Top Ten Ways to Spot a Tourist:

While I left Antigua over a week ago, the memories of all the tourists there will haunt me indefinitely. A few dead give aways:

10. Hawaiian shirts (and just regular button up collared shirts) tucked into shorts – some people can pull this off, but most really can’t. Seriously.

9. Groups of middle-age women haggling in English over the latest in Mayan fashion in the states.

8. Wandering the streets of Antigua all night because you go so drunk that you forgot where your host-family lives.

7. Using entirely too much Spanglish. (I’ll admit that I do this sometimes – occasionally I’m even right when guessing, but when you have to “guess-ar” every other “word-o” by adding –ar or –o to the Enlgish version there’s a problem.)

6. Talking with your horrible Spanish accent WAY too loud to make sure you’re heard. If I can hear you from more than ten meters away, we have a problem.

5. Footwear. Tevas (see previous blog) are not the only give away and sadly we are almost all victims of this. I bought sandals here last year, but sandals alone won’t make me fit in for beans. I can’t remember if it was here or Bali, but someone mentioned how you can spot a foreigner from miles away based on their footwear. Sure enough, foreign-looking folks with Guatemalan footwear often end up being locals and no matter how Guatemalan someone may look, they’ve thus far almost all been locals when their shoes didn’t look like everyone else’s.

4. Standing in the middle of the street as if you own it. While it’s true that the “collective America” practically owns half the world in one way or another, that simply isn’t enough. Walking to school the other day, a group of tourists (Texas perhaps? If so, they certainly do raise ‘em ____) was literally doing the boogie woogie in the middle of the street at 8am. Not okay. These are the moments that I suddenly transform myself into a peaceful Canadian. Nevermind that people drive really fast and don’t wait for you to see them before they smash you, you just look silly standing/dancing in the street.

3. and 2. I’ll be damned....can’t think of any others, but I think that number 4 is worth repeating because there have been times I’ve barely been able to walk through town up here in the Petén because folks take up the entire street.

1. People that come up to you – lost –in a non-English speaking country and shamelessly ask, “Do you speak English?”