Regrese a Xela

Happy Holidays! I know I haven´t written in a while, so I´ll try to give a succint update of everything.

After the farm I traveled in Mexico and Guatemala for a few weeks. The other WWOOFers and I went to the beach at Zihuatenejo for a few days and then Karen and I took a bus to Mexico City (which I still love). There was an ice skating rink and big winter fair set up in the city square and it was bueatiful. From Mexico City we went to Palenque, a city of Mayan ruins in Chiapas, about 8 hours away from Flores, Guatemala. To cross the border from Mexico to Guatemala, we had to take a 30 minute boat ride in these long and narrow boats. THey were prety cool. We spent a day at Tikkal and then a day at Rio Dulce (halfway between Tikkal and Guatemala City) where we went to a hot water fall. After Rio Dulce, we went to Antigua where we climbed Pacaya, an active volcano and roasted marshmellows on lava flows. It was really cool. For Christmas, I met my family in florida where we rented a house for a week. One day, Beth, Alex and I drove the 2 hours to the everglades and took an airboat ride to see aligators in the swamp. I learned that, like me, alligators also like marmellows.

I arrived in Xela yesterday and right now am trying to sort out my life-meaning finding a job, maybe taking some more classes, and deciding if I want to live with my host family or find an apartment. My biggest plans, besides job searching, is hopefully going salsa dancing tonight. Once I figure out more of my life, I´ll let you all know.

Still in Mexico...

This week, Karen and I fixed a wall of a terraced garden bed, planted about 500 beets, made a low tunnel (like a mini greenhouse to protect the fennel from the frost), and started digging out blackberry roots so we can plant one of the greenhouses. The new WWOOFer brought a hackey sack and a frisbee, which has been fun. I´m pretty terrible at hackey sack but at least have been improving.

The most exiciting news recently in my life is that today I bought a watch for $30 pesos (US$2.50) that says ¨Japan Quality, Made in China¨on the back. I don´t have high hopes, but so far so good.

Living with two Brits, I have started saying ¨proper¨as in ¨Are you going to make a proper fire?¨ Picking this up may be because it actually is better than just repeating the word twice, which is what I realized I sometimes do (or say ¨real¨but proper is better). Por ejemplo, ¨was it a date date¨versus ¨was it a proper date?¨ I don´t think I´ll get to saying ¨Crikey¨or ¨Bloody hell¨but maybe if I were staying longer, I would.

Corrected phone number and address

Sorry, I forgot to include a very important ¨1¨in my phone number in the previous blog. I´ve changed it on there but just so you know, if you want to call from a telephone or calling card from the states call:
011-52-1-434-1121-321.

And for anyone who wants to send me anything, you can send it to the following address until January:

Stephanie Charpentier
La Democracia Spanish School
9 Calle 15-05
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, Central America

I won´t pick up my mail there until around Christmas, but I´ll still get whatever you send.

Mexican Phone Number

Hey all, so this is likely the last time I´ll use internet until I leave the farm, so I would love to hear from anyone who wants to call me. It costs me about $4 to make a call just to say ¨call me back¨and then hang up, so I would love it if you could call me on Skype just because you feel like it. It´s best to call after 5 pm Eastern time and even better after 8 or 9pm.

From Skype: Set the country choice to Mexico (which will automatically input the country code). Then type in 1-434-1121-321 and hit send. If it doesn´t go through, just try again because the signal goes in and out so if I don´t pick up, it probably never rang. But it does work (I´ve tested it from Skype) so just don´t give up.

From a phone/calling card: Dial 001-52-1-434-1121-321. And the same thing goes as above about trying again (and again).

The primary cell phone provider in Mexico is a monopoly and charges criminally high rates to make calls. But I have free incoming calls and it´s not that much from skype.

Other than all that, some things I´ve been doing lately:
-preparing beds with fish emolsion (think decomposing fish parts) and bio-char
-planting purple mustard, parsley, beets, cabbage, fennel, etc
-feeding ducks, pigs, geese, chickens
-making compost
-hearding the pigs back in when they dug under the fense and escaped
-baking bread (today we made focaccia bread to use as pizza crust and a rye molassas loaf)
-digging a wallow for the pigs

It´s great because I´m learning a lot about permaculture and how everything works and fits together, not just working.

A new WWOOFer is coming today which will make 5 of us. He´s also Canadian, but I haven´t met him yet so I don´t know much more.

Hope everyone reading this is doing well. I miss you all (and thanks for taking the time to read this)

La granja

After leaving Mexico City, Karen and I took a bus 5 hours west to Patzcuaro, where Lisa and Ian picked us up from the bus station. They´re married and in their fifties (I think). Lisa is from the states and Ian is British. They have been living in Mexico on this farm for 4 years, before which Ian was a photographer and Lisa a fashion designer. They bought the farm and100 books on permaculture (which is sustainable, efficient agriculture) and have been figurin things out since. They grow vegetables that no one else around grows and sells them to a fancy restaurant on the coast. They have 4 dogs, 9 cats, 24 chickens, 40 sheep (who aren´t on the farm), and around 30 geese, and a bunch of ducks. So far I´ve been preparing new beds and planting. I´ve planted purple mustard and a special type of fennel.

There are two other WWOOFers besides Karen and me: Damian and Amy. Damian is from Quebec and has been WWOOFing for 3 months in Mexico and Guatemala. Amy is from England and hasnt worked on a farm before but has traveled extensively. And for those who this means something to: she worked in Elephant Nature Park for 6 months, two years ago. We all share a really comfortable room. Damien arrived two days before me and Karen and Amy got there one day after. I think we´re a pretty good group.

So the bad part about this farm is that we´re speaking English most of the time. Lisa can communicate well but Ian doesn´t know much and Amy doesn´t know any. Karen, Damian, and I speak Spanish with each other sometimes, but it´s definitely not the same as living with a bunch of spanish speakers. The best part about this farm, besides that Lisa is really willing to teach as much as possible about farming and permiculture, is that she is an amzing cook and has actually cooked professionally. So each meal is better than what I would usually get in a restaurant. And she´s teaching us to cook. So far, we have made (and I have recipes for) apple cake, a salad dressing, mexican scrambled eggs, rye, caraway, and molasses bread, and clam fritters. There is almost always homemade bread and/or cake in the house.

Overall it´s good so far. We work Monday though Saturday 8:30am-2pm and then some at dusk. There´s not really time to go into Patacuaro, where I am now, after work because its 30 minutes away and you need to take a taxi. Zirahuan is the little town of 500 people that is 1km away from the farm, and which has access to this huge, clean lake, but there isn´t much there, nor is there internet. (This means that I can probably only use internet once a week.) Karen, Damian, and I are strategizing on how to meet people in the town. We might volunteer to teach English a bit, though it´s not an amazing way to learn Spanish. There´s some local antagonism to foreigners who live there, I think mostly because this area is becoming like Florida, just full of retired people who don´t try to mix with the local comunity in positive ways. So I don´t know exaclty what effect that will have on our experience there. I´ll see.

Bienvenidos a Mexico

I know it´s been a while since I last wrote. My last week in Xela (the last week of October) I tried to spend it with my friends, rather than on the internet. Karen and I left Xela Nov 2 for San Cristobal de las Casas, an old colonial tourist town in Chiapas. We were going to take a night bus (16 horus) to Mexico City, but a one-hour flight was about half the price at $39 US, so we opted for that. Turns out, Mexico City is BEAUTIFUL. Really. We stayed in the historical (touristy) part of the city where there is a huge cathedral and a palace around a huge public square, all in magnificent European architecture. I hadn´t actually read much about Mexico before arriving so I was stunned when I stepped out of the subway.

The next day Karen, an Irish girl named Charlotte who we met in our hostel, and I went to Teotihuacán, a huge city of Aztec ruins. There are a number of pyramids there, and one of them, the Sun Pyramid, is the thrid largest pyramid in the world (including the pyramids in Egypt). We climbed its 250 steps and it was pretty awesome. Unfortuneatly I don´t have pictures up yet, sorry.

Being in Mexico City also made me realize how much I love subways and how much I miss it. I never would have expected it, but its true. I was also taken aback by how comfortable the first class buses here are, with more leg room than in any bus or airplane I´ve ever been on and really comfortable seats that recline a lot. I read in a guide that Mexico has one of (if not the) best bus systems in the world. I belive it.

Laguna Chicibal

Yesterday, I went with a bunch of people from the school to Laguna Chicibal, a lake that sits in the crater of an (extinct) volcano. Its a 6km hike from the town to the lookout point, but on the way up we caught a pickup part of the way. After the lookout point, we walked down 500 stairs to the actual laguna. The Laguna is considered a sacred place for the locals and we got to see a group of men performing a Mayan religious ritual on the side of the lake. The clouds kept coming in and out so one second it would be clear and the next we'd be in a cloud. The walk back up the stairs was a challenge, but overall it was fun and I had a good time with everyone.

Concepcion Chiquirichapa

Hi! This weekend I went on a youth (jovenes) mission trip to Concepcion Chiquirichapa with the church of my host family. My host brother organized it so I had heard a little about it while he was planning it. Last wednesday I asked if everything was all ready for the trip and he asked me if I wanted to go. Very excited at the invitation, I said yes. The trip went from 6:00pm Friday until 2:00pm Sunday. There were about 40 of us, ranging from 15 to 30 years old. At first I was a little concerned because I only knew my host brother and he was busy running the whole weekend, but there was someone, named Mirna, who I had met the week before at a prayer group that meets in my house, so I hung out with her. And of course, I met other people as the weekend went on.

We met at 6 at the church for a mass and after loaded a bus. Chiquirichapa is about 30 minutes away, and we sang the whole way. At first it was kind of hard because I didn´t know any of the words, but it was still fun and Mirna wrote down the words to some of the main prayers for me. When we arrived we ate and then gathered in the chruch for a service. This was better because they gave out the words to everything so I could understand everything better. And a lot of the religious vocabulary, I had already learned in Spanish as I was reading the bible. I could follow some parts of the masses and services but it was hard to keep my attention so the part where the priest was speaking turned into more a time for me to think a lot, which is good in its own right.

The next morning we met a 6 for a mass after which we ate and then were divided into groups to go house to house. This wasn´t a mission to convert people, just to visit houses of catholic families in this impoverished community to pray for/with them and try to inspire hope. Chiquirichapa is a Mam community (a Mayan subgroup) where they primarily speak Mam and speak Spanish (if at all) as a second language. Like many communities in rural Guatemala, this community suffered a lot durring the civil war and remains pretty poor. So for the mission, each group of 3 youth from Xela was paired with a group of 3 local youth and together we went from house to house. In one family that we visited, there was a woman who had just lost her husband the week before and was very very appreciative that we were there to pray for him and for her family. Something that I found interesting (but at this point of living in Guatemala not surprising) is that one of the things that the girl in my group leading the prayers included in what she said was prayers for the wellbeing of family living in the united states. Almost everyone (if not everyone) I´ve met in guatemala has fmaily in the united states and as far as I´ve heard from my teachers, very very very few of guatemalans in the US are there legally. Maddy, if you´re reading this, I met someone whose father is in Morristown! NJ and Virginia come up often as places where family members live.

In the afternoon, we did a via cruces, where each group acted out a different scene (en español es estacion pero yo no se in ingles) of the crucifiction of jesus. While each scene was being acted out, someone would read a description of what it was, and then how this part of the story relates to our lives, now, and then some prayers, and then we´d sing. Between each scene we would walk a little while up a hill for the next scene. During this time I got to talk to a lot of people and ask a lot of questions. It´s hard to believe how much I learned this weekend.

At night we had another service, in which the priest asked people if anyone wanted to come up and talk about their experience that day visiting the families, etc. I decided to go up and thank everyone and tell them how much I had enjoyed it. I only said a few sentences (I wrote it first and then read from what I wrote) but I was happy that I didn´t wimp out when I wanted to do it but was scared to get up in front of everyone (and of course, speak spanish to them).

The next morning was sunday, so we had a full mass service (at 5:30am). The church was packed with people standing in the aisles and additional seating behind the altar (where the priest is?). The service was in Spanish and translated into Mam also. The priest asked me if I wanted to speak again like I had the night before about my experience and I agreed, so I got up in front of the whole church and thanked them for inviting us and that it made me happy to visit with the families in the community. After breakfast, we had a meeting (about half Xela youth and half adults from the community) where the priest explained the progression of writings and reasons/uses/etc on fasting from the old testiment through the new testiment and then through catholic church law. Afterwards, we packed up our things and went back to Xela. I´m excited to see Mirna and some others again this weekend when they come to my house for prayer meetings.

The only exciting thing that has happened since is that I went on a tour today of Xela and found out that the cathedral in Xela (where my host family goes) is the second oldest church in Central America (after the one in Salcaja which I´ve seen)...right now its actually only the face that remains and the actual church is newer, but I still thought that was cool.

I guess the other exciting thing was that I found a hoodie from Mahopac, NY in one of the many many stores that sell clothing from Goodwills in the states. I aslo saw a guatemalan girl wearing a hoodie that said ¨scarsdale basketball¨which made me laugh a bit.

I´m sorry this was so long, but I´m very happy and excited so it was hard to not write a lot.

Mi neuva computadora

Not much has happened this week, since I´ve been back. I´ve been going to class, teaching kids English, going to Yoga class, buying pastries, and reading a lot (I´ve been reading the bible in spanish), and talking with my host family. These six things probably account for at least 90% of my awake time this week. Seriously.

I brought back with me a baby computer, an Asus EeePC, which at 8.9" fits in my purse. The interesting thing is that it runs on Linux, so my new goal is to learn to use Linux. I´m up for the challenge. So far, I haven´t done huge things, but I´ve found the beauty of occassional frustration is the accomplishment that comes at the end. And it comes with some fun games, including a falling math equation game where you have to shoot them with the correct answer, sudoku, and a prenguin racing game. There´s wireless at my school, in most cafes here, and at the farm where Karen and I will be going.

This week I´ve been studying with Yesica (like Jessica). She´s great. We´ve been reviewing everything I´ve learned so far and basically just talking for the whole time. I´m going to have her next week too.

And, I love my host family more than ever.

Surprise!

Last Tuesday I hopped on a plane to NY (with a week of planning) to surprise my sister, Erica, who just had a baby. Erica had been kind of bummed that neither Beth nor I would be around after Jonas, my nephew was born. Beth had the idea of coming home to surprise her and my dad suggested to me that I come home too. I was in NY Tuesday through Sunday and had an amazing time hanging out with Erica, Mike, Maisie, Jonas, Beth, and my parents. I also got to see my aunt Barbara and my uncle Randy. Jonas is doing really well and Maisie is adjusting (...). I know she will be an awesome big sister and someday she´ll realize how boring her life would have been had she been an only child. I also got to see Meghan, Amy, and Madalyn in NYC for dinner. Although I´m still happy to be in Guatemala, it was so great to spend time with family and friends. I really love and miss you all.

And to my family, I can´t wait until Christmas.

La Florida, Atltlan

A bit delayed, but here is an entry about my trip with Karen and Angela to the coffee plantation La Florida and then to Lago Atitlan

We left for Colomba, the nearest town to La Florida, around 10 am Sunday. We took a chicken bus which took only abuot an hour. After arriving in Colomba, we met up with somone from La Florida who got us on the right pickup truck (a common mode of travel in more rural areas). After the 45 minute ride, we then hiked for 45 minutes before arriving to the plantation. By then it was after 2pm and we put our things in the dorm (a dimly lit room of four beds with straw matresses) and then went to the families who gave us our meals. Karen and I were put with a family with 5 boys ranging from 2 to 7 years old. The house consisted of a room with two beds, a kitchen area, and a bar-style table across from the beds where we all ate. The room had a tin roof and concrete floors. The boys- with an incredible amount of energy- were constantly doing cartwheels and flips onto the beds. The food was simple but good: frijoles (beans), huevos (eggs), tortillas, and soemtimes cheese or pasta.

For the two mornings that we were at the finca, we ¨helped out¨in the fields. The first day, we removed weds twisted around soy plants and then deshelled macademia nuts using rocks. The second day we picked a bit of coffee and then collected macademia nuts. Turns out raw macademica nuts taste like coconut and are delicious. In the afternoon, it was always raining and there wasn´t much for us to do except entertain/teach the millions of kids running around, so we ended up napping and studying most of the afternoons. It was still an enjoyable experience, but it made Karen and I change our minds from volunteering there for a month to WWOOFing for a month and then doing volunteer work that related to our skills and interest if we were going to volunteer.

We were originally going to stay the last three days of the week at another finca nearby, but thinking that it would be more of the same, we decided to go to Lago Atitlan to visit San Marcos, San Pedro, and Panajachel. In San Marcos, known for its new age retreat centers, we went to a yoga class, metaphysics class, and a meditation class at one retreat center called Las Piramides. I actually liked it a lot (way more than I expected). After two nights in San Marcos, we went to San Pedro, a hippy hotspot, and spent a night there hanging out with the hippies (pronounced ee-pees). That inspired our next goal which was to find hippy pants in Panajachel--which all three of us suceeded in marvulously. The hippy pants here are almost all made of pieces or patches of material of traditional skirts. I wore mine yesterday for the first time, and am kind of in love, though mine are much more tame than many of my other options. There´s not much more to say about Panajachel except that we went to a place for breakfast where there were dead ants in Karen´s granola and hair in my crepe- which was cold, hard, and plastic-like anyway. After complaining to the waiter, we left without paying. So, if you ever go to Panajachel, you can probably skip Restaurante Taly (or any of the restaurants that are right on the lake, for that matter.) We returned Sunday, refreshed and ready for class on Monday.

I´ll post photos when I can.

WWOOFing en Mexico

One reason why I haven´t written much lately is that Karen and I have decided to WWOOF in Mexico in November and we´ve been spending a lot of time trying to arrange everything. For those who do not know, WWOOF stands for ¨Willing Workers On Organic Farms¨and it is an international program which links volunteers with farms where the volunteers work (and learn about organic farming) in exchange for food and lodging. Most larger countries have their own network but Guatemala does not so we decided to go to Mexico. Right now we´re waiting to hear back from a bunch of farms to see if they have room/need when we would like to go, and if they take people without experience (some do, some don´t). I´ll keep you updated on our plan as we find out more.

Jonas Alijah Charpentier McGuirk

¡Tengo un sobrino! I have a new nephew! Jonas Alijah Charpentier McGuirk, was born 9:26pm October 3 en la casa de Erica y Mike, con una midwife (comadrona). Last I heard, everything is going well and Maisie is proud to be a big sister. Here are some pictures of the fam:

Lo Siento

Hi, this is more of an apology than an entry. I´ve been away for a week but have been so swamped with emails and errands that I couldn´t actually write today. But I´m alive and happy and will write soon.

¡Fotos!

¡I´ve uploaded some photos to Flickr! They´re from around Xela, Panajachel/Atitlan, and Salcaja. I could only do 40, and some of them didn´t work, but at least its a start.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14872592@N00/sets/72157607286689290/

Mi Familia (Real)

Here´s a quick update on the cool things my real family is up to:

A film that Alex (my brother) produced is one of five films nominated for Best International Short at the Raindance Film Festival, a British festival of independent films. Its a French film called Troubles Sens. Here´s the film´s link on festival´s website: http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/index.php?id=284,2591,0,0,1,0

He´s also about to go on tour with Stark Fucking Hipsters, a NY ska/indie/punk band, as their drummer. http://www.myspace.com/starfuckinghipsters

Erica (my oldest sister)´s pregnancy is going well. The baby is now full term, so its not a problem if she gives birth, although he´s not due until the very end of September. Of course, I will let you all know when I have a new baby nephew.

And, Beth (my other sister) is leaving tomorrow for France for 3 months, where she´ll study French and probably do lots of other cools stuff.

My mom´s been volunteering a lot at a community radio station, WJFF, http://www.wjffradio.org/wjff/ and both my parents are enjoying semi-retirement.

La Iglesia en Almolonga y San Simon

Yesterday David, Karen, and I went to Almolonga and Zunil, two towns just outside of Xela. Almolonga is known for its fruit market, but the best thing we saw there was its Catholic Church. Apparently the town is now overwhelmingly Evangelical, but Almolonga is still home to a 400-year old Catholic church dedicated to San Pedro. We walked inside the church and the caretaker asked us if we wanted him to put the lights on in the front. We were thinking that it was just so we could take a picture of the alter and all, but he was a bit insistent so we were like okay, thanks. He goes to the back and all of a sudden in the front of the church above the alter (appologies if I am using my church terminology incorrectly) big neon letters reading ¨San Pedro 400 años¨light up. Then he hits another switch and around each of the saints a neon boarder appears. Every day is a suprise. I didn´t have my camera, but Karen took a photo, which I will post when she sends it to me.

After Almolonga, we took the bus to Zunil where we saw the Mayan (Mayan/Catholic syncratic) idol to San Simon (Maximon). There´s a few areas, one of them being Zunil, where this Saint has a strong following. From wikipedia, San Simon ¨is associated with the subterranean force of masculine fertility and prostitution. Always depicted in black, he wears a black hat and sits on a chair, often with a cigar placed in his mouth and a gun in his hand, with offerings of tobacco, alcohol, and Coca-cola at his feet. ¨ Outside of the little room with the idol, they have three fires going where they burn offerings. The location of the idol changes every year so you have to ask people for directions when you get to the town. It certainly wasn´t obvious, but we managed to find it without too much trouble.












I got this photo from http://latinamericanadventure.blogspot.com/2008/08/san-simon-zunil.htm

¿Quieres un acertijo?

This past week Libia was my teacher again. She is whom I ran into in the mall the first week. We worked together the week before too. The day after I went to the meeting on La Florida, we were talking for a while about whether or not it was just for the workers of the coffee plantation La Florida (that I learned about last night) to take over the plantation after struggling in legal ways unsuccesfully for 20 years. After we finished up with that and I was copying my new vocab words, she said to me ¨¿quieres un acertijo?¨I asked her what an acertijo was and she said, a bit unsure, ¨a muzzle.¨ Of course, I was like, a muzzle!? Like para un perro? I know I can talk a lot, but isn´t that what this whole spanish school thing is about? I started describing a what a muzzle is and then we both looked up in our respective Spanish-English dictionaries ¨acertijo¨and ¨muzzle.¨ When I gave her the translation of muzzle, we both broke down laughing. It was great. And after, we told each other some acertijos, or riddles.

La historia de la identidad masculnia en los estados unitos

This is primary for Madalyn, Amy, Suz, and others who either took Bruce Dorsey´s class History of Manhood in America or other studies of manhood, with Bruce. I just wanted to share that yesterday in my class, I spoke at length with my spanish teacher (all in spanish, of course) explaining what it meant to be an ¨hombre verdadero¨in 17th and 18th century New England. I even drew out the whole shift from aprentice-> journeyman -> master to not being able to become a master and how that messed with the definition of idea manhood. This was all followed up with a discussion of how race and class shaped the ideal manhood in the Antebellum South. So, if you want to know spanish vocab ranging from ¨cabeza de la casa¨(which they actually use for head of the household) to¨jerarqui¨(hierarchy), give me a ring. Getting to talk about changing ideals of manhood is one benefit to paying someone to talk with you for five hours a day.

Mis palabras favorites...

My favorite word that I have come across so far has been¨chispitas¨, most commonly used in the expression ¨chispitas de chocolate¨: chocolate chips. I like it because its in the diminuative form, so it sounds so cute. I´m pretty into all words in the diminuative form--like when another student, David, who is 18 moved into my house, my host parents, Danny, and I started to refer to him as mi hermonito (my little brother...hermano is brother, which you all may know already from Arrested Development). Another great example is when a taxi driver offered us a ride home for only 20 ¨quetzalitas¨: 20 little quetzales. Awww, how sweet. (a Quetzal is Guatemala´s currency. Currently, Q 7.7 = $1 US. Q20 is standard for a taxi ride home from the center of town).

Tonight I´m going to a meeting to learn about a coffee plantation (Finca la Florida) that was taken over by workers after the owner went bankrupt. The government gave the workers´collective a loan to buy the property and now they still live in poverty but are working to improve their revenue generating activities (like doing more processing n the finca rather than selling the beans at an earlier stage) and develop their ecotourism. Some other coffee collectives have been pretty successful bringing in ecotourism in the form of tours and paying volunteers. It should be pretty interesting.

¡Me Desmaye en la Iglesia!

Yesterday, Sunday, I went to church with my host parents. They are super catholic (as in we have church group meetings in our house twice a week and they are all very involved with the church). The attend the big cathedral in the center of town (the photo to the right is the old facade...the church entrance is actually out of the picture). I asked if I could go with them with because I thought it would be interesting and a good way to practice my spanish comprehension. I didn´t catch most of what was said but I could pick out lots of words (like brothers, children of God, community, etc). I hadn´t been to a full mass before so it was pretty interesting.

About an hour into the mass, just before communion, I started feeling kind of dizzy, but it was while we were standing so I couldn´t sit down. I tried to talk myself out of the thought that I was about to faint. Fortunately, right about then we went down to kneeling, at which point I promptky fainted. The next thing I know my host parents were picking me up and I was sweating profusely. I can only imagine how they interepreted this. And today, I found out that its a common belief that if a woman faints it means she´s pregnant (don´t worry mom and dad!). I bet it didn´t help that after church, I asked my host parents where I could find the local type of baby carrier (para Erica, por supuesto).

Well, at least now its a funny story.

Lago de Atitlan

Last weekend Dany, the chica who was also living in my house, and I went to Panajachel (pron: pan a chel) , a town on Lago de Atitlan. The lake is really deep (300m) and was orginally formed in the crater of a volcano. Since then more volcanos have sprung up around the lake so its quite a spectacular site. There are a number of little villages around the lake that you can take a boat to. Lago de Atitlan is one of the main tourist attractions in Guatemala for foreigners and Guatemaltecos alike. It was much different from Xela, which has foreigners but isn´t based around a tourist economy. It was the only time since I´ve been here (only two weeks, but still) when Iñve had children and old women following me around and approaching me while eating to buy things.

We went to Santiago Atitlan and then to San Antonio. San Antonio was a tiny place that basically
comes to life when a tourist boat shows up and the selling begins. There is one narrow road that goes straight up to the church. This picture is from San Antonio. One woman was trying to sell me a scarf that I was interested in (the one I´m wearing in the photo) when another woman came up and said that I could get the same scarf in Panajachel for a third the price. She wasn´t even trying to directly sell me what she had with her, she was just set on ruining this other woman´s sale. The first woman told me that the other woman was crazy (and some other things that I can only guess how they translate). She got really pissed and was frantically trying to not lose the sale. I ended up agreeing to buy it for less than we had talked about realier, but more than I knew I could get it for elsewhere. But then she didn´t have change and my boat was leaving so I left scarfless. But, if you like any of the scarves you see in the photo, let me know and I bet I can hook you up.

Here is a link to more photos. They´re all Danny´s photos, but could basically be my own.
http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=33471220836543308/l=423072095/g=143524399/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

¡Hola!

¡Hola!

I´ve decided to at least try to keep a blog. I wanted to get mividaguatemalteca.blogspot.com but it was already taken. So I went with myguatemalanlife.blogspot.com, which just doens´t have the same touch. Aparently mividaguatemalteca was taken sept. 2nd. Maybe this is what I deserve for putting this off. For organization´s sake, I´m going to start with what I wrote a few days in and then post again with more recent additions.

From Aug 28th:

I´ve been in Guatemala for three days so far and like it a lot so far. I can´t believe how much spanish i´ve spoken. I spoke with the woman on the bus next to me from Guatemala City to Xela for a while. I have 5 hours of class in the morning and then have spent the afternoons so far exploring, doing errands, and trying to talk to people. Yesterday I ran into a teacher from my school (who is 20) at Hiper Paiz-guatemala´s walmart, but way more clean, well organized, and even beautiful than the ones in the us- and we ended up sitting and talking for like 3 hours, en espanol. It was really fun.

The school is good. My teacher is okay but I think I will try to have a different teacher next week. It´s normal to switch, so its not a big deal. I have to work pretty hard to get a word in so she doesn´t just read grammar points to me when we´re doing grammar stuff, so i´ll see how i like the other teachers. Tomorrow there is a weekly salsa class which I´ve heard is fun. There are three scots who will be at the school for 2 more weeks, a couple and a woman from oregon who will be here until december and an autralian couple. There might be one or two other people. everyone seems to be in their twenties. most of the teachers are, except mine who is 40.

I like my host family a lot. I´m still waiting to get a key to the house, but I´ve been lucky enough to have someone home whenever I came home. It´s kind of low committment host family membership but we all talk at lunch which is nice. I have two host brothers who are 20-somethings. One studied law and works for the government. The other works with microfinancing, but I´m not exactly sure in what capacity. Both are really friendly and I look forward to getting to know them more. I can´t understand anything my host father says but he hardly speaks to anyone, so its okay. And my host mom is one of the smallest people I´ve ever seen. She is very nice and cooks delicious food. Right now there´s another girl (mount holyoke ´06) living with my host family, which has actually been pretty good. She´s only here for the week, but she speaks enough spanish that we talk to each other in spanish and english sometimes. It´s nice because we can be out a little later and be safe together than if I were alone. It would be tough if she didn´t speak any spanish but she took it in hgih school so can communicate. I´m trying to decide if I want to ask to be alone or not after she leaves.

My number here is (502) 5182-5669 if you ever want to call on skype. I´m usually home after 7pm (9 east coast time) because that´s when it gets dark.