On Wednesday, as I sat down beside Annie, my spanish teacher from 8 to 10:30 in the morning, she told me that there was a big festival and parade going on that day in Antigua. I said I wish we could go, to which she replied, "we can, right now! just ask your friends!" and so, clearly we vamosed our butts over to antigua for probably one of the best days I've ever had here.
Something you must know is that I absolutely adore my spanish teacher. She is radiant and bubbly and loving and spontaneous, and come tomorrow, I will be giving her daughter photography lessons, for she is also an absolute gem.
Anyways, we started our day in Antigua perusing this huge stand of books, old and new, historical and comical, all displayed beneath this giant old building. I purchased a spanish dream interpretation book and also some kind of spanish romance book, which I bought soley for its cover, and a book of herbal remedies. Jenna bought a book of poetry, called "a simple life" or something to that effect, which the other day we spent half our spanish lesson collectively reading to each other...it had a lot of butterflies in it if I remember correctly.
So, back to Antigua...as we were looking at the books, a blast of music errupted from these huge speakers in the street, making everyone jump, and soon jenna and I were dancing in the street while locals laughed and two caterers with big huge white bakery hats spurred us on from their nearby van. I felt intrinsically a part of something beautiful in that moment, and I will remember it always.
As the parade started, filled with many a marching band which Jenna became instantly enamoured of, Annie pointed to an upper balcony on the building with the books, and said "arriba!"(indicating, "let's go up there!") and began to push her way through the throngs of people to get back to the book area,jenna and her teacher close behind and then quickly found the stairs that lead up to the balcony, where we had a full view of all the festivities. Once the owners of the building kicked the handful of us sneakies out of the balcony area, Annie made sure we always had front row views of everything that was going on, and I got some pretty amazing shots, which I shall now display for your viewing pleasure.
I can't explain to you how alive I felt that day. Sure, I was a tourist taking photos of a culture I can barely comprehend, but yet, I was laughing and joking with Annie in Spanish, being embraced by her, and felt that I was not as foreign from these people and this place as language barriers and cultural differences would make us believe we are. We were all just people, under the same sun, loving the same way, enjoying the same things. *I appologize in advance for the poor organization of these photos below, I'm far too lazy to make them look sweet right now.
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