In two days deaf

Most of the students and other gringos go to the beach or home during Christmas. I was asked to join a group of eight students to El Salvador, but I decided to stay in Antigua with my guest family, in stead of speaking English the whole day on a sunny beach.
For the guest family it was the first time they had a student over for Christmas.
In Guatemala the biggest celebration is on the 24th of December.
At six in the evening I came home after a day of school. Only the abuelo of the family was home. He loves the "marimba music" and was telling me something about it. Because his false teeth don't fit completely it's pretty difficult to understand him. I thought he was asking me for a dance. So I asked him if he wanted to teach me the marimba, and he smiled big time. So he learned me the marimba, which is only slow dancing on music with flutes and congo's. Very romantic with a 76 year old Guatemalteco. But I loved the moment!
Not long after this he family came home and they offered me to drink a rum with lemonade, marsmellows, tortilla's with fried bacon. The food is really healthy over here, hum...
The nascimento in the living room (the landscape with Maria and the 3 kings, the whole village and all the animals) was finished. Now it had a river with streaming water and a volcano with smoke. The abuelo was probably in love with me after our dance and talked about the nascimento and a lot I didn't understand.
At midnight the real party starts and for two days the people in Guatemala live in the night and sleep during the day. At 0.00h the fireworks explodes in all the streets, with an enormous noise. They love firecrackers! It's normal to hug the whole neighborhood (there all family living next door) and eat tamales, drink hot chocolate, off course more rum and the champagne I brought.. During the evening you can hear out of every house very loud salsa and marimba music and it gets louder during he night. Most families go on till 5 or 6 in the morning.
I was glad I was in my bed at 2 o'clock after a long day.

The next day in the afternoon Olgi, Juan Carlos, Yasmina and Brandon were dressed in carnival clothes to participate in a parade with music and fireworks in the streets. They danced for more then 4 hours and I followed the parade through town. It was about 28 degrees and it was great to watch.
At 7 in the evening was another activity outside with religious music on the street. From the "Iglesia la Escuela de Cristo" arrives every year a statue of the Virgen Maria on a beautifully decorated wagon. She makes a tour through the streets of Antigua. Around seven she visited the colonia Manchen, where I stayed. You could hear her from far away, because every 5 minutes they light a "bomba" which sounds as a canon lighted next to your ear. She arrived at seven and every 20 meters between "the bomba's" the people of Manchen light an enormous amount of firework and the thousands of people who were watching also light firecrackers on the streets. A top of that there is a guy disguised like a bull, and he runs through the streets in front of the Virgin. Now and then they light the bull who is full of firework and all the hombres like to run after the bull. Very dangerous! At moments there is so much smoke of the firework, you couldn't see for more then a meter. It really sounded like a war in the streets. In the evening of the 25th there is a market of tortilla's, beer and of course rum. What a Christmas!