as the chicken bus.

At the end of a long but good weekend we made our way at around 5 to the bus terminal not sure if the last bus left at 5 or 6 or if they even ran that late on sunday, thankfully I still don't really know spanish because when we asked where the buses going to the capital were(we knew we were too late for a direct bus to san pedro) they said nowhere, gone, there were no buses left...while I was blissfully unaware they remembered there was one last bus that was running late so we followed at a run and made the bus, but the driver was running late and gets paid by trip rather than hour so we began rally-ing it to the capital. After several stops one of them including doughnut venders getting on and back off while the bus was moving it started to rain hard and get dark all at about the same time we made it to the major mountain highway. Here I started to notice the guy that wasn't driving would disappear after each stop out the back door and reappear in the front door much later.you could even hear him crawling around on top of the bus strapping on oversized cargo.every turn you can feel the outside wheels lift a little, we are taking turns at like 60mph. I'm afraid the bus is going to roll yet this guy is literally carrying heavy cargo on top of a tin roof then walking to the other end and swinging in the front door, hundreds of times a day, everyday.

Not quite as shocking, but everyone you meet here lives life so differently, I talked to a girl earlier today that said she wanted to sail the world so she literally showed up at a dock everyday asking people with boats if she could sail and after a week someone said yes and she grabbed her stuff and left that day. it makes you realize life is at our finger tips, we just have take it. So much is possible that we think is impossible,i was amazed for me it was a stretch to ride a chicken bus, yet for so many others the bar is so much higher.it made me wonder how many things we could do if we just believed them to be possible, or needed them to be possible, an artisan told me that for two years he used a drill bit and a deconstructed lighter as a mechanical drill because he needed to feed his family, and that was his work, he did what he had to do.every artisan I meet i am amazed, the ingenuity is amazing, like nothing I have ever seen, and I think its because of a culture with a mixture of nessesity and non fear. people seem to know they have to take charge of their lives and can't or won't let fear or anything else stop them. maybe im wrong and I just haven't seen the culture in depth and I'm sure I will change my mind again but for now I'm amazed I wonder what could happen if these people had access to the resources we do, if they would turn into us or if they would freakin make things happen?

I kissed a drunk girl

One of the many best parts of the night:

Girl in bathroom stall "i can't get out" boyfriend outside,"the lock is inside, you locked it" me in another stall to girl"you can turn the light on its just a switch by the door, girl "i can't get out"boyfriend is knocking on outside of door"its right here look where I'm knocking".eventually she escapes her self-induced prison and sees me washing my hands and says"your cute, can I have a kiss?" Me,"sure"we kiss on the cheek, and me and her boyfriend both wonder was that such a good idea she did just lock herself in a bathroom who knows what germs she could have picked up...

I'm doing just fine now

Aprender the other side of ingenuity.

Every time my school has a conference or movie showing we learn new super depressing facts about the civil war, which is actually amazing because everwhere else no one will talk about it at all, its like they don't want to scare you away with the past, but its their past and I think travelors should know the people not just the places they visit.

The movie we watched was written produced and acted entirely by indigenous Guatemalans and it started with a man running for days to tell the closest village that everyone he knew had been slaughtered and his entire town burnt to the ground and that they were next and the town had to decide what to do, with little hope of survival. They have connections with the rebels but know they will still be drastically outnumbered, they tell the rebels and even though they were told not to act they come, but the leader is being drawn as a bit jaded, and hungry to make a point.eventually the people are faced with the choice to stay and fight or run to the hills and leave behind everyone that is not able along with everything they have ever known.they choose to stay but one msn who had already lost his wife and daughter to the war wants to leave but by this time the rebel leader won't let him and threatens him at gunpoint.when the other rebels hear one rebel confronts him and the leader calls them cowards that need to be forced to do the right thing.here was the most impactful thing I have heard in a while: the other rebel responds by asking what do you want them to do where were they meant to learn courage, they are a conquered people they survived by running one group after another has taken their liberty, their homes, their families, what do you expect of them, when that is all they know. How can you force them to be the casualties, even for a good cause, you are atoll forcing them to be your weapon. I was shell shocked and thought how can we ask why would these people elect a man that knowingly killed thousands of his own people to president? How can I expect these people to think like me,i have no idea what history has taught them or formed in them, and not ancient history but current history; middle aged adults were young adults during the last war, they have lived through genocide.

The film finishes with the questioning rebel letting the questioning villager leave and him immediately being captured and tortured by the army, and with the rebels realizing he would give away their cover and deciding to try and hide all the villages in a nearby cave, but when the army arrived they found and killed absolutely everyone, and only a couple of the rebels survived to tell the story.
Not only was I really impacted by the statement, and tragic true story but the really impressive telling of humanity.there was no one right side like I want there to be. the rebels obviously were better than the army, but they were still run by people that are suseptable to both good and evil and change in the face of really tough circumstances, like we all do. Its much less drastic but relevant to people today,i wrote earlier how amazed I was by these people, their ingenuity, and since then I have tried to see another side to the story. There is no right side, we are all human. My teacher keeps retooling me stories of herlife as I tell hermine and each time a think how can I possibly try to excision the greed in america our what not she reasons with a story exactly like mine or tells me of the drastic problems with alcoholism here, or I go hang out with freddy who taught me how he mcgivered a lighter into a drill, and he walks away for a min to go do a line. Even though I have always known it I have wanted to believe their is one right way, one good people, somewhere where they have it figured out, but I think we just have to work everyday to be the people we want to be.

Best christmas ever

Guatemala has a holiday called "day of the kids" for it we taught random kids how to slack line, parents play this wierd game where they compete to feed their grown children a bottle the fastest while the children are dressed in as many layers as possible, barney music plays on the tv all day long, children get cerviche and whatever else they want for meals, and the kids don't have to do any work all day. Pretty rad

No leche in la noche

So I got sick for the first time after having my first smoothie in a gringo bar but more interesting was my host grandfathers explanation of why it made me sick:

Supposedly milk is not the problem.milk is fine if you drink it warm in the mornings but during the winter, which it is here, at night, you can't have cold milk? Still not sure why but apparently this is a well know fact. Kind of cool,

Suggested Listening, sorry you have to copy and paste the link for now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDf5eUkLUnU
i am putting my videos on facebook, i just cant post them here

Going out with a bang... or not

"What exactly is a post tropical cyclone"

So on what I thought was going to be my last day in san pedro i tried to shove as much possible experiences in as I could.

On my last day of class my teacher asked me if I would go with her to a catholic brotherhood fiesta thing because her other friend she would ask was too peppy and as I speak little spanish I am generally a good  bet to be pretty freakin quite when surrounded by solely spanish and ancient myan speakers.

We walked to her house to grab me some bottled water because she knew I would get sick if I drank coffee made of regular water and then headed up another hill to the party.once we got close the path was covered with fresh pine needles to stop the dirt and dust from picking up and giving it a nice clean smell and fancy look.we were greeted by some of the brothers and sat at one of like five picnic tables and immediately served soup and tamalitos by other brothers and we sat and ate in relative silence while every 15 min or so they signaled everyone to plug their ears and set off a bomba which is exactly like a firework without any of the fire yet all and more of the bomb like noise and according to my host mom "only a couple of them are real bombs like in iraq" apparently she had no reservations in joking about bombs in a relatively unsafe country wroth a fairly ignorant gringa:) . Also apparently only the catholics in Guatemala set off bombas as the christians have something against them, luckily for me I lived across the street from the main catholic church in town and got to celebrate with bombas nearly every night.

After we finished eating I got a bag to take my leftover chicken to my favorite little shoe shine boys and we left.and that was it people filtering in and out for 25 min at a time and eating and leaving, sort of strange but cool at the same time.

For my second party of the day I went to the isreali house for yam kapur.there are about as many israelis in san pedro as Guatemalans and I figured I should experience their biggest holiday while I had the opportunity. On my way I passed my local buddy freddy no kruger who gave me crap for going cause he wasnt a huge fan of the israelis because they consistently won't even talk or acknowledge the locals and although they will spend a shit ton on food and hostels they will never buy from the locals only other isrealis.so as I left freddy tells me I can't fall for an isreali at this party I have to stick with the myans,i told him I would try.

At least in san pedro it wasn't that hard. I sat with some people that did a great job of explaining to me how the sky opens up every year at this time and the world is judged so if you have wronged someone in the past year you need to have already asked for forgiveness because if the person doesn't forgive you it doesn't count that you asked. I ate some delicious isreali food and amazing fresh isreali bread. After the feast we went over to a tent being built by quatemalans because they were not allowed to work on that day. the tent was segregated by a sheet into men a woman and the sermon performed in hebrew. It was very interesting but unlike the locals who are incredibly welcoming and friendly, I stood around alone for probably half an hour before anyone said anything or even acknowledged I was there, also unlike most guatemaltechos everyone spoke perfect english.

My final fiesta of the day was my first quinceanera, which I had helped make over 2,000 tamales for the night before. Except for the loop of 4 quinceanera songs this was almost exactly the same as my first quatemalan fiesta of the day. No pine needles because it was at a really nice house with grass, and with the additional blessing of the birthday girl, nearly 1,000 people passed through and quickly and relatively quietly ate then left.

I moved out of my homestay the next morning and the hurricane hit, mudslides closing off every route out of town. So started my departure from san pedro.