Rainy Day Memories...

Between this crazy thunder storm we're having right now and the team from church coming home from Guatemala last week, I've been thinking a lot about my last trip to Guatemala. I was there during the rainy season so it rained most days which gave me some pretty good memories of rainy days. Here are my top three favorites :)

1. During my last week at language school, I volunteered at a children's home in Xela for a few days. I had told one of my friends that I met at the school about it and she said she wanted to go check it out, so I brought her along with me one day to show her the way. It was pouring so hard that our umbrellas were pretty much useless. We got to parque central and had to cross the street. Since the roads in this area of town are super old so it their draining system, so the street was basically flooded. My friend, Sonal, was wearing flip flops so when we ran across the street, through the "river", her shoe fell off and went right down into this big drainage thing that was on the side of the road. She was fishing through the dirty water to try to find it, but we both knew it was gone forever. Luckily, we were close to the market in parque central so she didn't have to walk too far shoeless (although I don't think I'd want to walk anywhere in Guatemala shoeless haha). We went and bought her some new sandals. She had to get a guy's pair because she's tall so she has bigger feet than most Guatemalan women, which I thought was pretty funny :) By the time we got to the home we were soaked all the way through and when we were working with the kids in the doctor's office we left puddles behind us where we had stood. It was pretty laughable :)

2. One of the first weeks that I was at school there was a pretty big storm and the electricity went out, which really isn't all that uncommon in Guatemala. Me and Tim got home from school and no one was around. There were a few pots sitting on the kitchen table to collect rain that was dripping from the ceiling, but other than that, it seemed like no one was home. So Tim and I had nothing to do but be there, in the dark. We decided to use his flash light and play pictionary in the dark kitchen with water dripping all around us until the electricity came back on. It was a fun time.

3. One night at the home, it started raining on our way home from church and of course I was sitting in the back of the pick up truck with a bunch of the kids and a couple girls from the team. Luckily, the church isn't far from the home at all so we didn't get too wet. When we got back, me and the girls were hanging out with the kids and Benny kept trying to push one of them out from underneath the roof and into the rain. Emily won and pushed Benny out into the rain before he could get her. So, he ran back into his room and changed into a different, dry sweater. Then she pushed him out into the rain again and he got soaked again. So, he went in and changed into another dry sweater. And this happened several more times. It was pretty funny. Benny is such a goof ball.

So there's my three memories :) I can't wait to go back to Hogar de Vida. I think about it almost every day. I miss that place so much! I just have to wait for God's timing.

Only a few more days...

I can not believe that I've been at the home for two whole weeks! The time has flown by so fast! Forgive me for my lack of posting, but I've been kind of busy here. The first week I was here, a team of 11 from a big church in Omaha was here. They were great, very spiritually deep but also really fun people at the same time. There were a couple of high school students and three young couples on the team. It was an interesting group of people. There was also another woman from the same church who came along to help Norm and Vicky host the team. She's been here a bunch of times and I actually knew her already because she helped host one team that I was on before. So we were both here to help host the team. My responsibility was breakfast. I got up each day and helped Norm prepare the food, which wasn't much work because the team helped out some too. We went out to a couple of aldeas (villages) in the mornings and the team performed a mime/skit and shared the gospel and we also washed, cut, and styled hair. We went to schools both times so we had around 100 kids each day, so that kept us busy. The other days we did some work projects around the home. I helped paint some primer on the new playground and did some other small jobs. The kids had a few days off of school that week too so we had some extra time to spend with them which was nice. Our nights were spent hearing testimonies of the missionaries here, worshiping with the team, and going to church a few times.

One of the guys on the team is a physical therapist so he worked with some of the kids here who needed his help. He looked at Alicia (the baby who was brought here at 3 days old when I was here with a team in November). They're worried about her because she's over 8 months now and doesn't roll over or put any weight on her legs. Also, her one hand is always in a fist and she can't fully straighten it out. So Matt looked at her and worked with her a little bit. He said something might of happened before she was born, like a stroke or something. Earlier this week we went to the Ficker's (medical missionaries in a town nearby who have a weekly clinic here in town) for a worship night. Vickie asked them if they thought it would be worth getting her looked at further to get a diagnosis. She said the there was supposed to be a neurologist coming into Quiche on Friday and, amazingly, that was the same day that Norm and Vickie had been planning on going to Quiche! God is so good :) So they took her to see the doctor yesterday- they had to take her in a baby swing strapped in with the seat belt because they don't exactly have a car seat here haha. The doctor examined her and noticed that the back of her head is unusually flat which most likely means that she wasn't able to move around in the womb much and still can't now. He said it could be a hormonal imbalance or something like muscular dystrophy and he recommended that she get some blood tests and scans done. If it's something hormonal, it can be treated with medication, so that's what we're praying for.

The team left early Sunday morning and Norm and Vickie didn't come back until Tuesday afternoon, so I was the only gringo here for a few days! Sunday morning I went to the clinic in town to work with the Ficker's. Lesley started the ministry with her husband like ten ish years ago and she's and RN and works with her daughters in law who are also RN's and other volunteers that come to help out. They see a bunch of patients in one morning so it can be kind of hectic. I started off by helping with the kids in the nutrition program. I weighed the kids and wrote down their information and gave out formula and food. Then I helped with the chronic and general patients. Lesley let me give a shot, which is a pretty big deal because I've never done that before! Other than that, I mostly just did blood pressures and blood sugars and observed a lot. Overall, it was a good experience and I'm going to be going back again tomorrow morning.

Since the team is gone I've been eating breakfast and lunch with the staff everyday so it's back to eggs, beans, and tortillas! But surprisingly, after a week of American food, it really doesn't bother me to go back to eating beans. When Norm and Vickie came back on Tuesday, they brought two other friends with them. One is a missionary in Antigua who works with disabled children and she also works with a ministry who gives out wheelchairs. She came to look at Chepa, a girl here with a brain tumor who has been pretty weak and unstable for a while now. Shes been in a wheelchair for the past few months but its not the best fit for her, so Pat is gonna work on getting her a better one. The other is a girl from Pat's church who just graduated from high school and came to Guatemala to work with her for a couple months this summer. Pat had to leave yesterday but Katie liked it so much here that she decided to stay until I leave. Then, when we went to the Ficker's for worship the other night, we also acquired another person. Amanda is another girl who just graduated and came here for a couple months to work with the Ficker's. She wasn't really enjoying her experience with them a ton so she decided to come here for a few days and see if she would rather be here. So now she's going to be here for about another month as well. So I haven't been completely alone here :)

This week I've just been trying to lighten the load of the staff by helping out wherever I can. I've done dishes for hours and washed, hung, and folded lots of laundry. I help a little but with cooking lunch but once they start to make tortillas, I'm pretty much useless. I tried to learn how to do it but the only thing it did was give everyone around me a good laugh :) Around three ish, I'm usually done with helping and can take a short nap and then go play with the kids.

I really don't know how I'm going to leave here on Tuesday! I wish I could stay here just a little bit longer. Or a lot longer :) It's hard to leave when you're not sure when you'll be back again. I really hope it's soon.

Mi Discurso

This is the short speech I gave at the graduation dinner on Thursday night. First in Spanish, so that you're impressed :) and then in English...

Yo no puedo creer mi tiempo aqui en Xela esta terminando muy pronto. Fue una experiencia muy buena y yo deseo la no tiene que terminar. Yo vine aqui para aprender espanol, pero you recibi much mas que eso. Yo encontre muchos amigos durante mi tiempo aqui y la experiencia no seria el mismo sin ellos. Yo aprendi mucho espanol desde mis maestros. Norma dos, Norma uno, y Joaquin- ustedes son muy intellegentes, amables, y pacientes. Muchas gracias por ensenarme. Hicieron apreder espanol muy divertido. Me gusta mucho sus historias y nuestros paseos alrededor Xela. Yo quiero decir gracias a los maestros que planearon las actividades. Ustedes hicieron el mes pesado una aventura divertida. Tambien, gracias a Edna por encontro un buen lugar para mi a hacer trabajo voluntario esta semana. Yo lo disfrute mucho. En el futuro, Yo deseo regresar y hacer esto el otro vez, pero sin la quemadura de sol, los verbos irregulares, y los frijoles.

I can't believe my time here is Xela is almost over. I have had such a great experience and I wish it didn't end so soon. I came here to learn Spanish, but I got so much more than that. I made some great friends along the way; my experience wouldn't have been the same without you guys. I learned a lot of Spanish from my teachers. You guys are so great- Norma, Norma, and Joaquin- Thank you guys so much. You are very patient, smart, and kind. You made learning Spanish fun. I enjoyed your stories and all of our walks around Xela. I also want to thank all the teachers who planned the activities- you made this past month a fun adventure. Also, thanks to Edna for finding me a great place to volunteer at this week- it was an awesome experience. In the future, I hope I can do this again, only without the sunburn, irregular verbs, and the beans.

Okay so that translation isn't exactly word for word and I know I made some mistakes, but everyone still understood what I was trying to say and that's the most important part. The dinner was a fun time to hang out with everybody one last time before I had to leave. I ending up sitting with a bunch of the teachers so I had to speak Spanish the whole time! But, it was a fun night and I tried to take a lot of mental pictures so that I'll always remember. It's sad to have to leave, but now I'm on to the next part of this adventure, which I'm so excited about. I'm sitting in Pollo Campero (fast food chicken restaurant) in Quiche right now waiting for Norm and Vickie and the team from Omaha. I've been here for about five hours and have about another hour left to wait because the team's plane was delayed! Can't write too much more because my computer is about to die and I haven't found an outlet, but hopefully I'll have time to update everyone while I'm in San Andres.

5 Things I Won't Miss....

It's kind of sad thinking about leaving Xela and everyone at the school. So instead of focusing on the good things, I'm going to focus on the things I won't miss about this place...

1. The Smell. Xela does not smell very good at all. The cars and buses always give off this terrible exhaust smell and sometimes you can smell garbage burning and other gross odors, like when you walk by the meat store with all the raw meat hanging from the ceiling. I realize this is probably Guatemala in general, but San Andres isn't as big of city as Xela is so it has more fresh air, definitely looking forward to that :)

2. The Food. I'm pretty sure I've had enough scrambled eggs, black beans, and tortillas for a life time. I actually stopped eating tortillas and tomalitos a week or so ago because I just don't even like them anymore. The food at my house is so repetitive and uncreative. Sometimes its really good, but most of the time its just eggs and beans. And we hardly ever eat fruits and vegetables! Hopefully when I get to Hogar de Vida my meals will be a little bit more varied.

3. The Bugs. I realize there are bugs everywhere and when they're outside, it doesn't bother me so much. But when they're in the house, in my room, and in the shower, that freaks me out a little bit. The house that I live in has lots of areas when the only thing between the inside and the outside is a screen or nothing, so it's pretty easy for all sorts of bugs to make their way into the house. Gross.

4. Strange Sounds in the Middle of the Night. Guatemala is a noisy place. There's dogs barking and roosters roosting and fireworks going off at all hours of the night. I've gotten used to those sounds. But then every once in a while I wake up in the middle of the night and hearing banging on the roof (it's a tin roof so it's pretty loud). I just kind of ignored it but when Tim switched rooms and moved to the same part of the house as me, he heard it too. He asked Ana what it was and she said "It could be cats, dogs, or robbers. But don't worry about the robbers because there's no way they can get into the house." Remember, how I told you that there's multiple areas of the house with nothing or only a screen separating the inside of the house from the outside? Well, apparently Ana forgot about that. I've slept with my door locked ever since she said that.


5. The Weather. It is so cold here! People told me before I got here that Xela was cold, but I always thought well I'm from NY, cold in Guatemala is warm compared to cold in New York. And for the most part it is. Except that they don't have heaters in their houses, or even walls in some areas, so it feels a lot colder than it really is. There have been a few times when I've woken up in the middle of the night and was freezing and had to put more clothes on. I brought a bunch of pairs of shorts which was completely unnecessary- I've only worn them once!

Yesterday I went back to the home to volunteer again. Another girl from school came with me too because she wanted to have a tour of the place to see if it was a place that she would like to volunteer at for the next few weeks. When we left it was pretty much down pouring. By the time we got to Parque Central, which isn't even half way there, I was feeling pretty drenched and soggy. We got to this one street that was completely covered in water, it was basically a river. Sonal was wearing flip flops and lost one when we crossed the street. She went to grab it but it slipped down the drain before she could! It was pretty funny :) We stopped by the market to get her some new shoes before we kept going.

When we got to the home, they thought I was the psychologist girl again so I explained to them that I was nursing student, so they sent me to work with the doctor at the home for a little while. Me and Sonal worked with the doctor to cut all of the kids finger nails and toe nails and to clean their ears- there's over 80 kids so it took quite a while! When the doctor had to leave, she said we could go too, but I asked if we could go help with the babies until it was time for us to go and she said sure. So I got to go see the cute little kids again. There were so many kids that needed their diapers changed but I could only find one diaper so the baby that peed on me got it- the sqeaky wheel gets the oil :) When the woman working with the babies finally returned, she got more diapers for the rest of them. But, again the kids were unsupervised when we got there and some of the babies were wearing the same clothes that I had put them in the day before. It makes me really mad that these kids aren't getting better care. I'm going back tomorrow for one more day and to hopefully see the little ones again.

Tonight is the graduation dinner for this week. I have to give a speech! In Spanish! It's gonna be pretty short and to the point because I hate speaking in front of people. Joaquin was trying to talk me into singing something, but that was never going to happen haha. I can not believe that tomorrow is my last day! I'm getting a little nervous about figuring out how to get to Quiche from here because no one seems to know what time the bus leaves exactly. Hopefully, I'll get all of that figured out before Saturday morning!

Hogar Temporal

Yesterday during class, Joaquin showed me the way to the children's home that I'll be volunteering at for this week. We went with another girl and her teacher and on the way we stopped for snacks. The teachers got these things that looked like snow cones except they put actual fruit on them instead of just juice and the one teacher got chili powder or something put on hers too. I tried hers and it tasted like puke, so I didn't get anything haha. I don't understand why you would ever think to put spicy powder with fruit.

When we got to the home, they gave us a tour of the place. There are almost 80 kids that live there and the majority come from abusive situations or were neglected. We saw some parents visiting with their kids but the visits had to be supervised by a social worker. I think the woman showing us around said that most of the kids can't be adopted because most of them still have parents. I couldn't understand a lot of what she was saying though because she talks really fast. They showed us where the kids sleep and it basically just these huge rooms with tons of bunk beds lined up and crammed in. It didn't look much like a home. The whole experience was just really sad. Then we went into the baby room and there was a volunteer in there with two super cute babies! She actually spoke English so that was nice. I decided to volunteer there three days this week because a lot of the activities this week are repeats, so I've already done them. I went yesterday and I'm going again today and Friday.

When I went yesterday, I got lost on the way there and couldn't find it. I asked a woman if she could help me but she said she didn't know where it was and then thankfully, another woman walked up to me and asked me what I was looking for and I was actually really close to the home, it was just around the corner. When I there I had to give them a letter from the school that explained my experience and when I wanted to volunteer, as well as the same information for the other girl who is going to volunteer there. They were mistaken and thought I was the other girl, who studied psychology in college. So they sent me to work with the psychologists. When I explained that I wasn't her and that I just wanted to help take care of the kids and play with them, we went up and got some babies and brought them back down to the room to play. One baby was new, so he cried pretty much the whole time. The only thing I could do to get him to stop was give him candy :) He had this big scar on the side of his face and the psychologist said it was from his parents. The other baby looked maybe 1 yr old, but she was actually 2 1/2! She was just beginning to learn to walk and she was so tiny! After a while we brought the kids back up to the baby room and there were more kids in there, probably about eleven. I'd say the majority were under 2 yrs old, but they were all under 5. When we got there to bring the kids back they were completely unsupervised. They were just in the room with the TV on. The babies were in cribs crying or with their bottles propped in their mouths. I think the majority of the time the babies are in their cribs, even when they're awake. There was this older girl (maybe 4 or 5) who kept trying to pick up the babies and I kept telling her no, she could've so easily dropped them. Then this other baby kept climbing all over the furniture- she somehow got on top of a dresser, so dangerous! There was only one woman assigned to work in the room and she was taking the babies out to give them baths and then bringing them back. She obviously needed help, so I'm glad that I could be there but it makes me wonder what happens when there's no volunteer. When she was changing some of the babies, she just walked away and left them on the changing table! They could've rolled right off! And the diapers were way too big for the little babies so there's basically no point in them wearing them.

I kept comparing it to Care-a-lot, the day care center I work at, and thinking how many laws they were breaking and how many things could go wrong. Ugh, it was so sad to see the kind of care these kids are getting. I mean, yeah its better then where they came from, but really, they need so much more to thrive and grow. A baby cannot stay in a crib all day and hardly ever be held. I'm glad I can volunteer there, even if it is just for this week, to give these kids a little bit more attention then they usually get.

My last week of Spanish school!

I can not believe this is my last week at Miguel Angel Asturias! The time has flown by! I'm getting really excited about going back to Hogar de Vida though.

Saturday I had a pretty relaxing morning because I decided to not do the activity with the school. They were going on a two hour bike ride to see a historical church and then to ride the two hours back again. That's not really my idea of a good time haha. I slept in and the walked around and ended up at a cute little cafe for a little while. Since it was Tim's last day, when he got back we went to Blue Angel to finally try their burritos. They were pretty delicious. Then Jodi met up with us and we watched a movie and afterwards we went to another restaurant because Tim really wanted to try a mango mojito before he left. It was a nice relaxing day. I went to bed early because I had to wake up at 5 AM the next day to leave for the market in Chichicastenango. It was a little difficult getting out of the house because the older son parked his motorcycle right in front on the door! Good thing I'm small or I wouldn't have been able to squeeze around it. I kept thinking please don't fall over, please don't fall over haha. Thankfully, this time we did not take a pick up truck, we were in a nice comfy microbus and I even slept a little :) The market was huge and crowded. I got to practice my bargaining skills and I think I got some pretty good deals. I bought all the stuff I wanted to and only spent $15! It seems like you're spending a lot when you're shopping because its like Q115, but then when you do the math and it's only $15, you realize that you hardly spent anything at all.

Sunday night we got a new student at the house. Good thing too because I didn't really want to be alone. Sometimes you just need someone you can speak English to. She seems nice and she's in med school like Tim was. So many med/nursing students come to Miguel Angel Asturias.

Yesterday during class, I had Joaquin take me to get a new phone. We went to the mall and I bought the cheapest one they had which came with 100 minutes and was only like twenty bucks. Then, I got a text message saying that Tigo (the phone company) was giving me a whole month of texting for free! I was pretty excited about that. Afterwards, we went to Taco Bell! I got some nachoes and they pretty much tasted the same as they do in the states except that they had guacamole on them. But, whats really weird is that they have french fries!

Today I'm going to a temporary children's home to play with some kids :) I can't wait!

But God.

So I never really blogged about the reasons behind me taking this trip to Guatemala. There are actually a few. First being that I’ve always wanted to study abroad. Ever since my first trip out of the country, I’ve just had this love of traveling. I love experiencing other cultures, seeing different places, and just being somewhere new, doing something exciting. Well, I quickly found out that studying abroad as a nursing major was next to impossible. There are just so many classes you have to cram into your schedule and most of them aren’t offered in study abroad programs or they can’t be taken in another country because they have a clinical component. So I decided I would do the next best thing, study abroad for a shorter amount of time in the summer. I searched programs all over the world. Greece. Thailand. Russia. South America. None of them were affordable and you can’t get financial aid for a summer semester like you can for a regular one. So after some time went by, I finally just gave up. I decided I was going to stay home all summer and just work and pay off my stupid college loans. 

But God. He had a plan for me all along. I was already planning on going on the two week Guatemala trip with the adult team from church in November. When I signed up for the trip I was so excited for it. But as I was getting into the Fall semester and the dates for the trip got closer, I was getting less and less excited and more and more overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine how I was just going to take two weeks off of school and come back and have everything be okay. I doubted God’s plan. I went on the trip as planned, although I did consider backing out once or twice. I remember telling someone before I left that this would probably be my last chance to go back to Guatemala and see the kids at the home and that I probably wouldn’t be going back again. Oh, how little did I know. The trip was amazing. I realized how little I had been living and how much I had just been going through day by day doing the things I “had to do”. It renewed my passion for Christ and made me feel more alive. Before I left for the trip I was talking to my friend Mark, who also loves Guatemala. I was telling him how I couldn’t even feel excited about returning to Guatemala because I had so much school stuff to do before I left. He told me, “You’re going to love it and then you’re going to want to go back again in the summer to language school with me.” I was thinking, yeah right, I already decided I wasn’t going to study abroad so that’s definitely not going to happen. But, God used that short conversation to spark an interest in my heart.

While I was in Guatemala, I mentioned the whole language school thing to my friend Steve, who has been to Miguel Angel Asturias before. We ended up getting into a pretty long conversation about it and by the end, I was pretty convinced that I was going to do it, but I wasn’t sure how or when. Then, a few days later I had to leave Guatemala. It was a pretty hard goodbye. What was even harder was going back to school afterwards. God was beyond amazing, and I ended up getting straight A’s despite missing so much school and going through the whole reverse culture shock thing while trying to finish up the semester. I went to talk to one of my teachers about making up work and she said “Oh, don’t worry about what you missed. You don’t have to do anything.” Seriously?! Then I had to make up a few tests. One of them I was pretty sure I failed. I had to guess the answers to half of the questions. I was pretty shocked to find out I got over a 100% on it. I’m not saying this all to brag, but to show how awesome God was. He did so much more then all I could’ve ever asked or imagined. 

After we got back, there was a sermon at church about the fish and the loaves of bread and how God takes what little we have to offer and turns it into so much more, if we only have faith and trust in Him. After this message, I knew God was calling me to go back to Guatemala. I wasn’t sure how the details would work out or what would happen with my job or if I could afford it, but I knew God was telling me that He was going to make this dream come true for me, if only I trusted in Him. I won’t get into how all the details of planning my trip came together, but I’ll just say that God is so good and it was clear that he wanted me to be able to go on this trip.

Now getting to my second reason behind wanting to come back to Guatemala. This one is a little bit scarier for me to put into words. I’ve been feeling for some time now that God is calling me to go into missions. It’s why I decided to study nursing at Roberts and it’s been the force behind a bunch of other life decisions as well. I remember when I was in high school, telling my Mom about how I didn’t want the boring American life of having a house and getting married and having kids. I wanted an adventure. I wanted to live and work and serve God in another country. When I think about just being a regular nurse, I think there are so many nurses out there. If I don’t take a certain job, someone else will. But when I think about being a missionary nurse, it’s different. If I don’t go out and serve where God calls me to, maybe no one else will. I want to be where I’m needed. I want to make a difference.

Looking back at that dream, I think I was a little naïve. It all sounded so fun and easy to me. I never once was scared by that calling that I felt. But then when I got back from Guatemala this past winter and I heard that message in church, I didn’t just feel that God was calling me to return to Guatemala this summer to study Spanish but also that He was calling me to something greater in the future. Like I said I had dreamed of doing missions work before, but I had never really heard God say to me “You are going to be a missionary.” But after Steve’s message, I felt very strongly that that is what God was calling me to. And it terrified me. There was an opportunity for those who felt God had laid something on their heart that day to go to the front of the church and to be prayed for. I couldn’t move my feet to do it. I was so scared. I’m still getting passed that fear I think. But, I know God is in control and He has something amazing planned for me. So my other reason for coming back to Guatemala was to further prepare myself for whatever God has for me in the future. Whether it’s using my Spanish at some inner city clinic in Rochester or using it as a missionary in a foreign country. I’ll just have to see where God takes me next.

Viernes

So today I had my weekly test and I was really happy because I did well! It wasn’t perfect, but close to it :) So now I know present tense, both past tenses and both future tenses. I don’t know if my brain can handle any more tenses or irregular verbs! I really just want to focus on speaking next week because I’m still not confident in my speaking. It’s so much easier to think things through when you’re writing them down or reading them, but when you speak, it speeds things up a lot and you don’t have as much time to think about how to say things the right way. 

This was Tim’s last week. Most of the people that were here when I first got here are already gone. It’s kind of weird getting new people and losing friends every week. This week we had 22 students, which means the number of students basically doubled in one week. Some students study in the afternoons so I haven’t even really met them. Too many new names and faces for me to keep up with.

Today I talked to Edna (the director of the school) about volunteering next week. Before I came, I was looking forward to maybe observing at the hospital or doing something at one of the clinics, but now that I only have one week left (I can’t believe it!) I just decided that I would rather do something with kids. She said she would look into some stuff and let me know. I also requested to stay with Joaquin again for next week. He helped me learn so much this week and I did so good on my test, so why mess with something that’s working well? 

Today we walked to the University of San Carlos during class. Joaquin had been telling me about it and he used to go there. He asked me if I wanted to go see it, so I was like well I really don’t want to sit in this classroom for another 5 hours so why not. We went with Tim and his teacher Rony too. It was basically a normal college campus, but not as nice. It’s also known for being a really politically aware and liberal school, so there’s a bunch of controversial murals all over the walls of the school. A lot of them are quotes that have a slight communist theme to them. There were murals of some guy that helped Fidel Castro and then was killed by Americans. Apparently, the Guatemalans like him and they like communist ideas. Another strange thing about this school is that it’s autonomous and it’s unconstitutional for the police to enter onto the school grounds! So the students drink and smoke and can pretty much do whatever they want. Oh and since it’s a public university they only pay Q250 a year! That’s $32! How ridiculous is that! They have to take a bunch of exams to get in and apparently they’re pretty difficult. The school is also really hard I guess because Joaquin and Rony were saying that only a few people graduate each year. The student’s grades were posted out in the halls and the majority of them were failing! Someone had a 3%! How does that even happen? Also, they were telling us how easy it is for the students to cheat on their tests. A lot of them will sneak in cheat sheets or even write their notes right on the desk before the test. They don’t have strict rules about cheating there, so the worst that happens is you get caught and you get a zero on the test. I certainly wouldn’t want a doctor that graduated from that school to be taking care of me! 

After class today, a few of us had planned to go to Zona 3 and walk around the mall and get some Taco Bell. We got a little turned around and never actually found the Taco Bell which was pretty disappointing. Tim and I did find a gift for our family though, so the trip was somewhat productive. But then we decided to take a microbus on the way back and I lost my cell phone on it! I had it in my pocket and it must have fallen out without me realizing. It was my Guatemalan phone so it wasn’t terribly expensive, but still. Ugh.

Las Mujeres de Guatemala

So yesterday in class Joaquin had me read this article in English about the citizenship and rights of women and then he had me translate it to him in Spanish. It was a little hard for me to understand it in English so you can imagine how hard it was for me to put it into Spanish, but he said that I got the main ideas across. The article was in Spanish on the opposite page so he already knew what it said. But basically, it was about how women need to know what their rights are and what rights they need in order to fight for them. I don't fully understand the state of women's rights in Guatemala right now but from what Joaquin explained to me, it's the indigenous women that are really lacking rights. He said the only rights they have are to have kids, to have sex, and to clean their houses. What kind of rights are those? He also said that when they walk in the streets with their husbands they always walk behind them, not beside them or in front of them. From what I've heard, they don't even fully have to rights to have kids. They can be pregnant and deliver the baby but if their husband doesn't want another kid or doesn't want a daughter, then they have to abandon the child, unless they want to be abandoned or beaten by their husbands. They don't own their own property or earn their own money so they really have no control. I don't know how accurate all of my knowledge of this is, but I do know that Norma was telling me last week that it's common for women to abandon their babies at the hospitals out of fear of what their husbands will do to them. I've been told by two of my teachers now that it is common here for a girl my age to already have two kids by now! So you can imagine how dependent these women are on their families and how helpless they feel in that situation.

Yesterday we visited Trama, which is a factory and a store for handmade textile goods. This cooperative of women is important because it empowers the women by giving them jobs so that they can earn their own money and support their families without having to ask their husbands for money all of the time. Some of the women are war widows from the civil war and so the income is especially important to them for maintaining their families. We got to see the different steps of weaving and hear about the history of the organization and then we looked around the store. The prices are a little bit higher then what you would pay if you were bargaining in the market but you know that the prices are fair and the money is going to the women who actually made the products and really need the money. I was shocked to hear that it takes 10 hours to make one scarf! But I think that might be for someone who is new to weaving, because they were talking about how they offer lessons there. I'm sure the women who do it daily are faster then that.

Yesterday during class I was trying to say some word, I forget what it was, but it has the double R in it, which means you're supposed to roll the r, which I can not do. Joaquin had me put my pencil between my teeth and try to make the sound. Apparently that's supposed to help, but all it did was make me feel like a fool haha. He said if I do it every day for a few minutes, I'll have a perfect doble erray soon. I don't know about that though haha.

Yesterday I went back to the chocleteria and bought some chocolate covered grapes and they were so delicious. My sun burn has been feeling better too, it went from excruciating (like seriously the worst sunburn I've ever had) to painful and now its just irritating haha. We're having the graduation dinner tonight instead of tomorrow because a couple students are leaving early. I offered to bring pop this week so I don't have to worry about preparing anything again. Friday, there's no activity so Tim and I were thinking of heading back over to the mall and getting some Taco Bell :)

So yesterday during class I felt my first earthquake ever! Well, I don't know if it really counts as an earthquake because it was really mild. I was taking notes and my teacher stopped and said do you feel that? And at first I was like what are you talking about, but then I felt the room shaking a little. They just call it a "tremble", but I guess its kind of common here because we're right near two volcanoes.

Joaquin was also telling me about how after he finished high school, he did a lot of volunteer work and he volunteered in a children's home for a little while. He told me how there was this cute little boy and he asked the boy if he knew why he was in the home. The kid said he didn't know why, but one night the police showed up and took him away and then next thing he knew, he was at the home. He didn't know where his mother was and he had never met his father. Joaquin later found out that the boy's mother was a prostitute and the police arrested her and brought the boy there. How traumatic for that kid to not even know what happened to his family and to just end somewhere else the next day. He told me another story about this guy that was walking over to a garbage can to throw out his trash from his lunch at McDonald's. A little kid walked over to him and asked him "Did you just eat McDonald's?" and the guy said yeah. The kid asked "How does it taste? Is it delicious?" and then the guy said "You've never eaten McDonald's?" and the boy said no. He lived in one of the children's homes too and he had never tried McDonald's. The guy decided that he was going to get enough money to buy all of the kids (over a 100) a happy meal, which in Spanish is a cajita feliz or a happy box haha. It's kind of sad when you think that something that is so common and cheap to us, these kids had never even eaten before.

Last night we all watched this old movie called El Norte. It about this brother and sister who lose their parents in the civil war in Guatemala and decide to travel to the United States to try to escape the danger in their village. It was sad because they thought that by going north, all their problems would be solved and they thought that the US was perfect and life would be so good for them there, but they slowly realize that it's really hard to be an illegal immigrant in the states. It was a pretty sad movie.

Yesterday for lunch we had these tiny little green pumpkins. They were stuffed with a mix of rice, vegetables, and meat. They were pretty delicious, it was a little bit like a stuffed pepper, but the pumpkins tasted like squash. We've also been having a ton of beans lately. Tim decided that he wanted to learn how to make them so he asked Ana to teach him. Well, apparently there's like a million different kinds and she's teaching him how to make all of them. I think I've had enough beans for a life time.

Joaquin and I were talking about some Guatemalan politics the other day and he was telling me that the current president and his wife recently got divorced. There's a law in Guatemala that once somebody becomes the president, no one else in his family can ever be president. Well, now the president's ex-wife is running for president for the upcoming election. So obviously they just got divorced because she wants to be president, which is a little sketchy. He was telling me about all these bad political decisions she's made. But, there's never been a female president before in Guatemala, so that makes it a little more interesting too. Also, Joaquin doesn't believe that Osama bin Laden is really dead. We had an interesting conversation about that too.

Later today, we're going to Trama which is a fair trade place where Guatemalan war widows work together making all kinds of different things with Guatemalan fabrics- wallets, bags, blankets, clothes, etc. I think they're going to give us a tour of the factory or do a demonstration or something and then we'll have some time to shop.

La Tercera Semana

So there hasn't been a ton going on this week so far. The activity yesterday was a tour of historical sights around Xela, but I missed it because lunch went late at our house so I couldn't get to school in time. So Tim and I were sitting at school with nothing to do, so we decided to go over to this restaurant called Blue Angel. They have a ton of DVDs there and you can pay 10Q to watch one on a big flat screen TV, so that's what we did. We watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which was a little strange.

My new teacher this week is Jauquin. So far he's been really good because he doesn't go through stuff too fast or too slow and he always makes sure I understand everything before he moves on. He likes to talk a lot which is good for me because I need to practice speaking. He also likes music a lot so we're gonna listen to some Guatemalan music sometime this week.

La Playa

So I went to bed pretty early Friday night because we had to leave early for the beach on Saturday. It takes a little more than two hours to get there and we were in the back of a pick up truck the whole way! The driver was nice though and laid out a sheet and gave us foam pads to sit on. It was actually decently comfortable until about the last half hour of the trip.

There was me and three other students that went, along with the teacher leading the trip and her daughter. It's the Pacific Ocean so everyone was saying that it would be super cold water, but it was so perfect! It was around 95 degrees and the water wasn't cold at all. The sand is black/gray because it's volcanic sand so that was kind of cool to see. We spent the whole morning laying in the sun and playing in the water.  There were some pretty rough waves and I saw one guy get stuck and the lifeguard had to go out and get him. A few of the waves knocked me over they were so strong! When we first got there we ordered lunch so that they could have it ready for us when it was time to eat. There was also a pool near the restaurant so we swam in there for a little while too. I ordered fried shrimp and it came with a little bowl of soup which had a non-fried shrimp in it as a sort of garnish and the shrimp still had eyes! They also fried the shrimp with the heads still on them so that was different haha. My friend ordered two meals because she couldn't decide what she wanted and one of the things she got was ceviche. I tried some of it, but I don't think I'll be eating it again any time soon. She couldn't eat all of the food so she fed a stray cat some of the ceviche and she loved it. The cat had a kitten and another family that was at the restaurant for lunch, took the kitten home with them! They just put him in a box and poked some wholes in it. The poor mother cat lost her kitten :(

The ride back to the school was a little bit more painful then the ride there because I got sunburned pretty bad. I don't know what I was thinking- I should've definitely put more sunscreen on after I got out of the water. I'm burnt all over and it's so painful. It was so weird on the way back because one minute it was warm and sunny and then the next second it was down pouring and the streets were flooding. Good thing we had a cover over the back of the truck! But the tarp leaked so I still got pretty wet. I didn't feel too good after we got back, so I ended up taking a nap and then going to bed at 8:30. I don't know if I got too much sun or if it was the shrimp I ate, but I got sick in the middle of the night. Not fun :( I've been feeling better today, but I'm still pretty wiped out.

This morning Tim and I went to the market in Parque Central that's only there the first Sunday of every month. They sell more touristy stuff and lots of jewlery, scarves, etc. I wasn't super impressed with it because it was pretty small and I've seen nicer stuff in other markets in Guatemala so I didn't end up buying anything. For lunch, my host family had a bunch of their extended family over to eat so I played a bunch of games with the kids before it was time to eat. As soon as we were done eating most of the family got up and left, which was kind of weird. You would think they'd want to hang out for a little while but apparently not.

Well, my third week here starts tomorrow! Five more weeks in Guatemala left! I'm starting to miss my own bed and my own shower, etc.

Week 2 done!

So the soccer game yesterday was actually pretty fun. Somehow the other team ended up having 4 Guatemalans and my team only had one, so that pretty much set us up for failure. We lost 4 to 12. On the walk back to the school afterwards we saw a dog eating some kind of meat and when we got closer, we realized that is was actually the head of a dead puppy! It was the saddest thing ever! My friend said well it´s a dog eat dog world, which would´ve been funny if it wasn´t so gross. For those of you who have never been to Guatemala, there are tons of stray dogs everywhere. They just run around the streets barking and looking for food and they´re dirty and gross. Some are cute and I want to bring them home and feed them but most of them aren´t. My teacher was telling me that the government doesn´t care enough to do anything about the problem and the most they´ve ever done is try to kill them. She said sometimes they´ll put poison out in the streets at night!

Today during class, my teacher and I walked to this bake shop that´s only open two days a week. It´s run by an American Mennonite family, which seems kind of random for Guatemala. They had huge fresh donuts and bagels, tons of cookies, breads, cupcakes, pies, yogurts, and granola. I got a pineapple filled powdered donut and it was so good. I asked my teacher if there were a lot of Mennonites in Guatemala and she said that there was actually a pretty big congregation here in Xela, so there´s an interesting fact for you :)

I also had my test today and  I really haven´t been doing that much studying this week. I studied in the morning today and during the break. I did okay on it but not as good as I would have hoped. They don´t actually give you a grade on it, they just correct it and show you what you got wrong. I mostly just messed up on conjugating irregular verbs in the past tense- there´s so much to memorize! I´m going to switch teachers again next week. I really liked my teacher this week but I feel like she moved too fast for me. I didn´t have enough opportunities to review and practice what she was teaching me. So hopefully next week, I´ll get a teacher that goes a little but slower through the material.

After lunch today Tim and I went for a walk to Zona 3 of Xela to the bigger market there to buy fruit for the fruit salad we´re bringing to the dinner tonight. I got three big mangos and a watermelon for 10Q! I can´t beleive how cheap fruits and vegetables are here. Last week for my salad, I bought like 8 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, an onion and a lime all for $1. I was kind of dissappointed though because none of the mangos I bought today were good enough to put in the salad. They were either rotten on the inside or not ripe yet. I don´t know, I´ve never bought mangos before haha. Hopefully the salad tastes good with out them.

To Haley, my neice, I watched iCarly in Spanish today! Analy said it´s one of her favorite TV shows too :)

I learned some pretty interesting things about Guatemala and Xela this week from my teacher. One thing is that the reason that the streets aren´t paved and theres not many stop signs or traffic lights in this area of the city is because it´s considered a historical part of the city and the government wants to try to preserve the history. The streets are really narrow and made of stones like old fashioned cobble stone streets and apparently they´ve been that way ever since people used to ride around them on horses. The people that own the houses and businesses on the streets in this area can´t remodel their houses to be a more modern style and they can only paint their houses certain colors. They also can´t have certain kinds of advertising like bright neon lights. Another thing is that most people here do not use their refridgerators or their ovens. My host family has an oven but they just use it to store left over foods and pots and pans, never to cook in. My teacher said it´s because they can´t hook their ovens up to the wall like we do in the states, they have to buy little tanks of gas like you would for a grill and I guess that gets to be really expensive. I still don´t understand why they don´t use their refridgerators but my host family leaves out mayonaisse, eggs, fruits, vegetables, leftovers, and even milk sometimes. We also hardly ever eat fruits and vegetables, which is weird because they´re so cheap. My teacher told me that a family that eats a lot of fruits and vegetables is seen as having a diet of poor people, which seems kind of strange. My teacher was asking me if I like to cook and bake. She asked me how to make chocolate cookies and I told her about break and bake cookies and she was saying how food in the US is so much easier to cook because we have pre-prepared foods and frozen foods and everything. I´m pretty thankful for that :)

I helped Ana (my host mom) cook again earlier this week. She had shredded up a ton of carrots and then she put in a block of this soft, crumbly cheese (which is wrapped up in a huge leaf when you buy it), an egg, salt, sugar, flour, and some seasoning stuff. She had me mix it all together with my hand and then she made it into these little patties and fried them in a pan. They tasted okay but I don´t think I´ll be making them at home haha. We also had this weird soup the other day. The broth was basically just water and it had huge chunks of vegetables in it. I had like a whole carrot stick, a whole potato, a quarter or this pumpkin squash thing, and like a half of corn on the cobb all in my bowl. I don´t understand why it just wasn´t cut up haha. It was kind of difficult to eat. There was also a chunk of meat in there attached to this huge bone that looked like a lumbar vertebrae which made me not really want to eat it. I said something to Tim about it afterwards and he was like yeah that definitely was a vertebrae! haha- I love that the majority of students at this school are in some sort of medical field and can understand the way I think :)

Anyways, I think I´ve gotten used to the weird meal times and foods here by now. If at home my main food groups are pasta, chicken, and veggies, here they´re eggs, beans, and tortillas. And I´ve actually began to prefer the repetetive eggs and beans to some of the other things we eat.

La Clase de Salsa y Pescado

So I ended up going to the salsa class yesterday. I had nothing better to do and pretty much everyone else was doing it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be but I was still as uncoordinated as I thought I would be haha. We mostly just learned basic steps but when we got to the spins and stuff, I just couldn't figure it out haha. There was a woman who was teaching us and then a younger guy who was helping out, so when the guy saw that I was clueless, he came over and helped me. So I got to salsa dance with a Guatemalan :) Today a bunch of the students are going to play futbol with some of the teachers. Yet another chance for me to show off how uncoordinated I am haha.

Today lunch was so disgusting. It was these little patty things made of fish and like potatoes or something. But it wasn't like regular fish. It was like tiny little sardines or something. While we were eating, I heard Analy say to her mom "Tiene una cabeza! Y ojos!" (It has a head! And eyes!). Oh my goodness, I wanted to throw up haha. I don't like fish to begin with but this was really fishy tasting and crunchy. Probably because of the eyes. She gave me three and I was thinking, okay, I can eat two to be polite. But after that, I couldn't even finish one.

This weekend, we could choose between going to the beach or hiking to a lagoon on top of a volcano. I'm gonna go to the beach beach because last weekend was enough of a hike for me and apparently there's not much to do at the lagoon once you get to the top. My teacher said the beach has black sand because it's volcanic sand. Hopefully it won't rain. Surprisingly, it hasn't rained for the past two or three days.

This week has gone by so much faster than last week! I can´t believe that it`s Wednesday already. Yesterday at school we watched Maria Llena de Gracia, or Maria Full of Grace, which is a movie about drug trafficking from Colombia. It`s a pretty intense movie. I`ve seen it before because we watched it in Spanish class in high school. Today in class, my teacher asked me to tell her about the movie, so we got into a conversation about how drugs are a big problem here in Guatemala. She said there are people here in Xela that drive around in Hummers and there`s no way they can afford them so they must be involved with drugs haha. Also during my class there was some guy out in the street talking through a sound system and I asked my teacher what he was talking about. Apparently he was selling medicine out in the street for cheaper then you can buy it in the pharmacy. You don`t need a perscription here for most medicines, so he was out there selling antibiotics and Xanax for like 10Q. So different than in the states.

After lunch today, Tim (the other student living at my homestay) and I walked around Xela exploring for a little while. We walked through some of the market areas and stuff. They sell a lot of clothes from the states for a lot cheaper. And you can buy Pirates of the Carribean 4, and other movies that are still only in theaters, on DVD  for only 5Q.

I feel like my Spanish has definitely improved. Today Tim and I were trying to read a local newspaper and there was an article about Arnold Schwarzenegger because of the affair that hes been having. Apparently the woman is from Xela! Such a small world haha.

La conferencia

So the lecture yesterday was a little boring. It was more about the religious beliefs of the Mayans than about their culture, which sounds like it might be interesting but it really wasn´t. It was hard to understand because it was all in Spanish, which is becoming the story of my life here hahah. They had another student translate, but the speaker would forget that he had to stop talking to let the student translate so there would large gaps of time where I didn´t understand much. One thing I did find interesting was that the Mayans beleive that people were created out of different types of corn. Theres five different types of corn apparently and each different kind represents a different race and different aspects of the spirit and the body. The speaker also said that the predictions about the end of the world based on the Mayan calendar are inaccuarate and ignorant. He said people who aren´t Mayan try to take the calendar and understand it and they don´t really know what they´re talking about.

After taking notes in class today for what seemed like forever, my teacher and I just sat and talked for a while. We ended up talking about movies and I told her about netflix. She had never heard of it and she was reallly jealous haha. She also asked me how close I lived to a grocery store and I told her it was about a 10-15 minute drive and she seemed shocked. She thought that was so far away. They just walk everywhere here so there´s stores and places a lot closer to their houses.

I´ve been feeling a lot better the past few days and I also figured out how to get hot water in the shower, so its been pretty awesome :)

El fin de semana y la segunda semana

So since this is the beginning of a new week, I get a new teacher. At first, I really wished I had requested to stay with my teacher from last week, Norma, because my new teacher, also named Norma, is a little bit harder to understand and she goes through material a little bit quicker, but after my first full day with her, I think she'll be a good teacher too. It'll just take a little bit of time to readjust again. She also gave me more homework!

This weekend it rained a lot! After lunch on Saturday it was pouring so hard that I didn't want to leave the house. So instead, I hung out with Analy (my "sister"). She's eleven so we sewed some clothes for her Barbies and then she tried to teach me how to dance and then we went to the tienda to buy snacks and made strawberry and banana smoothies and watched a movie.

On Sunday I went out to eat with some friends and then afterwards we decided we wanted to go see a movie. We had to take a microbus, which is basically just a big van, to the area of the city with the mall. It was such a commerical area with a Walmart and a Taco Bell and the mall and everything. It was so different from every other part of Guatemala that I've seen. We were hoping that the movie was in English with Spanish subtitles, because sometimes the movies here are like that, but we had no such luck. If we had gone earlier, we could've seen ¿Que Paso Ayer? 2 (The Hangover 2) in English, but we were too late for that. So I watched Piratas del Caribe and I didn't understand the majority of it, but it was still fun. It was weird because after we bought our tickets we had to wait in line outside of the theater until just before the movie started. Then they let us all in while the previews were playing and we had to find our seats in the dark. Then, half way through the movie, it just stopped. We thought that the electricity went out because we could hear that it was raining from inside the theater. But, then we realized that it was just an intermission haha.

This week for activities, there's a lecture on the Mayan culture and worldview, another movie, salsa dancing lessons, another hike up a different mountain to see Laguna de Chicobal and a trip to the beach. I think I'm going to skip the salsa dancing lesson haha.

First week done!

Yesterday during my Spanish class, I went to the big market in San Francisco that happens every Friday. I went with another student and our two teachers and we had to take a chicken bus! Chicken buses are old school buses from the US and they use them down here as public transportation. They make a lot of stops on the way picking up tons of people. There´s also some people that come on and off the bus selling things or trying to get money. One man came on and passed out these little cards and on the back they said ¨I can´t hear, I can´t speak. I sell these for 1Q to support myself.¨ 1Q is like twelve cents. It was so sad to see! Also, my teacher was telling me that usually theres like three people to a seat and then some standing up and that theres often chickens and pigs on the racks above your head. Thankfully, the buses we went on were not that busy.

The market was huge! There were tons of animals and clothes and meats and vegetables. There were so many cute little baby pigs and there was a man forcing one of the pigs mouths open and making him squeal so loudly. My teacher said they do that to check the color of their mouths or something to see if they´re healthy or not before someone buys it. Its so sad to think that they´re all just going to be eaten. I like bacon and everything, but cute little baby pigs! I wanted to buy them all and set them free :) There was also an area where they were selling all these animals parts. I don´t really know what a person would do with cow heads and chicken feet but it was definitely interesting to see. While we wandered around the market we went into a Catholic church  thats about 300 yrs old I think. It had beautiful domed ceilings that used to have murals painted on them but they were mostly worn off. My teacher said that it took 100 yrs to build and they put animal bones in the walls to reinforce them and make them stronger! After the market we walked to a nearby Mayan holy place. It was on the side of a mountain and the view was amazing. People go there daily to see the preistess and make sacrifices to their Mayan gods for health, money, etc. They sacrfice things like candles and insense usually but sometimes they´ll sacrifice chicken blood too I guess. They have to pay the preistess there in order to sacrifice their stuff and she communicates with the gods for them or something. It was kind of interesting to see but also sad to see that these people think that these ¨gods¨ are actually going to help them and bless them and make their lives better.

Because I was at the market all during my class, I got out of taking my weekly test :) But I actually kind of wanted to take it because I wanted to see how much I had learned. I´m still only learning the present tense but its new stuff because we´re going a lot more in depth then I ever did in high school. Sometimes I feel like shes teaching me too many words and I´ll never remember them all. And for a lot of the words I already know other words that mean the same thing, so why do I need to learn more? But I guess if I want to be able to understand other peoples Spanish then it´s important. I feel like I can understand a lot more Spanish now then before but I don´t know if my speaking has really gotten any better. I can´t believe my first week here is already over!

Last night all of the students and teachers had dinner together at the school. Each student had to bring a dish to pass. I just made a salad. But, it was probably the best meal I´ve had since getting here because it was a lot of American foods. We had garlic bread, pasta, fruit salad and lots of other stuff. I love the fruit here, but my host family never eats any fruit! The food they serve isn´t bad, its just really different. I´ve been feeling a little sick-ish the past few days. Probably because my body is adjusting to all these changes-the food, the climate, the walking everywhere, etc. I hope it doesn´t end up being anything worse then that. The other student that lives in the same house as me is a med student and he keeps trying to convince me that I have some kind of parasite haha. But, every time I´ve come here before I´ve felt the same way so I´m sure I´ll be fine. At the dinner, the five students that were ¨graduating¨ from Miguel Angel Asturias gave speeches and one sang a really funny song that he wrote in Spanish. It was a good time hanging out with everyone and eating good food.

This morning I went on a hike up a mountain with the school. The mountain is called Baul, which in Spanish means trunk or chest. I guess the story is that there was a family that had a lot of money and either they didn´t want it to get stolen or the money they had they got by stealing it (there are still holes in my understanding of Spanish haha), anyways they hid it in a chest and buried it in the mountain supposedly. So it was about a 30 min hike to the top and there was a park up there. There was a tall Mayan monument and one of the students with us climbed to the top. He´s crazy. There was also a bunch of long cement slides that a bunch of the guys went down on. I didn´t try it cause I didn´t want to hurt my butt haha. The hike down was much easier, which I appreciated.

I don´t really have much planned for the rest of the weekend, except that I´m going to go out to lunch tomorrow with some of my friends from school. I kind of just want to relax and rest so that I don´t get any sicker and so that I´ll be refreshed for another week here.

An Interesting Tradition :)

So before I left for Guatemala, my nephew Ryan asked me to figure out what the kids here do when they lose their teeth. So after explaining to my teacher in my broken Spanish what kids in the states believe, she told me that when kids here lose a tooth they throw it on the roof of their houses and sing this little song and they believe that a mouse will come and take their old tooth away and give them their new tooth. :)

Muchas Actividades

So last night I asked my host mom if she needed help with dinner and she had me make guacamole. I was so excited to eat it because I love guacamole and I was thinking we'd eat it with tortillas or tortilla chips but then she spread it on tortillas, put a hot dog on top, then tomatoes, onions, ketchup, and mayonnaise! I was thinking that there was no way that it was going to taste good. But surprisingly, it did! And today I finally had something other than scrambled eggs for breakfast! I never enjoyed a pancake so much hahah :)

The chocolate factory was pretty cool. They put sooo much sugar in with the cocoa beans though! It was like 3 parts sugar and one part chocolate. It's different than like hershey's chocolate though because they don't make it to eat. They make bars of it and then they'll put in it hot water or milk to make hot chocolate. Its more common for them to drink it then to eat it, so I was a little disappointed that I couldn't just buy a regular bar of chocolate. But then afterwards, one of the other students told us about a chocolateria (chocolate store) near the school so a bunch of us went there. I bought a chocolate covered mango and it was super good.

Yesterday we went to Fuentes Georginas which are the hot springs in a town that's next to Xela. The water is naturally heated because it passes by volcanoes. There were three different pools and the first one was so hot that nobody could even get in it! The other two were just like really big hot tubs. It's a lot colder there because of the altitude so it feels really nice to be in the hot water. It was so foggy there though so I couldn't see the view which sucks cause I'm sure it would've been amazing since we were so high up.

Tomorrow during my class, my teacher is going to take me to a really big market that's here every Friday. Every Friday night at the school, all of the students come for dinner and everyone is supposed to cook something or bring something to eat. Hopefully I'll find something there to bring! She said there's usually lots of animals at this market, like cows, turkeys, ducks, etc. It should be pretty interesting!

El Segundo Dia

I slept much better last night. I didn’t notice the roosters so much because I was so sleepy but I realized that the reason I heard a dog barking all night long was because my host family keeps their puppy outside in an area kind of like an enclosed patio and my room is right next to the patio. The puppy barks a lot during the night, but she’s so cute! It makes me miss Casey less :)

Today during my lesson a bunch of the teachers took their students to the cemetery. In Guatemala, it’s not common for people to be buried in the ground so most of the graves are above ground in mausoleums. They are very colorful and there are lots of interesting designs and statues. The families of the people buried in the cemetery have to pay a small fee every year to keep the body there and if they don’t pay, they remove the body! While we walked around, we stopped at a few different graves and heard stories and legends about the people buried there. It was pretty interesting, not at all what I was expecting when my teacher asked me if I wanted to go to the cemetery. Later today, we’re all going to una fabrica de chocolate (chocolate factory). I’m pretty excited about it because they’re going to show us how they make the chocolate and then we can taste it and buy some. Que delicioso! 

Here's a picture from the cafe I went to yesterday. I tried to add more, but the internet isn't that great so it was taking too long. I'll try again later.

First Day!

I got into Guatemala City yesterday morning and then had to wait three hours at the bus station for the four hour bus ride to Xela. I was expecting one of those old school buses but it was actually pretty nice. More like a greyhound bus. It had air conditioning and TVs and all for only 75 Q (about $10). I got into Xela after dark and then took a taxi to the school with another American that I met on the bus ride. I got to meet my host family and then had dinner and went to bed.  
I didnt sleep very well with all the dogs barking and the roosters cawing and the fireworks at 5:30 in the morning so I've been kind of exhausted all day. Its felt like such an long day and its not even 7 PM yet.  Hopefully that means I'll sleep really well tonight. After waking up at 5:30 am I had a breakfast of scrambled eggs and black beans with this drink that is made of hot water, chunks of pineapple, cinnamon, and other floating chunks that I couldn't understand the word for. It was okay. There's another student staying with the same host family as me and he's been here for a week so he showed me the way to the school. I got to meet all of the other students (there's about ten others) and then had my first spanish lesson. I had to take a test to see where I'm at and then we got started. I'm doing a lot of review to start out with because I don't remember everything I've learned and I need to get that down good before I can learn new stuff. We did articulos for like an hour straight, which got pretty boring. Articulos are basically just different ways to say a and the but in Spanish it's a little bit more complicated than that.
For the second half of my lesson we walked around the city for a little while. My teacher helped me change over my money and get my phone set up and then I was pretty much done for the day. After lunch I went back to school to meet a friend and we walked around the city and ended up at a cafe where you can sit on the roof that over looks el parque central. Then we came back to school to watch 127 hours which, by the way, is pretty disgusting. Over all, it was a good first day. Tomorrow we're going to a chocolate factory and the day after that to the hot springs. Sounds like its going to be a fun week :)

Today is the day!

Today is the day that I am leaving for Guatemala! This afternoon I'll be flying out to Atlanta where I'll spend the night so that I can fly to Guatemala tomorrow morning and take a bus to Xela before it starts to get dark out. I'll be able to meet my host family and settle into my room before classes start Monday morning. I still have a few things to do today before I leave, but already I'm starting to get excited! I know the first week or so will be hard since I'll still be figuring everything out and I won't be able to communicate very well, but I'm praying that I get a great host family and that I can adjust quickly. I'm gonna try to keep everyone updated on how and what I'm doing on this blog so that I don't have to email a million people all about the same things, so keep checking back :)

Leaving soon!

I leave for Guatemala in eleven days! That is so crazy to me- I thought this day would never come! I am finally all done with this semester and my last day of work is next Wednesday, so I'm starting to freak out realizing that I'm going to leave home pretty soon. Most of me is extremely excited to jump on a plane and go back to Guatemala, but the rest of me is really nervous and kind of scared. I've never flown by myself or navigated my way through a foreign country on my own, so those are two things that I'm getting nervous about. But I know that this is exactly where God wants me to be this summer and the safest place to be is in the will of God.