Moments that make me go hmmmm?

A group of us went on a field trip to visit some old churches near Xela. Our guide made the claim that our first stop was the oldest church in Central America. There is some question about how factual this may be as at least one student was fairly certain she´d been told the same thing during a trip in Costa Rica. History is wonderfully invented worldwide! This fantastic old man invited us into his store and home to give us more information about the church and to share some of his home brewed fruit liquor. He pushed the visitor´s book upon one of the students and rather than asking her to sign it, told her to read out the names of the people written in the book. He was so proud the whole world has been to visit him! And he was even happier to share the history of his beloved church. As for the fruit liquor, well it was quite tasty with a bit of a kick. Personally I prefered the fruit soaked in the liquor from the process of making it, but plenty of students purchased bottles of the liquor itself. Coming from a society were uniformity is the norm in selling a product and customers are quick to notice any difference in the product offered them compared to their neighbor, it was reassuring to observe as each student received a bottle of liquor which was both different in size and quantity for the same price as the others, not one person complained. In fact the person who received the largest bottle tried to give it away multiple times, as she apparently purchased it to support the old man not to indulge in the drink. Finally as we were driving back to school in our oversized mini-van I delighted in listening to two students from Germany conduct an entire conversation with each other about travel tips for Mexico (one had already been and the other was going there next) completely in English. They were not speaking in English for my benefit, or anyone else for that matter, but only because it was too difficult to try to keep three languages straight. They are currently studying and living in Spanish and the common traveler language tends to be English. So for the time being they are both trying to avoid speaking German as much as possible. One even told me he finds emails in German from friends and family distracting, but thinks they might not like it much if he wrote them in English. Ha! Oh, what a crazy and beautiful world it is indeed!