¡Bienvenidos a Antigua!

Antigua is an enchanting place to begin our journey... the former Spanish colonial capital of Central America, Antigua was founded in 1543 and - according to our Lonely Planet guidebook - it is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the Americas. (In the photo above, you can see Shom standing in front of the famous Antigua landmark, el Arco de Santa Catalina, built in 1694. This is one of the few Antigua constructions that withstood the 1773 earthquake). Antigua is a city of cobblestone streets, crumbling ruins, brightly painted buildings, and (unfortunately) crawling with gringos. I am shocked by the number of Americans and Europeans walking down the street... I have never seen so many in my previous travels to Latin America, and it is a bit overwhelming for someone who came to Guatemala to experience Guatemalan culture. Foreign culture is everywhere - from bagel shops to Thai restaurants to Irish pubs. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to sight-seeing and learning more about the history of this wonderful city.

This morning I took a walk around the Parque Central (the park which serves as the main meeting point for everybody here because of its central location) and witnessed a motorcade of teen beauty pageant contestants waving at passersby from their perches atop the roofs of various brilliantly decorated cars and trucks (see photo above). I also noticed the municipal police force - whose uniforms consist of full head-to-toe camouflage fatigues and huge machine guns slung over their shoulders. Scary. Even scarier, however, is that the non-police security guards stationed in front of every bank also carry machine guns. Woah. My guess is that this militarization of security and police is left over from the civil war, but maybe this has been the norm here for longer than that. All I know for sure is that we´re certainly not in Kansas anymore...

In other news, we are staying with a Guatemalan host family for these 2 weeks here (see a photo of our homestay to the left) and I am very excited to begin my Spanish classes on Monday. Shom has had some trouble finding a Kaqchikel instructor, but hopefully by our next update that will be straightened out. In the meantime, we would love to hear from any and all of you! We both now have Guatemalan cell phone numbers which you can call fairly cheaply using Skype or http://www.onesuite.com/ . If you´d like to give us a call, just let us know and we´ll e-mail you our numbers.

Much love to all,
Elena