Antigua, Guatemala.
Hello to everyone reading this blog. Tomorrow Team 61 says farewell to this glorious tourist trap and hello to…. San Juan village at Lake Atitlan (sp?). I am currently sitting at a bright yellow and orange particle board table right here inside ‘Pollo Campero’ writing this blog…. it’s the hot hang out here in classy Antigua. Not really. It’s actually an oversized fast food chicken chain where tourists like me and my friends can buy a $.60 cent soft frozen ice cream cone and have a free wireless connection for the whole day. Yay. The environment is less than inspiring. Yellow and orange, muffled restaurant music. It’s the price you pay to… not pay. My camera is dead but you can imagine. : ) Coldplay in my ears is taking the edge off.
So, rewind back to Mexico. By the end of our stay in Arroya Palinque, the locals had let go of their watertower suspicions of us and had really started to show us their beautiful golden smiles. They finally warmed up; I loved it. It was priceless. So priceless that I was about 20 minutes late to our farewell church service on one of our last nights in the village . I stopped to talk with a family sitting outside their home en route to the church. We started talking about trees for whatever reason, and how Colorado trees are different than Mexican trees. Communicating this point was challenging, so I used colorful markers and notebook paper to draw the typical Colorado scene (snow-capped peaks, log cabin with smoke out the chimney, burly bearded man in red and black plaid flannel with axe in hand, and lots of undecorated Christmas trees of all sizes.) I was intensely concentrating on my markers and failed to notice the throng of people that was gathering around me, watching the enfolding of this Sharpie masterpiece. At least 30 people were staring at me when I looked up; theirs is a culture that stares…. at EVERYTHING, however unexciting. I really was sad to go; I guess that was the point of that last story. The simpleness of their joy, the unabashed and unapologetic way they stare, their giggles when we would walk by, and the way they were wholeheartedly the people of Arroyo Palinque. That may not make sense. Essentially, we won each others hearts. It was a challenging yet very rich month of watching God do His genius work in so many hearts. For sure mine.
And then we raced. Now we are in Guatemala eating chicken and soft serve over our keyboards . More on Antigua later. Smiles with joy. : )
