I sucked it up and brought most of my clothes to the lavanderia this afternoon and I´m terrified that single socks will be missing. Oh the things I worry about. And I´m not sure why, since I´m sure I have an abundance of wickedly colorful clown socks to choose from here. I just handed a plastic bag of mi ropa to the teenager who simply said ¨Wash and dry?¨ and told me to return at 6pm. Entonces, por supuesto, I return around 6:25 and the place is shut down for the evening. If I see some teenage kid wearing my Mickey Mouse t-shirt and one of my erroneous socks around Xela tomorrow, ¨XelaWho¨is going to have another international incident to cover.
So I decided to stick with Carlos next week, mostly because I couldn’t be bothered switching at this point since I’m only staying at Celas Maya for one more week. And today my brain just couldn’t process any English, let alone Spanish. Last Friday was a little frustrating at school too. I’m generally not used to speaking so slowly and today, at the sound of the 1pm bell after five hours of what seemed to be really slow and painful conversation and lessons, I instantly started rambling away in English. I was making up words left and right today, and while Carlos is really amused by this, I’m a little worried that I may have hit a wall. I may give it a rest this weekend and focus totally on work. Poor Lety, my coworker here at Proyecto Payaso—we were laughing today at my sorry attempts at trying to speak some Spanish to her. She has a great sense of humor and corrects me when I use wrong tenses and palabras and we have had some successful conversations. I also had a sweet conversation with her 8 year old daughter this week, who is learning English and French in school. I’ll tell you one thing, I never seem to have any trouble talking about food in Spanish, though. Today I happily agreed to cook dinner for Lety and Stef next week and was able to rattle off an entire menu AND how I will prepare the meal. Maybe I can get a job in a kitchen when I return to NYC.
As promised, here are more pics of Maximon/San Simon along with some descriptions of what was going on.
Enjoy the weekend!
oh Trisha!!!!!!
this is fantastic!!!!
I feel like i am there xxxx
You are here chica wica!!! I love it up here in the volcanoes, and you would too! I was just in Panajachel last week and it looked so different than it did 4 years ago. Such an incredibly beautiful and interesting country…too bad it´s always raining, but it actually doesn´t bother me that much. If you can figure out how to post your pics of Maximon/San Simon from the Lake, it would be so cool to see the comparison! I think you just hit the little button up above that says ¨img¨. Yo sé, yo´se, but I thought I´d throw it out there anyway. xoxox
Don’t be so harsh on yourself. Maybe over-studying.
Love these pictures. All of this going on while Mary is being paraded through town?
LOVE YA
Yup. Although, believe it or not, Maximon is a Catholic saint. Most Mayans are Catholic (although I heard from a few of my cultural sources in Xela…i.e. Lupita, Michelle and Carlos…that the country has changed a lot in the past three or four years and is close to 50% Evangelist). When the conquistadores arrived with their customs and religion, in order to make it easier to convert the Mayans to Catholicism, they had allow certain concessions. And I´m sure Mayans also continued to practice rituals and worship in their own way, based on their own belief system, you know, when the Spaniards weren´t looking. There are so many interesting little twists in the way Catholicism is practiced here. I´m going to post some of the pictures of Mary on the platform that I took with my phone next week, because that ceremony is cool example of the result of Maya/Catholic syncretism.
Love ya,
xoxo
Hey love all ur pics thi thi!!!!! Hi amelia read this mes. 2!!:) I love the piccccc and i love tht baby with chubby cheaks!!!! <3 TTYS xoxoxoxoxoox 😛
Hi cookie! I got to chat with Amelia today and we were looking for you online, littleface! Just regular chat. Hopefully I catch you online soon!!! I still have to send you some pictures of the girl by the lake who reminded me of you with the cutest little puppy. This week……that baby with the chubby cheeks was so cute. All the babies are really cute here…love you xoxox