I think Sundays are some of the worst days for homesickness in Guatemala because weekends were religiously relaxing for us in the states. We’d go to the park, have brunches and/or picnics with friends, enjoy the sun, the snow, the rain, whatever the weather; we’d work on projects. Sunday could be extremely social or extremely introverted or well balanced between the two. Now I think of Sunday, the way it used to be, as a reflection of how much power of choice and freedom we had then, that, while we enjoyed it all, we never knew how different things could be. Here, no matter the day of the week, people will wake us up at 6 or 7 for some non-sequiter request. Where we can go is limited (no car for Sunday driving to fun destinations), and we HAVE to go to the market early Sunday morning if we want to eat any produce for the week. The market is a lot of work. Our close friends and family who know us best, who understand us, aren’t here to share with. Sundays often feel like any other day of the week, and frankly I think it’s quite a shame. But the memory of the good old Sunday gives me something to look forward to in fall of 2010.

Once we bid Elke fairwell, we had a whopping four days in site before we had to leave again. Elke left on Saturday mid-morning. On Sunday after returning from the market, I was cutting up strawberries to make a crepe sauce for brunch. We’d decided to try and make the best of our first full day at home and alone in weeks. After all, it was Sunday. Why not try and recreate the old ambiance, but with the unavoidable addition of the visiting neighbor kids? And sure enough, they came. Delvin and Michelle apparently caught on to the air of relaxation in the house as I invited them in. We were dancing around to our music and cooking. They always ask for food, and I like to share so I was slipping them every third or fourth strawberry. I turned around and laughed out loud, as they were laying on their backs on the floor, legs bobbing to the music, eating strawberries. They were the amusement for our relaxing Sunday. Often I think kids make Peace Corp what it is for almost all volunteers. Sometimes the kids drive me nuts when I just want to be left alone and they’re outside the house yelling whatever version of our names they’re able to pronounce–very rarely is it the correct version–, but more often than not they’re pretty fun to have around. And as for Sundays, well, we just have to make of them what we can. They have their bright spots here too, and this life is awfully temporary in the big scheme of things.

Sunday and Monday were filled with marimba music, of course. Monday there was a big parade in town, with kids from almost all the local schools marching. It was quite festive. We had to get up and out of town by 7 so as not to miss it. All the older kids in our family, Lucia, Galindo, and Lina, were marching and wanted us to take pictures of them, so we promised we’d be there. This is one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on Lucia’s face, and a very happy, healthy looking Galindo.

The parade had band kids (instruments are a thing often donated to Guatemala, I gather), groups of girls in traditional dress, random animal costumes, girls dressed as giant flowers, black beret and sunglass clad kids–I don’t know how they decided who got to/had to wear what costumes. One of the most amusing parts of the parade was watching how many kids suddenly tripped up on their dance steps as soon as they saw the gringos. If I’d had a dollar for every time… It was pretty festive, though lacking a bit in organization. For some reason, the people who planned the official route did not make it a circuit, but a one way march into a dead end that backed up. Consequently they had to have all the groups turn around and march back to where they came from, reducing the incoming groups performance space to half the original width, lots of confusion and running around trying to fix it, as three school bands played different songs simultaneously right in front of us. We had to laugh…and Fletch had to call his favorite school teacher to share the joy of the moment with him. ahaha. We were hung up on, but later he called back to make sure we were all ok.

Randomly, we met a local radio announcer, Lorenzo, as the parade was dying down. He’d spent some time in the states and spoke a bit of English. He was excited to use it to invite us on a tour of the radio station and show us how it worked. Once we got there, he asked us to share our impressions of their festival with the pueblo on the air, and he then thanked us for being honored guests. This part of the day cracked us up. You really just never know what’s going to happen here.

Tuesday we hiked almost an hour to get to the center of the festival in a bigger village halfway between here and the main town. The church yard was full of dancers in amazing costumes, and the valley was full of food and game vendors. The costumes from the baile de la conquista or the Dance of the Conquest, were pretty amazing. They were apparently rented from Xela/Quetzaltenango, a city some seven hours from here, because none of the dancers can afford to own the costumes themselves. We watched them for a while, but since we weren’t in our village and not well known in this area many of the spectators spent a lot of time watching us. I was really thankful Pedro, our Mayan language teacher, was coming to meet us soon. People are a lot less suspicious about us when we have a local guide. As soon as he showed up and people saw we weren’t some gringos who’d gotten lost and crashed their party, the dancers even started to include us in their routine. This was the bull, rushing Fletch. I love this picture where I caught one of the youngest dancers on break enjoying her cotton candy.

Ironically, after all the cold and nasty weather while Elke was here, it was warm and sunny all day from the time she left until we had to leave town again. The hiking to and from the festival was nice. We found a rare treat on sale with the fruit vendors after watching the dances–raspberries! So we bought a pound, hiked home, and baked a mini-pie, mmmm. I’m so thankful my mother-in-law taught her sons how to bake. Fletch makes the BEST pie crusts ever. While we were sitting eating the pie, drinking tea and coffee, staring out the windows at the clouds and trees on the other side of the valley, I thought out loud, “Man, I really wish I had something interesting and new to talk about with you. I feel like this dessert warrants better conversation.” He laughed out loud and said he was thinking the exact same thing. Ahhh, some day we’ll be interesting to each other again….This is probably Peace Corps biggest challenge to the marrieds. But the pie was awfully tasty, and the day was pretty, so we just concentrated on those things. And we could easily be our unmarried volunteer friends, who sit and eat the whole pie by themselves wishing they had company.

I think the feria made us grateful, once again, for not living in town, where most of the loud raucous partying was going on. We had a lot more freedom to choose to be or not be part of the activities. We didn’t have enough energy to go to the marimba dancing in Temux on Sunday night, and all the other dances were in town. We spent the last night of the feria staying the night in Santa with Pedro, our language teacher, and his family, as we had to leave earlier than the first bus out of our village to get to our mandatory meeting in the capital. This did allow us to see the torritos, a hilarious and dangerous little thing they do to celebrate around here. I have a feeling the point, at least originally, was to mock the Spanish, much like the dances. I mean, someone runs around with a box on their head pretending to be a bull, as fireworks shoot off in all directions, and the bullfighter antagonizes the “bull” then runs like crazy to escape the fireworks. It was remeniscent of the correfoc in Barcelona–a parade of demons that all had fireworks attached to them and went off all over the packed streets of the barrio gottico. However, in Barcelona the spectators were much better prepared. Everyone goes dressed head to toe in jean jackets, hats, and hang damp towels and handkerchiefs over their heads and faces. So the parade is a parade of demons that explode over what looks like an enormous crowd of bandits. Here, there was lots of out of control fireworks and people just hoping nothing would happen to them while watching the show. They always seem to leave these things to la voluntad de dios, the will of God…but no one was hurt this year. Yay. Or should we say, thank God for small favors?

Pedro was a very happy host. His family has been offering us a place to stay, if we ever need it, since we arrived. The weather was beautiful and he got the opportunity to do something I think he’s wanted to do for a while–invite Fletch to have a beer with him. He asked my permission first, since he has a wife who was raised in an extremely anti-alcohol family. Ever the gender bender, I asked him if it would be ok if I joined them, and he seemed happy about that. I got a lot a looks at the bar, but the weather was perfect for a beer, and, hey, we are trying to challenge people’s norms a little here. I definitely think Pedro is one of our best friends here, as he seems to be the closest to really understanding who and what we are. I wish I could feel the same about his wife. She’s really nice, but she has very limited Spanish, and I have very limited q’anjobal for the time being, and she definitely is a doting host. I’d like to get to the point where she lets me help out some, and doesn’t feel obligated to serve me, but that might be very wishful thinking.

The only marimba dancing we did during the festival was in the kitchen at Pedro’s house, with his ancient mom and dad, his sister Lucia (also the nurse in our village and how we met Pedro), and her 8 year old son Ronald. Everyone loves to see us dance, and they always comment on how great we are at it, which kills us, because the dance is SO simple and easy. The thing is, we never seem to escape it entirely, but I much preferred the private kitchen setting, where everyone actually joined in, to the great big rooms of people who stop to stare at us dancing at the big parties. It was totally worth it to see Pedro’s tiny little Mayan-to-the-core parents laughing and dancing along with us. I bet they never imagined they’d come to know a couple of giant gringos who’d dance to the marimba in their kitchen. It was fun and funny, and we were so caught up in dancing Fletch didn’t get a single shot in…so you’ll just have to imagine it.

I fell dead asleep after the dancing, but Fletch stayed up shivering with the beginnings of a fever….bleh. And so ended the Festival of Santa Eulalia.