Por que? Porque. . .

Basic updates: I am completely covered in red dye, and it does not appear to wash off, I officially have received my first pink skin, and it gets hotter here every day.

Central Park

Central Park

In my first 3 day week I have completed 9 hours of Spanish class, not a bad start. Next week the goal is 40, which is pretty ambitious, but we shall see how it goes.

For those of you who don’t know what a motor taxi looks like in Copan, here is a nice picture of the awesome “tuk tuk.” There is an abundance of these cruising around town.

Tuk Tuk

Friday afternoon Ixbalanque set up horseback riding for students interested. I have only been horseback riding once in my life, and I have to admit I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. This time the setting was much different and the horses were much smaller. We climbed up the side of a small mountain where the communities are much smaller and almost 100% agriculturally dependant. Most of the people living here are of Mayan decent. The climb was pretty steep but we made it in approximately three hours round trip. Kids were running everywhere trying to sell me little dolls or flowers made out of coloured corn husks. They are actually beautiful.

Corn Husk Flower

Then, while looking at some Mayan ruins about an hour away from Copan, who do I run into? Why Carin of course! (for those who don’t know who I am talking about she was the leader of the group Arte Accion that I worked with last time). That was a random delight.

New construction

View of rural landscape

Saturday was spent helping Inmar and his crew finish all of the Mayan art, and then loading up and setting up in Central Park. One of my favourite things about the town is Central Park. Everybody passes through it, and many people spend good chunks of their day hanging out there. So everybody pretty much knows what is going on without any traditional advertising. Setting up a stage involved a lot of sun exposure, hence the aforementioned sunburn.

Artists hard at work

In the evening I went to a celebration of sorts at my Spanish teacher’s church. It was some kind of Youth focused service. It was the first “service” I have been to in Copan, but they aren’t hard to find. I believe there are about ten churches here, and they have events pretty much every day of the week (and all members attend). The steep hills here made it ideal to put a stage in the middle of the street and have automatic theatre seating. If you don’t like loud music, clapping, and dancing you likely should avoid these churches.