"My Balls Itch!"

San Pedro and the whole Atitlan watershed is a polar combination of indigenous Mayan culture and ubiquitous Western influence. All the women and a few of the older men wear bright traditional, hand-woven garb. Many sell handi-crafts and traditional food on the streets.

Side by side with these are teenagers in blue-jeans, backward baseball caps and sneakers. In gringo havens like San Pedro, even many of the stores are owned by Europeans and a few Americans. (At our favorite ex-pat haunt, the drunk Irish owner literally paid me (5 Quetzales) to add a Colombian, anise-tinted, clear moonshine to my tonic water.)

Despite all the English we hear here, some of the slogan-laden English language T-shirts we find people wearing are truly epic.

Por ejemplo:

"My other body is a temple."

"I Don't Recycle."

"I'm from the land of misfit toys."

"Magic Isn't Real."

"I see your lips moving, but all I hear is 'blah blah blah."

"BOOBS"

And my personal favorite: scrawled across the chest of a well-to-do 55-year-old, stony faced and, I'd like to think, proud man:

"My Balls Itch!"

I thought about telling him, but quickly realized my Spanish wasn't nearly proficient enough to translate such a nuanced cultural statement.

So we let him go on his way, reasonably convinced that no one whose respect he cares about can speak English either.