This summer I lived in a little town in Guatemala called Ixtahuacan. The lifestyle is extremely different than what I enjoy here in the United States. The women spend most of their day in the family compound preparing meals, cleaning, or weaving. It surpised me how much time these activities take. For me, preparing meals and cleaning is something that distracts from my daily tasks, but for them it was their main responsiblity.
When they had time, they would weave. The weaving is so intricate that it took them weeks or months to finish something. The shirt that I am wearing in the picture, a huipile (spanish) or p'ot (K'iche'), took two months for my host sister Maria to complete (she is the one standing next to me in the picture). First she had to buy the threads in the market. Then she strung the white thread out in many parallel lines and connected them to her backstrap loom. Then she put the color thread onto sticks and wove the design line by line.
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