El Gripe!

Well, Guatemala is on yellow alert and the kids are off from school because the country has pretty much been drenched by rain caused by the after affects of a hurricane and another tropic storm. I’m not sure of their names, but they’ve done a good job of soaking things here. I think as a result of the on-coming change in weather, I developed a cold, or as they say so menacingly in Spanish, un gripe…that’s pronounced, “gree-pay” with the accent on the first syllable. I can’t help but get a kick out of the appropriateness of paring this word with its meaning in English. Of course, I’d never gripe about my gri-pe. It was gone after a day with a nice long siesta in the afternoon!

Over the weekend I went to the 12:00pm Mass at San Francisco church and discovered that there would be a wedding as well. Here in Latin America, Catholic weddings are usually done during an ordinary Mass that is open to the public (which is actually the way the Church intended the Sacrament to be celebrated…in the presence of the whole faith community, not necessarily just the families of the happy couple). This particular couple seemed to come from a family living in Guatemala City, the capitol which is about 45 minutes away from Antigua. As I learned from Marta, my home-stay “mom,” many couples from the city come up to Antigua to celebrate their weddings in the big stone churches here that were built during colonial times. I guess the idea of coming down a long aisle in a memorable setting is catching on with some of the wealthier Guatemalan families.

As it is a relatively open Mass for the community, decorations are not too extreme. I noticed that some of the poorer indigenous Guatemalans (meaning descendants from the native Mayan population) were helping drape streamers over the pews along the aisle. My hunch is that the families of those being married offered them a little money for their assistance in decorating. The only real problem I saw with the wedding party being from the city was that over half their family and friends arrived late for the Mass. There was a steady stream of participants at the Mass arriving even after the rite of marriage had taken place. On the whole, though, it was very nicely done and the couple, as is almost always the case, was beaming with joy as they walked down the aisle at the conclusion of Mass as husband and wife.

My home-stay now has two Koreans! There was one here when I arrived and we received the latest this week. So among five students, we have two Koreans, a couple from Quebec, and me. For ease of communicating, the Koreans have told us that their names are Jenny (the latest arrival) and Jennifer (the former). Jennifer, has been in Guatemala for almost five years working with a church mission and her Spanish is excellent! Jenny just arrived from Korea and didn’t know any Spanish. But, it’s been great having them in the house because when I don’t feel like studying Spanish, I ask them to teach me phrases in Korean. So, I should be able to greet John Lee (our seminarian from Korea studying in Cleveland) properly when I return home.

Just out of curiosity I decided to sum up all the nationalities of students I’ve meet here in Guatemala at my homestays: 4 young men from Seattle, 1 woman from Japan, 2 women from Germany, 2 women from Turkey who were living/working near Washington, D.C., a woman from France, 2 different couples from Quebec, 2 women from Korea, a man from Nebraska, 2 women from Holland, a woman from England, and a woman from North Carolina. That’s 21 people over the course of four summers.

All else being equal...this is a pretty quiet week here in Antigua.