Weekend in the City

I truly love Antigua, and I am enjoying my time here very much, but I have to say as soon as I reached the city last weekend, I was grateful to be there.  Last Thursday was technically a holiday here, as is every June 30.  It is Army Day, and in all honesty I did not learn much about the significance of this particular holiday, but I imagine it's similar to our Labor Day.  The government declared the holiday to be celebrated this year on July 1 so everyone could have a 3-day weekend, and so I headed to the city Thursday evening.

View of the city from a helicopter - yes I took the pic!

Although I grew up in a suburb and my high school years in what many would call "the sticks," I am a city girl through and through.  I thrive on the people, and somehow being around interesting architecture has always energized me.  This, by the way, is one of the reasons I love Antigua so much, but this piece is on the city.  Cities bring many modern-day amenities that are easily lost or forgotten in beautiful far-away settings, but I have to admit it was really great to be around tall buildings, people, malls, grocery stores, and the like.  Antigua has 2 grocery stores, but it's really hard to call these "grocery stores."  They're more like tiny warehouses stuck between centuries-old buildings, and there's really no rhyme or reason to the product placement, and really it's just "different."  In fact, it's so different that the first time I spent a good amount of time in the city, I was very interested in seeing the grocery stores there because I was really only familiar at that point with the ones here in Antigua.  My guide that day was laughing at me a little bit because as soon as I saw a real grocery store in Guatemala City, it was ummm...just like those in the States.  There's a regular produce section, an imported foods section, health/beauty supplies, and all the rest of the food nicely lined up in aisles and organized efficiently.  In fact, Wal-Mart Mexico just bought the largest grocery store chain here, which used to be called Hiper Paiz, and so now I shop at Wal-Mart again...

Giant Map of Guatemala in Zone 2

The point of this entry is to explain to you what life is like in the City.  I'm not 100% sure, but I'm guessing that the city has a population around 2 Million.  The city is separated into zones, with zone 1 smack dab in the middle.  The rest of the zones follow a sort of spiral-like pattern and go all the way up to zone 25 even though zones 20, 22, and 23 don't exist yet.  It's kind of confusing for me still because you will be driving down a road and zone 9 will be on one side of you and zone 14 will be on the other.  I could have this totally wrong, but the point is that from the ground level, it's difficult to understand the pattern.  Zone 1 is the old historic zone where you can find the old National Palace, which is a very beautiful building, and nearby there is zone 2 where you can find a giant map of Guatemala with every point of interest marked.  It's like a 3-D topographical map scaled to size where you can see all the volcanoes, lakes, cities, mountains, and it really is quite interesting.  I will be living in zone 15, and when other Guatemalans ask me where I'll be living, they are always quite impressed that I will be living in zone 15.  I have to agree it is a very nice area, which is very clean and pretty, so I will take their words for it and consider myself fortunate.  In zone 10, which borders zone 15, you will find Zona Viva!  This is the part of town about a 5-10 minute drive from the airport where there are lots of hotels, bars, restaurants, and other shops.  I've hung out in Zona Viva quite a bit, and I'm hoping to find a job in this area so I won't have a long commute every day.

Speaking of shopping...weren't we speaking of shopping?  Well anyway, I like to go shopping, and I have to say I'm impressed with the malls here.  There are tons of brands with which I am familiar, and lots more that I am growing to adore.  Actually, many of the stores here are from Spain.  I find that there is still quite a Spanish influence on the culture here besides the language.  There is even a Spanish grocery store, which I had the pleasure of visiting last weekend and bought some fantastic prosciutto!  Coming from Chicago, I had some of the world's best shopping at my finger tips (one very charming part of winter in Chicago is shopping along Michigan Avenue during Christmastime!).  I was pleased to find a Zara (Spain), Pull and Bear (Spain), L'Occitane, Bershka (Spain), Guess, etc.  The funny thing though is that almost everything is imported, so the high import taxes make clothes and shoes more expensive here than in the States.  I guess I'll have another reason to go shopping when I visit my friends and family!

My favorite part of the weekend besides spending time with my boyfriend was having the privilege of meeting some more members of his family.  I was a little nervous at first because his mother only speaks Spanish, but somehow we made it work.  I also got to meet his younger sister and her family, and we had a very lovely visit.  Her three children have been learning English since practically pre-school, so they were very cute and tried to speak to me in English.  The oldest daughter had spent some time in Joplin, Missouri last year for an exchange program, so she was excited to learn that I am originally from Missouri.  We had a really wonderful time, and I am so happy to have met such wonderful people.  One thing that is interesting about the Spanish language, and I guess culture as well, is that his mother is already my suegra, mother-in-law.  Although there is no in-law paper binding us together I now have an entire other family already!  It brings a warm feeling to my heart, much like the, "Bienvenidos a la familia," I received from my suegra upon departure.

Disfruta!  Hopefully I'll be able to sneak myself into a few of the upcoming pictures.  Adios por ahora amigos.