Guatemala City

The flag in front of the government
 buildings in Guatemala City.

Last Saturday we went to Guatemala City for the day, and a seminary/language school gave us a tour of the city.  We first went to Central Park and had to walk around the city and find answers to different questions such as how much do different types of fruit cost at the market and how much does it cost to see a movie?  (It costs 18 Quetzales to go to a movie, which is about $2.25!) 



 After lunch we went to the cemetery and the landfill.    Cemeteries here are a lot different than in the States; none of the caskets are underground.  At first I wasn’t super thrilled to be visiting the cemetery, but it turned out to be a very interesting and educational experience.



A private grave site at the cemetery.



  There are two parts of the cemetery: one part is private grave sites and the other part is the public grave sites.  The private grave sites are little lots in the cemetery that families buy where all of the family members are “buried.”  They build what (in my opinion) look like play houses.  We saw the grave site for the richest family in Central America and the grave sites of former presidents of Guatemala.  

Some of the public grave sites

                The private grave sites look like giant walls of caskets.   Families can rent these spaces out for the caskets for up to 14 years.  After 14 years, the bodies are put in a “pit” (obviously not open) somewhere in the cemetery.  I was grateful we were never went to this pit –at least we weren’t told if we did!  The bodies in the privately owned grave sites will stay there forever.

                From the cemetery, you can see the city landfill, which was a pretty heart wrenching experience.  There are several people who work at the landfill and get paid to work there, but the majority of the people in the landfill pay Q 2. to go to the landfill each day to find food and other things to live off of.  It was super hard to see all the people down there.

                After that we went to Miraflores, the mall in Guatemala City where the richest people shop.  There isn’t really a middle class in Guatemala; either the family is poor or extremely rich.  We saw some extremely rich people at the mall.  As Becky said, “You see some of the kids walking around that mall and can tell they have everything.  They’re worth more than everything my parents own.”   When we went down the escalators looking for other stores in the mall, we saw these glass doors that led out to a bunch of parked cars.  I thought it was a new car lot, not the parking lot.  That gives you an idea of the types of cars the people shopping there own!

Eating at Luna de Miel.



                Sunday I went to a bilingual church here in Antigua, Iglesia del Camino.  I really liked it.  We sang songs that I know, which was awesome, and an added bonus was they had the words projected on the wall!  The church is completely bilingual; the pastor is from the States so he preaches and then there is a translator for the Guatemalans.  The songs are sung in both languages; one verse will be in Spanish and the next in English.                 

                On Sundays we don’t eat at our house, so after church we went to a crepe restaurant.  It was a lot of fun.  The tables there are very different from what we’re used to.  We sat on benches about 8 inches off the ground, and I wouldn’t have fit in some of the chairs when I was in kindergarten! (Notice in the picture Brita to my left, she's sitting in one of the tiny chairs!)  The experience was all the more interesting in our skirts!  It was a lot of fun though, especially because I got to eat with a bunch of other people from Bethel, which is something I miss since coming to Antigua.  In Magdalena we ate at least one meal a day as a group, and in Antigua we only get to on Sundays.  After lunch I did homework until our group dinner that night at a local restaurant.  It was a great weekend!

                School this week is the usual.  There’s not much else I can say about it.  There’s lots of reading, papers, and homework.  It’s crazy that after this week, I’ll be half done with my first class!  SO CRAZY!