The city blocks of Antigua are surrounded by solid store
fronts or walls about 20 feet tall. As I
look down the sidewalk I see the brightly painted walls on either side of the
road. Cut into the walls are regular
doors, medium sized doors and very large doors that a truck could fit
through. Occasionally one of those doors
is open and I catch a glimpse inside.
Some doors open up into beautiful gardens and fountains while others
open up into a number of small buildings and sometimes there is even a
road. As I look at the front of the place
where we are staying, I see two windows, a small door and a larger door. Within the wall there is a coffee shop, a
conference room, a preschool, some offices, a road, a bathroom, and the huge
church sanctuary. There is another big
door at the back of the road that leads to some sort of club or hotel. They were having a party last night; we could
see lights and hear music but, we could not see what was going on. My imagination goes crazy in this town
thinking about what could possibly be behind the closed doors. The other day I passed a beautifully painted front
and looked in the door to find a room filled with cardboard boxes. A couple minutes later I looked into a door
to find a courtyard with fountains and flowers surrounded by a yellow pillared
building. There are hotels, businesses,
schools, and small neighborhoods within the walls of Antigua, but you would
never know it to look at the walls.
A couple weeks ago I was on my day off looking for a couple
post-cards. I entered a typical souvenir
shop selling t-shirts, woven materials, and every other souvenir you can think
of in a rainbow of colors. The girl
working the shop looked to be about my age so I asked her what her name
is. She pointed to herself with a
surprised expression and said, “My name?”
Angelica and I ended up talked for a little while and she asked if I
would return someday. At the time I did
not know that if I would be back in Antigua or not, so I did not promise to
return.
After school today I decided to go back to see if Angelica
was working. Sure enough she was in the
tiny shop holding up a woven tapestry for an elderly tourist. She recognized me right away and greeted me
with a smile. In between customers we
talked and I shared about what I had been doing the last two weeks. She laughed when I talked about my poor
tortilla making and washing clothes by hand.
I learned that she has 3 brothers and 2 sisters and all of them are
married. She is not married and does not
want to be anytime soon because she likes the freedom of being single. The shop is open 6 days a week and she works
all by herself for about 10 hours a day.
Her sister lives in Iowa and she would like to move there, but the visa
is very expensive. Angelica is not willing
to sneak over the border in the desert like her sister did, so she will
probably stay in Guatemala.
For about 2 hours Angelica and I sat and talked. I started to teach her some English phrases
for using at work, “Please come in,” and, “How are you,” and, “What is your
name,” were her favorites. The time came
for me to go eat dinner with my team so I had to say goodbye. But, I asked Angelica if I could come back to
hang out another time. She excitedly
said yes and promised to study the English phrases for the next visit. I thanked her for the Spanish lesson and headed back to my team.
