A simple Saturday...

My language school has trips every Saturday... one Saturday they climb the nearby volcano and the next visit a local fince. Well, this past Saturday, we visited a new finca and the beach!

The Finca is called Monte Carlo and is only a year old. The 390 families who are working the finca now occupied a major road for 18 months before the government would entertain their request for land; they had no where else to go. They picked this location out of the few options that government gave them. Now these families have 4 years to work the finca and then 10 years to pay off the loan to the government. It sounds wonderful, but with little rain this year their milpa (corn) has not been productive and they are struggling to set up the basics of civil life... a school, homes, meeting place, church. The government could reneg anytime on the loan and evict the 390 families... it has happened before. So these men and women toil, and sweat, and pray on land that is their hope but land that could be taken at the whim of people who live in homes with airconditioning... or lets get even more basic... homes with solid walls and floors.

Then we, 23 students from the school, 3 teachers and the bus driver, headed to the Pacific Beach. It was good to smell salt in the air again... and to be warm! The group was mostly Danish women... who all thought I was Nordic as well so tried to speak to me in Danish... I was amused by that. The Americans thought I was Danish as well... so I was between the groups. We ate together in a seafood restaurant very close to the water. Many of us ordered seafood soup... there is something surreal about receiving a bowl of soup and having the prawns, fish and crab all look up at you simultaneously... and then upon asking for a spoon having the waitress go to the group next to you and taking one of their spoons, wiping it off with a napkin and handing it to you... and then half way through the meal having a pig that is at least twice as big as me walk through the restaurant... I have learned to accept and in fact welcome the presence of chickens in restuarants and houses with me because they eat the bugs but a huge pig was a bit much.

Then after finishing our meal we moved a 10 meters or so away from the restaurant and spread out our towels or whatever we had to sit on on the black sand beach. The europeans all had their bikini´s which drew some attention from the Guatemaltecas... but we all sampled the waves for a bit. The waves and undertow were powerful... but it was fun to be in the ocean again and taste like salt for a few hours. The sun was strong so we didn´t stay long... but I felt refreshed as we once again accended the 8000meters to Xela.