Museo Santiago

At the Museo Santiago, there is a lot of information on the barrilete (kite-making) tradition there. Every year for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), there is a huge festival in Santiago in which hundreds of kites are released to take their first flight. Because they are so huge (often several meters in diameter), they take months to prepare. Even though we aren't going to be able to witness this spectacle, it was really interesting to tour the museum.

On another note, since we are a Kaqchikel class, we asked the museum director to give us the tour in Kaqchikel. However, because Spanish is more predominant than Kaqchikel, the poor woman had extreme difficulties in expressing herself in the indigenous language. That just goes to show that just because someone wears traje (traditional Mayan clothing), it does not necessarily mean that s/he speaks a Mayan language.