Adventures in Quetzaltenango
That´s me and my roommate Jessica at a dinner last night. Two volunteers had birthdays yesterday so we all went out to celebrate. The sangria was gooooood. So was the food.
Xela (Quetzaltenango) this weekend was kind of insane. My shuttle came to get me at 4am and then I sat in a shady empty bus station in Guatemala City for an hour and a half, waiting for a bus to take me to Xela. When the shuttle driver got there, the metal grates were down and they had to let me in. It was just me and a couple people who I´m assuming worked there. It was still dark at 5am when we got there, and the shuttle guy said that the driver had my ticket and "no problems." So I sat in the empty bus station, lit only by 1 lone lightbulb swinging from the ceiling like a scene from a horror movie, and then I looked out the window at the 4 abandoned buses sitting there and saw a naked man in one. It was still a little too early for me to do much other than vaguely wonder why the hell there was a naked man in the bus and why I was picked up at 4am if the bus didn´t leave til 6:30.
Anyway, people started coming to the bus station around 6 and when there was a mass exodus towards 1 bus, I figured maybe I should get on it. Nobody said anything about maybe getting on it, but I asked someone if it went to Xela and they said it did, though the bus said San Marcos and I thought that was a city by the lake (about halfway to Xela). I sat down and then someone told me to sit in a different seat. No idea what difference it made, but I did because it was easier to do that than argue. Then a morbidly obese woman sat next to me and squished me up against the window for the next 4.5 hours. At one point we stopped (slowed down slightly would be more accurate) for people to get off and we were next to a chicken bus, which legitimately almost killed the 5 snack vendors standing in front of it, trying to jump onto our bus to sell us things. The bus just MOVED without caring about the people in front of it, and they kind of screamed and jumped out of the way. I was only ever about 65% sure I was going in the right direction this whole time.
Then we got to the Xela terminal. I thought it would be more like the terminal in San Jose, where it´s a defined structure. No, it was just chaos. Absolute chaos. I was approached by a lot of shady men asking where I was going and if they could drive me there, since clearly I am NOT a guatemalteca. I politely said I knew where I was going (big gigantic lie) and went to find a bathroom and a place to put more money on my phone. Then I asked the police officers where a legitimate taxi was and went to the hostel Joanna recommended. The taxi driver was super nice and said my Spanish was good. That´s probably also a lie, but he was nice.
After checking into the hostel (about $5 for my own room, crazy), I went in search of an internet cafe to see if I could get in touch with Joanna at all, and eventually I found one that was open. I´d gone into a McDonald´s since they said you could get 30 free minutes of internet with the purchase of something from the McMenu, but after I ate the damn cheeseburger and fries that I didn´t really want, their server was down. Figures. Anyway, eventually I found Joanna and met her roommate, Juliette, who´s from France. We had coffee on a rooftop terrace that had a nice view of Parque Centroamerica. It´s kind of funny that they call it a Parque since it´s pretty much all cement, but whatever. Then we went back to their house (on the same block as my hostel) and ... we got followed and harassed by two men with crazy looks on their faces who would not go away and would not stop grabbing my ass. I´m glad there were 3 of us there. And I´m glad we ran across the street when a car was coming so that they had to stop and we didn´t get hit. I´m also glad I changed my travel plans so that I´m coming home a week earlier than planned and not traveling around this country on my own. The two men were really creepy and I was rather concerned there for awhile. Xela´s supposed to be really safe.
Sunday Joanna and I went back to that Parque and there was a market going on. The handicrafts here are really cool, but I didn´t really get anything since I have about 6 weeks left and I didn´t want to spend the quetzales I had left. I did get a scarf though, but I´m undecided about whether I´ll keep it or give it away to someone once I get home. I´d booked a shuttle home the day before, and this time I opted for a shuttle that would take me right to where I needed to be, though it cost twice as much. One time on a shady bus was enough. The shuttle got me at 3pm and brought me to a gas station, which was supposed to be a meeting point for the other shuttles of that company (they switch passengers based on where everyone´s going), and waited for an hour and 45 minutes. Apparently they were having connection problems, "which never happens." Eventually I got back to Antigua, 2.5 hours later than planned, but I got there. There were some Brits and Aussies on my shuttle who were "on break from uni" and they were funny - pretty much exactly what you´d expect from college students from England and Australia.
It´s good to be back in Antigua. I´m enjoying teaching my kids, though they´ve taken to calling me "seño mala" when they don´t like being told to do something. The other volunteers said they do that constantly to everyone, so whatever. Priti, the intern who´s been working with me, says she just calls them "niña bonita" and then they feel bad and say sorry. I tried that yesterday and it worked like a charm. Then other kids were like, "seño BUENA!!" Haha, kids.