La Lucha Continua

Back to school this week after a most amazing week at Lake Atitlan. It was so great to meet new family there and spend some awesome time with a friend from Austin. I´ll post more about the Lake and definitely link to some pics very soon.

I was a bit worried about starting back up with my classes but I got my same favorite teacher so that helped a lot. And, surprisingly, no olvide todo! But, still, I wanted to ease my way back into my five hours of one-on-one classes a day so I asked my teacher if she could take me to her university in town, San Carlos, which is the ONLY public university in all of Guatemala.

It was a super cool trip. The campus reminded me a lot of UT, with its crumbly old buildings and huge lecture halls but that´s pretty much where the camparison ends. This school is completely run by the students (when they want to close the school, it is closed, sometimes for weeks), very very cheap (my teacher studies law for 5 Quetzales a month, about 60 cents), and is extremely politically minded. The walls are covered in beautiful, powerful, revolutionary-minded works of art. Every year, a group of students, encapuchados, masked in KKK-like outfits protest current world governments and ¨fundraise¨for the university (they use some pretty strong tactics, some involving tire spikes...).

The day we went happened to be a special day for the encapuchados and the campus. Students were making beautiful alfombras (carpets) made of colored sawdust and were displaying their artistic creations of current critiques of world political issues. It was really amazing to witness. And I took some super cool pics... check them out!

http://picasaweb.google.com/clarissa.moore/UniversidadDeSanCarlos?authkey=Gv1sRgCJWi697Cgva8Yw&feat=directlink