Our family trip to Guatemala over Christmas was amazing. We are all still processing what we experienced. We will use this space over the next few weeks in an attempt to share what we learned and encountered, altough words can hardly capture the essence of what we experienced, we will do our best to describe this incredible journey.
Antigua
Since Coban (where Justin is living) is several hours from the airport and we were arriving on Christmas Eve, we decided to begin our journey in the colonial and historical town of Antigua, a mere 45 minutes or so from the airport. Justin met us at the airport around 8:30 p.m. in a rental car after waiting several hours for our late plane. He had purchased a map so that we could find the hostal we would be staying at, but of course if there aren’t any street signs, maps don’t do you much good. In addition, there were few street lights and people were standing everywhere in the streets lighting off firecrackers – a Guatemalan Christmas Eve tradition.
After asking for directions from a policeman, two store owners, calling the “concierge” at the hostal 3 times and then eventually finding and hiring a cab to follow – we finally arrived at our destination at 11:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve. We had not had any dinner and were in no mood to attempt to find the midnight mass we were originally planning on going to. Luckily, our hostal was wonderful. We had a table in the open courtyard, bought two bottles of wine and dug some granola bars out of our plane bags. Sarah brought “tradition” with her in the form of tiny felt stockings with our initials on them and snowflakes to decorate. She also brought a candle for each of us to unwrap so we could have our traditional Christmas Eve story sharing ritual. It was an extraordinary Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Day, we had beans and eggs for breakfast and opened gifts Sarah had brought from Minnesota family. We got specific walking directions and headed off to the Cathedral for noon Mass only to find that 12:00 on Christmas Day was another traditional time to set off firecrackers! Although we were delayed by about 10 minutes getting into the Cathedral, the priest didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get mass started and people kept arriving for another half hour or so. Of course, the mass was in Spanish but we could keep up with what was going on, especially with the help of our personal translator, Justin - who out of necessity has become fluent in Spanish.
After mass, we walked out into the main town square where we were immediately accosted by people selling their wares. My first thought was that of Jesus when he overturned the money changers tables in the temple. After all, it was Christmas Day when the stores are normally closed and we are supposed to have Sabbath and family time! However, it became quickly clear that the people (mostly indigenous Guatemalans) working the square relied on selling goods to tourists as their primary source of income. The women were selling tapestries at a “special price for you”, girls were wrapping hair braids or selling candy, men were selling jade jewelry and boys were learning the shoeshine trade. We decided it was important to help the local economy and started bartering :) 
Stay tuned for Installment 2 -
Getting around Guatemala or “the U.S. could learn a little about carpooling from these guys”
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