gringos and saints

Antigua is where everyone starts in Guatemala, to learn Spanish. We´re feeling like we´re heading slowly back, so Spanish classes seem like closing the barn door after the horse already survived the hospital without learning Spanish. So we´re thinking just a couple days here. It´s a very beautiful city. A completely perfect introductory city to Guatemala - beautiful, easy, totally tourist-ready. Colonial, cobblestones, pretty colored adobe, lots of churches and museums, lots of art. LOTS of gringos ... at least compared to everywhere else we´ve been. Everyone seems very prosperous here - tourism is a lucrative business. Pretty sure every local in this town is prepared to help you with your Spanish. We´ve been having a blast asking, "¿Como se dice ...?"

I´m totally rash and symptom free, and gradually reintroducing the long list of allergy-candidate foods back into my life. Successfully tackled milk, eggs, butter, and lemon so far. Can´t decide between pineapple and banana next. Saving cheese, tomato, chocolate and nuts for when back in the U.S. since those are the most likely candidates (after that damn exotic mangosteen). Anyway, point is, feeling pretty damn healthy and relaxed.

So, among all the other tourists, we actually acted like tourists today. Wandered around, bought souvenirs, referenced the Lonely Planet book a lot, visited museums and churches, ordered drinks with ice in them (everywhere here, the ice is made with purified water!), even gave up and spoke English now and then. Totally freakin´ decadent it was. Haven´t gotten around to taking a single picture - we´re completely rotten tourists in that regard - but we pointed at things and asked silly questions. It was great. We visited a museum devoted to the burial place of a saint. Saw lots of his stuff, even his underwear. Yeah. Sure, laugh, but have you ever seen the underwear of a saint?