Day Eight, Antigua

Central Plaza, Antigua

Our first two weekends here in Antigua are free weekends, but with a caution to stay indoors and certainly to avoid traveling far outside Antigua. The Guatemalan Presidential Elections are this upcoming weekend, held on the 11th of September and Guatemalan Independence Day follows the following week on the 15th of September. To be safe, and avoid being caught up in demonstrations and potentially dangerous situations, as tourists it is wise for us to stay close to home.
And so today Gloria and myself took the suggestion to heart and stayed at our home stay catching up on work and making phone/skype calls to family and friends to check in. We also worked on our homework due Monday. We went to the gym and stopped by a cafe for some coffee and tea, but mostly stayed indoors.
We did experience one strangely fantastic moment on our way to the gym; three separate marching bands were practicing at the Central Plaza today. The intersections right near the plaza were blocked off to vehicles but tourists and Antiguenos were walking all around the streets and plaza. The three bands were playing three different songs and it seemed they were competing for the loudest sound. As we passed by one group in particular, I recognized the song as a Shakira tune and Gloria and I started humming along with it. Later, on Facebook, another student from our group posted that she heard the bands playing Lady Gaga!
In both my history and religion classes we have to keep a journal where we record experiences we have here in Guatemala. For the history journal we have been given free reign to write about any experience we find interesting, but in our religion journal we need to write about experiences that revolve around religion here in Guatemala. For my second entry in my history journal I wrote about the experience of walking through the plaza listening to Shakira by marching band. For a moment, I had the eerie sensation of being at a high school football game in my hometown. I also wrote about the experience Gloria and I had sitting in our room at our home stay a few days ago listening to our neighbors listening first to Brittany Spears then The Beatles (a strange combination let alone place to hear it). Hearing music from the US here in Antigua gives me a very strange sensation that calls to the concepts mentioned in our readings for last week about Antigua and its "colonial" skin but "touristic" interior structure. As a tourist in Antigua, though it "looks" like I am far away from home, it "sounds" like I am still in Boston; still complaining about my neighbors playing Brittany Spears too loud.