Sexiest Halloween Costume in Xela

...you are looking at the winner of sexiest costume.

That's right. Chris was Michael Phelps for Oct 31 and won a prize at the Chocoyotos benefit party for New Horizons, a womens shelter for victims of domestic violence.

Here's a profile shot:

I know what you're thinking: "You're a lucky lady."

Happy Halloween!

If only...

Aw my gawd!

What do you get when you mix one part paranoia with two parts valium and five weeks of Spanish classes?

You get Ken, a forty-odd year old American who loves the local hot springs, "natural" Navajo cigarettes and likes to do good things with his money and wants everyone to know it. Lucky for the people of this country, he has chosen Guatemala as the location of all his future good deeds and financial generosity. However, the current economic situation in the USA is putting a damper on his parade. He stands to lose A LOT of money and is in daily contact with people in the secret service and family members that are high up in the government. Word has it that all the banks will fold and he has Trustafarian friends that have lost hundreds of thousands already.

The situation is dire and requires that he run around flapping his arms, speaking loudly in Spanglish about how much money he will lose and that he take more valium than usual. Unfortunately, mommy's little helper seems to have lost its effect. He also had to get up yesterday during a routine class meeting to apologize for freaking out and for offending people by speaking about mucho dineros. Ken's dinero is not for him though, he added while choking back tears, it's for the children he was going to educate at the escuelas he was going to open. I had to stuff my face with nachos to keep from bursting out in a howl. None of the teachers even raise an eyebrow anymore...or maybe the crazy doesn't translate into Spanish.

It seems that his Guatemalan girlfriend tried to cheer him up by putting a rat tail made of green yarn in his hair. To help with his luck she added a dreamcatcher contrapion at the end of it. I think the fact that she speaks no English and he speaks no intelligible Spanish will keep these two together for a long time and, who knows, perhaps I will witness a traditional wedding ceremony during my brief time here.

My New Love: El Rey

I think I may have discovered a new king to add to the list of musical talents I love. Move over King of Romance, there´s a new mustache in town, Vincente Fernandez.

Central America has been gripped by Estos Celos fever. The last few weeks the song has been on every radio station and played in every local cantina in town. It´s a great heart-wrenching ranchera lovesong, trumpets and all.

The man does have a striking resemblance to someone else though.... Someone from long, long ago...
It took a bit of internet research to figure it out and while I was online I discovered a great little book this hunking piece of 70s machismo wrote back in the day. First I must find a computer that will let me download some software but here´s the backcover as a teaser.

A brief stop in Tilapita

My attempts to save the lifes of unhatched seaturtles was unsuccessful last weekend. Instead the weekend turned into a beach fest with fourty other foreigners who had also been misled into believing that turtles appeared in abundance on the beach at Tilapita to lay their eggs. The notice in the XelaWho made no mention of the fact that none of the participants over the last three years had actually ever seen a turtle come out of the sea at midnight much less collected freshly laid eggs to take to the hatchery. Once we were given this information we decided to take Saturday night off and have a bonfire on the beach before returning to the concrete sweat boxes that were our hotel rooms.

The chicken bus on the way back was a brutal ride that erased all memory of the relaxing weekend on the beach. Chicken buses are ordinary American schoolbuses that are too old to use on North American streets and find their way onto Central American roads. Only now, they cram three people onto each bench and as many people as possible into the aisles.

Monday it was back to class with a fresh tan. Last week I had the ex-guerilla fighter as my teacher. He was an old geyser who joined the guerilla movement in Guatemala without the knowledge of his upper middle class family. He gave me a couple of very unexpected pep-talks and mentioned my origin and language skills to anyone who even dared to say hello to him on the street during our afternoon walks.

This week I´ve had the pleasure of experiencing the Guatemalan metrosexual. He lathers himself in sunblock while we sit on the roof under an umbrella and uses his index finger quite vigorously to rub his nose.

This is week three of language instruction and I am still not fluent. My spanish has improved a little. I am still stuck in the present tense but am making headway using the language during my five hours of class time.

Speaking to Guatemalans in English is still one of my favorite activities though. Monday night I met a nice university student that is part of another Spanish students homestay. Cancun came up in conversation and I swear he told me he saw on the Discovery Channel that American girls go there to participate in wet t'shirt contests. He then proceeded to tell me that fornication was abound during Spring Break and then it was only a natural progression in conversation to abortion. Apparently National Geographic has been making TV shows claiming that hippies loved to keep their aborted fetuses in jars around the house.

No conversation about slutty American girls and abortion is complete without a brief mention of the obviously raging hormones and unprotected sex Guatemalan teens are having. Jamie Lynn Spears and Sarah Palin´s daughter would not create a media circus in Central America for being pregnant. Girls in Guatemala, and Central America as a whole, get pregnant quite early and it doesn´t seem to be too much of a disturbance to family life with the parents. I´ve heard some travelers joke that it´s impossible to find a 16 year old Nicaraguan girl that isn´t pregnant. It´s definitely an obvious phenomenon but at least they don´t keep their aborted fetuses in jars. I don´t think the Mexican border officials would let them (abortion is illegal in Catholic Guatemala, so some people will take a quickie trip to Mexico to take care of things).

Xela and Juan Sizay

After two weeks of eating myself fat in Mexico we made it to Xela, Guatemala. It feels like a little hilltown but is in actual fact the country´s second largest city. Xela is in the northwest of the country and is best known to most travellers as a place for really cheap Spanish lessons. To my chagrin one week of being here hasn´t been sufficient for me to form sentences yet. I really hoped to be completely fluent by week three.

The school is great. Chris ended up with the local drunk as his teacher the first week which has been great fun for him. He owns a bar and has bloody mary´s for breakfast every morning while trying to teach Chris to conjugate verbs. My teacher is an older pyschologist who can´t find work outside of teaching Spanish. The students are a mixed bag of travellers and missionaries. Chris refers to the group of seven or eight American students who are on their way to an orphanage mission in Honduras as Jean Paul´s Army. At least one of them is definitely not looking forward to going to church every week for the next two and a half years. He told me this yesterday over a few shots of tequilla. Needless to say I like him best.

This weekend was independence weekend (hence the tequilla). I spent most of it frequenting various bars and going to the Santa Georgina hostprings outside town. It´s cool in Xela and there´s no hot water or central heating here, so soaking in scalding water was definitely called for after all those 30 second cold showers I´ve been taking.



Week two begins tomorrow. Jean Paul´s Army will be leaving after this week.