Intro to Panajachel

Due to popular demand, I'm posting an entry although I don't have pictures ready to post yet from the end of our Tecpán trip. There's not much to say really, but I wanted to post some pictures of market day.

We have now migrated to Panajachel on Lake Atitlán. Pana itself is mostly a tourist town or a point of departure for other towns around the lake, some of which we have explored already. We went to San Pedro twice - once by accident, and once with the class. The by accident occurred when on Sunday we decided to take a public boat (think public bus, but a boat) around one edge of a lake to see the other small towns on that side. The boat was supposed to make stops and end up in San Pedro, which is a hippie town we had also visited two years ago. But once we were all on the boat, everyone was going to San Pedro, so instead of taking the scenic route around the lake, we went straight across. We had no need to go to San Pedro, so to make our trip not totally a waste, we walked around the town. We ended up in the same restaurant as another member of the class who was in San Pedro doing her field research, so we had a very pleasant lunch with them in a very hippie restaurant. On the way back we did manage to get a boat that went around the edge, and the day was gorgeous, so all in all the day was quite pleasant, even if it was an accident.

The next day we headed to San Pedro again with the class to hear a talk by a woman who works with plants both for healing purposes, and for making natural dyes for weaving. All of it was very interesting and left me with a strange to desire to boil plants.

So far the whole process of doing exploratory field research has been going pretty slow. We did have a ceremony at Iximche with our class, so I observed and participated in that. I've been reading some, so that gives me ideas. I wouldn't worry too much about having ideas right now, but we are required to turn in a written project and give an oral report for the class, so that's a bit concerning. But tomorrow I'm going to see the Maximón statue at Santiago Atitlán with another student and the two Daykeepers (shaman) in our class (here is the story of the Maximon). So little by little I'm learning things.