{"id":195,"date":"2010-09-02T18:27:32","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T00:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=195"},"modified":"2010-09-02T18:27:32","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T00:27:32","slug":"un-otra-dia-ocupado-en-xela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/un-otra-dia-ocupado-en-xela\/","title":{"rendered":"Un otra d\u00eda ocupado en Xela"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Walking through Parque Centroam\u00e9rica<\/p><\/div>\n

Yup, another busy day here in the Highlands.\u00a0 I moved hotels this morning for a little change of scenery and some hot water, so I\u00a0am now in the slightly more upscale ($11\/night)\u00a0Casa Dona Mercedes, right off the central park.\u00a0 I was going to go to Celas Maya<\/em> this morning and just sign up for classes, but I wanted to look at\u00a0two more schools, Utatl\u00e1n<\/a><\/em>\u00a0& Ulew Tinimit<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Utatl\u00e1n<\/em> is in a beautiful\u00a0covered plaza which I took a gorgeous picture of but can\u00b4t upload it right now at this cafe.\u00a0 I\u00b4ll check out the other one\u00a0in the a.m. \u00a0I think I\u00b4m going to go with Celas Maya<\/em> though, it\u00b4s more expensive than the others, but it really does have the most activities.\u00a0 I\u00b4ll just sign up for a week and see how it goes.\u00a0 None of them require much of a commitment which makes me very very happy on so many levels.<\/p>\n

I also started my new job with the clowns today.\u00a0 I wasn\u00b4t able to explain the job in detail yesterday since every internet cafe I\u00b4ve been to closes at 8pm and it takes so long to upload pics I barely have time to write.\u00a0 Anyway, payaso<\/em> means clown and the Proyecto Payaso<\/a><\/em> is a non-profit that uses street theater to educate different populationson preventing AIDS, including indigenous communities\u00a0all over Central America.\u00a0 They are based in Guatemala and the organization is run by\u00a0one of the founders, Stef, a very tall, blonde, friendly,\u00a0French payaso<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I am normally quite afraid of clowns and I was seriously hoping I didn\u00b4t have to dress like one.\u00a0 Or, even worse, work in an office surrounded by rehearsing clowns.\u00a0 But thankfully, no necesito me\u00a0preocupar<\/em>.\u00a0 This excerpt describes the amazing atmosphere of the office, located in a rustic colonial building, close to the center:<\/p>\n

\u00a8We are a group of indigenous and non-indigenous Guatemalan, Peruvian, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Argentinean, Salvadoran, Spanish, French, German, US American, Dutch, Belgian, Canadian, Mexican and Australian. Our diversity is our strength, reflecting the need to engage with the widest possible range of individuals and leaders from the local to the international, in order to stimulate effective and empowered grassroots responses to the pandemic.\u00a8<\/em><\/p>\n

Such a perfect environment for me, and they are all so friendly and welcoming.\u00a0\u00a0I probably wouldn\u00b4t even mind that much\u00a0if they dressed like mimes and only communicated to\u00a0me with\u00a0gestures.\u00a0 Alright, maybe that\u00b4s\u00a0going a little too far.\u00a0 So today, I began selecting images from the past 10 years to incorporate in the design of\u00a0their\u00a02011\u00a0calendar, commemorating their 10th anniversary.\u00a0 I\u00b4m pretty much coming up with a graphic concept, working closely\u00a0with Stef and Tony, and then executing the entire project using Photoshop\u00a0en espa\u00f1ol<\/em>\u00a0and hopefully, InDesign.\u00a0 Right now, they have a program called FreeHand\u00a0(which seems to\u00a0be a light Illustrator with page layout features)\u00a0that I haven\u00b4t used, but I\u00b4m not too worried about figuring it out. \u00a0Oh yeah, and all the directives are in Spanish so I\u00b4ll really be putting my language study to use.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe ma\u00f1ana<\/em>\u00a0I\u00b4ll post some pics of their 2009 calendar, which was made up of images of murals\u00a0volunteering artists\u00a0painted all over Guatemala.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Many of the murals were defaced because the work they do is quite controversial.\u00a0 Part of their performance involves not only distributing condoms, but showing how to use them.\u00a0 One of the characters is a human-sized condom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okay, I think it\u00b4s tamalito<\/em> time…back to work in the am and by tomorrow evening I should have decided on a school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…started my new job with the clowns today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}