Out of the Mouths of Tourists

We´ve just ended our third day of Spanish classes in Antigua and our brains are full to the point of bursting. I´ve been conjugating verbs in my sleep and I still feel like I´m talking like a five-year-old.

The town seems to be full of tourists in a similar boat, though, and both Geoff and I are definitely improving and able to converse with our respective teachers, Jose and Ninette, and with our wonderful host family.

Our mother for the week is Dilia, who is a great cook and loves to chat - a perfect fit for us. Her youngest daughter works in a glass museum and is a budding artist in her own right. We´re hoping to visit her at work later in the week, but for the time being there are plenty of things to gawk at just wandering around the city. Three large volcanoes surround Antigua and one called Fuego is still active - hopefully not too active. In the mornings when we walk to school, the view is stunning, especially past one of the many amazing ruins that dot the city (a picture of this coming soon!).

We´ve been taking some side trips too, on Monday to a fascinating museum called Casa Popenoe, a colonial mansion that had collapsed during the earthquake of 1773 and was rebuilt by an American avocado exporter who worked for the United Fruit Company in the 1920s. Perhaps the best part is its top-floor aviary which has dozens of built-in birdhouses for doves once charged with sending messages from town to town - the first Internet, according to our surprisingly understandable guide (who spoke very slowly and with perfect diction).

Today we visited another small town called San Antonio where the women basically use a belt to strap themselves to a loom and weave colorful textiles with intricate patterns on both sides. Very distinctive and very beautiful.

So far, the people we´ve spoken with have talked only indirectly about the country´s decades of turbulence in the not-so-distant past. But everyone seems to agree that corruption among politicians is still rampant, that the capital city is particularly dangerous and that so many foreigners have moved to Antigua that the houses are now priced well beyond the range of nearly all Guatemalans. One apparently sold recently for $9 million.