Iguana!!!!

Ok, so today I walk in the door to our house and since it's so hot inside the first thing I do is open all the windows and such. But today was a little different because as I walk towards the sliding glass door, I am stopped by the sight of a huge iguana/lizard thing. And when I say huge, I mean, "How in the world did this thing get in my house?!"

So here for your veiwing pleasure is a picture of this huge lizard (on a leaf of our bird-of-paradise plant). But the best part is the VIDEO!!! so check it out by clicking HERE!

Semana Santa! (and Catholism)

Easter was great! I enjoyed being in Antigua and I got to see a bunch of great things. We actually planned on (and did) come back on Saturday so that we would miss the "returning home" crowd. (Antigua is the place to be for holy week.) But we apparently didn't miss the crowd of people. In fact a couple of our buses were overbooked. But we sure had fun while we were there.

One of the most famous things they do in Antigua for Semana Santa (Holy Week) are the afombras (carpets). They have processions every day where statues of Christ, Mary, and some of the appostles are carried through the street. It's supposed to be a mental picture of Christ going through Jerusalem during his last week. It's interesting because they carry Him on these huge platforms (almost like floats) but they sway from side to side to make it look like He's walking. Well, back to the afombras... They make carpets out of sawdust or other natural things and the procession then walks on them. The biggest day we saw was Thursday-night/Friday morning. Christ's arrest is depicted and there are tons of afombras almost everywhere. But the interesting part was that they spend all Thursday night and Friday morning (staying up all night) making them, but then the procession walks on them by very early the next day.

I'm not sure where this tradition comes from. If I had to guess, I would say that maybe they started making more "special" carpets for Palm Sunday when Jesus is supposed to come in on His triumphantly peaceful Donkey. Then maybe they just decided that Jesus was so special that He needed carpets then entire week. But I don't know, so don't take my word for it.

On Friday afternoon they had some other things as well. At the church, they crucified Jesus. It was pretty interesting, but I don't think they would have gotten very far with this in the States. They were dressed a little funny... to say the least. Actually, remember Chris Betz from COTW? Me and him were very good friends, and we had a lot of talks about Catholic things since he is Catholic. Out of all the things we talked about, there wasn't one single thing that I was uncomfortable with or one doctrine that I couldn't agree with at the least being a possibility. Actually, I really admired many of the things that Catholics have in their doctrines or catechisms.

All that said... there in Antigua I began to feel very uncomfortable. Maybe it was just the things that I didn't understand, or maybe it wasn't the Catholic Church at all, but rather the people in it. But either way, I truly felt like there were things that were pretty far off and it made me uncomfortable seeing it. I can see why the evangelical churches down here have really pulled away from the Catholics. It's hard for me to put together all that Chris said with what I see down here. It's incongruent to say the least. The only think I can guess is that maybe the Vatican is just looking the other way. I really believe there are people down here that worship Mary or that worship some of the icons that the churches keep. I mean... they are very beautiful and they definitely could be bringing glory to God, but not if people are worshiping them instead of Him.

And all that goes very far against what Chris and I talked about a couple of summers ago. Apparently in Vatican II, all that type of stuff was frowned upon and more or less outlawed within the faith. Which makes me wonder exactly what it is that's going on here and how the Vatican is getting around having to deal with it head on.

But either way, the afombras make for very beautiful (if temporary) carpets and pieces of artwork.

The YPG-525

Guess what? I also just made my first large puchase with the music money! I bought (of all things) a keyboard. I was looking around and trying to research them yesterday online and I found a couple of good ones. You know, I like the Yamaha brand. They have something besides the Clavinova series, called Portable Grand. It has fully weighted keys and it's piano-focused (their word, not mine) so it has a really good piano sound. It also has real stereo (not just two speakers), so the high notes sound like they're coming from the right side and the low notes from the left side. Anyway, I was looking around and found that almost always the price was $599. That seemed to be a good price for it. There were a few places that sold it for $549, plus shipping, but I found one that didn't charge for shipping and cost $599. Then, while I was there I noticed they were selling a special packaged deal: they were selling the keyboard with it's Yamaha issued "Survival Kit". The kit usually costs between $30-60 when you buy it by itself. But the store must have made a mistake in their pricing because instead of listing the package as $ 630 (which would have been a very reasonable price), it was listed at $530! And this is the same store that doesn't charge for shipping! So needless to say, I bought it! I was only planning on looking yesterday, but when I came across that seeming mistake, I couldn't help but buy it. It worked out well though, even after I put it in my cart and everything it still said $530. Actually, I got an email this morning telling me I had been charged $530, so it looks like that really was the price. But I'm not worried because I'm buying it new, so even if it's the $630 price, I won't mind since it's the exact one I wanted the school to have. If you want to check it out online or something it's called the YPG-525 (Yamaha Portable Grand).

I'm excited!

April 1st

These are the wonderful sites my roomates got to see when they woke up this morning. During the night, every peice of furniture in the house (minus only four major pieces and the bed I was on) was moved into their room. I wonder who did that? Notice the Stove in the back ground. Whoever moved all of that stuff so stelthaly must have been a very strong man.

The funniest thing is looking at the rest of the house and seeing how empty it is. HA!