Quetzaltenango

Most often referred to by it´s pre-conquered name Xela (Shayla), this is where I studied Spanish for 2 weeks. It is the second biggest city in Guatemala, but feels like a big town. It is in the highlands and fairly cold which gives it a very tranquilo atmosphere. I liked Xela a lot. The tour books say their is very little to see there and I guess that´s true in terms of pure attractions, but I found it very liveable. It has scattered colonial buildings, but what I mostly liked was the numerous brightly painted houses, the many things being sold on the street, and the 3 tiendas per block. The people were friendly, spoke only Spanish to me, and were definitely more indigenous looking than in Guatemala City


Nearbye there were some places to visit. I went with a group at my school to Momostenango. It is known for its wool alfombras and a pretty good market. Ironically, although I reluctantly went with my school, it ended up being great because they had us go on a tour of one guy's house who makes the blankets. He took us through the whole process and had us do a few of the parts, like spooling the wool and making one row of a quilt. A cool thing also was he used all natural items to dye the wool, including plants for the gree, some berries for the purple, and bugs from Honduras for the red.

There was also some hot springs and a volcano I never got around to nearbye as well. In the end I think my favorite part was just walking around. One of my least favorite parts was this tradition they had in the town that seemed very Latino. Every morning between 6 and 7 someone set off at least one round of fireworks. I found out this was done to commerate a birthday in the town. Now, this is a town of some 300,000 people. I also learned that they did it first thing in the morning so you would awake knowing it was so and so's birthday. Thanks! Overall though I thought it was great place to do a language school.