Semana Santa and a little polution

Filling your brain with Spanish words can be a little hard on your body sometimes, so I like to take to the streets and keep up with the cultural happenings.

These processions down here are like protests during the Vietnam era.. They are happening everywhere around town. My Spanish professora named “Lady”, yeah her name is Lady.. it’s pretty easy to remember her name because when I forget a girls name I revert to calling them Lady by default. Anyways, Lady and I took to the streets to check out this one procession that was kind of like the varsity team of the week. These people are pretty hard core Catholics going barefoot and crying down the road.

We entered the street and were immediately swept into the crowd and trapped in the narrow avenue for almost 20 minutes.. The marching went forward, and then a couple steps back, then side to side. It was a little weird to be the only gringo in the whole crowd, if any of them realized that I was a catholic poser the whole group could turn on me and I could be crucified right on the spot. So I kept my head down and tried to sing along to the songs/prayers that were playing on the loudspeaker while not drawing any special attention to myself.

The procession finally came to an intersection and Lady and I were able to duck out on the side street unscathed. It was a very dangerous experience that I wouldn’t recommend a non catholic to attempt.

One thing that always gets me about this Centro America is the littering. The general consensus around here is to drop trash where you stand, or immediately out the window. The city center stays pretty clean usually because there are people that sweep up the trash. I think for the most part they just sweep it right over the cliff into the creek.

This creek here is a couple blocks from the house I’m staying at. Sometimes I like to head down to appreciate the serenity, and sweet sounds of the creek. I look at this creek and think, no where in the entire USA could you ever see something like this. These experiences are character builders, not very many people get to see this.

Some people would really think that all this trash has a negative connotation to it, but the indigs celebrate it like a blessing from above. For example at San Juan the city on the pacific beach people go to see the trash and be in it. Just like gringos like to go see nature and be in it..