Xela (again)

Okay, so maybe I'll try and summarize as best I can the time since I left the group.

I caught a bus back to Xela - first class- which means they only stop, well, everywhere. The bus stops, the guy jumps out and runs around yelling xelaxelaxela at everyone in sight - then a few vendors will jump on, hand out snacks, give speeches about the snacks from the front of the bus - then come back around and take them away from anyone who doesn't want to buy them. This happens about every 10 - 30 minutes the entire 5 hours. Soon I will experience a regular bus, and I can't even imagine what they must be like.

So I returned to Xela, and spent a few days staying back at the now familiar Casa Dona Mercedes and wandering the town exploring and checking out the different Spanish schools - of which there are many.

As it turned out, my timing couldn't have been better - a couple of days after I got back was the 68th anniversary of the local soccer team Xelaju, and so they gave the team a new bus, and had a HUGE event in the Parque (note I have spelled Parque wrong every time until now - thanks Spanish school) Central. It is hard to think of a comparison to this event, soccer here is a religion of it's own, and so this was like another Christmas for the locals.

The team drove around in their new bus, then had cake on a stage built for them while a (I believe) rather famous Guatemalan group sang. The mayor was there, and a bunch of other important looking people - I of course couldn't understand a word that was said, but it was still fun. After cake the real concert started, which was more of the first group, then a group of three women which are very famous here (the crowd went crazy for them, and the reaction was the same when a DJ played their hit song at a club here last Friday) so it was cool to be right in the middle of the crowd for the whole event.

Celebrations here also involve lots of fireworks - but unlike in Canada where we fire them off above a lake or the ocean, far from the crowd and high in the air - here they fire them from the middle of the crowd and only about 4 or 5 stories up - I actually got hit in the forehead with a piece of one - of course I'm fine, and it was awesome.

Many other events have occurred - most having something to do with the lead up to easter - the weekend before last I followed the procession of Jesus with the cross right into the main Cathedral and made offerings along with the locals, it was a very special thing to be a part of.

The procession, by the way, is much like the one I spoke of witnessing in La Antigua, but obviously on a smaller scale - though the crowd was about equal.

There have been 4 or 5 concerts - I haven't actually been counting so I'm not sure. And processions every week, I saw two or three of them - but at the moment I am busy doing other things like. . .

Learning Spanish. For some reason I had the idea that I would just go to school, learn new words (they of course would be easy since they were so similar to French) and then go off and speak Spanish.

I was wrong.

The idea of conjugation never occurred to me. Why? Probably because I can't stand grammar. Fortunately for me the conjugation is very similar to French, and so I picked it up very quickly - the problem with conjugation, it that you then have to learn all the new verbs to conjugate (I only learned present and a bit of future) and there are many verbs. In fact, the more I learn of Spanish the more sympathy I have for anyone trying to learn English - everything in our language is an exception, the poor souls! - and so the whole thing has been an excellent exercise in humility.

I am attending Celas Maya Spanish school, and staying with a very nice host family - so with 5 hours at school per day + the total immersion thing, I've come along fairly quickly and I think that when this week is finished and I hit the open road (so to speak) I will be able to get by. I find that I do quite well "in context" but general conversations are much more difficult.

So there it is in very short form. I would like to say a quick WAY TO GO CANADA from afar. I was able to catch some Olympic reruns (unfortunately on a slightly biased NBC) and also watched the Gold medal hockey game live with a few other Canucks - and I have to say, it was pretty easy to be extremely proud of our country throughout the entire time, and I'm sure the Special Olympics will be the same.

ps- watching hockey here is pretty funny, the locals think we're all completely insane.

pss - why no pictures? Too many pictures.