This is Ignacio from the Buena Vista Social Club



















Next, me working in the bakery at La Salle

The last two are from a visit to the little preschool where two of the girls in my house go to school and where my host mom gives the daily refaccion or treat.

More pictures later when the internet signal is better....I promise!

Well sorry that I haven’t been consistent in writing on this blog. Taking fieldnotes every day is a lot more draining than I remember and so having to maintain two big records is hard for me…

This last week was the feria of Santa Maria. It’s a yearly event and a huge deal for the locals. I had gone down to the feria in San Pedro on the edge of the lake both with some friends from La Salle and then with my family and it was awesome to get a more native experience of the fair than just the tourists. I had bought a corte from my host mom and tried to participate in the local tradition of premiering a new outfit for the fair. I wore a corte and embroidered blouse to San Pedro and while there I bought a purple blouse and purple flower belt and shiny metallic purple high heels to premier for Santa Maria’s fair. I didn’t have the purple corte so technically I wasn’t totally traditional because they say that to premier your clothes you have to be all one color, but I was still wonderfully coordinated. I wore the outfit for the parade Sunday morning and all day through the fair on Sunday and bought three more half cortes so that I can wear just corte once we get back from El Salvador in two weeks and so on Monday I was able to be all in purple. It was interesting to see how people reacted here as compared to when I wore corte for a couple weeks in Nahuala. I got a million compliments and my friends wanting to take pictures with me and saying that I looked gorgeous and the people that I didn’t know just getting quirky smiles and all the drunks and teenagers whistling. All of the girls had gotten dressed in corte to go to the parade and it was fun to see them dressed up too though I think it’s just not the same borrowing clothes and searching out your own style. I was really tall too with the heels at a towering 5 foot 7. It was great. I really feel I bonded with my host mom and her best friend that lives in San Pedro. She had come up for the fair and I let her share my bed 2 nights in a row and between the three of us we had constant girls night outs and I felt really comfortable with them and they defended me from the creepy guys trying to get me to dance with them.

At the same time, I didn’t like the fair because it was an open invitation for the drunks to roam the streets and we even had a good amount of guest drunks from other communities that would come up for the music blaring on the streets. I had wanted to dance but only the drunks danced by themselves and the guys that asked me to dance were too sketchy for my taste until the one normal guy on Tuesday night pushed by his fellow university friends to ask me to dance.

We also celebrated the 4^th of July and our half-way point in the program. I was sad to not be at my own family’s get-together but we planned a dinner of hot dogs, watermelon, potato salad, and a homemade red, white, and blue cake. We invited all of our host families to come too and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I was really worried at first that people wouldn’t come because Amy’s mom refused to go up to Santa Clara and I didn’t know if the Santa Clara people would come down to Santa Maria but I asked the people at La Salle if we could have it there and they said that it would be fine so we had it at a neutral place (though in Santa Maria) and almost all the families showed up. Some didn’t eat the watermelon because it’s taboo to eat cold foods at night but the rest of us scarfed it down and there were no leftovers whatsoever.

In other news, Kristine managed to lose her flash drive voice recorder. I had thought maybe I’d taken it to the internet and left it in one of the computers but as I asked at each place they didn’t have it. Finally, late night after the 4^th of July party, I got a phone call and found out it had fallen out of my bag when we went down to San Pedro in my friend’s car. Unfortunately, due to a virus that I had already had on there, I lost all the voice files including 3 interviews and last Monday Meeting but the good thing is that I have the flash back and supposedly virus free now. That same night, I had a really interesting conversation about religion. My friend asked what the basic doctrines of Mormonism were and I talked about the nature of God, our potential to become like him, living revelation and prophets, and the restoration of Christ’s Church with His authority on the earth again. From my friend’s point of view, he said that we basically believed the same things and the only difference was that we had more scripture than the Bible. It was a good comfortable conversation on one hand, but on the other it was hard to talk about things I saw as different and he saw as the same. I mean, I do believe that our doctrines have a lot in common but when I tried to talk about authority and permission it didn’t mean anything to him and he concluded that we are evangelical. He talked about how he wanted to play in an evangelical band and make a living playing in concert (which is an amazingly lucrative job here in Guate) and I told him about music in our church and I happened to have my hymn book in my bag and lent it to him to play around with (at least until Sunday when I go to church). It was an interesting conversation too because there are no missionaries here in Santa Maria nor Santa Clara. When the fighting broke out a few years ago they took the missionaries away and they were having to travel a ways anyway since the nearest chapels are in Nahuala and Solola. As students in a Field Study we are not to be proselyting either but I am grateful for the opportunities to talk about the gospel when the other people here bring it up and the fact that we don’t drink coffee usually sparks at least a small discussion about being Mormon and people are incredibly tolerant and kind so it’s been good.

I’ve had to make some adjustments to my plans with the arrival of Dr. Williams. I have some pending publications to put together with him and he realizes that once I finish here in Guatemala I’ll be on double time to get ready for Paraguay and I won’t be of any use to him and his research anymore. So, as much as I love getting primary information and talking with people and researching La Salle, I really have to spend more time alone with my computer and get some papers written…not my favorite part of the research process but an important one so that I don’t disappear without putting anything out for academic consideration. So, I’m planning to work this next week indoors and tighten things us when we go to El Salvador and hopefully get a few articles submitted before I leave Guate. I’m still freaked out by the 10 month commitment I’ve made for the Fulbright in Paraguay but if things go the way they have here in Guate I’ll be happy. It’s going to be harder because I don’t know any Guaraní yet and I came here already knowing a good deal of K’iche’ but the Lord knows what he is doing and I just hope that I’m good enough to get things done in the amount of time I’ve been given.

I hope all are doing well and enjoying the summer sun. I heard a heat wave and drought has struck Utah while I’ve been suffering through daily torrential rains. Ironic. We plan everything around the rain and usually it strikes in early afternoon which is lunch time so it works out pretty well but not all the time. I’m pretty used to it now though and kinda like the atmosphere of sitting inside and pondering the cultural universes while the rain pounds against my tin roof. If I could send some up your way I would, but alas… Have a great week and keep me in touch. Lots of love!!