Hi there! We finally sorted out our photos so here is a shot of Antigua, with Agua volcano in the background. This is not the vulcano we attempted to visit, by the way. That one, Pacaya, started erupting last week and nearby residents had to be evacuated. So, maybe we had a lucky escape...

Spanish classes going well; we tend to have one good day, when we can happily chat about subjects like God, family life and culture, followed by a bad one, when we can't remember our own names. Apparantly this is quite normal. Its particularly bad when we learn a new verb tense, and all the previous ones kind of get pushed out. Also, we've both found all our French coming back, and inserting itself inapproriately in all our conversations. It causes a good deal of confusion.

We had an interesting outing last week. We went to a nearby village, to a temple devoted to Maximon, also known as Saint Simon. He is a very peculiar 'saint', however, usually represented as a seated man in a black suit and broad-brimmed hat, smoking a fat cigar. Many people worship him, offering candles, rum, cigars and even animals (including chickens). In return he helps people, but not always by doing good...he will eliminate an enemy, for example. There are many conflicting legends about his origin, but the most common one is that he was a Mayan magician who became a deity after he died. When the conquistadors arrived, they tried to absorb him into the catholic religion, identifying him with Judas Iscariot. However, the church wasn't really prepared to accept the strength of faith that Maximon continued to evoke, nor the fact that he is clearly not a good catholic, being ambivalent in matters of sin.

In the catholic church nearby we saw a notice outlining the reasons why Maximon is not a God, nor a saint, and is not worthy of worship. There were a lot of people in the temple, however, and many brass plates adorned the temple walls with notes of thanks to Maximon for petitions granted. Outside a 'shaman' was performing a strange ritual involving a fire, lots of rum and chanting in a Mayan dialect. Afterwards the 6 or 7 witnesses smoked fat cigars, sometimes two at a time, and drank. This was all part of the ceremony, apparantly, although the purpose of it was not clear. We didn't see any dead chickens either, but we might have missed that part. The spookiness of the whole event was enhanced by the fact that once the ceremony ended, the heavens opened and we were treated to a major thunderstorm, right above the temple.

Well, I guess thats all for this week, hasta la semana proxima!

Jakki