limo tint rearview...that's how i do

 

my friend dominik (hails from germany by way of s. florida) and i decided to throw back a few saturday night. and, after walking by one too many gringo bars we decided to dumbrush riki's. almost immediately we met this charming group of guatemaltecos in town from guate (the capital). donald, the big guy, actually lived in germany for a year, so on top of some decent english, mano spoke german too. i was speaking with his wife larita about all kinds of stuff...antigua, the economy, crime & punishment, etc. all in spanish! they seemed eager to flex some english so big dom and i spoke spanish and miraculously the conversation was great.

the catalyst may have been the liters of dorada ice on the table, but this is what lead me to a great realization. if you wanted to learn a 2nd, 3rd or whatever number language and you could find someone else that knew that language and wanted to learn your language, then just meet for happy hour once a week and presto! the cool thing was that it was just effortless barchat and when we or they hit a bump we just helped each other out or said it in the other language. this is a completely different mode of learning from the school which only provides spanish...for this reason many abstract concepts have to remain hidden until you can adequately describe in spanish what you'd like to ask. i also non-begrudgingly got tricked into taking a picture with a delightful group of ladies from finland, guatemala, ireland, and who knows where else. that was thanks to angel, el abogado, not shown. the other pic with dom, donald & larita also has the frontrunner for mayor of antigua, complete with 8X10 glossy. it was kinda cool and worth noting that one minute we were just trying to make our way to the bar and the next we were rubbing elbows with the guatemalan aristocracy.

anywho, we also went to café no sé for the closing hour and it felt like we were just on top of the world...mainly because we rode over to this place in a clean benzo with limo tint, even on the windshield. (by the way, that's what everybody does here, cuz it's not illegal) overall, it was a nice prelude to a departure with a group of friends, none of whom i knew 24 hours prior.