morning

The best way to really get a feel for a new place is to wake up early and get around during the morning rush. The tourists are still in bed nursing their hangovers, and I am rushing to the bank to grab cash before I have to be at class. The sun is bright and glaring, and on the street corners colorful buses pick up weary passengers and threaten to splash me with the remnants of yesterday´s rainstorm. My sandals make me trip in the rifts of the cobblestone streets, and a wrinkled and very stained looking Guatemalan reaches his hand out to catch me. The people here are warm and wonderful in a way I haven´t encountered yet. As I approach the bank, children in blue and white uniforms rush past me to school their pink and yellow backpacks bouncing as they move, some of them cluthing tightly to their mother´s hands and others racing up the school steps. I get a little twinge just then. Antigua is humid and sticky, and the morning is quilted in a layer of cloud hiding the surrounding volcanoes from my view. My hair begins to curl up from my pony tail. Aside from class, I have no plans for the day. And after the bank I weave my way back to the school through the streets of Antigua watching a world so new to me that is so painfully mundane to those I pass on the streets.