"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.
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