November 1

For someone who was tired beginning this day, i certainly should not have walked all over the city, again. But I did.

Class went well. We laughed quite a bit, which was really nice. A lot of students went with their teacher to the cemetery since today is a special day where everyone observes their loved ones who have passed away. So officially, today is a holiday, and I guess studying was optional, though I wasn’t given the option this time. Hugo made the decision for me. And he made the decision to stay at school. So anyways, I asked Alexia during our break how the cemetery visit was and whether I should go. She said it was interesting and that I should go, so I did.

After class I used the internet for a while, then left to go home for lunch. Suzanne was walking up the sidewalk when I walked out of the school, so we walked home together and talked in Spanish the whole way. She corrects my incorrect usage of verbs in the future and past tense since I don’t know those tenses yet. :-) When we arrived at the house, there was music playing and no one home. Lunch was on the table with foil on top. We sat down, uncovered our bowls, and found a mix-match of food, a typical Guatemalan meal on this particular day called “fiambre.” Well, I was very UNthrilled.

Literally, this was the first meal I just could not eat. It was cold. There were at least 5 different kinds of meat in there. Sliced hot dogs, sliced ham, chicken, pork, maybe beef, and something ground. Only the hot dogs and chicken were recognizable and edible. I tried the other meat, but my mouth freaked out not knowing what it was and scared of the way it looked. Yes, I was a wimp today. I admit it.

In addition to all this meat were vegetables. Beets, onions, cauliflower, baby corn, and something that looks like baby corn but instead it’s really skinny. There was also the same carrot, pea, and bean salad in there. The same stuff that’s really sweet that we’ve eaten many times in the last 2 weeks.

So basically, I was not happy and very glad that Adolfo and Anna weren’t home. I picked around and ate the hot dogs, chicken, and baby corn. And I ate more bread than I normally would. Suzanne didn’t like it all that much, but she ate most of it. actually, she ate the vegetables. Then we switched bowls and she ate my veggies and I ate her hot dogs and looked again at the other meat but still couldn’t eat it. we ended up leaving our bowls half full probably. I felt really bad about it and certainly didn’t want to offend anyone since this is a special meal for everyone, but I just couldn’t do it.

So anyways, after I finished picking at my lunch, I went in my room and made myself half a peanut butter sandwich. :-) Then I started walking toward the cemetery. I had planned to catch a tuk-tuk down to the park and then walk the 5 blocks to the cemetery. But today, of all days, there weren’t any that passed me without people in them already. In fact, I saw one with 7 people in it. I haven’t taken a picture of one of these things yet, but basically you can fit 3 adults in the back, if they’re skinny. But this one tuk-tuk was carrying 3 adults and 4 children, all in the back. I couldn’t believe it. there they all were bumping down the road.

So I walked and walked and walked and finally reached the cemetery. You have to walk through the market and bus station, curve to the left and walk through what reminds me of a county fair food area, and walk into a very beautiful, very different, very symbolic and religious moment in time. I tried to be respectful, quiet, somber even. I tried to be inconspicuous about picture taking. And for a while I sat down and watched families come in and put flowers down, pay their respects, and move on.

There aren’t gravestones. There are grave houses. A family will lie in one house. The house has gravestones on the outside, a door where you can put candles, flowers, statues of Mary or Jesus inside, stained glass windows, crosses on top, and many flowers, old and new, on the outside, either on the house or leaning up against the house.

Those that can’t afford to build a house (I assume), are placed in the outside wall with gravestones to show where that person lies. There are flower holders and hooks on that wall around each stone.

People come to the cemetery all day long. They bring flowers, wreaths, and crosses. Some even bring food and have a picnic around their family’s grave house.

There is a church in the cemetery as well. And either before or after visiting their loved ones, people go into the church, sit down in a pew for a few minutes, kneel down and pray, and then leave. On the steps in front of the church and the floor of the church was grass. (just like what the lady was putting in the street last Sunday night.) just inside the door were two corners with little ledges to sit on, so I chose the one on the right and another tourist chose the left. I sat for quite a while and watched the people and listened to the singing and chanting led by someone I couldn’t see. Of course, I couldn’t understand any of it, but it was interesting nonetheless.

It was a long walk home. I am very tired. My legs are really freaking out, as are my feet, and yelling at me to stay home tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was vegetable soup. But the vegetables were blended together. It was sweet and by the end of it, very hard to swallow. Thankfully we had rice to put in it (as we do with most soups) and bread. There was a lot of discussion around the table in Spanish, but I wasn’t really involved. I understood the subjects being spoken about because of such words like Nestle and Lucifer. But couldn’t chime in. I still hate that.