dia de los muertos

so much to write and so little time on the internet. but i´m pretty sure there are worried souls out there who might want to know that i am still alive. :)

so to catch people up, i finished up my two months at the school and had a long, emotional goodbye on thursday. i´ve grown to make good friends and family at the school and in the community, so i´m already planning the next time i can get back to visit them. i´ve learned a lot of spanish, but more than that i´ve made good friends with the teachers and the families here. i recommend it to anyone who´s looking to find a little community to make a home in in guatemala... :)

but finishing time at the school means that i´ve moved into my final leg of my 3 months. on friday i met up with Mark Forsberg, an Ole in the Peace Corps, in Huehuetenango. he and i took off saturday for Todos Santos to watch the famous drunken horse racing to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. it´s a big deal, and it is legitimately crazy. it´s tucked way up in the hills and thus the 24 hours we spent getting there, spending the night, and getting back was exhausting, but well worth it. i hope to attach a couple photos. it was an adventure to get back because there weren´t any buses leaving yesterday, just pickups. so we were bien muhado (REALLY wet) and very tired. still, it was well worth. Day of the Dead is a big deal here and everyone flocks to cementarios to celebrate, dance, eat food, and decorate their family tombs. extremely interesting, and i was glad to have been here to experience it.

it´s been a big change to switch from my impoverished little community to a bigger city with mark, where he and i can speak english all day if we want. he reintroduced me to tv via the treasure that is his laptop. our weekend in todos santos was with about 80 other peace corps volunteers which was also crazy. but it´s been a good few days, and i think will be a good way to transition back to the busy world of the US.

i´m looking forward to using spanish at work, not living out of bags anymore, and having a bed that doesn´t give me pain, but it´ll be sad to leave this country. who wants to join me when i come back... next year?

relaxing makes me tired.

turns out visiting the guatemalan relaxation paradise of sorts equals total exhaustion upon return. funny how that always happens. but clearly, i am not complaining, lago de atitlan is exceptionally beautiful and overly indulgent compared to life here without much internet, phone, restaurants, or bars. all of those things exist at lago as well as a huge ex-pat/tourist crowd which was overwhelming. still, we had a great time, got some much desired sun, and did some fantastic yoga. plus, we got up early to watch sunrises, sat in thermal pools, ate at ´fancy´restaurants (anything that´s not eggs and beans is fancy to us) and listened to some INCREDIBLE folklore latino (latin folk music) at san pedro´s one and only irish pub (that happened to specialize in mango curry.... so confusing). it was a fantastic 3 day weekend away and it was so good to eat some different food. i´ve discovered, however, that i´ve forgotten how to communicate with other... gringos, really. my friend and i managed to avoid communicating with tourists save a couple restaurant workers because.... we don´t know what to say. my spanish isn´t great right now, but apparently i know how to have small talk with guatemaltecos better than i do other americans. :)

this is the start of my last two weeks at the school and i am both very excited to start the last legs of my travels and very very sad to leave the friends i´ve made in the teachers here at the school. i´m currently attempting to learn subjunctive which makes me feel like i´ve regressed back to week one (because suddenly i was saying ´correctly´ is now incorrect). ha, such is life. for this reason i don´t have much more to report, other that i´m trying to keep my brains from seeping out my ears....

then, next thursday i meet up with another ole, mark forsberg, in his part of guatemala, following which i will fly to peru to meet up with jared brandell, and then my cousin for a quick tour of southern peru. time flies- i´ll be home in a month.

i´ll try to send some photos via email like last time... hope to hear from you all soon.

the internet is a little sketchy this afternoon, and my time is limited, so i apologize if this is brief or.... interrupted. :)

anyway, the few days since i last wrote have been sort of crazy, so i´ll do my best to summarize once again. shoot me an email if there are questions you have and i´ll try to answer in my next email.

1) my ´mom of the kitchen´(mama de la cocina) from last week got really really sick last wednesday right after i wrote my last post. put a terrfying image of a woman being carried away in the arms of her spouse and dad screaming and crying in pain in the rain and you have my dinner from wednesday. she´s 3 months pregnant and has been having problems in her pregnancy. gracias a dios (even though i´m not much of a christian let alone a catholic, it´s just what you say here) she and the fetus are fine as far as i know now.

2) then my roommate got really sick, so i spent the day on thursday with her, and our other friend annie visiting doctors and waiting around in labs and clinics. i played translator for the morning, which is a crazy concept to me. the main thing was that the first doctor thought she had appendicitis, so we were all functioning under the assumption that she might have to have surgery. luckily she too is fine, and DID not have appendicitis. we did spend the night in xela after a long afternoon in the city. plus, our other friend found out her mom has cancer and so it was overall a draining end of the week. annie left right away the next morning to fly home to be with her mom.

3) saturday morning we spent at the ex-guerilla community i mentioned. i once again (poorly) played translator that morning as well. don´t let this fact fool you into thinking i could possibly be a translator, becuase i really couldn´t. i just happen to be the student with the most spanish ri ght now.... SCARY thought. :)

4) sunday a couple of us did this ´little´hike up to laguna de chikabal, the sacred lake in the cone of a dead volcano where the Maya have done ceremonies for a damn long time. this ´little´hike as both the guidebook and our local guide (a guy who works at the school) gustavo called it, kicked my ass and i am still sore 2 days later. still, it was mysterious and beautiful and a good challenge, especially as us students essentially have no opportunity to get any physical exercise. ask me for some hopefully mysterious and cool photos when i get back.

life here is good. i am really lucky to have gotten a fantastic family to eat with this week. two adorable little 3 year olds, a lovely and smart 9 year old, and an extraordinaril y sweet mom of the kitchen. this is a week that i am more glad that i don´t actually live with the families and just eat there because all of their beds are made of just flat boards with a blanket on top. no mattress or anything resembling a mattress. no, gracias, i´ll pass on that. and my spanish is coming along. apparent ly i am currently passing from intermediate into advanced spanish (accord ing to my overly sweet teacher this week) whi ch, again, would suggest that i am something that i am definitely not. still, i´ll be happy to hold up a conversation with a guy at the shelter when i get back, for example. :)

time is limited and i´m gonna miss the last pick- up truck out of town if i don´t head out now. hope to hear from you all soon.

re-cap.

hi all. i regret to say that i don´t quite have the focus it takes to write a good, thoughtful update on all the stuff that´s happened since i last wrote. so sorry to disappoint. BUT, i will just hit some of the highlights so that you all can ask me later or email me about them so i won´t forget.

from the top....

1) we had a conference last week from a woman who fought with the guerilla from about 90-96 after her father was kidnapped, and ultimately disappeared (the family never found out what happened to him) and her family fled to chiapas in mexico. at the age of 14 she decided to come back and join the guerilla. interestingly enough, she had nothing but positive things to say about her experience. she now lives in the ex-guerilla pueblo i mentioned which i will be visiting this coming weekend. extremely interesting perspective, especially when it comes to discussing gender equality, etc.

2) we also had a conference with a man, enrique, who shared his long, painful experiences trying to get into the US to work as a migrant worker. throughout the 90s he tried 3 times and always was arrested just over the border. he discussed the laborious journey, the fact that he had to turn over the title of his house in order to pay the ´coyote´to take him to the border, and the bad conditions he experienced in US detention centers. again, extremely interesting, especially for those of us who are from the US.

3) me and a couple other girlfriends adventured away from our little next of tranquility this past weekend and headed to Chichicastenango. it´s about 4 hours via 3 buses to get there from our school and was absolutely worth it. chichi is a fantastic little town that is exceptionally touristy but doesn´t necessarily feel that way. we arrived around lunch time on saturday, had an incredible lunch at a restaurant (the first i´ve eaten in since i´ve been here) and then walked to a nearby Mayan shrine/altar, Pascual Abaj. we ended up being really lucky in that the actual shrine was empty so we could take photos, but then there was a group of Maya doing a traditional ceremony for an asian film crew of some kind. so we also got lucky enough to be able to watch the ceremony as well as take photos (which normally you can´t) because they were already being filmed. plus the owner of the nearby mask making shop happens to also be a well educated historian and writer who gave us a SUPER interesting account of Mayan ceremonial masks. all in all, teniamos mucho suerte- we were really lucky. our hostel had good views, we all spent far too much money buying Mayan textiles, and had a really great weekend. very refreshing weekend in order to gear up to another week of school.

4) yesterday we had two conferencias. the first with a man, Don Pedro, who recounted his horrifying 14 days of torture in 1983 for being a suspected guerilla. the fact that he was directing a campesino cooperative in order to get better prices for their communities somehow was equated, in the mind of the army , to being a guerilla. anyway, this was a very painful story to hear. he ended his story with a request that we students be sure to tell our friends and family how things ´really´are in guatemala which he thinks may be different than how guatemala is portrayed in international media. there´s little violence remaining here since the 96 peace accords, but very little has changed otherwise and the poor campesinos are...... really really poor and discriminated against. the second conferencia, much more light-hearted and also educational was with a local community member who works as a midwife. she actually was, in effect, my abuela a couple weeks ago, because i spent my second week here eating with her daughter´s family. turns out family planning options are paid for the government, something i didn´t know. regardless, she was definitely a good fix for my the public health- minded part of myself.

5) on the docket for the coming weeks include the trip to the ex-guerilla community i mentioned, hopefully lago de atitlan - the paradise of guatemala, maybe climbing the volcano tajulmulco, visiting the lovely mark forsberg, and spending a day in antigua before i leave. oh, and learning spanish- did you guys know i was doing that? :)

look forward to hearing from any and all of you because i miss you and also like to hear about the world at home.

apples and fried rice

not much to post at this moment- i spent my weekend reading the fantastic ´a thousand splendid suns´by khaled hosseini- it´s the best book i´ve read in a long time and also the most painful. you all should read it.

but, this week has discussions about one man´s attempts at getting to the US to work as a migrant worker, another woman´s experience during the war as a guerilla , learning how to make empanadas, a visit to an community of ex-guerillas, a visit to the huge market in chichicastenango to buy textiles, and the start of an attempt Life is a Dream in spanish. go get ready for big updates next week. :)

for now, my plan is to eat myself some fruit from the market, ´study´ or just sleep, and enjoy the tranquility at the school. my ´meal family´, with whom i´m eating this week, had to go to visit some friends who´s son was just murdered in guatemala city, so i´ll be making myself dinner (fried rice with lime from our backyard, apples, and fresh galletas). for all the peacefulness and relaxation of the school, it´s never hard to forget that people´s lives are extremely hard and thus people are extremely strong- spirited to have endured what they have here.....

more soon.

picture fail.

i´m pretty sure the photos aren´t so much going to work... too bad i´m not more articulate than i am.

anyway, my last point was going to be that the school here does a LOT of really incredible things for these communities up here (which, if i didn´t mention, are communities of voluntarily deplaced finca workers who had to form labor unions to receive wages unpaid..... so worth the money and the time and the projects). anyway, you should all consider coming here to learn spanish, but even if you don´t, it´d be a worthy cause for your donations, tight though your money may be. my host mom straight up told me that they only have tortillas to eat when they don´t have a student to feed because they don´t have any other money..... and these people have been through a lot. check ém out: www.hermandad.com

not enough time to study ? what?

so... a little less philosophical, and a little more reality for those that were asking.

normal day: get up voluntarily between 6 and 7 (uh.... what??? clearly this is novel). breakfast with my host family for the week (it changes every sunday) at 7:30. class at 8 until 12. brain is exhausted. lunch with the fam at 12:30. afternoons include reading books, studying, dancing around my bedroom because that´s my only form of exercise, playing with or reading to kids down the street, eating delicious galletas, group discussions about relevant political and sociopolitical topics, etc. dinner with the fam at 5:30. wednesday nights are noches culturales where we play games with the local kids of the community , thursday nights we have cooking classes where i learn to make delicious food that causes me to gain weight..... otherwise more reading, studying, chatting about sociopolitical stuff, and... sleeping often before 10 (ummm.... hello? um.... hi?). interestingly enough i feel like i straight up don´t have enough time to study what i want to study. CRAZY.

some other realities.... the families in the local communities are really poor. i spent the afternoon with a family in the community of santo domingo down the road and i think there are 7 people (an essentially single mother of 6 kids because the father of the kids, or some of them, drinks a lot and wanders around town) living in a one room house. dirt floor, two beds, one little armoir thing, and that´s it. they have a sort of kitchen outside in back, and a sort of bathroom out there too. but we had a great time reading a few books, playing the equivalent of ´oh-bo-shanotentatan..´the gibberish hand game that we always played growing up, and then taking absurd numbers of photos with my camera. i´ll try to upload a couple here.

last saturday we went on a hike to this nearby waterfall- the best. i think i´m going again tomorrow with the new crew of people. the first week we only had 3 students (which is BAD for the communities- these people depend on the school being full) but this past week we had 8. hopefully even more full next week. anyway, the waterfall was stunning, but let´s be honest, it´s stunning here regardless. now that the rain is starting to taper off a bit, we´ve actually had a couple of sunsets.... needless to say, it´s beautiful.

i´m gonna try and get a couple photos to load.... looking forward to hearing from all of you. miss you all.

humbled and inspired

so certainly meeting all these amazing guatemalans has been incredible. my host family is very sweet and has made me delicious comidas tipicas for every meal. i stay in a dorm room on campus and then walk down to her place for every meal. the local communitites depend somewhat heavily on the school´s help by bringing in students. families are paid to feed us, others work at the school and are teachers, etc. given the extreme povert y, plus the decreasing amounts of foreign aid (and no change in the poverty level) plus the coffee crisis, much of guatemala is really struggling, especially in the rural highlands where there is little access to work even if people can afford to hop a chicken bus to a finca of construction site. it´s a realm of history and current events that i know extremely little about so i´m so lucky to be surrounded with extremely knowledgeable people. even better is that the few other american students here (we´re down to just 3 right now) are all also doing really really cool things in the world and doing a lot of good. so that is also extremely humbling to be surrounded by people who really make big differences in the world. it completely inspiring to be a part of this community.

though i never thought i´d say it, it´s good to be back in an academic setting, especially given the luxury of having a one-on-one class set up. and the location is more beautiful than you could fathom- especially those of you who live in minnesota and don´t know real highlands. i just can´t get enough. i´m already very attached to the school and living my simple life. i might not want to come back (which is apparently not uncommon- i´ve met a lot of americans and europeans who came to study spanish and just got a job here and never left).

forgive me my random thoughts, but i have little time and lots of thoughts. a sort of refreshing aspect of arriving here has been to realize that while guatemala has a significantly different political and cultural history than any other place i´ve been, day to day life for guatemalans is very much the same as what i experienced in tanzania and zambia. so... while i didn´t know what to expect and while i have SOOOO much to learn, i feel a little like i know what to expect. maybe, to be overly sweeping, poverty is poverty is poverty? something to consider.

place in the clouds, foundation of stone

i leave on friday and will be settled in at school by sunday afternoon. i'm studying at a tiny school on the pacific slope about an hour and a half bus ride southwest of the city of quetzaltenango (xela). hoping to keep you all updated here, with some photos to go with my ramblings.