Day Forty-Eight, Antigua

Thursday was the big day when we turned in our final projects for both of our classes. At the beginning of history class we turned in our research papers via e-mail, then we presented our creative projects in both our history class and religion class with a short break in between. Everyone took the concept of a creative project about religion and went completely different directions and angles. There were drawings, sculptures, presentations, and even a ceremonial alter design. We spent the entire two class periods going through the presentations for these projects and my presentation of the long count coloring book was the last presentation of the day.
After we finished our presentations and ended our last classes, we all decided to get dinner together with Professor Burnett (and her husband who came to visit) for a goodbye.
Before dinner though, I spent two hours reading "The Order of Days" at Cafe Fernando, then went to PLFM (my language school) to attend a class on how to make kites. In Guatemala there is a tradition of creating elaborate, and sometimes really large, tissue paper kites. I don't have any pictures of them but this site <http://www.travelsinparadise.com/guatemala/kites/index.html> has some lovely pictures to get a sense of the scale of their kite festivals.
I took the class with four people from my group of students and another student from PLFM. Creating the kites was difficult for some of us, but absolutely a wonderful time. I decided to change up the traditional designs and create my own, much to the confusion of the two men who were showing us how to make them. In the end we all really liked our kites and I want to make several more, more complex and much larger. I am also planning on going to the kite festival in Sacatepequez on November 1st.

After we finished up our kite making lesson, we all headed over to Casa to meet up and walk over to the restaurant for dinner. Everyone ended up showing up for the evening and we overwhelmed the little restaurant, but had a wonderful time. It was bittersweet, but we were all laughing and having a wonderful time by the end of the evening.

The whole group out to dinner,
going off into the distance!