Moving and Working

The rain has started. It rains lightly for a couple hours after lunch and then hard after dinner and into the night. One of my favorite things is to fall asleep to rain, and sleeping under a tin roof makes the sound incredible. We can't really talk or watch TV or anything that requires listening once the rain at night starts. It should stay this way or get even wetter throughout the rest of my time here (which I realized is less than7 more weeks!).

I moved out of my house on Sunday. The mother of my host father passed away the Friday before, and the whole weekend was taken up by funerals, services, lunches, processions, etc. I hardly saw them because they were gone nearly the whole time. Sunday afternoon there was a big lunch at my house with lots and lots of family and friends. The already emotional atmosphere made my moving out feel even stranger. Saying goodbye was more difficult than I expected it to be. Even though there were things I was always unhappy about, they had been my home and family for the past three months, and I was sad to go.

I moved in with a family I had heard good things about from other students at the school. The house is very close to my old one, and convenient to the places I know and frequent. My hostparents are Lionel and Marisol and they have two daughters: Anna, who is 10, and Rimque, who is 18 months. A student from Holland stayed with them awhile back named Rimque, and they liked its sound and guaranteed rarity in Guatemala. So far, I am really enjoying them. They eat with me, something my old family only rarely did, and speak much more with me. It's still new, but I think I will feel more comfortable with them. I don't have pictures of them yet, but I do of the house and my room.


My room. It is much smaller than the one in my old house, but it is comfortable and more than enough for what I need.

This room is just outside my room (the first door on the right). You can see the moisture from the rain on the walls. I eat here with the family and Anna watches TV nearly all day when she gets home from school around 1. She watches almost exclusively shows from the States on Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network, all dubbed in Spanish. The shows are all ridiculous, but it's good listening practice, and Anna editorializes and helps explain when I get lost. The house is much bigger with wings where other family members live, but I spend nearly all my time in this room or in mine. There is another room for a student, but I've been the only one this week. Maybe tomorrow I'll get a roommate.

This is the view coming into the house. The ground slopes down pretty steeply once inside the gate. My 'area' is behind the floral curtain on the left. The sky is too cloudy in this picture, but normally you can see the mountains in the distance.

I spent the last two weeks after coming back from my Semana Santa travels looking for a place to volunteer. I called and visited several places, and realized to my disappointment, that nearly all the clinics here only accept volunteers with actual training and more patient skills than I have. I wanted to work in a medical setting, so that was discouraging. The lack of work and place was wearing on me, though, and making me pretty homesick. I was feeling purposeless, directionless, and anxious to get back into a routine. So, I went to the original clinic (the one with lots of other volunteers), Primeros Pasos (www.primerospasos.org), on Monday morning and spent the mornings of last week there. After seeing more closely what they do and speaking with the other volunteers, some of my initial worries were allayed. Yes, they speak more English than I would like, but there is also a lot of Spanish, and once I start teaching health education classes, that will be really good sustained speaking practice. As with the other clinics I visited, I won't be able to do any patient care, but the health education volunteers are pretty much the reception/front office staff, greeting and checking in patients, processing files, etc. As a rule, only Spanish is spoken in the front office so as not to intimidate or disorient the patients as they enter the clinic.

What is health education, you ask? One of the clinic's primary functions is seeing students from the surrounding 10 communities' schools. Four days a week, the clinic gets a class full of students who come for a general healthy child check-up, a dental check, and some kind of health education. The topics vary by age, of course, from basic nutrition and hygiene to the environment, puberty/sex education, and drugs and alcohol. Health education volunteers also travel to the schools for longer, more in-depth discussions within the classroom. The hope is that the clinic will see every child from the community at least once a year. I'm hoping that giving these classes and being involved in the larger life of the clinic will be good practice speaking and listening, and I'm encouraged by what I have seen this past week. I thought about finding a second placement for the afternoon, but by the time I get back from the clinic and have lunch, most programs have already started. There are also often errands to run for the clinic, and other things to be done in the afternoon. I'm still thinking about other ways to practice speaking apart from an official position.

My time is winding down now. I can't believe how fast it has gone. I will be at the clinic for another five weeks, and then I'm planning a quick-and-dirty, week-and-a-half loop around the country to see the things too far away for a weekend trip. I haven't found a traveling companion, yet, so if any of you has time and money at the beginning of June, let me know.

Graduation and Semana Santa

A week and a half ago, I graduated from 10 weeks of Spanish instruction (here's my diploma to prove it)! It's a bit strange to be done, but I feel good about how far I've come in that time. I still need to work on my speaking skills, but that will come with more practice. I will miss the community, however transient, it provided.


Here are all the teachers I had, in chronological order starting with Evelyn on the left, then Roni, Alvaro, Helen, Miriam, and Pablo. Helen is the teacher I spent the most time with and was going to live with (more on that later).

At my graduation dinner with Natalie and Michelle.

The 'old guard,' Matt, Natalie, and Lori. These three had been with me the whole time, and we had all been there much longer than the other students. Lori graduated with me and is now living in Antigua doing an internship at a hospital in the capital. Matt and Natalie are still around, and I hope to keep in touch with them.

I graduated at a great time, because the next week was Semana Santa (Holy Week). My friend Kristin's school had the week off, and a friend of ours from college, Zach, flew down for his Spring Break. The three of us travelled around with Kristin's friend Annie in her car. It was so good to spend time with them catching up and seeing the country. We started off in Monterrico, a beach town in the south. It was unbelievably beautiful, with lots of sun and big waves. Our hotel was right on the beach, and there was a great restaurant attached with lounging cushions and hammocks, which made a great place to relax and let down at the beginning of our vacation.

After Monterrico, we headed up to Panajachel, the biggest city on Lake Atitlan, which is perhaps the most stunning lake I have ever seen (settle down, Tahoe-lovers), if not one of the most beautiful places period. We stayed again at a hotel right on the water, and had great views of the lake and the surrounding mountains. It was disappointingly overcast for much of our time, but it did clear up enough to see the other side.

Panajachel was very busy, partly because it's the most touristy spot on the lake, and partly because it was Semana Santa. There are a lot of bars, restaurants, hotels, and places to shop. We didn't stay in town for very much of our time there. Our only full day there, we took a morning boat across the lake to San Marcos, a quiet, calm, little town. Once there, we hiked a lakeside trail to a couple cliffs you can dive off into the lake. I'm a terrible judge of distances, but one seemed about 15 feet up, and the other a bit over twice that. I'd never been cliff-jumping before, and it was at the same time terrifying and exhilirating.

Zach, Kristin, and me after our first jump from the shorter cliff.

Jumping from the small one.

At the top of the taller one.

Surveying the prospects. Are you sure?

Taking the plunge.

There was a group of locals at the top of taller cliff watching us. We asked them if they'd ever done it, and they laughed and said no. It seemed entertaining for them to watch gringos throw themselves off the cliffs. I have to admit that while an awesome experience, it does seem a bit crazy.

The boat ride back.

Our last morning in Panajachel, we went to breakfast at a beautiful four-star hotel. It had incredible gardens and a great view of the lake. It had cleared up more that morning, so we were able to see the other side better.

After Panajachel, we drove down to Antigua. It's supposed to be the best kept colonial city in Central America, and it definitely still has a colonial air to it. Guidebooks say it's a good place to go to recharge if you're traveling, thanks to the more cosmopolitan feeling. There are nicer restaurants, hotels, and places to shop than elsewhere in the country. It might have been more of a recharge had there not been swarms and swarms of people there for the processions.

Antigua has the most dramatic processions for Semana Santa, and people come from all over the country and the world to see them. As an introvert, it quickly became exhausting, but it was also exciting to be in the middle of all that group energy and the anticipation of the festivities.

Unfortunately, we were in a pretty dark spot for Friday night's procession, so I don't have great pictures to share. Suffice it to say, they were elaborate and very interesting. There was a succession of floats with life size statues representing each stage of the Passion. Of course, there were also copious amounts of incense and banners and men dressed in black. The one thing I did get a good picture of was this big lit-up float. You could see it glowing from the other side of the park.

Every Catholic church I have been here has a dead Jesus in a glass case, and it seems the sponsoring church of this procession decided to parade him through the streets, which I suppose was fitting for Good Friday.

The other famous Semana Santa tradition here is the creation of alfombras, or carpets. They are made most often of colored sawdust, but are also made from things as varied as grass, flowers, vegetables, and on one we saw, CDs. That last one was a bit unexpected, but it makes sense that the tradition would change as the surrounding culture does. The processions pass over them as they make their way around the city. Each procession lasts for several hours, and people continue making their alfombras right up to the minute it arrives.

Kristin and Annie took off Saturday afternoon and Zach and I stayed an extra night so that we could hang out and so that he wouldn't be left alone to figure out his way back to the airport with little to no Spanish ability. He left very early in the morning, and I took a few chicken buses back to Xela alone. After such full and fun week, it was strange to be in Xela again. It felt like we had been gone much longer than a week.

So now I'm in Xela, looking for a place to volunteer. It's odd not to have scheduled classes and activities through the school. This week, I'll be going to a nearby hospital in the mornings with some other students from my school to observe, and in the afternoons calling and visiting organizations and making arrangements. I visited the clinic I talked about in a previous post, and while I really like what they're doing, there were a lot of English speakers volunteering. I'm still going to meet with their volunteer coordinator on Monday, but I'm not sure I want to speak that much English. There are other clinics around, though, so hopefully I'll be able to find one. If not, I'm open to working in another field. We'll see.

As I mentioned before, I didn't end up moving in with my teacher. Her brother-in-law took the room at the last minute. I was pretty disappointed, and after scrambling with a couple other potential places that didn't end up working either, I've just been staying with my original family. With traveling last week and looking for a volunteer placement now, though, it has been nice to have at least that one constant. I may be moving in with another family connected to the school that other students have said good things about. They live around the same area as my family now, so I wouldn't have to reorient myself to a new part of the city. That move may happen this weekend.

Sorry for such a long post. Thanks for hanging in there. I'd love to hear your news, so send it my way.