Andrea's Unintentional 10K (9/14)

This evening, while passing the time waiting for the bus, we chatted with a Guatemalan guy named Henry. At one point he exclaimed, "What! You don´t run on Independence Day? No torch? No running? Really? What do you do?!!"
So tomorrow is Independence Day for Central American Countries, the day Spain officially withdrew control over their former colonies. The celebrations have been buildingwith fervorr all weeks. Flagsare drappedd on the hoods of cars and are flying from every building. The day beforeindependencee is the day of "antorcha"- groups of people run with a banner with the name of their school or business and they run with a lit torch (think Olympics) around town or in our case, from one town to another. We haven't been able to getdefinativee answer on how this custom began or its significance. The best that I can gather is that the torch, a symbol of light and freedom, is carried between towns all over Guatemala uniting the country. Oh, I forgot to mention that the runners carry whistles that sound with every breath and that the spectators cheer and throwwater balloonss (made of plastic bags), buckets of water, or just open up hoses at the runners. It is an entertaining event for all. The roads are filled with people of all ages running and, oddly enough, traffic is kind on this day of all days- drivers honk enthusiastically and wait patiently to passthe hoardss of runners.

So I thought our Spanish school was going to run around the nearby town of SanMiguel becausee it would be less crowded that our town of Antigua. What actually happened is that we were dropped off in San Miguel and had to run back to Antigua! The details were lost in translation- or perhapsthey didn'tntellel us on purpose! A surprise but fun nonetheless. We were a ragtag group of little boys, some of our aging teachers full of pride determined to finish. In the picture you can see our school banner PLFM and the torch (a gasoline soaked rag stuffed inside a tin can on a stick). I'm in there somewhere sucking air at 5000 feet and of course, with watebottlele! A hello to my running buddies. Needless to say I was thinking of you all.