Semana Santa Part 3: Easter Morning

Liz only had a short time here in Guatemala City on Easter Sunday.  Her flight left around 12:30pm, which meant we only had until about 10am to do…anything.  Liz really wanted to see the Easter festivities in Guatemala, since she was well aware it would probably be her only time in Guatemala for Holy Week.  So I did a little research, and we set of for Zone 1 to try and catch a procession in the morning.

Each year during Holy Week in Guatemala, elaborate alfombras (carpets) are designed on the streets, made of colored sawdust and plants and flowers.  Then a procession of people holding up floats bearing images of the Lenten story moves slowly down the street, walking over the alfombra.  The processions happen the entire 40 days of Lent, but are most impressive in Antigua and during Semana Santa. 

Going to Antigua was out of the question, but we knew that Guatemala City would have its own processions.  I found that one procession would leave at 8am arrive at the Catedral Metropolitana at noon.  While we wouldn’t be at the cathedral to see its arrival and enjoy the festivities, I figured we could meet it along the route and see it at least. 

So Liz and I left my house at 8am, stopping to pick up Christy on the way.  When we arrived in Zone 1, preparations for a huge party were already half set up in the main plaza.  Food vendors and artisans were in the process of opening their booths, and purple fabric cordoning off the streets marked the reason for the celebration. 



After consulting a map of the procession’s route, we set off down a street hoping to run into it.  By 9:30am, we’d seen no sign of the procession, so we stopped to ask several municipal police officers about the route and where we might run into it.  We followed the officer’s directions to the letter, but saw no sign of a procession advancing towards us.  We did, however, see one alfombra in its beginning stages of creation (just a background of pine needles, no design or anything), and we thought we heard a procession at one point and ran to catch it—but it turned out to be just a church group singing and handing out balloons. 

Disappointed, we headed back to the central plaza where we snapped a few photos and wandered a bit before realizing it was 9:50 and we should probably head for the car and towards the airport.



We plugged in Waze to get the fastest route from zone 1 to the airport, and we were on our way.  Soon, we turned a corner, though, and found cars stopped up ahead.  We’d run right into—the procession.  I pulled over, and we all hopped out and walked up to the intersection, just in time to witness the whole thing. 

So in the end, Liz saw alfombras, the towering floats of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Resurrected, and the multitudes of people following the procession.  She smelled the incense and heard the fire crackers thrown down to announce the risen lord’s arrival. 






And the timing was perfect—the procession passed, the street opened, and we arrived at the airport exactly 2 hours before her flight was scheduled to leave.  Couldn’t have asked for a better Easter morning.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive thing was that as soon as the plane got to al
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and decided that if the team qualified for Glob
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I wil
Read more