Taxidermy

Xela is proving to be a wonderful city!!! I have a little "family" at my hostel: we go to movies together,, take day-trips, make meals, and whatnot. I'm still loving the markets, and went to the biggest one in the city last week. All the food is so delicious (I got lentils, flax seed, and sesame seed, because we can't find those as easily at the market by the hostel). When we were there we tried some tamales and little animal-shaped waffle thingies. I've made all sorts of oatmeal creations, spinach and snow peas with a boiled egg, sweet bell pepper tomato sauce, temphe caluiflower snow pea curry, lentil soup (with my delicious sprouted lentils), cream-of-pumpkin soup, and Martin (one of the fam members) makes us delicious, usually veggie treats!

We also had a pastry-tasting one night, where we bought a bunch of different sweets from Xelapan, and cut them up so we could try them all. Then we giggled off our sugar high.

In the evenings I've seen some movies, including Australia (hilatious, with "hottie McTight-Shirt"), Milk (highly recommended), and Tropic Thunder. Also, some great documentaries about the Guatemalan Civil War and local conflict/struggle on the coffee and banana fincas. I also saw the Los Monologos de la Vagnia, which was wonderful! And I've been reading some good books, including "I, Rigoberta Menchu."

My volunteer job turned out to be nothing like I thought it would, but it's been a good experience! I'm teaching art at an after-school program for local gradeschool children. The school is about a 20 min walk out of town, and there are some really fun volunteers.

Last weekend we took a chicken bus to Momostenango for their market day. It was fun to see everything set up, and we had choco-mango and choco-banano, before sitting down to eat soup and tamalitos. On the way back, a preacher-man on the bus got mad at all of us white girls for not giving hime any money and we got a pretty nasty lecture about injustice and whatnot.

I also went to the Cultural museun in Xela with Megan and Jon, which is packed with tons of stuff and basically no information about any of it. The highlight, though, is the Taxidermy Room! That's right a room full of horrible taxidermy, fesuses (including human) in jars, dries "devils of the sea," two-headed cows, and a family of lions.

I'm loving this place, and the fam is going to make crepes tonight with our french friend, and then go to a documentary about Guatemalan fincas.