Santiago Sacatepéquez

On Wednesday of last week we went to Santiago Sacatepéquez to visit the home of one the instructors, Aq'ab'al (aka Gonzalo), who is also the instructor I had for private lessons for two weeks last summer. Here he is... as you can see, I am normal sized or even *gasp* tall here, which is probably the only time in my life I will be so. This photo is from the first weekend in Antigua, when Judie had her 60th birthday party.




During our trip to Santiago Sac, we also had class in the morning. Since Terry and I had both gotten to know Aq'ab'al last year, Terry wanted to see Aq'ab'al's house, so he came along. While we were having our usual morning class, he went off to entertain himself. Finally during one of the breaks I found him and discovered that he had been appropriated by a small (and adorable) child. This is Aq'ab'al's nephew, William, who is obviously delighting in Terry's dramatic enactment of the "bottle game."





and this was "crash-things-into-each-other game"


Meanwhile, in the afternoon, our class divided into groups and made kites. Those of you who have taught Spanish 104 may remember the mention of Santiago Sac in the Dia de los Muertos reading, saying it's famous for its huge kites. We received a talk about the history and meaning of the kites, and then got to make some of our own. They're made entirely of bamboo, string, tissue paper, and glue.

Here is my group (group 3) working on our kite. The whole process took about 2 hours.



One of the women in our group is a weaver, so she was in charge of deciding what colors to use. It turned out beautiful, I think... our kite is the one in the middle with the three dots! The three dots are the Mayan number 3, since we were group three.





All very lovely, if I do say so myself.

And finally, the gringo parade as we left Santiago Sacatepéquez: