Money matters are the most boring possible opener, but, as I´m currently waiting in a long line to exchange traveler´s checks at the Banco Industrial, this is a good opportunity to mention Antigua´s unique money problems. Traveler´s checks are relics of the past; when we travelled to Amsterdam in 06 the AMEX office we´d been to 2 years previously had since closed. Thus a Visa debit card is all you need.
Not so in Antigua, though, where some corrupt Colombian corporation controls all the local banks. Only one cajero (ATM) in town is both serviceable and straight: use any others and you risk either losing your card or, worse yet, draining your account to fund some nefarious operation in South America.
The German guy behind me says it´s unlikely that BI will take the checks and I´m wasting my time here...
Today was our first day in school, which for the boys was on the pretty rooftop patio (the weather has been exactly 80 degrees everyday) but for me an interrogation room with bars on the windows and bare light bulb above us. Classes at Academia Antiguena are 1 to 1, grammar for the first 2 hours, conversation for the second.
During our conversation time today, my teacher was both impressed and disquieted by my command of Guatemala´s past massacres:
¿Como se dice decapitaion in El Peten y murdered priests in Santiago Atitlan?
Her view is that everything changed in 1980, as the civil war¨heated up and the hippies discovered Lake Atitlan. From this point on, Antigua´s culture was tainted by remnants of violence of the war and the debauchery of young tourists too bent on finding themselves to appreciate where they are. She seemed to see the language school as the only motivation for women to get an education and make a living doing something other than cooking or washing clothes.
Our chat was much more interesting than the homework she assigned, which I will be copying from Dena later.
Dena and the boys enjoyed their schoolday, although Paul found Spanish Scrabble too inscrutable (I told my teacher, No games, let´s talk massacres). The three of them are touring Antigua anitquity while I try to redeem these worthless checks. Denied at BI.
My wasted hour enitles me to a 2:00 Moza, my favorite cerveza guatemalteca. You don´t see Guatemalan beer in the States because it´s pretty mediocre (and brewed by a tyrannous family monopoly that controls all of Guate´s brands) but here they´re just fine.
And, at 2:00 on vacation, it´s all good...
