Guatemala #1

The funny thing about writing is I'm going back and reading my friend Anne's posts now. She was there before we were, and is still there now. More on her later. Like pictures. So we started out getting up, taking the El to O'Hare (I bloody hate O'Hare, but taking public transportation with your parents is somehow interesting, almost anachronistic in a way...?) and chilling out there. We flew to DFW and had a little layover, and saw these two sculptures there:

My dad trying to decide why someone would make this...thing.

Then we arrived in Guatemala City. No shock yet, but humorous to fill out little forms about our state of health (worry about the swine flu, which I of course told everyone there I had (okay no I didn't) and we were greeted by people collecting the papers, while wearing dust masks. We got picked up by a nice lady named Gilda who drove us to her house where we stayed, slept, had breakfast, and an early drive to the bus station to take the bus four hours to Quetzaltenango, traditionally known as Xela (shay-la) from the Mayans.

Gilda's place:

We drove four hours in not a bad bus, on some pretty bad roads through the mountains, all of which were being constructed as if they were just recently brought into existence at all. They were often dirt with a lane of concrete that was maybe or not blocked off. Never know. The lanes were constantly changing. The scenery was great though. We got a rest stop some random place, and I slept a bit, also reading Musicophilia (by Oliver Sacks, a psychologist, writing about people with different music disorders and obsessions or abhorrences, which I'm just finishing now) and writing in my journal. This is where I shall finish post #1. Pictures.

Every bit of countryside that wasn't forest or an actual house was cultivated farmland, no matter how steep. Looked pretty cool. And hard to work.