Written October 17 2009
Today was a day full of surprises. Monday Thursday and Saturday are market days in Antigua, whereas Sunday is the only day there is a market in Santo Tomas and even then the market is smaller than the market in Antigua on an off day.
Zuleika and I planned to go to the market to buy me a sweatshirt, a pair of scissors and a soap dish. When I mentioned to my host sister that we were planning to go to the market she offered us a ride with them because they were leaving in an hour to go shopping for the baby shower of the baby that might be being born right now. That is, my host brother’s wife (my age) might be at the hospital and might be in labor depending on whether or not I interpreted correctly the frantic dash out of the house by my host mother and her mile-per-minute Spanish.
So anyway, this was pretty exciting right, a free ride to Antigua with my host family and not having to take the camioneta and spend forty minutes commuting to Antigua.
Well, Car turned into pickup truck and pickup trucked turned into we’re leaving get in lets go. So regardless of whether it was a good idea or not Zuleika and I rode to Antigua in the back of my host Grandfather’s truck with a bunch of other people.
We got to the market and they were like “meet us back here at twelve” but Doce in Spanish means twelve and Dos means two and when people speak in really fast Spanish I get them confused and I thought we were supposed to be back at two. Thank goodness Zuleika was there to correct me an hour and a half later.
Pretty much we wandered around AKA got lost in the market for an hour and a half and didn’t find any sweatshirts that I liked but we did find my soap dish, a DVD for a dollar, and a box of trash bags I needed. I almost bought a small backpack but I couldn’t tell if I was getting the gringo price or not so I decided not to.
We then decided to go get some lunch at 11:15, me thinking I had plenty of time and Zuleika just not knowing how long it would take to eat in a Guatemala pizza restaurant. It ended up being really cheap pizza an absolutely delicious to eat good American food for a change.
We finished lunch with enough time run back to the market to meet my family, unless of course we decide to look for some cat litter for the kitten that Marguerite got for free yesterday. Next thing I know we are heading to the bodegona to buy cat litter. And by head to the bodegona I mean we went and got French fries and a coke at McDonalds on the way.
Let me tell you about this McDonalds. Antigua has regulations requiring every building to be constructed in authentic colonial style, so this is like the nicest McDonalds you have ever seen. Exquisite tile floors, chandeliers, and an entire outdoor courtyard complete with an ornate fountain and shaded tables with luxurious seats and a picturesque Ronald McDonald statue overlooking 4000m Volcán Agua.
After we finished eating for the second time, Zuleika wanted to sit in the McDonald’s and read her book so I went looking for what literally translates as “a type of sand that a little cat can make the bathroom on”. In other words, Zuleika didn’t know the word for Cat litter. I soon learned that the reason the cat was free to foreigners is that it’s the only store in town that sells cat food (the locals just feed their animals chicken scraps or let them fend for themselves…) and so if a foreigner gets a free cat they have to buy the food and cat litter from that one single store. Monopoly anyone?
So, after that we went walking to see the church that Zuleika insisted she wanted to go see, which turned out to be closed. But on the way, we were just walking down the street and this man who was running a lemon and orange cart on the other side of the cobblestone street calls out to us and says “ay yo, you look like you should buy some weed. You want? C’mon it good” which was probably the last thing I was expecting. For one it was one of the longest phrases I had heard a street vendor memorize, but also, I was not expecting to have someone ask me in English to buy weed in Guatemala, especially not because there’s generally a much larger stigma against drugs amongst the people who live here. It just caught me off guard, that’s all.
After this, I had to use the bathroom so Zuleika was just like “that looks like a good place”and leads me into a very fancy private bed and breakfast and just starts wandering around inside looking for a bathroom. After we find one, she just starts exploring the hotel. She goes and finds the pool, through the back rooms, peeks in all the windows. I felt so uncomfortable. She claims she asked permission but I’m not entirely sure I believe her…
After we spent 16Q and two and a half hours in the internet café, most of which talking to the Senegalese fellows and Adri on skype, we caught the camioneta back to Santo Tomas. The bus driver scammed me out of a Quetzal saying that it was 5 Quetzales to ride the bus on the weekend which according to Yoli and my host mom was a lie.
When we got off the bus, the camioneta dropped us off in the middle of a funeral procession of over 500 people. It was pretty cool to see the casket being carried throught the streets by hand to the cemetery which was down the street and up the hill from my house. We looked pretty odd. We were the only ones not wearing black, and I was carrying a bag of cat litter…
After we finally got home, my house was a frantic mess because they had just learned that the baby was on the way and everyone was going to the hospital…
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