Crazy gringa

One of the best things about traveling is taking yourself completely out of familiar surroundings. The newness often leads to various profound revelations about self and culture and the world in general.
But sometimes it makes you seem like a crazy person.
So far I´ve only had two crazy incidents.

The first wasn´t´t too bad thanks to the extreme graciousness of the Guatemalan culture. At 3:00 on Friday Allegra and I were sitting in front of a beautiful, ancient church in Antigua. For those of you who have been to Antigua, it was the yellow one.
Anyway, the bells began to ring and we decided that it would be a lovely afternoon to go to mass. It is a rich spiritual experience to participate in a service in an ancient, beautiful church in a language that somehow seems much more holy than English. So, we went in and sat in the back. We knelt on a bench and we prayed. We looked around at the beautiful architecture in an attempt to soak at the sacredness built into the stones. We smelled the candles and listened to the hallow echoes in the high ceilings. When the music began and the others around us stood, we stood and faced the back door expecting to see a cross and processional of priests. Instead we saw palbearers and a coffin! It did seem odd that most of the others in the church were dressed in dark clothes. We crashed a funeral! Talk about rude! Luckily we could make a quick escape. I assume that the other attenders chalked it up to our being crazy confused gringas.

My second traveling opps was a little messier. Allegra and I took a bus to a little village to see the oldest church in Central America (it was not at all exciting). We got on the bus and after a few minutes a man came back to where I was sitting. People walk around on busses all the time as the passengers shift for each stop. This man had a particularly crazy look about him... kind of like, "I had six beers for breakfast and I´m going to have you for lunch." I was a little scared of him. He came back stood right by me and pointed down directly at me as if he wanted me to move over so he could sit down. Given the crazy look in his eyes and the fact that there was an open seat diagonal to mine, I stayed sitting where I was and pointed to the other seat. The crazy-eyes guy turned toward the man sitting in that seat and had a brief conversation in which it became clear that the man sitting was not keen on paying for my bus fare. I made an ass of myself. The guy was just coming to collect the bus fare. I had to apologize to the guy sitting and the crazy eye guy. I felt really bad about assuming that the crazy eye guy intended me harm. Maybe he´d just been in the sun a lot in his life, maybe he has an eye disease, maybe he did have six beers for breakfast. None of these indicate that he is a gringa molester. However, in my defense, he assumed I didn´t´t speak Spanish and instead of asking me for the Quetzal (money) he just pointed at me in a very odd, non-descriptive way. It would have been different if he has held his hand palm up so something... An important part of traveling is learning to trust the voice inside, the voice that says what is safe and what is not. I probably made the wrong choice today, but it is important that I keep listening to that voice, in all areas of my life, but especially when I am in a place that is foreign.

Such are the crazy adventures of traveling. I am learning humility and to appreciate the graciousness of others. I guess these mishaps are not too bad. When I was in Ghana, my friends and I accidentally peed in my Ghanaian friend´s shower. That was hard to apologize for!