We started in Salcaja, which is home to the oldest Central American Catholic Church - build in the 1520's. Unfortunately, we couldn't get into the church, but it did look quite old on the outside (as you can see for yourself in the picture). There was also a Saturday market that was nice to walk through. We then took a short little bus ride to San Andres Xecul, that has very brightly colored churches. The towns were cute and nice little half day excursion. 
Other than the Church in Xela, they were the first churches in Guatemala I'd seen. It was just a pity that we couldn't go in either one of them. I'm also not really sure what the story is behind the crazy colors. The next day, I had an adventure of a different sort. Last week, I contacted a group call AMIGAS, that runs and trains women and youth to do health education in their communities around Xela. On Sunday, I was invited to go to a town about two hours away, Columba, where they were piloting a session on STD's and HIV/AIDS for teens. The session lasted about three hours and it was really great. The youth were so into the workshop, asking important questions and seeming genuinely grateful for the information. It was also interesting, but not really surprising, to see how liberal the facilitator was about certain topics, and conservative about others. For example, there were very open conversations around STD's, with graphic pictures, how you contract them, and what the symptoms are. But, while the materials had images of homosexual couples, these relationships and their sexual behavior was highlighted many times as being "unnatural." Afterwards, we all had lunch, and I was able to talk to some of the youth about what they thought of the talk and what their parents and other classmates thought about these topics.
On the way home, I experienced the Chicken Bus in its true form. Sunday is a huge travel day especially in between big towns - and we traveled on the most packed bus I have ever been on. People jammed in with no breathing room, as well as anywhere between 3 and 5 people hanging on the outside of the front door. As soon as you thought that the bus wasn't going to stop and pick up more people, we would pick up a few more, who would proceed to hold on to what ever rail on the outside of the bus they could. For the first 45 min of the ride, I was jammed in between someone's butt and someone else's knees. Then, the bus broke down and we all got to spend about 20 min outside. Amazingly, the driver had a bunch of spare parts and tools in the bus and was able to fix it in no time. I don't think any description I can write can really recreate the craziness of the bus repair. But, imagine three people running around, screaming at each other, grabbing tools and parts, and doing acrobatic jumps over the open (and hot) engine for about twenty minutes. And then yelling at us to get back on the bus faster, because we were behind schedule... All and all, I was quite impressed with the driver and the 'ayudante' (helper) and our 1983 school bus.
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