Guatemala

Pictures from my time in Guatemala, where I took a two week intensive class entitled "Hermeneutics and Contextualization" at SETECA.

Flying over the Guatemala countryside Saturday afternoon
Making our way down toward Guatemala City (about 3 million residents)
My bedroom at SETECA
The kitchenette
Showers with hot water! Yay!!!
Sunday afternoon we toured the city.
Overlook (the volcano was hidden in clouds most of the time)
Cafesa Lounge (this was at the turn-out for the city overlook)
Canons from when these were Spanish colonies
Not leaning (just a reckless car ride). And wow, the driving in Guatemala is scary!
McDonald's is everywhere
Drive through
Interesting monument
The cathedral
A replica of the black Jesus. Before I took this picture, there had been a man with his arms wrapped around the statue as he prayed.
The courtyard
The presidential palace - on a side of the courtyard catty-corner to the cathedral
Spices for sale laid out on a blanket
Colorful fabric for sale
Food for sale
Little girl dressed in indigenous garb
Pentecostal evangelist. He counted out the number of believers as they arrived. Uno! Dos! Tres! ... Treintidos!
A lady in indigenous garb, with a baby strapped to her back. When the Spanish conquered the Mayans, they assigned each town a special pattern of skirt to wear as a means of population control. Now, the Mayan people still wear those skirts, although they have added to the patterns to tell their story.
Books for sale
More food for sale
I'm not sure what those are.
Random guy studying or writing
The "plucky" little van we went most places in
Someone impersonating Michael Jackson
Any place where there is an open piece of sidewalk, someone will set up shop. This lady is selling lollipops (I think).
The city is full of concrete walls right up against the sidewalks. Many of them have murals painted on them.
Flowers at the 3D terrain model (not-to-scale) of Guatemala.
More flowers (It cost too much to get in, so we had to content ourselves with the flowers and Google Earth.)
Guatemala City has several ravines cutting through it.
As the population increases, and there is no place to build, the poorest folks have to build shacks on the sides of the ravines.
In the distance, you can see where the ravine turns into a landfill.
Because of excessive rain, all the cemeteries are above ground.
Mausoleums for the rich...
Simple crypts for the poor.
Sometimes the rich and poor are placed right next to each other.
Everyone has two last names. There's a whole system to it, but If you see a "de" in a name, it is a woman.
Next to the cemetery is the largest landfill in Central America. It is slowly filling up one of the ravines.
The landfill is right up against the shacks from the ravine.
Many (most?) of the mausoleums have crosses on the top.
Like most landfills, this one was filled with scavenger birds. Normally the birds are flying more because there are also people scavenging for a living, but today they must not have allowed the people in.
Monday we started class. Class was usually in the morning from 8:30 to 12:30.
Most days we had to spend a good deal of time in the library reading photocopies of journal articles and books that were on reserve.
The articles we read had to do with philosophical hermeneutics, liberation theology, etc.