Recap of the end of my week:
Thursday: I went to the Office in the morning and we made posters for women's day. The theme for this year's parade is women's rights in the workplace, so some of our slogans are: "I am a woman, a mother, and a worker for my family", "I am a woman, not a sex object", "I have labor rights. No to labor exploitation" etc. In the afternoon I climbed up to a mountain called El Baul behind where I live. There's a huge cross there with a mirador and the vista of Xela is incredible. There are also some really long amazing slides there.
Friday: I worked on my Entremundos articles pretty much the whole day. A little misunderstanding happened between my editor and I because she sent me an activities timetable with a lot of stuff for me to do and I got a little overwhelmed. For example, I have to have the 1100 word article done by March 10th, but she never wrote back telling me if I have to redo it completely or not, I have an 800 word article to write about ecology news and laws, and a 550 word article about a community organization to write by March 15th. I also have 2 other 550 word articles about community organizations for April 15th. I have to start translating articles on March 20th, and will help translate Entremundos's annual report due April 15th. I also have to create a photo bank of 400 pictures for the magazine by April 12th. On top of that, I have to look for organizations to send grant proposals to for Entremundos's funding. Anyways, it all worked out but I still have alot of writing to do, not alot of time, and still no feedback! I also had a 2h salsa class which was amazing, and then went to the showing of a guatemalan movie called Puro Mula, which basically means Dumbass. The premise is that a drunk young guy has to babysit his nephew but he is hungover and loses the child. While he is trying to find him around town, several funny encounters and adventures happen to him. I didn't understand most of it because the sound was pretty bad and their language was very colloquial and slang guatemalan spanish. Then we went to a free Jazz festival where a group called Imox from Guate played some original pieces at the Municipal Theatre. The band was made up of 3 guys (pianist, bass, and drums) and a girl (vocal and sax) that all seemed to be in their late 20s, they were really talented and have played in other parts of Latin America. I had to go to bed early because I was getting up at 3:30 the next morning to go on a field trip with the women's office.

Saturday was both a test of my patience and a strange cultural experience. One lady from the office, Mariella, whom I've become friends with, had been asking me the whole week if I was going to go to Tapachula with the office on Saturday. I asked several times what Tapachula was, what we were going to do there, if it was for work, but I never got a clear answer, and maybe some of it was lost in translation, but what I understood was that we were going to a town close to the Mexican border to go check it out and chill, so I agreed to pay the 125Q pasaje and have a bonding day with the ladies.
I got up at 3:30 and woke Elvia and Hugo up so that they could drive me to the bus, which was supposed to leave at 4 am, but because of trusty Guatemalan time, left at 4:30. It was really cold but I was able to sleep on the bus, and as the hours passed, it got warmer and warmer as we descended from the Highlands into the coastal areas of the Quetzaltenango and San Marcos departments. The sunrise was beautiful as the blackness enveloping banana, palm, sugarcane, and mango trees gave way to orange-pink skies and rich-green tropical nature. After three hours of surprisingly smooth road, we got to the Mexican border and had to go through immigration.
In what many would call a typical Leah situation, I hadn't understood that Tapachula was in Mexico so I only had a photocopy of my passport with me to avoid my passport getting stolen; needless to say, we were in a bit of a dilemma. I, the tall gringa, had to cross into Mexico illegally without being noticed by the dozens of border patrol officers. We got to the first checkpoint and Eunice said everyone was Guatemalan - they only need an ID to cross. However, everyone had to get off the bus and get into a line  and walk in a corridor across the border line, which was in the middle of a bridge above a river. I made myself as short as I could, and walked looking down or away at the river, close to Tita's back. We walked very fast to get out of there as soon as possible and cross the last checkpoint where Migra officers were checking people randomly and we had to go through a final turnstile and into Mexico. Down on the riverbank, a man and a young boy were making rafts out of wood and tires for crossing. I don't think they were going to cross but perhaps were preparing them to sell to the daily (or nocturnal) batch of Central American illegal immigrants heading North. After ten intense and blurred minutes of stress and fast-paced walking, I had crossed the border without any problem. I guess within a group of 40 people crossing legally, it's easy to sneak past, even if I am 2 heads taller and a whole lot whiter than all of them. It was a really interesting experience to feel that fear of getting caught by the Migra, a fear that is surely exponentially higher than mine was for the typical illegal immigrant. However, the Mexican police is so corrupt that giving them 100 pesos would probably have solved any problem that might have arisen.
Being illegal in Mexico for an entire 11 hours almost made the trip worth it, but the rest of the day was pretty drab. We went to a first department store outside of Tapachula, a giant Carrefour-like store where things were cheaper than in Guatemala, due to the lower value of the peso (1Q = 1.58 pesos), and the ladies went nuts tapping their calculators for every item to compare prices and filling up their cart with all kinds of imported foodstuffs, cosmetics, and accessories. I was hoping the day wasn't going to consist of going to various department stores to indulge the ladies into an entire day of frantic consumerism, but unfortunately it was. We went to 3 different stores, the difference between the items within each of them unapparent to me, and systematically people were half an hour to 40 minutes late when we had to go back to the bus to go to another department store and finally leave. I know Guatemalans are late in general, and Guatemalan time is never on time, but I've never been so frustrated. The bus driver actually had to honk the horn outside Walmart to get everyone to come back no later than 30 minutes late so we could finally leave and head back to Xela. Yes, because we went to Walmart, upon majority group request according to Tita. The Walmart complex was 1 year old and very modern, with at least 3 different frozen yogurt places. I told some ladies that Walmart was actually a labor rights violator and had had many different lawsuits, but that wasn't a strong enough argument to deter them from going. For lunch we went to the parque central, which has 2 fountains, and ate delicious tortas mexicanas. It was sweltering, a nice change of climate from breezy Xela. Around the park were a lot of stores full of tacky clothes that we of course had to peruse.
In the office, the ladies joke about McDonald's with Eunice, who repeats she is against what it represents, and proclaims No to Capitalism. The question prodding my mind that day was How is this different from eating at McDonald's? Out of the 3 stores, 2 were american (Sam's Club and Walmart), and almost all the products they bought were made in china by american or european companies. They were all excited about how slightly cheaper everything was, but in the end spent more than they would have or needed. After the 2nd store, I asked what it was that they could possibly want to buy from the next place, and the answer I got was We'll see what there is. That is consumerism, a culture that's definitely been imported from the States in which people seek to buy just to buy. It gave me a headache and I have to say I was a little horrorstruck by how ridiculous and materialistic people were acting. Tita gave a short speech in the bus thanking everyone for being here and saying that this day trip was a gift to us women for the International women's day, which is Tuesday the 8th, to relax and have fun. In other words, to celebrate our womanhood, we went to three department stores to buy things in bulk for the casa and the family - we went on a 9h grocery shopping spree to relax. How ironic is it that we did what is considered the traditional woman's role to celebrate our independence and emancipation from society's grip on what we are and what we represent.