Fireworks

Little known fact about Guatemalans…they LOVE fireworks. I can’t stress this enough. In fact, I think the word LOVE isn’t even strong enough to express exactly HOW MUCH they use fireworks. Here, fireworks are used to denote: celebration, waking up in the morning, welcome parties, goodbye parties, and everything in between.

Now the thing is, they aren’t just pretty, light-up-the-sky fireworks. They are more like Roman Candles – big explosions of light on the ground that last about 15 seconds before they’re over. It’s a good thing that before I got here I was thoroughly warned of this fact by Carrie, otherwise, on my 2nd day here, when I woke up to what sounded like gun shots, I would have been a lot more nervous (don’t worry – I’ve NEVER heard gunshots here – just fireworks :)). Even then, Christina, another volunteer from Germany who was my roommate at the time, just mumbled in her sleep, “Don’t worry, they’re just celebrating, go back to bed.” After rolling over in my bed to check the time I realized that it was 4:15 in the morning. What does ANYONE have to celebrate at 4:15 in the MORNING?? Needless to say, it happens about every other day here…just something else to get used to.

Friday night was the first time that I actually ever SAW people light off fireworks. There had been a group of visitors here from Minnesota for a week, and as part of their despedida celebration there was a dance, which of course, included fireworks. Hundreds of kids standing around as two of the older ones lit fireworks and ran like hell – quite an interesting sight :).