Religion, religion!...RELIGION!

Quickly:

There is another student at my house. He is 19 and from Suriname, but has lived in Amsterdam for the past 3 years with his sisters. He has been in Guatemala for a few weeks already so his Spanish is ok, plus he speaks about 4 other languages. And, get this: he is Jewish too. Who would have thought there'd be 2 Jewish students in the same family during Easter week in Guatemala? Not me. (He is really only half, but still).

So Semana Santa. I dont have time to explain too much, but before I got here I knew there'd be carpets. I pictured roll out the red carpet carpets. Then once I was here I heard they were made of sawdust. I didnt really understand, but figured it was sawdust plus glue or something. No. What they do is lay sawdust in a big rectangle on the street. Then they use stencils and colored sawdust to make a design on the carpet. Fleur-de-lis, crosses, animals, etc. Every "carpet" on the street is different and they dont do the same design every year (I guess it is families or friends who make each carpet). People stay up all night making them. Or, they are carpets of flowers, with long pine needles as a base. And flowers for the design (or vegetables). Then there is a procession. Yesterday it was from 8 am to 9:30 pm. It included many (a few hundred) men and boys dressed in the bright purple gowns plus white head things that looked like what sheiks were, with a purple band. By 5 pm they looked like they were just plodding along. Some talked on their cell phone, some walked hand in hand with a girlfriend, some carried a baby. I guess they didn't look that involved in it to me. And then came about 40 men carrying a big float with lifesize figured on top of Jesus and other people (I dont know my New Testament, sorry). Plus some flowers. Apparently it weighs 100 pounds on the shoulder of each man carrying it. There is a guy at the front of the "float" that is the Christ figure. He walks on the carpets. The ones that people stayed up all night making? Yeah, those. It ruins them. Then there's a band following the Jesus float, playing funeral marches and other songs, and then more floats. The bands walk on the carpet too. I saw people following and picking up the flowers, and apparently sometimes the carpets have bread on them as decoration and kids run to pick it up to eat it, and mothers pick up the veggies. It is amazing to me that in a poor country people would spend what must be a relatively large amount of money on materials for these carpets. I guess many dollars in the past 5000+ years have been spent on religion, and I'll just never really get it. The carpets are very pretty and are usually colorful, but the procession itself does nothing for me and I would rather walk on a crowd-free street looking at carpets than be in a mass of people straining to get a glimpse of the float. The carpets are supposedly the best on Good Friday.

More religion: I went to dinner last night with the girl I met from Sweden, the 2 girls I met at lunch yesterday, plus some people from their school including a 60-ish couple from Michigan. All the others except me and the Swedish girl were Christians, although not all th students at the christian school are. We prayed before we ate. The couple from Michigan wants to move here as permanent residents and do mission work. The British girl I met yesterday is living just over the border from Texas in Mexico and building a safe house/community center for former prostitutes with a friend. It was so nice to be with people my age and have fun talking about things! I am meeting some of them for a movie this aftenoon. It is also nice to have plans and not have to figure out what to do to fill the day without being too bored or lonely.

Hmm, I've distilled the Samana Santa stuff into something less interesting than it actually is. The churches have sawdust carpets, too. Last week one day each church had one, this week is the same. And there will be multiple processions on some days. All the people here means it feels a little safer to walk back to the house at night - last night was my latest night out. I got back around 9 pm! I think it will work out well to see friend in the afternoon, go home for dinner and then study until bedtime.