{"id":564,"date":"2010-09-29T22:52:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T04:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=564"},"modified":"2010-09-29T22:52:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T04:52:17","slug":"no-hay-nada-como-una-sauna-que-cuesta-cuatro-dolares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/no-hay-nada-como-una-sauna-que-cuesta-cuatro-dolares\/","title":{"rendered":"No hay nada como una sauna que cuesta cuatro dolares"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

I am dying to know what happens in a \u00a8busy room\u00a8<\/p><\/div>\n

Las Cumbres.<\/em>\u00a0 Tucked away directly off the side of the carretera<\/em>\u00a0on a hill\u00a0just\u00a0outside\u00a0Zunil.\u00a0 Once again, Cesar braved the task of escorting Celas Maya estudiantes<\/em> through camionetas<\/em> and other vehicles to enjoy the geothermal warmth and luxury that comes from steam spitting out of the earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What a great way to spend an afternoon.\u00a0 The grounds and surrounding landscape were breathtakingly gorgeous, the steam room was intensely hot and…did I mention that it cost 4 bucks.\u00a0 $3.77 to be as exact as I can be without a calculator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the sauna, returned to Xela for a bit of dinner and another viewing of Sin Nombre<\/em>.\u00a0 This is the third time I’ve seen this film and I simply love it.\u00a0 I watched it when I first started taking formal classes in NYC, to help me with Spanish.\u00a0 It’s about a Honduran family that is attempting to migrate to the U.S. and MS13, Mara Salvatrucha,\u00a0the incredibly violent Central American\u00a0gang with members all over the Americas that have gotten quite a bit of media coverage in the past few years.\u00a0 Really worth watching, warning, it is a tad disturbingly violent, but I didn’t get the sense that any of it was gratuitous.\u00a0 Definitely not for kids.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Las Cumbres, EcoSpa in the Guatemalan Highlands<\/p><\/div>\n

The last couple of days have been a little hectic.\u00a0 School, work, studying, class trips, rain, yoga, cooking, answering emails, gmail chatting, empanada eating.\u00a0 Got the green light to go ahead with my design idea so I will try and post a few completed pages this weekend.\u00a0 Today I played hooky from classes to travel with Stef to Mazatenango, which is close to the Pacific Coast, to see the payasos<\/em> in action and\u00a0photograph an intervention\u00a0at an HIV\/AIDS clinic at the main hospital with another group they work with, Nueva Esperanza<\/em>.\u00a0 Hasta ahora,<\/em> I’ve been experiencing all of this two-dimensionally which was\u00a0impressive enough, but it was incre\u00edble <\/em>to see\u00a0them in action.\u00a0 It seems the clinic in Mazatenango (and other similar\u00a0facilities thoughout Central America) holds platicas<\/em>\u00a0or informal conferences\/meetings with HIV and AIDS patients and healthcare providers, to discuss progress (or lack of)\u00a0in health initiatives and also perhaps to distribute information on access to medication or therapy.\u00a0\u00a0 Proyecto Payaso<\/em> and other groups they are affiliated with\u00a0then infiltrate these meetings to create realistic scenarios that focus on social stigmas, emotional impact of dealing with living with HIV\u00a0or AIDS,\u00a0and preventing its\u00a0spread.\u00a0 They engage the audience by involving them in what’s happening \u00a8on stage\u00a8 in an extremely sensitive and effective way.\u00a0 It is interactive improv at its best.\u00a0 Now I’m going to have to figure out a way to describe today in Spanish.\u00a0 Using past participles…my favorite!\u00a0 Carlos\u00a0ha estado<\/em>\u00a0really accomodating and I was going to have afternoon classes with him instead of morning classes, but we were stuck in a cola<\/em> (traffic jam) on the way back to Xela and were already running late, and when I called him he seemed okay with re-rescheduling our\u00a0class for Saturday.\u00a0 Which, por supuesto<\/em>,\u00a0gave me a free afternoon to go to the market for food and cook for my house\/work mates.<\/p>\n

I made lomo de cerdo en limon y ajo con platanos y chili Cop\u00e1n machacado<\/em>.\u00a0 Yes, prima del sol<\/em>, I made plaintain-crusted pork loin.\u00a0 With rice and beans too.\u00a0 I can’t tell you how much mileage I am getting out of this dream dish.\u00a0 And it really was FANTASTIC,\u00a0even at this altitude.\u00a0\u00a0Everyone loved it,\u00a0even\u00a0Christine, who is a French chef at Stef’s restaurant.\u00a0\u00a0She brought me to her\u00a0butcher in el mercado<\/em> behind the church so I wouldn’t get ripped off and get relatively fresh meat…and honestly, I don’t know what possesses me to buy hanging meat from an unrefrigerated room where blocks of wooden tables are\u00a0crammed next to each other in a most unsanitary way.\u00a0 But it certainly was delicious, and it’s been a few hours and I still\u00a0feel okay.\u00a0 The meat was really tender and seemed to be of high quality, you know, for meat that’s hanging in an unrefrigerated room all day\u00a0around\u00a0other meat and\u00a0organisms it shouldn’t be hanging around with.<\/p>\n

And on that note, before I start worrying about all the intestinal\u00a0illnesses I could have and\u00a0before I start googling things like \u00a8guatemalan market meat\u00a8\u00a0or \u00a8deaths in Central America directly related to bad pork\u00a8, \u00a0I\u00b4m going to hit the hay.\u00a0 Hasta ma\u00f1ana.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am dying to know what happens in a \u00a8busy room\u00a8<\/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-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","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=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}