One week along...

DATE NOTE: SO this note was made when we had actually been here for a week but the internet signal kept crashing every time I tried to upload the pictures and publish the page, so sorry for the delay. Otherwise, enjoy.


So we have officially completed one week being in the communities of Santa Clara La Laguna and Santa María Visitación. It's been a real up and down week, but hopefully things are off to a good start for everone. We got the students into their host families and they have been getting out and making contacts with various organizations in the communities. I had no idea that the two towns would actually hate each other so much, but apparently the rivalry is so strong that 2 years ago they lynched 2 Santa Maria teachers for going over to Santa Clara to teach, and now they won't let the little taxi drivers cross community boundaries. Santa Maria started it's own very small market and a lot of people refuse to cross the community line even to buy their biweekly food.




This is one of the coolest Maya papas I've ever met, and our key contact in Santa Clara as he gets ready to head to his milpa fields for work.


I spent the last few days trekking around to the houses of all the evangelical ministers and the catholic priest to let them know about our arrival in the communities. I also met with the mayors of both towns and we had formal audiences with them where the students presented themselves as well. I ran around to get things set up so that we would have a place to hold our weekly classes too but it might not work out because the students failed to come back when the directora was there and she was had conditioned giving us the building on meeting the students so that she would know who would be coming and going...I wasn't very happy with that but the students will have to learn to be responsible one way or another...







The rainy season has officially started and is in full swing. I made a quick trip up to Ixtahuacan for a fiesta and decided to visit Xela while I was nearby and we got caught in the middle of a monster rainstorm...thoroughly soaked we finally made it to a bus and headed back down to the communities. But, as the road is far from being completed and workers limiting the lanes down to one way moving at a time, I get really nervous about traveling and there have been 2 deadly bus crashes in the last week up near Nahuala.







I got to hike up with one of the host dads to a beautiful overlook over the lake. With all the twists and turns of the road I didn't realize that we were so close to the supposed "waters of Mormon." Once we started hiking up there it was back to the aldea mentality that I had been in the middle of up in Tambrizap and huge bursts of laughter and shock everytime I said hi to someone in Kiche. While it is still a novelty, I have really appreciated that most of the people in the town center actually start conversations with me when I talk to them in Kiche rather than breaking into uncontrollable fits of laughter that keeps us from moving beyond "what's your name?"







My host family is fantastic too and my host mother sits and talks to me in Kiche most every meal. I brought some bubbles for the kids to play with and they went crazy chasing them around. See picture.







Yesterday morning a lady on our corner passed away and the whole city was kept awake by the evangelical music pouring out of their house all night as they kept a candelight vigil for her. My mom said that rumors were flying about how she had been poisoned or had a spell cast on her. She was only 32 and never married, no children. People had apparently gotten jealous of how successful she was becoming in school and gone to a witch to cast a spell on her and she suddenly started failing her classes and dropped out of the university, then she had a problem with her chest and had surgery only to get infected and after having the swelling gone down she went home and died 20 days later. Pretty interesting stuff...







I got to go to church up in Chirijox and a lot of the members remembered me though they still didn't find enough courage to talk to me. I just got lots of long stares and whispers of "Cristina!" all around me. It's definitely different having to learn to be the odd one out again when I really felt so integrated in Argentina.







I have also run into a fantastic private school called La Salle where I am now taking weaving lessons. It is dedicated to Christian principles and run by a group of brothers that was founded over 300 years ago. The bread teacher is now a dear friend and I am going to spend time learning traditional marimba music as well. They have a great program combining traditional classes in the morning and workshops of trade skills in the afternoon--I really kinda wish I could have gone to high school there!! Apparently they have branches all over the world. I don't remember if I am repeating stuff, but I'm in a kind of hurry to get this up and get back to my house for lunch.







I hope all are doing well, thanks for your support. Happy first birthday to little Maxwell, happy 13 to big Spencer, and happy 25 to big bro David.

Settling In

After a ton of help from Malcolm and his local contacts, we finally got all the students into their family housing and had our first full group meeting today. I left Panajachel and stayed in Santa Clara La Laguna as we went around and met with the potential family contacts and thought about who would fit best where. I was still going through the shock of being back in Guate and so I don't think I was as effective as possible, but things got worked out and I have been really happy with the families that were willing to take a student in. The funny thing, when I arrived at the house that we had envisioned me living in, I just got the strongest feeling that I wasn't supposed to live in that home. I didn't feel bad about the family at all and ended up placing one of the other girls there, just that I wasn't supposed to be there. SO, I stayed with them for 2 days and then moved over to another community called Santa Maria Visitacion. It's a lot smaller than the first community and acclaimed to be a Tzutujil town (another Mayan language), but my host mother and more and more people that speak Kichee and I've been really happy to see how it is coming back to me. I am still not the most conversant and I would love to keep formally studying to work on the more complex verb forms, but I have sincerly understood between 80 and 100% of all the conversations I've been in even with the other people who slur their words or talk softly and I'm getting a lot better at speaking faster and having people understand me. It helps that these communities are a TON more bilingual and I can ask them in Spanish to correct things or help me with the application of the words and so I am learning faster than I was up in Tambrizap.

On Saturday and Sunday the students met us to come down to the communities. I went up to Nahuala early in the morning to go to Church because they are working on the PanAmerican and so they have huge long lines of cars as they shut things down to one lane in order to add on the additional two lanes they are working on... though they've been working on the road for the past forever and probably won't finish the new lanes any time soon. Church in Kichee was refreshing and I even saw my old president from the Chirijox branch. Then, as I left church, I figured that I wouldn't have a lot of time so I didn't expect to see my host family, but some of them had come down the hill to go to market and so I got to see them anyway! It was great to see them and some of my neighbors too. But, as I had them help me go find the bread vendor that they always went to, I ended up getting robbed of my 90Q I had in my bag (like
$15). It was the first time I've ever been robbed in Guatemala (well I had my debit card number stolen...) but at least it was just the cash and nothing more. I went back to the church to meet up with Malcolm and the two students that had come on Saturday so that I could get some money to get home. Maybe it was my punishment for buying bread on Sunday...even if it was for my host family. Saber (who knows...)

We had our first full meeting with the students today and I have had some fabulous encounters talking to the community members about the students' arrival and what they are planning to do here for the next three months. They have been much more warm and friendly and not nearly as intimidated by the foreign presence. I think there is a lot owed to the increased outside contact because the road that leads through Santa Maria and Santa Clara goes down to the big tourist towns on the lake and so they see more and more gringos passing through. Also, there have been a lot of international organizations involved in these communities including Habitat for Humanity and help for the victims of Hurricane Stan. So, I'm excited not to be TOO novel and yet have some interest and curiosity since I'm not like one of the regular tourists and passersby.

My host family is fantastic and I'm really pleased with the change. The mom speaks Spanish but is much more comfortable in Kichee and her kids speak both languages. She has four of the most adorable kids I've ever met in my life and the little 5 year old girl just clung to me and from the first day was telling me that I was beautiful and that she loved me. It was really sweet. The little 9 year old boy started out only talking to me in Spanish but after seeing me talk to his mom in Kichee the whole time, he now talks to me in Kichee and says that I am teaching him. I like the idea of them seeing value in their native language and I think that the novelty of a foreigner from the US knowing enough to converse and being comfortable enough to initiate conversations means a lot.

Well, I have to get back to the house to eat my dinner and also get one of the students hydrocortisone cream for her recent flea bites...sad story. Sorry no pictures but I'll put some more up next time!!

Mi llegada (my arrival)

Yep, I'm back in good ole Guatemala. I took a late night flight from Salt Lake to LA and then at midnight took off to Guatemala City. I didn't hardly sleep at all even though the plane was basically empty and so I took a whole row to myself to stretch out on. I just don't do well trying to sleep on airplanes...and then there's the whole my insides are about to pop out from being nervous ordeal... You would think that after two other visits here that it would all be second nature and I wouldn't think twice about being nervous or what was going to happen to me, but you would be wrong. Every time is a new adventure and I don't think I will every leave for a long time without having it make me nervous.

When I got to the LA airport I had to switch planes, and terminals, and had to walk through this freaky white-walled tunnel with signs everywhere saying "stell curtain tunnel, exit immediately when alarm sounds--room will fill with carbon dioxide." Not the most comfortable long walk of my life, but I survived. I got to the Guatemala airport and had to flee to a corner and rearrange my stuff since my suitcase had been too heavy and so I had taken out a spare backpack to check the extra weight so I got a few funny stares from the workers seeing me dump out my stuff and tie on my sleeping bag as I hunched over my bloated purple suitcase in the corner of the baggage claim area. I got a little nervous since I was the last passenger left, but it turned out just fine. Then, bargaining for a way overpriced taxi blamed on high gas prices and a trip to the bus station to find out I was 5 minutes late for the 6:30 bus and would have to wait for the 7:30. It was so strange seeing things that were completely familiar and yet strange to me all at once. The first thing that hit me was the smell--I still have clothes that smell like Guate... But the bus went nice and slow around the curvy highway and we had to wait for more than an hour since they were only letting one direction go at a time down the highway since they are repairing it... I don't understand why they are repairing it NOW when the rainy season is starting and they won't be able to do much about it or finish up their work while it's all muddy...but I'm not in charge. I got to where I was meeting with some old friends more than 2 hours late, but they stuck it out and waited for me. It was great to see them in their home country after we had met in the States and became friends. They took me down to the beautiful Lake Atitlan where I am staying for the next couple days as we finalize housing and get the students set up. It really took a lot of worry off my mind to have them ride me down so that I wouldn't have to be changing buses with a suitcase and then blindly searching for my hotel. We talked about politics and the upcoming elections (including the potential success of Rigoberta Menchu as a presidential candidate--if you don't know who she is, look her up!!) and the hilarity of all the politicians trying to buy votes and the crazy propaganda. We talked about education a little bit and how their studies were going along, as well as some of the social projects that one of my friends had worked for and whether it was positive social involvement or not--all as we ate spaghetti in a touristy restaurant and joked about how people probably wondered what a "tall" white girl would be doing with these 2 Guatemalans and that they'd have to advertise their services as body guards in the future.

We went down to the lake and lamented that it was too cloudy to see the volcanoes and how sad that they are still cleaning up from last Fall's Hurricane disasters. I bought a cell phone and reacquainted myself with the no-toilet paper in the toilet bathrooms, and otherwise have gotten settled in. I love being able to see the textiles again, the green mountainsides zigzagged by slouchy dirt roads and cozy adobe homes, and the recently sown cornfields as they start to pop up in all random corners of the landscape.

So, basically, I'm here! I'm still trying to adjust for my now obtrusive Argentine accent and the awkwardness of not being able to blend in AT ALL again, but otherwise excited to get going and dig my heels in. My K'ichee' is rusty but improving and with stronger Spanish I will hopefully be able to make up for a lot of what I couldn't in the past and keep conversations going, ask better questions, and respond better to the inevitable suprises that are undoubtedbly headed my way (so stay tuned same blog space same blog channel!) Thanks for all your support, talk soon
Cristina

WELCOME

Well, I wanted to keep including whoever wanted to be kept included in my research in Guatemala but rather than send mass emails, I am converting to the latest technology and making my own blog! Feel free to add any comments, shoot me an email if you want a response, and enjoy!