Viva La Antigua!

Ola los amigos! Antigua is fantastic and we're well impressed with how well our Sanish has come along. We can now, with a bit of improvisation and help from the friendly Guates, ask for everything we need and pretty get our point across. This has been largely due to the help of Clemencia y nos otros maestras, Rosy y Lesli. We've really enjoyed staying with the family and tonight will be our last meal with them. Last night we took a few photos so we'll post one on the site when we get a chance. They live in the old town part of Antigua and to get there you have to walk down the side of what seems to be the main street that traffic enters the city on. This means you get all the old American style school buses which have been painted magnificently, choking out big clouds of black smoke at you, while you're trying to squeeze past the oncoming pedestrians without getting flattened. It's all good fun. You also see alot of Toot toots, the Central American version of the African Tutus. Strange that the name's so similar. You finally get to the end of the busy entrance road and the road widens out into the typical cobbled streets that run throughout the whole of Antigua. Every morning at about 7.30 we have walked towards el parque central, where everyone gathers. Shoe-shiners of all ages (from 6 to 50), women selling ready sliced mango, papaya and pineapple, local school children, Spanish students and at the weekend lots of families out for a day trip from Guatemala City. We continued on past the square to our Spanish school where we worked for 4 hours, Dave with Lesli and me with Rosy, with a half hour break. It's been hard work and very brain straining but definitely well worth the effort. The house we've living in nice, quite small and basic, with the typical open air central area with lots of flowering potted plants and big concrete washing up sinks. Our room is comfy with our own bathroom with shower, specially built by Julio who is a builder by trade. He's currently building another ensuite room to accommodate more students which must make an enormous difference to their income. We're paying $130 for a week including meals. Obviously by Guatemalan standards that's loads of dosh. Rosy, my teacher, says she earns 10,000 Quetzales per year ($1 = Q7.5) teaching Spanish. Our meals have been yummy and very traditional which is cool. Lots of frijoles (refried beans), typical local veg like guisquil (pronounced: whiskil; a green pepper looking veg which is more like a juicy spud), a squash called guicoy and of course sweetcorn always served with lots of tortillas. We had a couple of nights off eating with Clemencia including Sunday, her day off, and so we sampled the tacos, fried plantainos and random meat (by Dave) in the outdoor food market outside La Merced, a very impressive cathedral. We haven't walked up a volcano, as you are seriously advised to go with an organised group accompanied by tourist police, and none of the trips organised by our school were at convenient times for us. This hasn't bothered us too much as it's very hot during the day and the views of all the surrounding volcanoes from the town are spectactular. El volcan Pacaya is active so it would have been good to see it in action, which it often is apparently, but maybe a little scary. Dave's dissapointed because we haven't seen any volcanic action and haven't had an earthquake either (Dave - except a few rumbles from Joeys bottom)! Ha ha ha :-) Sunday was fun, we went Margarita and Mojita crazy at some lovely bars and then joined the throng in the square for the catholic procession as it got dark. It was incredibly atmospheric as the procession came into the main square and past the huge main cathedral, led by lots of priest-like people in long purple satin robes (Dave - They looked like wizards to me) lining either side of the street and down the centre people swinging their metals balls holding burning coals and incense which smelled lovely (sometimes like cinnamon) and completely swamped the place with smoke. They were followed extremely slowly by three different 'floats' carried at shoulder height, with colourful statues of Jesus and Mary decorated in gold paint and flowers. The crowd around us added to the mood, all holding candles which glowed through the smoke. We took a couple of videos, so hopefully they have caught the atmosphere and the soulful singing coming from the cathedral. We bought some magnificent parajos de paradiso (birds of paradise flowers - my favourite) and roses for Clemencia at the huge market place to say thank you and have booked our bus tickets to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan to the north-west of here and leave at 7am tomorrow (Miercoles 22a Marzo). The littlest hobo is calling and we feel it's time to move on. La Antigua has been a fantastic place to spend the week learning un piqueno de Espanol.