I took this photo on a field trip to Parque Central with Pablo. Sitting in a tiny room for five hours studying Spanish gets a bit tedious. I have decided to begin recording the topics we cover in our conversations because we talk about really strange things. Yesterday, we spent nearly an hour discussing the existence of aliens and Area 51, and his notion that the U.S. government is covering up our alien contact so that we can gang up on other countries with the aliens. Keep in mind that this conversation was entirely in Spanish. Seriously. I'm a little frightened about the level of abstraction we will reach if this is where we go on day one.
Today Pablo and I went to a bakery and spent some time sitting inside of the Iglesia del Espiritu Santo Cathedral in Parque Central discussing Catholicism and our varying views on God. As you can imagine, Pablo is of the extreme supernatural persuasion and told me several stories about the phenomena that has taken place in the Cathedral. One story goes that so many people in Quetzaltenango lit candles to pray to this particular statue of Jesus on the cross, that Jesus turned black from all of the soot. Pablo said that the priests took down the statue to clean it, but were unable to. It remains black today, and the little tray was full of lit candles when we were there. I tried to find a link on google so you could read more about it, but there aren't any. Sorry.
In other, unrelated, but funny news, Sara just asked me what we had for lunch. I told her that we had chicken and rice. Now we are arguing about what the meat actually was. She is saying it was pork (there is no way!) and I'm certain it was chicken. She seems content to settle on rabbit. In any case, the food is delicious and we are confused about the stories people are telling us about losing weight on their trip. Sara is doing well with her Spanish and is bravely using it often.
Something to look forward to: Tomorrow we will be reviewing Guatemalan snacks we purchased at the grocery store today. Get excited!