A well-deserved cultural break

After three days of intensive Spanish classes, with us being as tired as can be every night and going to bed at 8pm (!!!), we felt like we deserved a little break over the weekend. The classes are really good and we each like our teacher. However, our brain gets so tired after 6 hours of classes in addition to the meals all in Spanish with our host family. Since we are serious students, we were planning to do some homework over the weekend but also include some fun activities.

The wedding of Maribel and Selvin

After school on Thursday, we went to pick up our laundry. This is one of the advantages of being in Latin America: it is actually cheaper and easier to have someone do your laundry than to try to find a laundromat and do it yourself! Needless to say that we adapted very quickly to this change... As we entered the restaurant/bar/laundry place, a young woman that was working there was cutting white doves from a piece of paper. Curious, we asked her what it was for: she was actually getting married in two days. As the owner returned with our laundry, she said that we should come to the wedding and wrote all the information on a piece of paper. We were quite surprised and confirmed twice that we understood correctly. Indeed, we had to come: they would be really happy if we could attend the wedding.
We talked to our teachers and host family if they thought it was weird too but they just said it was really nice of the bride to have invited us at that we should go. Friday, we went to buy a present and inquired about the bus to take to the Cuidad Bieja.

Saturday morning we were all set to go in our simple travelling clothes and took our first bus since we had left home. It was quite fun to be with the locals in the colorful bus. At 10:45am, we were in front of the church, 15 minutes before the wedding was supposed to start. To our surprise, the doors of the church were closed and no one was there. Were we in the wrong place? The doors finally opened as we were about to leave and a person confirmed that the wedding was in this church and as we peaked inside, we saw young girls still decorating the church. We decided to sit nearby to wait and see. At 10:55am, the first people started to walk towards the church. It looked like they were close family so we waited a little longer. At 10:59am, the few people that were around started entering the church: we followed them. The groom entered a few minutes later and at 11:15am, the beautiful bride made her entry. At that point, there were maybe 30 people in the church: it looks like this was a small wedding. The church was beautifully decorated with many flowers on the altar and the ceremony was very moving. Caroline was surprised to see that she could almost understand everything: it ended up being so similar to a ceremony in French. We looked at each other, moved and remembering the vowels we had exchanged a little over a year ago. Half way through the service, the priest asked us to great our neighbors and as we turned around, we were surprised to see that the whole church was now full. About 100 people had shown up between 11:15 and 11:30am. So even for weddings, there was such a thing as “Latino time”:)

After the ceremony, we congratulated the bride and groom and gave them our present. Maribel was so happy that we came and told us that she would see us at the party. As we entered the Imperial Salon, we saw rows of plastic chairs around a dance floor (no tables) and sat in one of the rows. Waiters started bringing the food on plastic plates to each person along with a glass of rice juice. Everyone ate in silence: it seemed quite formal and serious. After eating, we waited for a couple of hours and the bride and groom made their entrance, followed by the dances with each other, the parents and the godfather and godmother. Again, quite serious and formal dances, no smiles. All the people were still sitting in their chairs, seriously waiting too. Then we all toasted to the newly weds and finally the first couples made it to the dance floor. Looks like the party was getting started. Chad and I danced for a while as well, and after a while left to take the bus back to the city since the last one was leaving at 7pm. We were told that the fiesta continued until 8pm, with the diner also being served and the wedding cake cut and shared. We had a great time and felt privileged to have to opportunity to witness a Guatemalan wedding.

Getting real close to the lava

Antigua is surrounded by three volcanoes, on of them being active. From our Spanish class, we could see every now and then fumes coming out of the crater of Volcan del Fuego. Close to Antigua as well, there is an active volcano that you can climb all the way to the top and get a chance to see lava. Since you have the option to go in the morning or in the afternoon, we took the Sunday afternoon tour in order to have a chance to see the lava by day and night time. The minibus picked us up and an hour and a half later, we were at Volcan Pacaya. This was going to be no child game: 90 minutes of a streanous hike with almost 1000 meters of elevation change. We had our walking shoes, water, some food and the flashlight, ready for the return in the dark. The hike was steep right away and we were many groups of 15 people hiking one after another. Given some past robberies in the area, we were happy to be such a large group with multiple guides. Directly behind us, a few horses and their owners were following us: “Sure you don't want a horse? It is a hard walk...and we are here if you change your mind!” The hike was becoming steeper, through jungle and later rocky ground. One girl in our group could not handle it and she took a horse. More rocks and finally and danger sign: we were approaching the active volcanic area. In no time, we were surrounded by fog and it became harder to walk as the ground was now steeper and covered with volcanic powder. We were hurten, especially Caroline who was still recovering of a cold. Only 15 minutes to the top promised the guide. As we climbed, there were more impressive volcanic formations as well as heat coming from the ground.

And suddenly the fog disappeared: we were above the clouds and could see the top of the volcano, from which smoke was coming out. And there it was: the lava! Two rivers of liquid fire were in front of us: as we got closer to the incandescent flows, our feet felt suddenly very warm. We looked down and under the rocks, we could see red glow: we were directly walking above the lave flow. Our guide took a stick and cooked some marshmallow above the lava: it took less than a minute to get them all brown and melted. We were going back and forth towards the lava as you could not stay longer than a few minutes unless you wanted your shoes to melt. As the sun started to set, we could see in the distance the shadow of the three volcanoes close to Antigua. The lava also started to glow more intensively in the darkness, a sight than we thought we would never see anywhere else than on National Geographic.
It was time for us to start the descent. Soon enough, it was very dark making the hike challenging as our feet were sliding down the steep slope and our shoes filling with volcanic rocks. We could not see much, even with our flashlight but at least it was less tiring than the ascent. We turned around a couple of times to look at the fiery glow that was surrounding the crater as well as the line of lights along the mountain slope of all the people getting back to town. It was a unique expedition and a close encounter with the power of Mother Earth.

Back into our host family, we were tired of our long hike but so happy with the weekend we just had. Going to a wedding reminded us of all our beloved friends that got married this year and whose wedding we were unfortunately not able to attend. Mayte and Bayron, Maria and Greg, Jen and Brian: we think about you often and hope you enjoy all the blessings of married life. This weekend, we rere reminded of how important and sacred the wedding vowels we all exchanged are and wished we could have been here to share this special moment with you. Be sure you are in our thoughts and that we are so happy for all of you.