Christmas, New Year, Panajachel, birthday

As I told in my previous blog, I didn't have many plans and the weeks after I wrote my blog indeed turned out to be pretty boring. In the first weeks of December I just worked and relaxed in the weekends but did nothing worth mentioning. I guess Christmas is the next thing that I should tell about (sorry for the delay).

Of course Christmas is celebrated in Guatemala as much as it is in Europe, it is a pretty Christian country and in that respect actually more conservative than Holland, for example. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, it was hard to get the Christmas feeling, though. Being here in the summer without my family and without any vacation did not give me the right winter-Christmas feeling. But in this respect it was better than being in Istanbul two years ago, at least there were quite some Christmas decorations (trees etc.) and people are talking about it all the time. Then the day of the 24th came and we had organised to visit an orphanage that day. So around noon we went to the orphanage (around the corner from our office) and spent time with the children (about 30 children between 1 and 8 years old, all with their parents in jail or passed away) and brought some food for them. I think they really enjoyed our attention and food, so that felt good. That evening we went to the church and then to the family of one of our colleagues. There we had dinner and after the dinner we went to our colleague's family in law. That part was more about drinking actually and at 12 o'clock, midnight, we looked at the fireworks... Something seems to have gone wrong there, because here Christmas is celebrated with fireworks, so I guess the Guatemalans made a small mistake when copying the western traditions. Anyway, we had a really good day and got at least a bit of Christmas feeling in the evening at the dinner. The next day was more quiet. We went to the gym and did some sunbathing and in the evening we had dinner with some friends.

Then not much happened until the Wednesday after, when we left the office at the earliest possible time to go to the beach. A colleague/friend of ours has a house at the beach and had invited me and Alberto to join him, his brother and two friends to spend some days there and celebrate new year's eve. That same night we went to a big party, organised by the national brand of rum "XL" (free entry and free drinks), where we met the same people as we meet every week here in Guatemala City when going out. We spent the next days at our friend's house (very nice place, just a few meters from the beach) and the evenings in the bars in the village. We returned already on Saturday evening and relaxed on Sunday, that day I really felt more relaxed than ever. And that was necessary, because the week after would be the toughest week of the year, because in those days we had to close the financial books for the year 2009. And it did turn out to be a tough week, we worked long days and also on Saturday and Sunday. Next to that, the guy that was taking over my old job, resigned and had his last day that Tuesday, so I suddenly had two jobs again. Anyway, everything turned out well and we finished 2009 successfully.

The weekend afterwards we went to Panajachel with some colleagues, a place next to lake Atitlan that is surrounded by volcanoes and where I had been twice already. On Saturday we spent the day there and two other villages around the lake and in the evening we (Alberto, Ligia and I were left by then) had a drink and slept early. The next day we left to go to Chichicastenango, a village/city that is famous for its market. And we immediately understood why, the whole centre was filled with market stands and sometimes we could hardly walk because of the crowd. Next to the market, there was also a procession for some saints, so that made it even busier and more interesting. Of course we bought some stuff, but not a lot, because none of the ATMs in the whole city worked, so we spent our last quetzales. Maybe it was better, otherwise we would have bought even more things that we might not really need.

The Friday after that it was already my birthday. In the morning I could hardly work, because all my colleagues (from my department that is) came by to congratulate me, birthdays seem to be a bigger thing here than in Europe.. Next to that, I had to arrange something for the weekend, because Alberto's and my visa for Guatemala would expire the following Monday, so we had to leave Guatemala. We had been thinking about Mexico, Honduras and Miami that week, but after a call to a travel agency it turned out that our best option would be to go to Costa Rica. So I made the reservation on Friday morning to leave on Saturday morning. It felt a bit crazy to arrange it in such a rush, but we had to in order to avoid being illegal in Guatemala. Anyway, for lunch we went out with the whole department to Pizza Hut to celebrate my birthday. That evening I celebrated my birthday again at my place. My flatmate Ömer had his birthday the day before, so we could combine our birthdays and have a decent party. The party turned out really nice, we had a lot of guests (around 40-50) and there was a really good atmosphere.