que te vaya bien

Tomorrow morning I leave Xela for a more remote department of Guatemala called Huehuetenango (known more commonly as just Huehue). Within Huehue I will visit Todos Santos Village, an off-the-beaten path type of place, and hopefully do a day hike or two around. I have to take a bus to Huehue proper, and then another from there to Todos Santos - no more than 30 miles distance but I should expect the ride to take at least 3 hours due to the landscape. I´m in the highlands here and there´s no such thing as a straight and narrow road (ok, narrow, yes).

I expect that on Sunday I will retreat back towards the Capital city, with a stop in Antigua on the way, and be prepared to fly out on Tuesday. Mary are you home on Tuesday afternoon and can you pick me up from JFK? Man that would be awesome. smiley face

Probably won´t have much access to internet after today so adios todos....(and this picture is very likely how i will travel). Don´t worry parents, I am going with a friend I met here. and I won´t take pictures of the Mayans like the Japanese guy did in the 90s.

La Tormenta

I didn´t write last week because I quickly fell into a pattern here that seemed to resemble normal daily life, and unworthy of passing on. Except for the rainstorm last Thursday. I was at the school until about 7pm that night when it started storming. The school has an open courtyard in the middle that we could watch the lighting from in a safe place, so the handful of us that were there stayed for a while until the heavy rain passed. It was a dense storm! And one that Xela hasn´t seen in awhile - here begins the rainy season! But eventually I had to make my way back (dinner was waiting for me), so I braved the rain and ran for it. As soon as I set foot outside on the tiny sidewalks I was in complete shock - not twenty minutes had passed and the streets were flooded more than a foot high and rising! It was totally impassable; I watched a car try to drive through and I´m certain the water seeped in through its doors. A nice boy on his bicycle tried to help me cross the street but it was hopeless - the only thing to do was head for higher ground until the rain stopped.

This city has apparently expanded so rapidly in the past twenty years that its infrastructure can´t possibly keep up, and the drainage system is totally insufficient for storms like this one. People were sweeping water out their front doors as I tried to get home. There are so many public services that we take for granted in the States...



I don´t have a picture of the storm but here´s the school. Pretty right? (by the way there are a ton of new yorkers here. I thought I was getting away from them. Anyone want to go see this guy play at Piano´s with me when I get back?)

Volcan Tacana

I hiked a volcano this weekend. These are words that never occurred to me would cross my mind to write. It was Volcan Tacana, bordering Mexico, and the second highest peak in Guatemala and Central America - somewhere close to 14000 ft. I went with three guys who are experienced hikers, so the trip started out being a little daunting. What if the altitude did me in, the hiking, dehydration? But I didn´t come here to sit indoors all weekend, and I don´t have the luxury of months of travel as most other people here seem to have, so I went. To make it more difficult, we didn´t start the hike at the base of the volcano, we started in the neighboring town the Chicken Bus left us in, some 8K away.

In the first hour I thought I was going to die. It was so foggy that it was impossible to see 10´in front, and every farmer with his mule carrying firewood that we came across told us different stories about how long it would take us and which direction to go. By the time we reached a girl no older than six and working with a sickle, I was starting to feel better.
How tremendously beautiful this country can be! The pine forests left a strong sweet sap smell in the air, and I felt my lungs being purified after my week in the city. It was difficult to look up often for fear of losing my footing (not to mention how discouring it was to see how high we still had to climb). My endorphins begin kicking in though when we began climbing the volcano, some three hours after commencing. It´s incredible to be so high, watching the few farmers down in the valley below with their sheep and thatched roof houses. After climbing for six hours we found a little camping site at the top of one of these stepped farms and settled in for the night. Food has never tasted so good! We all fell asleep so early out of exhaustion, but it enabled us to wake up early enough to see the sunrise above the clouds (which was possible because we, too, were above the clouds!) I looked out and saw Volcan Tajamulco - the only peak to beat Tacana in height. Beautiful.

We got moving quickly in our effort to reach the top so we could catch the last bus back to Xela at 1.30pm. (no luck) We were deceived by about 5 different peaks that once we reached the top of could see the next (with me complaining the loudest). It became an obsessive pursuit, and soon we were using arms and legs to climb boulders, moving slower and slower as we got higher and higher. I think if I paid attention inthe moment to what I was doing I would have panicked and stayed behind. I´ve been safe in New York too long.
Sitting on top of this volcano (it hasn´t been active for over 100 years, but plenty others here are), eating granola and peanut butter and apple bread.....how do I go back to an office job after this?

I´m not ready for this experience to be over.

(by the way I´m posting these photos to flickr . may come in two batches. I still have to post many many others but i have poor luck with the internet connection. check out that fog though. )

buenos dias

I am getting very frustrated that I wake up each morning at 5.30am, ready to go. This gives me extra time to study, I guess. Don´t know if I should blame the roosters or the fireworks...either way they are both like clockwork.

wow.

The weekend! Saturday started like any other day could - I waiting at the bus stop at 7.30am with two other PLQ students for the bus to take us out of the city for a weekend trip. We were going to San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan. This lake is part of the reason I decided to take this trip, so I was really excited for my adventure outside of Xela. The bus came quickly and we squeezed in with 20 other passengers (mind you the bus is really a small van). We were dropped off at one end of an outdoor market in the city where we made our way to the other end to the bus terminal, and from there we caught a chicken bus to take us to San Pedro. The chicken bus is the favorite thing of the extranjeros to talk about in Guatemala because they are very colorfully painted old school buses from the states, where people sit four or five to a seat meant for two, and the drivers speed through the moutains like maniacs. The combination makes for a great adventure! But this bus stopped in the countryside for us to make a transfer, and when we disembarked we were told the next bus wouldn´t show up for at least three hours. Instead another van-bus took us to another small village where we again disembarked for a transfer, and discovered we needed to hop on the back of a pick up truck with again at least 20 other people, all standing (they provided grab bars for safety haha). But holy crap!! Here we are, descending on very winding roads through the mountains, standing cramped in the back of a pick up truck, breathing beautiful air and watching the lake appear closer and closer....we could have been heading for the most disgusting city in the world and it would have been worth it for that trip.

Ahhh....the thermal spas. Chicovix! I´ve been preparing for this, waiting not just for my trip to Guatemala but for my OUTDOOR ADVENTURE - my time with nature - my relaxation in the hot springs...Hopefully there would be some wildlife around to view with the binoculars (Melanie, the way, loves the binoculars, especially turned around to make everything ¨muy pequena!¨)

But look! The school organizes a trip to Chicovix! I can go in the afternoon!

We set off, six girls (apparently spas are not as appealing to the opposite sex), so excited. We had a van take us through the winding roads of the mountains - the views are astounding but the land is covered in litter. We ascended and descended via smaller and smaller passageways and finally we arrive....The guide explains ¨solo dos personas per baño, cuesta quatro Quetzales por una hora¨ and I think, I don´t need the bathroom, let´s go to the hotsprings! So he leads us there and I quickly realize ¨solo dos personas¨es porque cada ¨baño¨is a tiny enclosed dirty room where they pipe in the water from the earth. There are local families lined up waiting for us to finish so they can take their FOR REAL baths. Each of us, paired off, emerge after a hot hot hour (man that water is seriously hot) with red feet and legs and look at each other, smiles erupting on our faces and we knew that it was worth the experience. Well, check that off the list of things to do. I guess I didn´t need my sunblock for that one!

eek! someone asked me to go out tonight! excuse me...I gotta go so I can finish my homework before dinner...

sonrisa!

Last night I was sitting in my new bedroom - not any bigger than my room in New York - and as I was doing my homework (is it wild that I have homework) I was listening to my replacement parents speak to each other in Spanish. They seem to have a nice relationship. The house is very tranquil but the city is not. I hear motorbikes and trucks all the time, and there is a dog on top of the roof of the house next door that barks in competition with the rooster a few houses down. A cat came to the back door to beg but my host mother, Blanca, said she freezes all her trash to keep the cats from coming back. It´s obviously a life very different from my own, but in basic ways maybe not - we all get up each day to do our things and eat three meals (although I think that´s because it´s in the contract between the families and the school) and enjoy other people´s company. The streets are so narrow, the drivers so reckless, and the sidewalks don´t allow enough space for even one person to pass. Each afternoon the clouds descend upon the surrounding mountains (which at the altitude we are already look more like hills) but this simple thing creates such vistas you´d think you were looking at a diorama.

I had the most fun day my first day here. During the orientation in the morning I realized what a good choice I made in coming here - the school´s social activism shines and I know I will learn a lot about the history of the country during my stay. After my morning lessons (I both know more than I realized and simultaneously know nothing at all about this language) I went to my host family´s house and played with the granddaughter, who was proud to show off the extent of her English ´I am Melanie¨ and when I asked her age she replied ¨six¨ while counting her fingers. While she couldn´t tell me how to say ¨hide and seek¨in spanish, we figured out how to play it anyway.

I´m overwhelmed by all the Spanish speaking. The students in their eagerness want to speak to each other in Spanish, but soon it wears off to the more comfortable position of (mostly, anyway) native language of English. I say I´m overwhelmed but I´m getting by decently and it´s not so difficult! Last night my host mother told me a long story about a terrible earthquake in Guatemala City a few decades ago (she knew Indiana was hit last week too! and she knew about the racecars! which is weird).

Later I will tell about my first excursion- the hot springs.......